Friday, January 20, 2006

Tell the Truth About Torture, Mr. President

Amnesty International Launches 'Tell the Truth About Torture, Mr. President' Campaign
Urges Full, Honest Disclosure of U.S. Acts of Torture During State of the Union Address

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL USA
PRESS RELEASE
January 19, 2006


(Washington, DC) -- Amnesty International USA today kicked off its "Tell the Truth About Torture, Mr. President" campaign, building up to the State of the Union address on January 31. During the two-week campaign, Amnesty International will enlist thousands of people to urge the president to be honest with all Americans about the U.S. government's use of torture in the "war on terror."

"The White House has dodged the truth about torture for too long," said Dr. William F. Schulz, Amnesty International's Executive Director. "With reports of torture in the news virtually every day, it is imperative the president and all in his administration end the secrecy and end the torture. This campaign will allow thousands of Americans to demand that torture in our names is not committed again and insist that the president speak the truth in his State of the Union address about this heinous crime."

As the first campaign action, Amnesty International encourages the public to visit its Web site, www.amnestyusa.org, to sign a petition urging President Bush to tell the truth about the country's acts of torture here and abroad. The Web petition is the first in a series of online and community activities in Washington and beyond the beltway that Amnesty International is initiating between now and the State of the Union. Actions are being planned for after Bush's address, as well.

Amnesty International is concerned that when President Bush last month signed the Anti-Torture Amendment -- passed overwhelming by Congress -- he also quietly issued a legal interpretation of the amendment through a "signing statement" asserting that he was not bound by the law under all circumstances.

"This mixed message from the administration is one more reason why Amnesty International is urging the Congress to establish a fully independent and impartial commission to conduct public investigations into the reports of abuse in U.S.-controlled detention centers, including secret ones, around the world and to offer preventive measures to stop torture," Schulz added.

In the Shadow of Bin Laden

Editorial
The Guardian (UK)
January 20, 2006

With the timing and panache of a diabolical Scarlet Pimpernel, Osama bin Laden reminded the world yesterday that he is still out there and that he continues to shape the global political agenda as few others. Of course, there are searching questions to ask about the authenticity and timing of the al-Qaida leader's latest tape before the rest of the world can make a balanced judgment about Bin Laden's message. But there is no disputing that this was another audacious media and political coup of a high order. The most wanted man in the world has proved again that he has an unrivalled ability to cock a snook at the American-led global manhunt against him. Like it or not, yesterday's tape will burnish his legend with his admirers and enemies alike.

There seem, at first sight, to be four noteworthy aspects to his latest act of electronic defiance. The first is simply the reminder that Bin Laden is still in the game. It is nearly 14 months since his last taped message. The whole of 2005 passed without a public word from him. There had been speculation that this silence implied he was either dead, seriously ill or cornered. Now, at the start of a new year, that suddenly looks like yet another example of the familiar over-optimism that has characterised much of the US-led war on terror since 9/11. The second is the striking timing of a taped message. It is less than a week since the American airstrikes on the Pakistani village of Damadola, aimed at killing Bin Laden's deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri. This may be pure good luck for al-Qaida - the logistical difficulties of getting such a tape into the hands of the broadcaster al-Jazeera without detection make it unlikely that the tape was made in the past week - but the timing enables Bin Laden to thumb his nose at his pursuers yet again.

But it is not just the fact of the message that matters. It is also its content. The two things that stand out here are the al-Qaida carrot and stick. The carrot is a so-called truce offer, in which the United States and its allies apparently withdraw from Iraq and Afghanistan in return for some kind of al-Qaida ceasefire in the west. This will not be to be treated as a genuine truce offer, for it would provide al-Qaida with the time, space and place to resume planning a renewed terror campaign. There is, though, a political claim in this message that cannot be completely disregarded, designed to play into a naïve belief in some parts of the west that negotiations with Bin Laden may offer a way out of the terror and security-dominated world in which we now live.

The final point follows from this. At the heart of Bin Laden's message is the threat to unleash further terror attacks on American citizens in their homeland. Far from provoking a movement to appease the terrorists, this will surely do the reverse. It will play directly into the hands of those who insist that security must overwhelm all other considerations. It should not. Specifically, after yesterday's leak from the Foreign Office, it should not undermine the continuing anxiety about possible British involvement in the transport of terror suspects to third countries where they risk torture.

The Foreign Office memorandum revealed no doubt in official minds of the illegality of ignoring due process in the transport of terrorist suspects to countries where they might be tortured - hence the importance of Condoleezza Rice's assurances that the US will not act in breach of its own constitutional disavowal of torture, a much narrower definition than the obligations imposed by the UN convention against torture or the European convention on human rights. It may mean what is legal there would not be here. Ms Rice says Europe is helping it take terrorists out of circulation. The government insists it has no evidence of rendition flights. It might prefer not to resolve this contradiction. Bin Laden's intervention should not let it off the hook.

Funds for Iraq stolen, misspent

By Rowan Scarborough
Washington Times
January 20, 2006

Finding out what happened to Iraq's $37 billion in oil-financed reconstruction funds -- its stacks of plastic-wrapped hundred-dollar bills popping up all over the country like play money -- has taken investigators down many paths, including one to the Defense Ministry office of Ziyad al Qattan.

Questions about what happened to the fund, once held by the United Nations and turned over to the Bush administration, are part of a broader story of how the United States has spent billions in American and Iraqi money after Saddam Hussein was ousted in April 2003.

So far, the United States has spent $226 billion to wage war in Iraq, and the reconstruction costs have proven to be another expensive challenge.

Along with the $37 billion fund, another $24 billion from U.S. taxpayers has been ordered for Iraqi reconstruction. Together with $4 billion pledged by other countries, more than $60 billion is pegged for reconstruction costs alone. The problem is U.S. and Iraqi officials aren't sure just how much money has been stolen or misspent.

The situation is crucial for Iraq: The World Bank has estimated the country needs another $40 billion in reconstruction money and Iraq can ill afford massive corruption which would jeopardize future funding.

A confidential report by Iraq's Supreme Board of Audit provides a peek at accounting problems, which date back to May 2003, when the Bush administration created the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) and made L. Paul Bremer Iraq's first post-Saddam leader. Mr. Bremer's office received a huge infusion of funds at that time and began spending it on rebuilding efforts at a furious pace -- in cash.

The Iraqi audit dug into Mr. al Qattan's defense ministry office to find evidence of front companies, out-of-country banks and cash payments to arms dealers before anything was delivered. Sometimes, nothing was.

Today, Iraq's Commission on Public Integrity is trying to determine how much of the CPA-distributed cash was stolen or misspent, and how much went for legitimate projects. Mr. al Qattan could probably answer some of those questions, but he's now thought to be hiding in Warsaw.

Ali Shabot, the commission's spokesman, said investigators estimate at this point that corrupt officials took multimillions of dollars. "They are still investigating the cases," Mr. Shabot said through an interpreter. "They don't have a final number yet."

Mr. Shabot and American officials say they think most of the money in question was stolen in 2003, when the CPA exercised few safeguards, and in 2004, when Interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi ruled Iraq without the benefit of financial oversight laws that later became part of the new constitution in 2005.

Defense dollars wasted

It was Mr. al Qattan who negotiated contracts totaling hundreds of millions of dollars, according to the 32-page, English-translated report, a copy of which was obtained by The Washington Times.

The Iraqi audit of 2004-05 also said the Defense Ministry paid too much for a "rest house" for an army commander, complete with 24-karat gold-plated chandeliers. It said commanders signed for their men's salaries and pocketed the cash. The ministry paid a middle man more than $1 million as a down payment for 20 armored BMWs and Land Cruisers. Auditors could not determine whether the cars were ever delivered.

The ministry would pay cash up front, then sign a contract and wait for the military equipment to arrive, if it ever did. Cash went to arms dealers in Poland, Ukraine, Jordan, Pakistan and elsewhere.

"We would like to state that taking out of cash money related to acquisition of materials abroad represents a flagrant violation of the state monetary policy," the Supreme Board of Audit concluded. It told of "poor and organizational wording of the ministry's contracts in which it was seen that the interests of the supplier were taken into account while the contracting rights of the ministry were not."

U.N.'s pot of gold

In the spring of 2003, Iraq was descending into chaos as American troops began to feel the sting of an insurgency that would only grow in sophistication.

Arriving in Baghdad was Mr. Bremer, a protege of Henry Kissinger and the Pentagon's pick to get Iraq moving toward democracy. He badly needed money — huge sums — to prop up ministries, pay civil servants, an army and a police force, and to start rebuilding power plants, schools, hospitals, homes and water treatment centers.

At first there was relatively little U.S. money for such an undertaking. The Pentagon diverted millions from its operational budget to what are called Commander's Emergency Response Programs (CERP) to start public works projects. The administration raided other accounts to start other projects, such as resurrecting Iraq's wrecked power grid. But the flow of money only trickled in: Iraq needed a flood.

However, there was a pot of gold, and all Mr. Bremer need do was look west.

The United Nations had amassed a fortune in Iraq oil proceeds and seized bank accounts to the tune of $37 billion, most of it stashed in a Federal Reserve bank in New York.

The Bush administration asked the U.N. for custody of the money and, with the approval of resolution 1483 in October, the Development Fund for Iraq (DFI) was created and placed under the control of the CPA.

Spreading the wealth

Soon loads of cash started arriving in Baghdad on giant C-17 cargo planes. Pallets packed with crisp, enumerated $100 bills were unloaded, trucked to the capital and then dispatched by convoy around Iraq to pay the bills.

In all, $12 billion in U.S. currency was flown into Iraq before a banking system was set up to handle wire transfers of the fund. The country more resembled the Wild West than a functioning state. Given the situation, Mr. Bremer decided to deal in cash — paying for construction projects and salaries out of pocket even when the tab reached millions of dollars.

"We were handing out $100 bills in contracts like candy," Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich, Ohio Democrat, later commented.

Rep. Henry A. Waxman, California Democrat, directed his staff to look into the frequent flying of money into Iraq. He reported that the $12 billion was dispatched from the DFI account in "cashpaks" at the Federal Reserve in shipments totaling 363 tons. Each cashpak contained $1.6 million worth of $100 bills, Mr. Waxman said.

On Dec. 12, 2003, the Fed recorded a first. The reserve bank released $1.5 billion for a single flight to Iraq, making it the largest single Fed payout of U.S. currency in history, according to Mr. Waxman's staff.

Once in Iraq, much of the loot sat in a huge safe inside the Republican Palace, making one of Saddam's lavish residences Iraq's richest bank.

Where's the watchdog?

Something else besides functioning banks was missing: government oversight. "CPA officials used virtually no financial controls to account for these enormous cash withdrawals once they arrived in Iraq," Mr. Waxman's staff said in a June 2005 report.

The Pentagon oversaw the CPA, yet its inspector general balked at sending any staffers to an increasingly violent country to probe reports of theft.

Mr. Bremer and military commanders decided the money was so urgently needed, especially for essential fuel from Kuwait, that there wasn't time to set up contracting offices and thus comply with U.S. regulations.

Oversight finally arrived just months before the CPA was going out of business in June 2004 and Mr. Bremer was winging his way out of Baghdad.

Enter the examiners

Congress created the post of a special investigator in late 2003 to monitor how the $37 billion was being spent. Stuart W. Bowen Jr., appointed in January 2004 as the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction (SIGIR), sent in teams of auditors that spring to start trailing the money.

In January 2005, he broke the bad news to Congress, saying the CPA could not verify that $8.8 billion it turned over to Iraqi ministries was properly spent.

"After many months of careful interviews ... my auditors concluded that there were not adequate systems in place to ensure that the CPA knew what happened to the DFI funds after they were disbursed to the Iraqi ministries," Mr. Bowen wrote in his January 2005 report.

The Iraqi Commission on Public Integrity is continuing to investigate the cash flow, as is the country's Central Criminal Court. The U.S. is also advising each Iraqi ministry in the establishment of an inspector general system modeled after Washington's, complete with hot lines.

Still, Iraq's Supreme Board of Audit, and Mr. Bowen's gumshoes, have been able to establish that millions of dollars were likely misspent.

Mr. Bowen's staff focused on the DFI's first year, a time when packs of cash left the palace vault at a dizzying pace. "Inevitably, in such an environment, with so much cash and such an enormous task ... there were inefficiencies and we found them," Mr. Bowen later told Congress.

One of the SIGIR's first discoveries was that Mr. Bremer lacked the personnel he needed to run financial transactions.

"Relatively few agencies responded positively to the call for volunteers for CPA," said a SIGIR report. "Interagency coordination of human resource management was generally weak."

At the top, the SIGIR concluded, Mr. Bremer's CPA "did not implement adequate managerial controls over DFI funds. ... We believe the CPA management of Iraq's national budget process and oversight of Iraqi funds was burdened by severe inefficiencies and poor management."

Tales of squander

Mr. Bowen's sleuths, and other auditors, found graft and incompetence, on both a small and large scale:

•The CPA gave one ministry enough to pay 8,026 guards, but only 602 actually existed. Another agency received payroll money for 1,471 guards, but only 642 stood duty.

•A CPA comptroller outside of Baghdad maintained a disbursement safe, but kept the key in an unsecured backpack and the disbursement officer often left the premises, leaving the safe open.

•Halliburton, the giant oil services firm, received $1.6 billion in DFI money for fuel and oil field repairs. Pentagon auditors say it overcharged the government by $218 million.

Perhaps the biggest DFI scandal unfolded in the CPA's South-Central Region headquarters in the city of Hillah. A cast of suspected thieves included U.S. military officers, a CPA field agent and a flamboyant American businessman, Philip H. Bloom, who owns businesses in Romania and lives in New Jersey.

Rounding up suspects

Mr. Bowen's team found a series of suspicious transactions. Agents submitted project receipts for more than $300,000 for contracts that had already been canceled; Mr. Bloom was paid twice for the same contract; and account managers did not verify all needed documents before paying out money.

Before long, the U.S. Justice Department launched a full-bore investigation.

By November 2005, the department filed its first criminal charges. It accused Mr. Bloom and an accomplice, Robert J. Stein Jr. of Fayetteville, N.C., of fraud and money laundering. Mr. Stein served as the CPA comptroller in Hillah, controlling millions of dollars in cash shipped from the palace safe. The Justice Department says Mr. Bloom paid Mr. Stein more than $600,000 in bribes in return for more than $13 million in contracts. Weeks later, the department accused two Army officers of accepting cash and gifts from Mr. Bloom.

The Justice Department said Army Reserve Lt. Col. Debra Harrison of Trenton, N.J., received a $50,000 Cadillac Escalade and $6,000 in airlines tickets. She is also accused of dipping into the DFI fund in Hillah, stealing up to $100,000. She purportedly used the money for home improvements. A second officer, Army Reserve Lt. Col. Michael Wheeler of Amherst Junction, Wis., is also accused of stealing up to $100,000.

A breakthrough, of sorts

The contract amounts from the Hillah debacle are relatively small given Mr. Bowen's investigators have concluded that more than $8.8 billion was improperly controlled. But his office sees the Hillah case as a breakthrough.

"It sent a message that we are going to go after people who did this, people who committed crimes," said Jim Mitchell, Mr. Bowen's spokesman.

As for Mr. al Qattan, he is one of 23 Defense Ministry and other Iraqi officials who face arrest warrants issued by the Central Criminal Court of Iraq. The Iraqi Commission on Public Integrity estimates that more than $1 billion in DFI money was misappropriated and those facing warrants include the former defense minister, Hazem Shaalan, who is in London and has denied any wrongdoing.

Mr. al Qattan is thought to be in Poland, where he had traveled in early 2005 to negotiate arms deals. An Iraqi court issued an arrest warrant for him because of "financial, administrative and legal issues." A spokesman at Poland's embassy in Washington said he had no information that Mr. al Qattan is in Poland.

Bremer defends methods

In all, Mr. Waxman's staff estimates that of the $37 billion fund, the CPA controlled $23 billion during its brief life span, spending nearly $20 billion.

Mr. Bremer, who is now hawking his book about his year as CPA administrator, has bristled at Mr. Bowen's criticism. Not long after the special investigator's first draft audit appeared in July 2004, Mr. Bremer fired off a letter.

"In my view this draft report does not meet the standards Americans have come to expect of the inspector general," Mr. Bremer wrote. "The report assumes that Western-style budgeting and accounting procedures could be immediately and fully implemented in the midst of a war. ... The IG auditors presume that the coalition could achieve a standard of budgetary transparency and execution, which even peaceful Western nations would have trouble meeting within a year, especially in the midst of a war."

Mr. Bremer said the Iraq economy was "dead in the water." His only rational option, he said, was to begin paying Iraqi civil servants in cash to get the government restarted.

Mr. Bremer continued his counterattack Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press." He said Mr. Bowen wanted him "to impose an army of American auditors into all of these ministries to follow every dinar down to the very last dinar. This would have been a recipe for a real mess, and I just think he's wrong."

Mr. Mitchell said Mr. Bowen stands by his findings and never advocated a huge number of auditors, just a system to verify that the money went to actual employees.

Noting that Mr. Bremer said Iraq had no functioning payroll system and suffered through corrupt Ba'athist rulers, Mr. Mitchell said, "In the view of the inspector general, any one of these conditions should have sent strong signals to CPA financial managers that weaknesses were widespread, posed unacceptable risks and called for forceful action. Instead, Ambassador Bremer authorized the distribution of billions of dollars to these ministries, and he cannot say he knows that the funds went to the intended recipients."

General Attacks American Record In Afghanistan

By David Rennie, in Brussels
London Daily Telegraph
January 20, 2006

Divisions within Nato over the "war on terror" burst into the open when the commander of Dutch forces launched an extraordinary public attack on the record of the American military in Afghanistan.

Gen Dick Berlijn said yesterday that four years of "unnecessarily harsh" American combat operations had brought "little or no" benefit to the restive south of the country, other than the toppling of the Taliban.

Holland's coalition government and parliament are locked in a bitter debate over whether to send 1,200 Dutch troops to join a new Nato mission of 6,000 troops in southern Afghanistan.

With Dutch memories of their military's disastrous involvement in the former Yugoslav conflict still raw, the row has threatened to topple the government. Britain is among those most keen to hear a final answer from The Hague, as the UK will command the new mission, which is supposed to involve some 6,000 troops.

If the Dutch parliament refuses, Nato will have to think again.

Gen Berlijn, the chief of the Netherlands defence staff, backed the sending of Dutch troops, saying they would bring sensitive peace-keeping skills to the operation. But in the same interview with the Dutch magazine Elsevier, he expressed grave concerns about the exact relationship on the ground between peacekeeping Nato forces and American combat forces engaged in Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF).

Dutch politicians have expressed fears that peacekeeping troops will come under attack from insurgents motivated by their loathing of American forces. The general did not dismiss such concerns outright, saying: "If it is necessary to hunt terrorists in an area, then the OEF commander will have to discuss this extremely carefully with the Nato commander.

"There must not be a situation in which we work on reconstruction one day and the bulldozers of the OEF flatten everything again the next."

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Just How Big is the Defense Budget?

A Tutorial on How to Find the Real Numbers
By WINSLOW T. WHEELER
CounterPunch
January 19, 2006

On Dec. 21, 2005, Congress passed a defense appropriations bill, which according to the press releases of the House and Senate Appropriations Committees, and many news articles subsequently written, funded "defense spending" for the United States for the current fiscal year, 2006. The impression made by the press releases and the news articles was that the $453 billion advertised in the bill, H.R. 2863, constitutes America's defense budget for 2006.[1]

That would be quite incorrect. In fact, the total amount to be spent for the Department of Defense in 2006 is $13 billion to $63 billion more, the latter figure assuming full funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. If you also count, non-DOD "national defense" costs, add another $21 billion, and, if you count defense related security costs, such as homeland security, the congressional press release numbers are more than $200 billion wrong.

Having observed, and in past years participated in, the obscuration of just how much the United States actually spends for defense, this author believes it would assist the debate over the defense budget in this country by identifying its actual size. The "defense spending" bill enacted in December had the title, "Making appropriations to the Department of Defense for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2006 and for other purposes." It was a little heavy on those "other purposes" [2] and it did not comprise all the money the Defense Department received and will receive for 2006.

To peer through the opaqueness of congressional defense appropriations, it is necessary to run through the numbers; all the numbers. The first step is to understand the "defense spending" bill, H.R. 2863, as enacted:

* Division A of the bill appropriated $453.3 billion, but not all of it for DOD. $522 million went to the CIA for unclassified "intelligence community management" and to the Coast Guard. This makes the DOD total in Division A $452.8 billion.[3]

* Division B, Title I, Chapter 1 of the bill adds to DOD $4.4 billion for its expenses to rescue and relieve civilians and to undo damage to DOD contractors from Hurricane Katrina.

* Chapter 7 of Division B adds another $1.4 billion to rebuild DOD facilities damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

* Division B, Title II, Chapter 2 adds $130 million for DOD work for protection from the threat of the Avian Flu pandemic.

* Division B, Title III, Chapter 2 cuts the DOD budget by $80 million in rescissions (cancelled spending). More importantly, Chapter 8 in this title cuts DOD, and all other federal spending, except the Department of Veterans Affairs and "emergency" spending, by one percent "across the board." The cut is mandated to occur in every single program of the affected accounts, nothing is exempted. The reduction to DOD is $4.0 billion. The actual total for DOD in the bill is $454.8 billion, over a billion more than what the appropriations committees implied.

But that's not all for the Defense Department's budget. Add $12.2 billion for military construction.

For reasons of politics and jurisdiction, Congress appropriates money for the Defense Department in two separate bills: the Department of Defense Appropriations bill and the Military Construction Appropriations bill -- which these days is also wrapped in with other spending, such as the Department of Veterans Affairs. The "MilCon" bill funds military bases in the states and districts of almost every member of Congress.

A major Capitol Hill activity is writing press releases for local newspapers about the goodies the senators and representatives add for their military facilities back home. They also write press releases about the goodies they add in the DOD appropriations bill. (Having two bills to write press releases about is better than one.) So, that gets DOD spending for 2006 to $466.7 billion. That's all, right? Nope. Add about another $50 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

There is already $50 billion for Iraq and Afghanistan in the $466.7 billion appropriated in H.R. 2863. However, war spending in 2005 was over $100 billion, and most expect 2006 to cost at least as much. Nonetheless, Congress decided to provide just $50 billion for ongoing military operations, about enough money for the first six months of the fiscal year.

It will run out in about March 2006.

Before then, Congress and the president will need to add more, up to another $50 billion. It is that amount that Pentagon and congressional officials privately say they anticipate will be added in a "supplemental" appropriations request in early 2006.[4] OK, that gets the total to $516.7 billion. Done now, right? Nope. There are other defense activities in the Department of Energy to keep America's nuclear arsenal reliable and effective and to develop new nuclear weapons.

Add another $16.4 billion. There are also defense related costs in the Selective Service, the National Defense Stockpile, parts of the General Services Administration, and other miscellany. Add still another $4.7 billion. That gets the total to $537.8 billion. This figure constitutes the "National Defense" budget function (known to budget geeks as budget function "050") in presidential budget requests and congressional budget resolutions. You may also want to count even more spending, such as the costs of the Department of Homeland Security, which is certainly national defense in a generic sense. Add about $41 billion. [5]

You might also want to consider some of the human consequences of current and previous wars; add about $68 billion for Veterans Affairs. Also, consider adding the costs of reconstruction in Iraq and Afghanistan which counts in the State Department's budget, plus all the other costs for international security, diplomacy, and foreign aid, as administered by Condoleezza Rice; add about $23 billion.

If you count all these costs, the total is $669.8 billion. This amount easily outdoes the rest of the world. In fact, if you count just the costs of the National Defense budget function, the approximate $538 billion we spend is $29 billion more than the $509 billion the entire rest of the world spends. [6]

Pick the number you believe to be most appropriate for "defense spending" in 2006. Presumably, you will not be using the $453 billion widely advertised by Congress and the press. Now, there can be an accurate debate on whether this budget is too large or too small. Please proceed.

Confused by this welter of numbers? Not surprising; below are the important parts.

U.S. Defense and Security Spending Fiscal Year 2006

H.R. 2863 Grand total for the Department of Defense Appropriations Act, (but not all Congress has appropriated to DOD) $454.5 Billion

H.R. 2528, Military Construction Appropriations: $12.2 Billion

Total Appropriated to Date to Dept. of Defense: 466.7

Likely 2006 Supplemental (Possible amount to complete Iraq/Afghanistan war costs for 2006) $50 billion

Likely Total for DOD for 2006 $516.7 billion

Department of Energy/Defense Activities Appropriations (Funds nuclear weapons activities): $16.4 Billion

Other non-DOD defense activities (Funds Selective Service, National Defense Stockpile, etc.): $4.7 billion

Total for "National Defense" (Constitutes the National Defense Budget Function (Budget Function 050) in presidential budgets) $537.8 billion

Homeland Security (Approximate amount for non-DOD Homeland Security costs): $41 billion

Veterans Affairs $68 billion

International Security (Approximate amount for reconstruction aid, foreign arms sales, development assistance, etc.) $23 billion

Total for non-defense but security related costs $132 billion

Grand Total for All international security and defense costs $669.8


Winslow T. Wheeler is the Director of the Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information. He spent 31 years working for US Senators from both parties and the Government Accountability Office. He contributed an essay on the defense budget to CounterPunch's new book: Dime's Worth of Difference. Wheeler's new book, "The Wastrels of Defense: How Congress Sabotages U.S. Security," is published by the Naval Institute Press.

[1] See Dec. 17, 2005, U.S. Senate Committee on Appropriations, "Conferees Approve FY 2006 Defense Spending Bill." See first sentence in addition to the press release's title.

[2] The bill was passed by Congress on Dec. 21, 2005, and it was signed into law by the president on Dec. 30, 2005. It is now Public Law 109-148.

[3] To be entirely correct, significant amounts of the funds ostensibly appropriated to DOD are actually for the various U.S. intelligence agencies, some of them outside DOD. Last year, a defense official accidentally told the press the classified intelligence budget amounted to about $40 billion. The appropriations for intelligence agencies are buried in various parts of the DOD bill. For example, the account, "Other Research and Development," for the Air Force might have a few billion for CIA or NSA programs. The details of these intelligence appropriations are available only to members of Congress and a very small number of staffers. The paperwork resides in a secure vault in the Capitol building for those cleared members and staff to read; very few do.

[4] As this is written, the press is reporting DOD and OMB to be considering a supplemental of not $50 billion to finish out war funding in 2005 but $80 billion to $100 billion. Insiders report that the press has this wrong; it is more likely that DOD and OMB will ask for about $50 billion more for 2006 and a "down payment" for 2007 war costs of $40 billion to $50 billion.

[5] This number and those below for the VA and international security are not from congressional budget data but from "The Military Balance 2005-2006," International Institute for Strategic Studies, Routledge, 2005, p. 42 . The final actuals for these agencies in 2006, including not just appropriations but also "mandatory" or "entitlement" spending, is not available and likely will not be for a few weeks, as of this date.

[6] "SIPRI Yearbook 2005; Armaments, Disarmament and International Security," Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Oxford University Press, 2005, p. 310.

US kills Nautilus laser gun

Originally developed to intercept Katyusha rockets, it is now considered the main defense against kassam rockets.
Amnon Barzilai
Globes (Israel)
January 18, 2006

Sources inform ''Globes'' that the Pentagon has killed the joint US-Israeli Natulus mobile tactical high energy laser (MTHEL), designed to intercept aerial targets such as rockets, missiles, artillery shells and other aerial threats at ranges of 5-6 kilometers.

Over the past three years, Israel’s defense establishment developed a system to use lasers to intercept kassam rockets. The defense establishment has been informed of the US decision. A senior Ministry of Defense official said, “I feel we’ve missed an immense opportunity.”

Maj.-Gen. (res.) Prof. Yitzhak Ben-Yisrael, who served as IDF chief R&D officer when the decision to develop the Nautilus was taken said, “This is a fateful decision. We’ll have to live with kassam rockets for decades. Technologically, the laser system was the only solution in the foreseeable future that could intercept them.”

The Nautilus laser gun program was begun ten years ago. It was originally designed to enable the IDF to intercept Katyusha rockets fired by Hizbullah in Lebanon against communities in the Upper Galilee. A Nautilus prototype was initially developed at the laboratories of TRW Automotive (NYSE:TRW), in cooperation with Israel Aircraft Industries Ltd. (IAI), Rafael Armament Development Authority Ltd., and Elbit Systems Ltd. (Nasdaq: ESLT; TASE: ESLT). The technology chalked up impressive successes in tests in New Mexico, intercepting Katyushas in and mortar bombs mid-flight.

The prototype was completed five years ago. $250 million has been invested in the program to date, 80% of which was funded by the US Army Space and Missile Defense Command and the rest by Israel’s Ministry of Defense. When development was completed it was realized that the system was immobile, awkward and too big. In order to used effectively, its size had to be halved, to give mobility using trucks.

When the IDF withdrew from southern Lebanon in June 2000, Hizbullah stopped its heavy bombardment of the Upper Galilee. The Ministry of Defense therefore decided to use the Nautilus against other aerial threats, such as missiles, paragliders, and ultra-light aircraft.

When the Palestinians began massive firing of kassam rockets from the Gaza Strip, the Ministry of Defense and IDF developed the concept to use lasers as the morst effective defense against them. To speed up development, the Nautilus project was transferred to the Ministry of Defense’s Homa project, headed Aryeh Herzog, designed to protect Israel against ballistic missile threats. In the US, Northrop Grumman Corp. (NYSE:NOC) took over military laser programs, and became the chief contractor for the Nautilus.

Last year, Herzog held several meetings with US Army Space Command chiefs and Northrop Grumman executives to discuss further development of the program. A plan was formulated, under which development of a light and mobile system (the MTHEL) would be completed by 2008-09 at an additional investment of $300-400 million.

The plan was to deploy 6-7 Nautilus MTHELs to defend communities surrounding the Gaza Strip. Over a year ago, Israel received the Nautilus’s radar system, which has been integrated into a warning system in Sderot to warn against incoming kassam rockets.

In discussions in the US, the Americans criticized Israel for reducing its share in the financing of the Nautilus, and asked Israel to increase its budget share. Israel said its defense budget had been reduced, and there was no possibility of increasing its share in the program. Despite US criticism, Israel budgeted only $7 million a year in the past two years for the Nautilus. Israel recently learned that the Pentagon had decided to stop allocations for the program in 2006, thereby halting development.

Consequently, an argument broke out in Israel’s defense establishment over who was responsible for neglecting the program. Defense industry sources blame the Ministry of Defense. However, a senior ministry official said today, “The reason is that the US Army lost interest in the program. The US had invested $50 million a year in the program, but decided not to add another cent this year. It’s impossible to continue the program without US aid.”

The ministry source believes that the US decision was professional. The laser gun uses a chemical laser, and the US is now developing a solid-state laser interceptor. “The enemy of the good system we developed is new technology, which the US believes is better. That was the problem.”

A Ministry of Defense spokesman said in response, “As of now, there is uncertainty about further US Army financing for the program.”

Spain accuses man of terrorism for recruiting fighters for the Iraqi insurgency

Spain has brought preliminary terrorism charges against one of the men it apprehended last week on suspicion of recruiting fighters for the Iraqi insurgency.

On Monday, a Spanish court announced the charges against Omar Nakcha, a 23-year-old Moroccan who was apprehended last week, the Associated Press reported. The Spanish government accuses him of leading one of two major terror cells in Spain that recruits and raises money to aid the Iraqi insurgency. Last week, Spanish authorities targeted the two cells in a major raid that netted 21 suspects.

In Iraqi Oil City, a Formidable Foe

Airborne Soldiers Struggle to Break Grip of Insurgents
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 19, 2006; A01

BAIJI, Iraq -- Pfc. Robyn Houston fires bursts of bullets into the air as his Humvee swerves around a pothole and lurches over a highway median. His convoy bears down on oncoming traffic, forcing Iraqi cars to swerve onto a dirt shoulder.

Roadside bombs "are really bad here!" the vehicle's commander, Staff Sgt. Sean Davis, 30, of Crestview, Fla., shouts over the gunfire and growl of the Humvee. "We're firing warning shots to get them off the road!"

It's a tactic Davis and his platoon resort to daily to avoid deadly explosions in Baiji, a Sunni Arab city long neglected by American forces and still firmly in the grip of insurgents, soldiers here say. In the first month after the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division took over security duties in northern Iraq in late fall, roadside bombs killed or wounded more than a quarter of the 34-man platoon.

Baiji has emerged as a critical priority for the U.S. military because of its importance to Iraq's oil industry, a fact underscored last month when insurgent threats forced officials to shut down the country's biggest oil refinery here, which handles 200,000 barrels a day.

But the city was virtually unknown territory when Davis's platoon -- part of Bulldog Company of the 1st Battalion, 187th Infantry Regiment -- and hundreds of other 101st Airborne soldiers were dispatched into the heart of Baiji for the first time last fall, Army officers here say. The knowledge deficit has proven to be deadly.

Like many small cities and towns in Iraq, Baiji, with a population of about 60,000, has long festered as an insurgent haven while U.S. commanders concentrated their limited forces in large cities such as Baghdad and Mosul. Previous American units stayed mostly outside the city, and intelligence was minimal, officers say.

As a result, even these battle-hardened troops from the 101st, many of them veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, have fallen into the pattern of many Army units that suffer high casualties in their first six weeks in Iraq, as insurgents test them in unfamiliar terrain.

This month, Army commanders frustrated by fatalities from bombs, mines and, more recently, suicide car bombings began building up sand walls with bulldozers, digging ditches and setting up barricades to sharply restrict entry to the city. They completely sealed off a section of Baiji -- the village of Siniyah -- with a six-mile-long, eight-foot-high berm.

Meanwhile, Davis's platoon resorts to do-it-yourself tactics to try to stay safe. They scour their base for concrete, mixing it with water and pouring it into potholes where insurgents could hide improvised bombs. "I've been trying to find some Quikrete" concrete mix, said Sgt. 1st Class Danny Kidd, 36, of Fulton, N.Y., who like many in his unit is surprised by the intensity of attacks. Other soldiers have mounted shrieking police sirens on their Humvees to clear Iraqi traffic off the roads.

"It's definitely more dangerous this time around," agreed Spec. David Jones, 24, of New York, on his second tour in Iraq with the platoon. "I didn't expect to lose so many friends so soon."

Hostility on the Rise

Lying 120 miles north of Baghdad on the Tigris River, Baiji's huge industrial complex rises like a metallic jungle out of a scrub desert landscape. A town with a population that is 98 percent Sunni Muslim, Baiji prospered under Saddam Hussein, who paid favored tribes handsomely to run and protect the oil and electricity infrastructure.

After the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, those patronage jobs disappeared, generating hostility against American forces as well as recruits for the insurgency, Baiji residents say. Heavy-handed sweeps through Baiji by U.S. forces in 2003 and 2004 left many people angry, frightened and humiliated, residents say.

"Most of the people fighting the Americans tell me they do nothing for us but destroy the houses and capture people," Adil Faez Jeel, a director at the Baiji refinery, said of the U.S. forces. "There are no jobs, no water, no electricity."

Meanwhile, U.S. military convoys passing Baiji along the main north-south highway from Baghdad to Mosul have killed some residents in hit-and-run accidents, according to local leaders. "A lot of people from my tribe are dead, and I don't know what to say," said Ghaeb Nafoos Hamed Khalaf, leader of the Qaysi tribe, one of the largest in Baiji.

Insurgents have used Baiji as a base for staging attacks on Mosul and Baghdad while skimming funds from the oil trade, U.S. officers said. Together with criminal networks, they began profiting by cutting pipelines and trucking oil products to be sold on the black market. "No one makes money when oil flows. They make money when it's disrupted," said Lt. Col. Mike Getchell, an operations officer with the 101st in Tikrit.

In Baiji, the black market for gasoline bustles, with vendors often reappearing within days or hours of being detained by U.S. troops. "They're all over the place," Houston, 20, of Cincinnati, said on a recent patrol through town.

About 150 Iraqi soldiers oversee checkpoints around the city but have failed to stop the attacks. Inside Baiji, the police are ineffective -- they often sleep on night duty, U.S. officers said. The police and army "are fence-sitters -- they don't like the coalition or insurgents, and they're just trying to stay alive," said 1st Lt. Billy Bobbitt, 24, of Woodstown, N.J., an Army intelligence officer in Baiji. "We're already on our second police chief. The other one was going to be fired, but then he got blown up" by a roadside bomb.

U.S. troops have made some headway, recently tracking down a key weapons smuggler and a large cache of munitions. But residents say security in Baiji is far worse than it was under Hussein. Many residents, fearful of insurgent threats, refuse to tell U.S. soldiers who is planting the bombs in their neighborhoods. Insurgents target Iraqis who work for Americans; one man who cleaned toilets at the U.S. base was recently beheaded, Baiji residents and a U.S. officer said.

"When Saddam was in power, we used to go to Mosul, to Tikrit, to Baghdad. . . . It was safer all over," said Salah Aub Ramadan Obaydi, 65, a retired teacher, serving tea and pastries to visiting American soldiers in the curtained sitting room of his east Baiji home. Now "people get shot every day and no one cares."

Outside, on a wall along a trash-strewn street, graffiti declare: "Long live the resistance" and "We're the Baiji heroes, we still resist."

The soldiers go door to door, seeking to identify and photograph all military-age males as part of a tedious effort to figure out who's who. Iraqis oblige, sometimes grudgingly. No one offers information on attackers.

"They have the place locked down," Kidd said of the insurgents. "We have almost no support from the local people. We talk to 1,000 people and one will come forward."

First Sgt. Robert Goudy, of Bulldog Company, summed up the soldiers' frustration in fighting an elusive enemy: "It's like an elephant trying to catch a mouse."

A Deadly Ruse

At the home of Ghaeb, the Qaysi tribal leader, Capt. Matt Bartlett leans forward and directs a piercing gaze at the sheik, who is dressed in a gold tasseled robe and red-checked headdress.

"You may know, down past that bridge four of my soldiers were killed," says Bartlett, the 29-year-old company commander, of Montville, N.J., his voice low and tense.

Ghaeb bursts into rapid-fire Arabic. "From the bridge to the island is not my area!" he says, gesturing toward the Tigris flowing just beyond his courtyard.

Bartlett wasn't impressed. "They are scared of us and of being seen with us," he explained later. "They go along with the status quo."

A few weeks before, Bartlett and others recalled, the captain and one of his platoon leaders, 1st Lt. Dennis W. Zilinski, of Freehold, N.J., had visited the neighborhood to try to gain information from Ghaeb about a cell of bomb-makers. Zilinski, an amiable young officer and captain of his West Point swim team, brought toys for Ghaeb's children and traded high-fives with them.

The sheik was holding a large gathering and was unavailable, they were told. The American convoy tried to turn around, but Iraqi cars blocked the way and people waved the soldiers down an alternative, dirt route along the Tigris nicknamed "Smugglers' Road."

"It was weird," Bartlett recalled thinking. A few hundred yards down the road, bordered by fields, the convoy was hit by a massive explosion.

Behind the blast, Goudy jumped out of his Humvee and ran forward toward the huge cloud of smoke and debris. As it cleared, he was confused by what he found.

"I saw this big piece of flesh and thought it was a goat or cow. I thought, 'Wow, these guys put an IED in a dead animal,' " he recalled. He went on, hoping to find his men sitting in the truck. But as he got closer, he recalled, "I didn't see the truck. I started seeing limbs and body parts." Goudy tripped over what was left of one soldier. Then he found the only survivor of the five soldiers in the Humvee, blinded and screaming.

"It was horrible," Bartlett said. "We had to pick up body parts 200 meters away." The Humvee was "ripped in half and shredded," he said, by a monster bomb later found to contain 1,000 pounds of explosives and two antitank mines, with a 155mm artillery round on top.

The attack left the platoon outraged.

"I felt so angry and violated," said Goudy, of Clarksville, Tenn. "We all wanted to go out and tear up the city, kick down the doors, shoot the civilians, blow up the mosque." Goudy and others were convinced Iraqis living nearby knew about the bomb but did nothing to warn them.

Sitting at a wooden table outside his crowded bunk, Sgt. John Coleman, of Greenwood, S.C., dismantled a machine gun for cleaning and recalled his lost mates.

There was Zilinski with his upbeat charisma, and the husky, 5-foot-3 Spec. Dominic J. Hinton, 24, of Jacksonville, Tex., who beamed with pride over his two young children and called home every few days. Staff Sgt. Edward Karolasz, 25, of Powder Springs, N.J., was a rare squad leader who cultivated friendships with the men under him. But it was Cpl. Jonathan F. Blair, of Fort Wayne, Ind., the tattooed and tough-looking machine-gunner, who galvanized the men with a note he left behind:

"Don't blame anyone for my death, as much as you may want to. It was my decision, my life and my choice. . . . To all the boys still fighting -- keep going, stay strong, and remember you'll all be home soon."

Coleman paused from wiping down the gun. "If we leave and this place falls apart, they will have died in vain," he said.

The same day as the attack, the platoon headed off base for another mission. Two days later, they received a bit of good news: An intelligence report recounted insurgents as saying that the recently arrived American troops "aren't scared of anything."

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

Egypt could miss US trade deal

By Jonathan Wright
Wed Jan 18, 2006

CAIRO (Reuters) - Egypt could lose its chance of a trade deal with Washington if it cannot convince the Bush administration to launch talks within the next few weeks, a congressional staffer told Egyptian businessmen on Wednesday.

The Bush administration has not yet decided to start talks with Egypt and both it and some of the members of congress who would vote on any agreement have linked expanded trade with Egypt with political reform by President Hosni Mubarak.

A particular concern is the imprisonment of liberal opposition leader Ayman Nour, who is serving a five-year sentence on forgery charges he says are politically motivated.

The senior congressional staffer, who asked not to be named, told a breakfast organised by the American Chamber of Commerce Egypt would not get another chance at a deal for four years.

"If they don't launch the FTA (Free Trade Agreement) within three weeks to a month, you will lose the opportunity until 2010. That's the grim reality ... and the FTA negotiations have been taken off course by events not directly related," he said.

Another congressional staffer told the meeting U.S. lawmakers would also take Egyptian reform into account.

"It's important for you to recognise that for a number of members of Congress progress on political reform will be very important in deciding how they will vote on the FTA," he said.

The Egyptian government says it has made changes, notably by amending the constitution last year to allow multi-candidate elections for the presidency. But monitors said presidential and parliamentary elections last year were seriously flawed.

Mubarak beat Ayman Nour, his most prominent opponent, by 89 percent of the vote to 8 percent, and his National Democratic Party retained its two-thirds majority in parliament.

Businessmen and congressional staffers at the breakfast said the Egyptian government should also act fast on the Nour case.

Told it could take months for Nour's appeal to come up in court, one businessman said: "That's just not quick enough."

The Washington Post said in an editorial on Tuesday the United States had cancelled an invitation to an Egyptian delegation to discuss the trade agreement this month because of "President Hosni Mubarak's flagrant violation of his promises to lead a transition to democracy".

U.S. State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters on Tuesday that Egypt has made some progress on both economic and democratic reforms, but needed to do more.

Tuesday, January 17, 2006

'Aerial IEDs' Target U.S. Copters

By Greg Grant
Defense News
January 16, 2006

Insurgents are attacking U.S. helicopters in Iraq with improvised explosive devices (IEDs) that leap into the air and detonate when an aircraft passes nearby, said a U.S. Army aviation general.

Insurgents, who place these aerial IEDs along known flight paths, trigger them when American helicopters come along at the typical altitude of just above the rooftops. The devices shoot 50 feet into the air, and a proximity fuze touches off a warhead that sprays metal fragments, said Brig. Gen. Edward Sinclair, commander of the Army’s Aviation Center at Fort Rucker, Ala.

The bomb-builders may be obtaining radio-guided proximity fuzes from old Iraqi anti-aircraft and artillery shells and mortar rounds.

Sinclair said these aerial IEDs have been used against multiple U.S. helicopters. He declined to say whether such IEDs had damaged any aircraft.

The new weapon is one way insurgents are taking on Army aircraft, which come under fire between 15 and 20 times a month, Sinclair said. Other methods include small arms, rocket-propelled grenades and advanced shoulder-fired surface-to-air missiles.

“The enemy is adaptive,” Sinclair said. “They make changes in the way they fight; they respond to new flying tactics.”

The insurgents have even used conventional roadside bombs against medevac helicopters, he said.

The basic medevac ambush works like this: Insurgents attack an American patrol with an IED, inflicting casualties. When a medevac helicopter touches down on one of several nearby landing zones, the insurgents detonate preplaced bombs.

The Army has lost more than one helicopter in such medevac ambushes, according to U.S. military officials in Iraq.

The service is responding by altering its flight paths and seeking technological defenses, Sinclair said.

In 2003, Sinclair formed an Army Shoot Down Analysis Team to study trends in insurgent tactics and weapons. Launched after enemy missiles downed three Army helicopters, the team recommended new flight tactics and high-tech countermeasures — especially against shoulder-fired missiles.

After the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, the Army rushed cockpit missile warning systems and advanced countermeasures dispensers to equip all its helicopters in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Army has so far spent $1.5 billion on technological countermeasures.

Meanwhile, Army leaders are working to find money to replace helicopters that have crashed or have been shot down in theater. Close-air support missions and an operational tempo five times that of peacetime flying have taken their toll.

Since 2003, the service has already received $2.6 billion in emergency funding to replace worn out or damaged helicopters. The money will buy 16 Apache attack helicopters, among other things.

Army officials said they are seeking additional supplemental funds for a further 100 aircraft to replace at least that many that have been lost to combat and accidents.

An industry source said that figure could include up to 30 Apaches.

Diplomacy And Force

Interview: The United Nations' top inspector is prepared to issue a report on Iran's nuclear program that will 'reverberate around the world.'

Newsweek
January 23, 2006

The man in the middle of the escalating tensions between Iran, Europe and the United States is Mohamed ElBaradei, director-general of the United Nations' International Atomic Energy Agency. ElBaradei and the IAEA, recipients of last year's Nobel Peace Prize, are charged with verifying Iran's compliance—or lack thereof—with international safeguards against nuclear-weapons proliferation. In his first interview since Iran broke the seals on nuclear research equipment last week, ElBaradei spoke bluntly at his Vienna headquarters with NEWSWEEK's Christopher Dickey about his frustrations with Tehran, and his ideas on how to avoid further escalation.

DICKEY: You've said you're running out of patience with Iran. What does that mean?

ELBARADEI: For the last three years we have been doing intensive verification in Iran, and even after three years I am not yet in a position to make a judgment on the peaceful nature of the [nuclear] program. We still need to assure ourselves through access to documents, individuals [and] locations that we have seen all that we ought to see and that there is nothing fishy, if you like, about the program.

Q: At one site called Lavizan, facilities were bulldozed by Iran before you could look at them, and you weren't allowed to run tests in the area.

We clearly need to take environmental samplings from some of the equipment that used to be in Lavizan. We need to interview some of the people who have been engaged in Lavizan. We have [also] gotten some information about some modification of their missiles that could have some relationship to the nuclear program. So, we need to clarify all these things. It is very specific. They know what we want to do, and they just have to go and do it. I'm making it very clear right now that I cannot extend the deadline, which is ... March 6.

Q: With all due respect, the Iranians don't seem to care what you think.

Well, they might not seem to care. But if I say that I am not able to confirm the peaceful nature of that program after three years of intensive work, well, that's a conclusion that's going to reverberate, I think, around the world.

Q: Do you have any indication that there is some other completely separate Iranian nuclear-weapons program?

No, we don't. But I won't exclude that possibility.

Q: But there's another problem. Even if the declared nuclear research is all that Iran has going, there's nothing in the Non-Proliferation Treaty itself to prevent them from enriching uranium—which they say is their right. They could get to the point of producing their own nuclear fuel, or bomb material, then tell you, "We're pulling out of the treaty."

Sure. And if they have the nuclear material and they have a parallel weaponization program along the way, they are really not very far—a few months—from a weapon. We need to revisit the treaty, because that margin of security is unacceptable. But specifically on Iran, the board is saying, "You have a right under the treaty to enrich uranium, but because of the lack of confidence in your program and because the IAEA has not yet given you a clean bill of health, you should not exercise that right. In a way, you have to go through a probation period, to build confidence again, before you can exercise your full rights."

Q: That was the basis of the European and Russian negotiations with Iran. But that's been declared a dead end, and tensions are escalating. There's probably going to be an emergency meeting of the IAEA board in the next couple of weeks. Washington and now Europe have called for the U.N. Security Council to take up the issue.

I'll tell you, nobody wants to go to the Security Council—if they can avoid that ... [But] even if it goes to the Security Council, it will be a graduated approach. If [the Iranians] decide to go the confrontation route, everybody will be hurt, there is no question about it. But at the end of the day, in my view, they will hurt more because there is a more united international community.

Q: Iran has been observing a protocol, which it didn't actually sign, allowing your inspectors to visit many sites on very short notice. Now Tehran is threatening to stop that.

Of course that would be another escalation. It also would backfire on Iran, because at least if we are on the ground we ... can see what's going on. We are there on the ground and we are saying we don't see a clear and present danger. If there is no inspection, people can have as wild an imagination as they want [about Iranian activities], and that will hurt Iran.

Q: You talk about "confidence building," but at least since President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad came to office last June, Iran's activities have been mostly confidence destroying.

It is very frustrating because everybody invested a lot of time and effort in building this confidence. It's a very slow process. You can have a crash overnight. I hope the Iranian authorities will understand, again, that if they lose this nascent confidence building it will become even more complicated in the future to [restore]. It is very frustrating. But if you are in a business like mine you have to be very, very patient.

Q: What if the Iranians are just buying time for their bomb building?

That's why I said we are coming to the litmus test in the next few weeks. Diplomacy is not just talking. Diplomacy has to be backed by pressure and, in extreme cases, by force. We have rules. We have to do everything possible to uphold the rules through conviction. If not, then you impose them. Of course, this has to be the last resort, but sometimes you have to do it.

Q: You're angry.

No, I'm not angry, but I'd like to make sure the process will not be abused. There's a difference. I still would like to be able to avoid escalation, but at the same time I do not want the agency to be cheated; I do not want the process to be abused. I think that is clear. I have a responsibility, and I would like to fulfill it with as good a conscience as I can.

Egypt’s democratic charade

By Saad Eddin Ibrahim
The Globe and Mail
Jan 16, 2006

On Dec. 30, just before dawn, Egypt’s riot police stormed a public square in the Cairo suburb of Mohandeseen, where 3,000 Sudanese refugees had staged a peaceful sit-in for several weeks. In the process of using water canon and live ammunition, some 27 refugees were killed, including 11 children. Eyewitnesses and the media documented the horrifying encounter. This tragedy has renewed many questions about the Mubarak regime’s commitment to democratic opening and the country’s claim to be a role model in Africa and the Arab world.

The refugees were not protesting against the government of Egypt or its people, but against the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), which had kept them in limbo for months. Having lost family, homes and means of livelihood in their native homeland because of the ravages of a protracted and brutal civil war, they turned to the UN for help with resettlement.

The UNHCR disclaimed responsibility for them on grounds that the Sudanese civil war had ended with the signing of a peace agreement among the warring parties earlier in 2005. Their own government in Khartoum contended that it would provide for all Sudanese refugees, when and if the international community honoured its many prior pledges for the reconstruction of the south of Sudan. Meanwhile, the world is now distracted, dealing with another civil war that erupted two years ago in Sudan’s western province of Darfur.

By camping out in front of UNHCR headquarters in Cairo, the Sudanese refugees hoped to draw world attention to their predicament. Though initially sympathetic, Egyptian residents around the public square began to complain as the sit-in entered its third month. The government of Egypt promised to deal with the issue as soon as the presidential and parliamentary elections were over. Little did concerned Egyptians anticipate that their government would be so heavy-handed or brutal in its solution. They were shocked and dismayed at this indication of official ineptness and disregard for human life.

Seasoned observers were not so shocked. They noted the Mubarak regime’s established pattern of overreaction. A month earlier, the same riot police killed 18 Egyptians and wounded hundreds during the parliamentary elections; the victims were only trying to exercise their right to vote. On May 22 and July 10, peaceful protesters were badly beaten in the centre of Cairo. When a score of women took refuge near the press syndicate building, plain clothes security thugs pursued them, stripped off their clothing and manhandled them in a deliberate act of humiliation and intimidation. As the footage of these brutalities was aired on Al-Jazeera and other television networks, U.S. President George W. Bush deplored the police violence and called for an investigation. That investigation was recently dropped by the Egyptian government for what it said was lack of evidence.

Hosni Mubarak’s regime has more often than not resorted to brutal methods against protesters and political dissidents. The outspoken political candidate Ayman Nour, 41, is a flagrant case in point. When the member of parliament exposed the regime’s long-term plans for grooming Gamal Mubarak to succeed his father, and then formed a political party a year ago to challenge Mr. Mubarak in the first contested presidential election, Mr. Nour was arrested and charged with fraud. Out on bail, he ran in September’s presidential election, garnering 9 per cent of the vote (compared to Hosni Mubarak’s 89 per cent). At his shameful trial last month, the political activist was convicted and sentenced to five years in prison.

What is new, however, is that Mr. Mubarak is no longer able to cover up his behaviour. His claim to the West to be a bulwark against terrorism and religious extremism is not enough to justify flagrant violations of human rights. His latest ploy of flirting with democracy has been exposed as a charade. November’s parliamentary elections were judged by international and domestic observers alike to have been seriously flawed. In an unusual public expression of dissent, Egyptian judges issued a damning report to this effect.

Hosni Mubarak’s claim to respect the rule of law was exposed as false by the case of Ayman Nour. His claims of human decency were brutally negated by the massacre of hapless Sudanese refugees. This 25-year-old regime is no longer fit to govern the pivotal nation on the Nile.

Saad Eddin Ibrahim, an Egyptian sociologist and democracy activist, founded the Ibn Khaldun Center for Development Studies at the American University of Cairo. He spent three years in prison until an Egyptian appellate court, in 2003, overturned his conviction for disseminating information harmful to Egypt.

Egypt ignores US request to see jailed opponent

Tue Jan 17, 2006

CAIRO (Reuters) - The Egyptian authorities have ignored a request from U.S. congressman Frank Wolf to meet opposition leader Ayman Nour in prison and the prison visit will not take place, sources close to Nour said on Tuesday.

Wolf, a Virginia Republican, has been in Cairo since Saturday and asked Interior Minister Habib el-Adli and Justice Minister Mahmoud Aboul Leil to authorize the visit, they said.

"He has not had any response," one of the sources said. Asked if there was still any chance that Wolf would visit Nour in Tura jail south of Cairo, the source said: "No chance."

Nour, who came a distant second to President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt's first presidential elections in September, with 8 percent of the vote, is serving a five-year sentence after a Cairo court convicted him of forging documents.

Nour and his liberal Ghad (Tomorrow) Party say the authorities trumped up the charges to discredit Nour and keep him off the political stage for the next few years.

The vice president of Egypt's National Council for Human Rights, Kamal Abou El Magd, said after meeting Wolf on Monday that the congressman had been going around distributing U.S. editorials critical of Mubarak's handling of the Nour case.

But two close associates of Nour, who asked not to be named, said Egyptian officials who met Wolf appeared to have influenced the congressman's thinking on the Nour case.

"I had thought the issue was clear but he (Wolf) got the impression from all the officials he met that Nour has been a corrupt forger since he was young... The impressions given to him had an effect," one of the associates said.

Wolf has declined to speak to reporters on several occasions over the last two days. He had a meeting with President Mubarak on Tuesday but left the palace without speaking in public.

A spokesman for the Interior Ministry said they were not aware of any request from Wolf to visit Nour in prison.

One Nour associate said Nour felt Washington had lost interest in his case after criticizing his trial last year and giving the government a chance to paint him as American-backed.

The Washington Post said in an editorial on Tuesday that the United States should withdraw military aid to Egypt -- worth about $1.3 billion a year -- unless Nour comes out of jail.

A First Answer to Egypt

The Washington Post
Tuesday, January 17, 2006; A16

THE BUSH administration has taken a first step toward adjusting its relationship with Egypt following President Hosni Mubarak's flagrant violation of his promises to lead a transition to democracy. An Egyptian delegation that was to visit Washington this month to discuss a free-trade agreement has been disinvited, and the agreement itself was put on hold. Thanks to Mr. Mubarak's autocratic backsliding -- including his crude persecution and imprisonment of his leading liberal opponent, Ayman Nour -- Egypt will continue to lag behind Jordan, Morocco and other modernizing Arab states that enjoy tariff-free access to U.S. markets. For Egypt's business community and the reformist technocrats in its cabinet, the message should be clear: Egypt won't join the global economic mainstream unless it abandons its corrupt dictatorship.

For much of the past year Mr. Mubarak, 77, sought to convince the Bush administration that he could dismantle the autocracy he has presided over for nearly a quarter-century. He changed the constitution to allow a multi-candidate election for president; allowed more open debate in the press; and eased repression of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's largest opposition movement. Though his own reelection in September was heavily manipulated, Mr. Mubarak promised to carry out a long list of reforms in his new term, including more freedom for the media, independence for judges, greater authority for parliament and reform of the emergency laws that give him dictatorial power.

Now Mr. Mubarak has squandered the tenuous credibility he had acquired in Washington. When the Muslim Brotherhood's candidates performed better than expected in the first rounds of parliamentary elections in November, his government used fraud and brutality to alter the final results; security forces opened fire on voters trying to cast ballots. Mr. Mubarak, meanwhile, set out to crush Mr. Nour, a moderate, secular politician who won 8 percent of the presidential vote on a platform of liberal democracy. Though far weaker than Islamic leaders, Mr. Nour, 41, poses a threat to Mr. Mubarak's 42-year-old son, Gamal, who also presents himself as a moderate reformist. Without Mr. Nour, the only choices in Egypt are the Mubarak family and the Muslim Brotherhood. That's why Mr. Nour was sentenced on Dec. 24 to five years of hard labor on bogus charges of forgery.

Mr. Mubarak calculates that President Bush will eventually overlook this crude maneuver and will choose to accept, again, promises that his regime will make Egypt a democracy. Already, his government has brazenly petitioned the administration for hundreds of millions of dollars in new aid this year -- over and above the $1.8 billion Egypt regularly receives -- ostensibly in compensation for its efforts to maintain security in the Gaza Strip. U.S. officials say this request will be rejected -- as it should be. Instead, Egypt's standing aid allocation and, in particular, its military component should be subjected to a rigorous review by the administration and Congress.

While there may not be ready alternatives to Mr. Mubarak, it is foolish not to connect one of the largest U.S. foreign subsidies to vital American interests. First among those interests is concrete steps toward the construction of a political system that will allow Egypt's next president and parliament to be elected democratically. That means the lifting of emergency laws, the legalization of centrist parties that Mr. Mubarak keeps banned, and the removal of controls from the press and independent civil society groups. Ayman Nour should be freed and allowed to work unhindered for the constitutional reform he advocates. If Mr. Mubarak will not take these steps -- this year -- then it is not in the U.S. interest to keep funding his armed forces.

Egypt in transition towards what?

Social upheaval seems unlikely with coffers filling nicely from gas exports, record canal tolls and booming tourism. But revolutions have happened elsewhere with the same conditions in place

The Hamilton Spectator (Canada)
Jan 14, 2006

An odd text message popped up on Egyptian mobile phones in the last days of 2005. "The price of an ulla leaps to $10," it said. An ulla is not some hot stock on the Cairo exchange. It is a cheap clay jug which, by Egyptian custom, you smash on the threshold of your house when an unwanted guest leaves, to make sure they never come back.

The purported scarcity of ullas was due, as any clever person would infer, to the end-of-year cabinet reshuffle that saw the abrupt departure of several long-serving but widely loathed ministers.

Yet in many Egyptian minds, the desire for door-slamming riddance might apply to the year as a whole.

Apart from the Cairo stock exchange, whose index rose 125 per cent, 2005 was sadly inglorious.

The improving picture for the country's economy made little difference to families struggling as ever with poverty, unemployment and diminishing public services.

Presidential and parliamentary elections, heralded as the most free in decades, turned out nearly as fraudulent as usual, returning the same president of the past 25 years, Hosni Mubarak, at the head of the same ruling party.

Talk of greater human rights was belied in practice by numerous graphic incidents of police excess -- most shockingly by the busting on Dec. 30 of a sit-in by Sudanese refugees that saw at least 27 people crushed or beaten to death by Cairo's riot squad.

Other images of the year that linger:

* A terrorist attack that killed 88 people at the resort town of Sharm el-Sheikh.

* Plainclothes government thugs groping women protesters in Cairo.

* Voters scaling ladders to reach polling stations during November's parliamentary elections after police had blocked the doors to opposition supporters.

* The candidate who was runner-up in the presidential contest, Ayman Nour, being put behind bars for five years on a flimsy forgery charge that many Egyptians interpret as punishment for daring to present a liberal alternative to 77-year-old Mubarak.

Yet if Egypt looks much the same top-heavy, police-ridden state as it has since the 1952 coup that ushered in what some describe as a presidential monarchy, much has changed below the surface.

The most populous (70 million-strong) Arab country is clearly in a transition phase (though no one seems to know towards what).

The clearest portent for some is the dramatic advance of the Muslim Brotherhood. Though officially banned, Egypt's oldest Islamist group won most of the parliamentary seats it contested in November.

Probably fearing an Algerian-style government response should they have done too well, the Brotherhood fielded candidates for just 141 out of 444 seats. Yet it emerged, with 88 MPs, as the biggest opposition block to sit in an Egyptian parliament since the last king's removal.

Such success was partly a reward for the Brotherhood's formidably efficient organization, as well as for its adoption of a more inclusive message that stresses democratic freedoms rather than enforced Islamization.

But it also reflected widespread public anger with the regime.

The Brotherhood may have captured the same kind of popular will for change that has fostered secular movements in Serbia and Ukraine.

The ruling National Democratic Party's candidates lost two-thirds of the races they ran in, despite widespread rigging. The party kept its traditional rubber-stamp majority by coaxing scores of "independent" winning candidates to join, largely in the hope of getting more perks for themselves and constituents.

Mubarak's party, still firmly in charge, has a two-pronged strategy to stay in power.

The Brotherhood's success lets the National Democrats pose as the only alternative to Islamist rule, a stance that appeals to Egypt's worried Christian minority as well as to secular Muslims, many businessmen and also, presumably, many western allies.

Nour's imprisonment and the government's unwillingness to license a long-proposed centrist Islamist party hint that the regime actually wants to keep Egyptian politics polarized.

The other prong is economic. Egypt has pursued liberalizing reforms since the 1970s, but the government's commitment has often wavered, due to concerns, for example, that privatization of state assets would weaken the government's power to coerce workers or supply cosy sinecures to loyal officers.

That hesitancy has lessened: Witness the naming of a new cabinet dominated by prominent businessmen rather than party stalwarts or ex-army men.

With Egyptian coffers filling nicely from gas exports, record Suez Canal tolls and booming tourism, the bet is that economic growth will remain a buffer against social upheaval.

Maybe.

But then some revolutions -- in Iran or France, for instance -- came along just when middle-class expectations were rising.

Monday, January 16, 2006

Reuters journalists among 509 detainees freed in Iraq

Agence France Presse
Jan 15, 2006

The US military has freed 509 Iraqi detainees from three prisons in Iraq, including two journalists who work for Reuters, the justice ministry and the British news agency said.

The prisoners had been held for several months without charge at Abu Ghraib prison on the outskirts of Baghdad, at Camp Bucca, a US jail in southern Iraq, and at Camp Suse near to the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah.

"The US military freed all the prisoners this morning," said a spokesman for the ministry, adding that they had been cleared of terror-related charges.

US-led coalition forces are still holding more than 12,000 Iraqis in prisons across the country on suspicion of taking part in the insurgency that has plagued Iraq for almost three years.

Reuters welcomed the release of television cameraman Ali al-Mashhadani, who was arrested in August, and correspondent Majed Hameed, who was taken in September. Hameed also works from the television channel Al-Arabiya.

Both men are based in the restive Sunni-stronghold of Ramadi in western Iraq. They were held at both Abu Ghraib and Camp Bucca, Reuters said.

The news agency voiced concern at the length of time its employees were detained without charge.

It also noted a third man, Samir Mohammed Noor, a freelance cameraman for Reuters, remained in custody. Iraqi troops arrested Noor seven months ago at his home in Tal Afar, northern Iraq, the London-based agency said.

"We are delighted that Ali and Majed are now free although we continue to have grave doubts about the way in which they were held for so long without charge," David Schlesinger, Reuters Global Managing Editor, said.

"We hope that Samir will also be able to rejoin his family soon."

Might the Arabs Have a Point?

by Patrick J. Buchanan
The American Conservative
January 16, 2006 Issue

Karen Hughes, President Bush’s newest undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and the caretaker of America’s image abroad, has her work cut out for her.

A Zogby survey of 3,900 Arabs in Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Jordan, and the United Arab Emirates has uncovered massive distrust of U.S. motives in the Middle East.

Unkindest cut of all, Arabs would prefer that President Chirac and France lead the world rather than us, and, rather than have us as the world’s lone superpower, they would prefer the Chinese.

While Arabs are not as rabidly anti-American as in the aftermath of the Iraq invasion, still, by 77 percent to 6 percent, they believe the Iraqi people are worse off today, and by four-to-one, Arabs say the U.S. invasion has increased, not decreased, terrorism.

Designed by Arab scholar Shibley Telhami of the Brookings Institution, the survey reveals pervasive cynicism about the stated goals of George W. Bush. When asked, “When you consider American objectives in the Middle East, what factors do you think are important to the United States?” the Arab answers came as follows:

Fully 76 percent said the Americans are there for the oil, 68 percent said to protect Israel, 63 percent to dominate the region, and 59 percent to weaken the Muslim world. Only 6 percent said we were there to protect human rights and another 6 percent said to promote democracy. Asked directly if they believe President Bush when he says democracy is our goal, two of every three Arabs, 78 percent in Egypt, said that, no, they do not believe Bush.

Asked to name the two nations that present the greatest threat to regional peace, 70 percent named Israel, 63 percent the United States, and 11 percent Britain. Only 6 percent named our bête noire Iran.

Asked to name the foreign leader they disliked most, Sharon swept top honors with 45 percent. Bush took the silver with 30 percent. No one else was close. Tony Blair came in a weak third. Only 3 percent of the Arabs detest him most.

While only 6 percent agreed with al-Qaeda’s aim to establish an Islamic state and only 7 percent approve of its methods, 20 percent admire the way al-Qaeda “stood up for Muslim causes” and 36 percent admire how it “confronts the U.S.”

Favorite news source? Sixty-five percent named Al-Jazeera either as their favorite or second favorite. What Fox News is to red-state America, Al-Jazeera is to the Arab street.

America’s standing in the Arab world could hardly be worse. And the questions the survey raises are these: Do we care? And, if we do, do not the Arabs have a point? Has not U.S. behavior in the Middle East lent credence to the view that our principal interests are Israel and oil, and, under Bush II, that we launched an invasion to dominate the region?

After all, before liberating Kuwait, Secretary of State Baker said the coming war was about “o-i-l.” And while we sent half a million troops to rescue that nation of 1.5 million, we sent none to Rwanda, where perhaps that many people were massacred.

If Kuwait did not sit on an underground sea of oil, would we have gone in? Is our military presence in the Mideast unrelated to its control of two-thirds of the world’s oil reserves?

If human rights is our goal, why have we not gone into Darfur, the real hellhole of human rights? If democracy is what we are fighting for, why did we not invade Cuba, a dictatorship, 90 miles away, far more hostile to America than Saddam’s Iraq, and where human rights have been abused for half a century? Saddam never hosted nuclear missiles targeted at U.S. cities.

And is Israel not our fair-haired boy? Though Sharon & Co. have stomped on as many UN resolutions as Saddam Hussein ever did, they have pocketed $100 billion in U.S. aid and are now asking for a $2 billion bonus this year, Katrina notwithstanding. Anyone doubt they will get it?

Though per capita income in Israel is probably 20 times that of the Palestinians, Israel gets the lion’s share of economic aid. And though they have flipped off half a dozen presidents to plant half a million settlers in Arab East Jerusalem and the West Bank, have we ever imposed a single sanction on Israel? Has Bush ever raised his voice to Ariel Sharon? And when you listen to the talking heads and read the columns of the neocon press, is it unfair to conclude that, yes, they would like to dump over every regime that defies Bush or Sharon?

Empathy, a capacity for participating in another’s feelings or ideas, is indispensable to diplomacy. Carried too far, as it was by the Brits in the 1930s, it can lead to appeasement. But an absence of empathy can leave statesmen oblivious as to why their nation is hated, and with equally fateful consequences.

Bolton Scores U.N. on Stance Toward Israel

BY BENNY AVNI - Staff Reporter of the Sun
The New York Sun
January 13, 2006

UNITED NATIONS - The American ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, upped the ante in an escalating confrontation between America and Turtle Bay on the issue of Israel's place at the world body. In a sharply worded letter to Secretary-General Annan, Mr. Bolton threatened to cut funding to the United Nations if it continues to promote anti-Israel events.

Mr. Bolton's January 3 letter, which was seen yesterday by The New York Sun, is a response to a November 29 event celebrating an annual "International Day of Solidarity With the Palestinian People." At the event, which was attended by Mr. Annan and other top diplomats, a map that "erases the state of Israel," as Mr. Bolton wrote, was displayed.

"Given that we now have a world leader pursuing nuclear weapons who is calling for the state of Israel to be wiped off the map, the issue has even greater salience," Mr. Bolton wrote.

A photo of Mr. Annan standing below the map - several days after President Ahmadinejad of Iran made his statement - was carried last month on the Web site eyeontheun.org, creating a storm of criticism. The site also highlighted the seven-figure budget of U.N. bodies dedicated to promoting what Israel and America consider one-sided, anti-Israel propaganda in the guise of solidarity with Palestinian Arabs.

A U.N. spokesman, Stephane Dujarric, told the Sun yesterday that Mr. Annan was "grateful" to Mr. Bolton and others who have alerted him to the map, and that he "much hopes" that the U.N. body that organized the annual event will "consider not displaying the map in the future." Mr. Dujarric stopped short of saying that Mr. Annan would cancel his participation in future events that display such maps.

Mr. Dujarric said that Mr. Annan plans to answer Mr. Bolton, but 10 days after sending the letter, which contained very specific questions, Mr. Bolton's spokesman, Richard Grenell, yesterday said, "We have not received an answer as of yet."

"Who is the high-level official within the secretariat who approved use of the map for the event?" Mr. Bolton asked in the letter. "Does the United Nations intend to use the map in future U.N.-sponsored functions and events?"

Most ominously for the United Nations, Mr. Bolton wrote, "In light of prohibition under U.S. law to fund events such as this one, do you consider it appropriate for the United Nations to advertise and promote the event on its general Web site and other venues, which do in fact benefit from U.S. funds?"

Although America opposes funding for several U.N. bodies that one-sidedly promote Palestinian Arab rights, the threat to further cut its support for U.N. general advertising budgets is a matter of serious concern to Mr. Annan's aides, who have been under intense pressure to reform the United Nations in the wake of last year's scandals.

The Palestinian observer at the United Nations, Riad Mansour, defended the use of the map yesterday, telling the Sun that a pre-1948 date is clearly marked on it. "That map has been there for tens of years," he said, adding that in 2004, one of the participants in the event was the American ambassador at the time, John Danforth.

Israel and America might object to funding for the pro-Palestinian Arab bodies, Mr. Mansour said, but the vast majority of member states "think they are useful" and vote annually to continue their activities.

Mr. Dujarric told the Sun that since 1977 the secretariat "has been mandated by the General Assembly" to promote the "Day of Solidarity." He said in 1981, the "committee for the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people" decided that the map and the flag of "Palestine as it existed in 1948" should be displayed in the room. Disregarding an official objection by Israel's then ambassador, Yehuda Blum, "the practice has remained unchanged ever since," Mr. Dujarric said.

The fact that the map has been displayed at the United Nations for such a long time and was only noticed this year "only strengthens our position," Israel's deputy ambassador, Daniel Carmon, said. "You can't have a U.N.-sponsored event that displays a map that obliterates a member-state." He added that even if the issue of the map is resolved, the central problem remains: the existence of "automatic" anti-Israel resolutions that provide funds for one-sided bodies at the secretariat.

The organizer of the "solidarity" event is the Division for Palestinian Rights, which in the 2004-2005 U.N. budget received $5,449,600. Other bodies include the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories,($254,500); the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, ($60,800), and the Information Activities on the Question of Palestine ($566,000).

Similar funding has just been approved for the next biannual budget. America "strongly opposes the use of scarce U.N. resources to support the biased and one-sided political activities" of these bodies, America's deputy U.N. ambassador, Anne Patterson, said in October as the General Assembly was discussing the current budget. With the exception of America, Israel, and some small Pacific nations, the General Assembly approved their funding.

Tomorrow's world war today

Niall Ferguson
The Los Angeles Times
January 16, 2006

ARE WE LIVING through the origins of the next world war? It's certainly easy to imagine how a future historian would deal with recent events in the Middle East:

"With every passing year after the turn of the century, the instability of the Gulf region grew. By the beginning of 2006, nearly all the combustible ingredients for a conflict — far bigger in scale than the wars of 1991 or 2003 — were in place.

"The first underlying cause of war was, of course, the increase in the region's relative importance as a source of petroleum. The rest of the world's oil supplies were being rapidly exhausted, while the breakneck growth of the Asian economies had caused a huge surge in global demand.

"A second precondition of war was demographic. While European fertility had fallen below the natural replacement rate in the 1970s, the decline in the Islamic world had been much slower. In Iran, the social conservatism of the 1979 revolution conspired with the high mortality of the Iran-Iraq war and the subsequent baby boom to produce, by the first decade of the new century, a quite extraordinary surplus of young men. More than two-fifths of the population of Iran had been aged 14 or younger in 1995. This was the generation that was ready to fight in 2007.

"The third and perhaps most important precondition for war was cultural. Since 1979, not just Iran but the greater part of the Muslim world had been swept by a wave of religious fervor. Although few countries followed Iran down the road to theocracy, the feudal dynasties or military strongmen who had dominated Islamic politics since the 1950s came under intense religious pressure.

"The ideological cocktail that produced 'Islamism' was as potent as either of the ideologies the West had produced in the previous century — communism and fascism. Islamism was anti-Western, anti-capitalist and anti-Semitic. A revealing moment was Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's intemperate attack on Israel in December 2005, when he called the Holocaust a 'myth.' The state of Israel was a 'disgraceful blot,' he had previously declared, to be wiped 'off the map.'

"Prior to 2007 the Islamists had seen no alternative but to wage war against their enemies by means of terrorism. From the Gaza to Manhattan, the hero of 2001 was the suicide bomber. Yet Ahmadinejad, a veteran of the Iran-Iraq war, craved a more potent weapon than strapped-on explosives. He aimed to give Iran the kind of power North Korea already wielded in East Asia. The power to defy the United States. The power to obliterate America's closest regional ally.

"Under different circumstances, it would not have been difficult to thwart Ahmadinejad's nuclear weapons program. The Israelis had shown themselves capable of preemptive air strikes against Iraq's nuclear facilities in 1981. Similar strikes against Iran's were urged on President Bush by neoconservative commentators throughout 2006.

"But the president was advised by his secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, to opt instead for diplomacy. Americans did not want to increase their military commitments overseas; they wanted to reduce them. Europeans did not want to hear that Iran was about to build its own WMD. Even if Ahmadinejad had broadcast a nuclear test live on CNN, they would have said it was a CIA trick.

"So history repeated itself. As in the 1930s, an anti-Semitic demagogue broke his country's treaty obligations and armed for war. Having first tried appeasement, offering the Iranians economic incentives to desist, the West appealed to international agencies — the International Atomic Energy Agency and the United Nations Security Council. Thanks to China's veto, however, the U.N. produced nothing but empty resolutions and ineffectual sanctions.

"Only one man might have stiffened President Bush's resolve in the crisis. But Ariel Sharon had been struck down by a stroke just as the Iranian crisis came to a head. With Israel leaderless, Ahmadinejad had a free hand.

"As in the 1930s, too, the West fell back on wishful thinking. Perhaps, some said, Ahmadinejad was only saber-rattling because his own domestic position was so weak. Perhaps his political rivals in the Iranian clergy were on the point of getting rid of him. People crossed their fingers, hoping for a homegrown regime change in Tehran.

"This gave the Iranians all the time they needed to produce weapons-grade enriched uranium at Natanz. The dream of nuclear nonproliferation, already half-broken by Israel, Pakistan and India, was now irreparably shattered. Soon Tehran had a nuclear missile pointed at Tel Aviv. And the new Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu had a missile pointed right back at Tehran.

"The devastating thermonuclear exchange of August 2007 represented not only the failure of diplomacy; It marked the end of the oil age. Some even said it marked the twilight of the West. Yet the historian is bound to ask whether or not the true significance of the 2007-11 war was to vindicate the Bush administration's principle of preemption. For, if that principle had only been adhered to in 2006, Iran's nuclear aspirations might have been thwarted at minimal cost. And then — hard though it is to imagine now — the Great Gulf War might never have happened."

Saudi interest in America

By Rachel Ehrenfeld
The Washington Times
January 16, 2006

Many are aware of widespread Saudi investments in the United States, but few know how potentially harmful they are. Moreover, U.S. policy-makers remain unaware of this grave danger.
On Sept. 28, 2001, after the attacks on the United States, Osama bin Laden called for financial jihad against the United States, and on Dec. 27, 2001, he called on jihadists "to look for [and strike] the key pillars of the U.S. economy." Although now the Saudis claim bin Laden is their enemy, many of them continue to follow his agenda.
Religious and ideological support has been also provided by Hussein Shihata, a leading Sunni scholar of Islamic Economy at Cairo's al-Azhar University. Mr. Shihata's July 10, 2002, fatwa says: "We do not use the term 'economic jihad' as a mere motto or a resounding slogan with no action. Rather, we mean by it a practical jihad that requires action to turn it into an effective and concrete reality. The aim behind that is to benefit all Muslims and to challenge the aggression staged by the U.S. and Jews against Islam and Muslims."
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, who claims to abhor bin Laden, seems nevertheless eager to follow his agenda. In an interview with Arab News in May 2002, the prince said that if the Arabs "unite through economic interests," they would achieve influence over the U.S. decision-makers. Since government sources estimate Saudi holdings in the United States at $400 billion to $800 billion, the matter warrants public attention.
The Saudi agenda extends far beyond policy-makers. In the late 1990s, the privately owned Massachusetts technology company, Ptech, designed software used to develop enterprise blueprints that held every important detail of a given concern. The company was financed with more than $22 million, by Saudi multi-millionaire Yasin al Qadi, a Specially Designated Global Terrorist. The Saudis thus gained access to strategic information about many major U.S. corporations such as SYSCO, ENRON, and the U.S. Departments of Defense, Treasury, Justice, Energy, and even the White House. The extent of the damage, if it was investigated, remains a mystery.
Meanwhile, substantial Saudi and Gulf financial contributions "to bring the proper message to America's brightest minds," are pouring into U.S. educational institutions through Arab and Islamic centers and professorial chairs. Last month the prince gave $20 million each to Georgetown and Harvard universities. According to the Center for Religious Freedom, the Saudis also supply textbooks for public libraries, schools and colleges, and provide the content concerning Islam to some U.S. textbook publishers.
The Saudis' potential influence on U.S. and international media was recently illustrated by the prince's purchase of 5.6 percent of voting shares in News Corp., the world's largest publisher of English newspapers. Moreover, Reuters reported on Dec. 5 that the prince announced his plan to "spread the right message" via a new television channel, "The Message," to broadcast to the U.S. within two years.
Yet, information regarding the magnitude of the Saudi economic infiltration into the United States is secret. The U.S. Treasury's interpretation of the census law, supported by a 1982 court decision, shields this data from the public. On Oct. 27, 1982, the American Jewish Congress (AJC) was denied information requested under its own FOIA inquiry, by the U.S. District Court in Washington D.C. (Civ. A. No. 81-1745). The AJC litigated its FOIA case up to the Supreme Court, but the government won.
Indeed, filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the Department of Commerce is useless. FOIA Director Burton H. Reist stated in December that this data "is protected by Title 13, United States Code, Section 9, which requires that census records be used solely for statistical purposes and also makes these records confidential." Furthermore, FOIA "exempts from disclosure records that are made confidential by statute." In other words, the government wants this information kept secret.
Under the "International Investment & Trade in Services Survey Act," the U.S. Treasury Department tracks foreign portfolio, and Commerce tracks direct investments. This information is unavailable for Saudi Arabia or the Gulf States, following their request that the details be suppressed "to avoid disclosure of data of individual companies." For example, under the heading "Foreign holdings of U.S. long-term securities, by country," Treasury aggregates all eight "Middle East oil exporters." A Treasury Department official said that this aggregation is a "Treasury policy," and justifies the non-disclosure on grounds that this information could "harm national security and foreign relations."
While the U.S. government seeks to spread American democratic values, including transparency and accountability, it denies its own citizens and policy makers the same. In view of the stated Arab and Muslim strategy to subvert the U.S economy, one wonders why the publication of Saudi financial interests in the United States would harm national security and foreign relations. It seems that the secrecy surrounding Saudi investments in the United States is what may well threaten our national security.

Rachel Ehrenfeld is author of "Funding Evil; How Terrorism is Financed -- and How to Stop It," director of American Center for Democracy and a member of the Committee on the Present Danger. (Alyssa A. Lappen, a fellow at the ACD, contributed to the article.)