The News!

The Pope’s Words

Editorial
The New York Times
September 16, 2006

There is more than enough religious anger in the world. So it is particularly disturbing that Pope Benedict XVI has insulted Muslims, quoting a 14th-century description of Islam as “evil and inhuman.”

In the most provocative part of a speech this week on “faith and reason,” the pontiff recounted a conversation between an “erudite” Byzantine Christian emperor and a “learned” Muslim Persian circa 1391. The pope quoted the emperor saying, “Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.”

Muslim leaders the world over have demanded apologies and threatened to recall their ambassadors from the Vatican, warning that the pope’s words dangerously reinforce a false and biased view of Islam. For many Muslims, holy war — jihad — is a spiritual struggle, and not a call to violence. And they denounce its perversion by extremists, who use jihad to justify murder and terrorism.

The Vatican issued a statement saying that Benedict meant no offense and in fact desired dialogue. But this is not the first time the pope has fomented discord between Christians and Muslims.

In 2004 when he was still the Vatican’s top theologian, he spoke out against Turkey’s joining the European Union, because Turkey, as a Muslim country was “in permanent contrast to Europe.”

A doctrinal conservative, his greatest fear appears to be the loss of a uniform Catholic identity, not exactly the best jumping-off point for tolerance or interfaith dialogue.

The world listens carefully to the words of any pope. And it is tragic and dangerous when one sows pain, either deliberately or carelessly. He needs to offer a deep and persuasive apology, demonstrating that words can also heal.

Which Countries are LICUS?

World Bank
September 15, 2006

As defined by the World Bank, all LICUS (Low-Income Countries Under Stress) are characterized by weak policies, institutions, and governance. This map shows how the LICUS composition has changed through the years, since the program was instituted by the Bank. It also shows the countries' severity levels (see explanation below) and conflict/post-conflict status.

Severe LICUS:
Afghanistan
Central African Republic
Comoros
Liberia
Myanmar
Somalia
Zimbabwe

Core LICUS:
Angola
Burundi
Cambodia
Congo
Cote d'Ivoire
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Eritrea
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Haiti
Kosovo (territory)
Lao PDR
Nigeria
Solomon Islands
Sudan
Timor-Leste
Togo
Vanuatu
West Bank and Gaza

Marginal LICUS:
Chad
Djibouti
Gambia
Papua New Guinea
São Tomé and Principe
Sierra-Leone
Tajikistan
Uzbekistan

The Bank has used two criteria to define core and severe LICUS: per capita income within the threshold of International Development Association (IDA) eligibility, and performance of 3.0 or less on both the overall Country Policy and Institutional Assessment (CPIA) rating and on the CPIA rating for Public Sector Management and Institutions. Some low-income countries without CPIA data are also included.

Depending on the income level and CPIA rating, a LICUS country is classified in one of three subgroups: severe, core, or marginal. LICUS classified as "severe" have an overall and governance CPIA of 2.5 or less; LICUS classified as "core" have an overall and governance CPIA of 2.6–3.0); and LICUS classified as "marginal" have an overall and governance CPIA of 3.2. Marginal LICUS score on the edge of what is considered LICUS, and hence are identified by the Bank only for monitoring purposes (henceforth LICUS refers to core and severe LICUS, not marginal LICUS).

The Bank has recently replaced the term LICUS with fragile states , while retaining the same criteria to identify these countries.

Bush's Message To Iran

By David Ignatius
Washington Post
September 15, 2006

What would President Bush say to the Iranian people if he had a chance to communicate directly with them? I was able to put that question to Bush in a one-on-one interview in the Oval Office on Wednesday. His answer made clear that the administration wants a diplomatic solution to the confrontation over Iran's nuclear program -- one that is premised on an American recognition of Iran's role as an important nation in the Middle East.

"I would say to the Iranian people: We respect your history. We respect your culture. We admire the entrepreneurial skills of your people. I would say to the Iranian people that I recognize the importance of your sovereignty -- that you're a proud nation, and you want to have a positive future for your citizens," Bush said, answering quickly and without notes.

"In terms of the nuclear issue," he continued, "I understand that you believe it is in your interest -- your sovereign interest, and your sovereign right -- to have nuclear power. I understand that. But I would also say to the Iranian people, there are deep concerns about the intentions of some in your government who would use knowledge gained from a civilian nuclear power industry to develop a weapon that can then fulfill the stated objectives of some of the leadership [to attack Israel and threaten the United States]. And I would say to the Iranian people that I would want to work for a solution to meeting your rightful desires to have civilian nuclear power."

"I would tell the Iranian people that we have no desire for conflict," Bush added.

He expressed hope that Iran would help stabilize Iraq, but he said the best channel for this dialogue would be through Iraq's new prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, who has been in Tehran this week. And he called for a new program of cultural and educational exchanges between the United States and Iran as a way of encouraging greater contact and trust.

Bush's comments were a clear public signal of the administration's strategy in the confrontation over Iran's nuclear program. In recent days, the Washington rumor mill has been bubbling with talk that the administration is planning military options for dealing with the crisis, perhaps in the near term. But Bush's remarks went in a different direction. His stress was on reassuring Iran that the United States recognizes its ambitions to be an advanced nation, with a robust civilian nuclear power program and a role in shaping the Middle East commensurate with its size and power. The red lines for America involve nuclear weapons, military threats to Israel or the United States, and Iran's links to terrorist groups.

Bush's comments tracked the offer the United States and its allies have made to Iran if it agrees to suspend its enrichment of uranium. He proposed that the West supply enriched uranium to Iran and other countries, and collect the nuclear waste. He argued that this global program "would be a solution that would answer a deep desire from the Iranian people to have a nuclear power industry."

On Iraq, Bush said Maliki's visit to Tehran was "aimed at convincing the Iranians that a stable Iraq is in their interest. They have said so many times, and I think Prime Minister Maliki is now attempting to find out what that means, and how the Iraqi government can work with the Iranians to create a sense of stability."

Bush said he had read commentary criticizing Maliki's trip. "I disagree. Prime Minister Maliki should go to Iran. It is in Iraq's national interest that relations with Iran be such that there are secure borders and no cross-border issues, including the exportation of equipment that can harm Iraqi citizens as well as coalition troops, and the exportation of extremism that can prevent this young [Iraqi] democracy from flourishing."

Our discussion followed the 12-day visit to the United States by former Iranian president Mohammad Khatami. I asked Bush why he had approved this visit by a high-level Iranian and what he thought it had accomplished.

"One of the dilemmas facing [American] policymakers is to understand the nature, the complex nature of the Iranian regime," he said. "And I thought it would be beneficial for our country to receive the former leader, Khatami, to hear what he had to say. And as importantly for him, to hear what Americans had to say."

He wanted Khatami to understand that on the nuclear issue and Hezbollah's attacks on Israel, "It's not just George W. Bush speaking."

The Khatami visit "said that the United States is willing to listen to voices," Bush explained. "And I hope that sends a message to the Iranian people that we're an open society, and that we respect the people of Iran." Clearly, the White House wants to reach out to segments of Iranian opinion beyond the hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

I asked Bush what next steps he would favor in opening dialogue with Iran. "I would like to see more cultural exchanges," he said. "I would like to see university exchanges. I would like to see more people-to-people exchanges."

"I know that the more we can show the Iranian people the true intention of the American government," Bush concluded, "the more likely it is that we will be able to reach a diplomatic solution to a difficult problem."

I came away with a sense that Bush is serious about finding a peaceful solution to the nuclear crisis, and that he is looking hard for ways to make connections between America and Iran.

Mikulski Urges Bush To Seek Handover Of Md. Sailor's Killer

By Siobhan Gorman
Baltimore Sun
September 14, 2006

WASHINGTON -- Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski called on President Bush yesterday to press the Lebanese government to hand over a Hezbollah militant who shot and killed a Navy diver from Maryland in 1985.

Mohammed Ali Hamadi, who killed Petty Officer Robert Dean Stethem, 23, of Waldorf during the hijacking of an airliner, rejoined Hezbollah after being released from a Lebanese prison, according to news reports.

The U.S. government has sought Hamadi's extradition since the Reagan administration. He was captured in Germany in 1987 and later convicted, but Germany refused to extradite him because he could have received the death penalty in the United States. Hamadi was released from a German prison in December and returned to Lebanon.

The White House is reviewing the letter from Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat. "We have been seeking Hamadi's extradition since his release from prison in Germany and return to Lebanon last year," said spokeswoman Dana Perino. "In no way have we given up on this."

Growing Concern: Terrorist Havens In 'Failed States'

Instability in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon Raise Risk That U.S. Seeks to Address
By Yochi J. Dreazen and Philip Shishkin
Wall Street Journal
September 13, 2006

In April, Saudi Arabia disclosed plans for an unusual and hugely expensive project: a multibillion-dollar electrified fence along its 560-mile border with Iraq.

The move angered U.S. and Iraqi officials, but Saudi officials said Iraq's growing instability left them little choice. They said they were concerned about militants infiltrating from Iraq to carry out attacks aimed at either toppling the ruling family or inciting Saudi Arabia's restive Shiite minority to seek independence.

Concern about extremism seeping out of Iraq underscores a painful irony in the five-year-old war against terrorism: The U.S. and its allies now face the distinct possibility that the same kind of "failed state" that gave terrorists a haven when the Taliban ruled Afghanistan -- leading to Sept. 11 -- could be forming again, in more than one place.

Both Iraq and Lebanon are threatening to degenerate into states with weak central governments where extremists can thrive. Iraq already appears to serve as a kind of finishing school for young radicals seeking battlefield experience. In Lebanon, Hezbollah's war with Israel this summer both destabilized the country and enhanced the reputation of Hezbollah extremists, who in the past have demonstrated a desire to extend their reach beyond Lebanon's borders.

To make matters worse, Afghanistan itself now appears to be sliding backward so much that it could again become an international terror breeding ground.

Forces from the U.S. and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are locked in the bloodiest fighting in Afghanistan since late 2001. U.S. casualties are running at more than twice last year's rate. U.S. military commanders speak openly of an "Iraq-ification" of Afghanistan: Once-rare suicide bombings and roadside bombs have become common, and both arms and militants flow over mostly undefended borders. Much as in Iraq, the bulk of the Afghan insurgency is local, but there are signs al Qaeda-linked foreign fighters are participating.

Attack in Syria

The violence and instability roiling the Middle East spread to another country yesterday, as Islamic militants armed with machine guns, grenades and an explosives-filled van mounted a brazen but unsuccessful attack on the U.S. Embassy in Damascus, Syria. The attack in Syria, which borders both Iraq and Lebanon, left three of the attackers and one Syrian guard dead.

This unwelcome picture is forcing changes in America's posture across the region. Most significantly, the U.S. in midsummer abandoned a plan that Gen. George Casey, the top American commander in Iraq, had crafted that would have had the U.S. withdrawing some of its forces beginning this month.

Instead, the number of American forces in Iraq is increasing. In recent weeks the U.S. has shifted thousands of troops to Baghdad as part of an effort to secure the city, which means the U.S. has had to increase the overall number of troops in Iraq. Last week, the Pentagon said there were 145,000 troops, or 18,000 more than in late July and the highest level since the start of the year.

Senior military leaders say their top priority is to ensure that Iraq doesn't become a failed state. That has caused shifts in how U.S. forces operate on the ground. In places such as Tal Afar in northern Iraq and Tarmiyah, a Sunni stronghold northeast of Baghdad, U.S. military forces are reaching out to insurgent leaders in search of some sort of compromise that would get them to participate in the political process and move away from terror groups. As a result, American officers today are negotiating with Sunni leaders who only a couple of years earlier had been in jail.

U.S. officials acknowledge their main goal in Iraq now is to prevent it from turning into a place run by fundamentalists who export terrorism to the region. The administration's public comments also have shifted markedly in tone, from stressing the benefits of a democratic Iraq to citing the threats that failure in Iraq would pose to U.S. national security.

"If we abandon the Iraqi people before their government is strong enough to secure the country," said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice at an American Legion convention last month, "we will leave the makings of a failed state in Iraq, like that one in Afghanistan in the 1990s, which became the base for al Qaeda and the launching pad for the Sept. 11th hijackers." She added: "And we should not assume for one minute that those terrorists will not continue to come after the American homeland."

Similar concerns are leading the West to adopt a more aggressive strategy for extending the strength and reach of Lebanon's government. After several years of a U.S. policy of benign neglect toward the country, Ms. Rice threw herself into crafting and ensuring implementation of a United Nations resolution to create a peacekeeping force that the U.S. hopes will keep Hezbollah at bay. The U.S. Treasury Department has launched an effort to shut down the flow of money to Hezbollah from Iran. And partly to try to limit Lebanese citizens' attraction to Hezbollah -- which provides extensive local social services -- the U.S. pledged millions of dollars in aid and got involved in projects to clean up oil spills and rebuild wrecked schools.

The picture in Lebanon and Afghanistan, to say nothing of Iraq, is an uncomfortable one for the Bush administration. After Sept. 11, 2001, Mr. Bush announced a far-reaching policy shift. No longer, he said, would the U.S. allow what he called failed states to be havens for terrorist groups plotting attacks outside their borders. If the countries were unwilling or unable to root out extremist groups, the president said, the U.S. would strike both the groups themselves and the governments that sheltered or tolerated them.

Now the U.S. is forced to try to keep extremists from taking deeper root in the very places it hoped would be footholds for stability -- most notably Iraq.

There, a typical battle against the resilient and elusive guerrillas began one spring night on a trash-strewn lot in Samarra. U.S. soldiers quietly surrounded the house of a suspected leader of an insurgent cell. As the advance team took down the front door and burst inside, Army Capt. Chris Brawley climbed over mounds of garbage and trained his rifle on a back alley. A shadow went flying over a narrow alleyway separating two houses, as the suspect scurried across an adjacent roof and then merged into the darkness.

The nighttime sweep did net several other suspects. Soldiers roused a man named Ayoob from his bed, stepping around the dinner leftovers of fries and sausage on the floor of his decrepit living room. A man named Mahmoud was grabbed next to a hollowed-out vehicle that looked like a car bomb in the making. Soldiers also rounded up a skinny man with a scraggly goatee who had a bag of suspicious-looking circuit-breakers stashed in his house.

Back at their base, soldiers checked the detainees' names and photos against military intelligence reports. The reports said Ayoob was reported to have received training from al Qaeda-linked groups. Mahmoud had fought the U.S. in Fallujah and now specialized in small arms and roadside bombings. The skinny man's circuit-breakers were parts for improvised explosive devices.

The emergence of this new generation of experienced militants in Iraq -- along with the critical issue of how much political violence they may carry out in neighboring countries -- is a source of deep concern for counterterrorism officials.

Until now, Iraq's violence has largely been contained within the country's borders, except for the bombings that killed 60 people in Amman, Jordan, in November. Intelligence officials worry that extremists are building a durable foothold in the vast and lawless Sunni province of Anbar, in center-west Iraq, as a future base for attacks in neighboring countries like Jordan or Saudi Arabia.

Last week, President Bush cited an al Qaeda document found in Anbar that laid out a detailed governing structure for the province. It included education, justice and social-services departments plus an "execution unit" -- responsible for "sorting out, arrest, murder, and destruction."

A senior Jordanian official says that since the Amman bombings, Jordan is bolstering its long border with Iraq with motion-detectors, cameras and other electronics. After discovering that the bombers had entered with forged Iraqi passports, Jordan instituted a two-step system for entering Iraqis: Border personnel search them, while others study their passports for evidence they were faked.

The U.S. faces a diplomatic cost as three allies in the region -- Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey -- increasingly chart their own courses because they see a possible threat to their security from extremists in Iraq. The U.S. communicated "unease" to Saudi Arabia after it announced plans for its fence, according to a U.S. official familiar with the exchange. The U.S. saw it as a slap in the face of the new Iraqi government. But the Saudis said they would press ahead.

The U.S. has renewed its push to build a force that can hold Iraq together. In the early days after the 2003 invasion, U.S. officials were hesitant to build too strong an Iraqi army. The concern was that if the army became the most powerful instrument in the country, it would dominate political affairs, and instead of a flowering democracy Iraq might begin to look like other Middle Eastern states.

Today, the U.S. military's focus is building as strong an Iraqi army as possible to impose some semblance of order. Often that means empowering Iraqi commanders who have little faith in or loyalty to the current government. At Camp Taji, a U.S.-run base in central Iraq, many senior officers in Iraq's sole armored division are Sunnis who once were officers in Saddam Hussein's military.

Many of the officers express little faith in Iraq's current Shiite-led government. Some complain openly that the current Iraqi prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, is little more than a puppet of Shiite-dominated Iran. To enlist these officers' support, U.S. commanders have used the promise of a steady paycheck, as well as appealing to their wish to stem chaos in their country.

In Lebanon, the government's inability or unwillingness to curb Hezbollah has given the group a better base from which to carry out attacks. Hezbollah has long shown a willingness, but limited ability, to attack outside the Mideast. Now, the State Department's most recent "Patterns of Global Terrorism" report says Hezbollah "has established cells in Europe, Africa, South America, North America and Asia." That contrasts with other militant groups in the area such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, which restrict their operations to Israel and the Palestinian territories.

Hezbollah's history worries terrorism experts even though its last known overseas strike was more than a decade ago. A few months ago, Argentine prosecutors announced that the deadliest act of terrorism in their country -- a 1994 suicide bombing at a Buenos Aires Jewish community center that killed 85 -- had been carried out by a Hezbollah member, Ibrahim Hussein Berro.

Israeli intelligence officials say that in 2002, representatives of Hezbollah and other Islamic fundamentalist groups met in a South American area called the tri-border region (the intersection of Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay) to discuss possible strikes. "Hezbollah thinks globally, not regionally," maintains Ilan Berman, an Iran expert at the right-leaning American Foreign Policy Council.

Meanwhile, amid mounting concerns that Lebanon and Iraq are becoming terrorist havens akin to Afghanistan under the Taliban, Afghanistan itself appears to sliding back toward disarray.

U.S. and NATO commanders cite three big problems there. The Hamid Karzai government is deeply unpopular in many rural areas, seen as a U.S. puppet. Opium-poppy production is skyrocketing, with Afghanistan now supplying 92% of the world's supply of the heroin ingredient, according to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime. The biggest threat is a military one: A resurgent Taliban has triggered the heaviest fighting since the U.S. toppled the fundamentalist Islamic group's rule in 2001.

Taliban offensives have left more than 1,000 people dead in the past four months and greatly complicated reconstruction efforts. In just the past few days, a suicide bomber killed a provincial governor, and then another suicide bomber attacked at his funeral.

NATO commanders in southern Afghanistan have been surprised by both the intensity of the Taliban attacks and the tactics used. They say the Taliban have shifted from ambushes to larger-scale ground assaults, in which the militants stand and fight rather than melt back into the countryside. On Thursday, NATO's top commander, Gen. James Jones, asked the alliance's 26 member states to send more soldiers, warplanes and helicopters to reinforce the allied forces battling the Taliban.

Some veteran observers of Afghanistan are watching the violence with alarm. In 2004, Joseph Collins, who had recently left a senior Pentagon post, wrote a scholarly paper saying the U.S. was successfully blending three missions in Afghanistan: combat operations, humanitarian aid and peace-keeping work. He called it "Afghanistan: Winning the Three Block War." If he wrote it today, Mr. Collins says, "There'd be a question mark in the title, if not two or three."

Where's The Outrage?

A united world must resolutely condemn terror
By Karen Hughes
USA Today
September 12, 2006

Five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, one essential ingredient is still lacking in our international response to terrorism: the concerted moral outrage of everyday citizens of every faith and country.

The names of the people murdered that morning read like a roll call of the world's family: Ahmed, Alonso, Chung, Fazio, Fitzgerald, Goldstein, Gonzalez, Jablonski, Mbaya, McSweeney, Mohammed, Rizzo, Wallendorf and Zukelman. The victims, citizens of more than 90 countries, included a young Muslim woman, seven months pregnant, on her way to attend a friend's wedding; an Iranian grandmother who had overcome her fear of flying to visit her grandsons in Boston; a German businessman in New York to attend a meeting. His son, 4 at the time, said, “If the terrorists knew how much we love Papa, they wouldn't have flown the plane into the tower.”

Unfortunately, the extremists we face don't care. Since that fateful day, hundreds of others have been torn from their families, murdered as terrorists targeted morning commuters in London, Madrid and India, wedding guests at a hotel in Jordan, children in school in Russia and lining up for candy in Iraq, tourists in Egypt and Bali, Indonesia.

This is not right, or normal, or acceptable, and a much louder chorus of voices needs to join in condemning it. Terrorism threatens all of us. It targets the very foundations of a free society. Yet where are the mothers organizing against terrorism as American mothers did against drunken driving? Where are the fathers promising to teach their sons to choose to live rather than choose to die? Where are the religious clerics and congregations of all faiths arguing that no just and loving God would call on young men and women to kill themselves and others in the name of religion?

To be fair, many voices, Western and Eastern, Islamic and Christian, have spoken out against the violence. Yet the criticism seems oddly muted. Offensive cartoons sparked massive protests in nations across the Islamic world. The international outcry was immediate when civilians were killed in the recent conflict between Israel and Hezbollah.

Yet we have seen no similar mass condemnation of terrorist violence and murder, and no hint of remorse from those engaged in these acts. As I have traveled the world, I have met those who try to justify the violence based on policy differences, long-held grievances or a perceived threat from the West.

Those who speak of a clash of civilizations seem to forget that Islam is part of America, that an estimated six to seven million Muslims live and worship freely in America. America and our international partners went to war to protect Muslims in the Balkans and gave generously to help Muslims rebuild their lives after the tsunami in Indonesia and the earthquake in Pakistan, just as many Muslim-majority countries reached out generously to help Americans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

We do this because we believe in the dignity and value of every person. The fifth anniversary of Sept. 11 is both a reminder of the inhumanity of the extremists we are up against and the humanity shared by most citizens of the world. The color of our skin, the language we speak and the way we worship may be different, but much more unites us than divides us.

So why aren't more of us doing more to stop the terror?

First, I believe most of us hope that terrorism is an aberration. Unfortunately, I do not believe it is true. Part of my job is to look at the propaganda being spread on Internet sites and TV sets around the world. It is chilling. Bombings are depicted as acts of glory. Children are being taught the language of hate. Thousands of people have been trained in terror training camps, convinced the only way to defend their faith is to kill all others who have a different point of view.

Second, the presence of religion in this debate makes governments and individuals nervous. We are unsure how to engage; we hesitate to offend. Yet all major faiths — including Christianity, Islam and Judaism — teach that life is precious. We cannot allow what is essentially a death cult to get away with murder in the name of religion.

It is in the best interest of all the civilized people that the terror stop. And we have a model. Slavery's path from international norm to pariah began with moral outrage. In 1833, one of every seven adults in Britain signed a petition against slavery. That was twice the number of people eligible to vote at the time and the largest public petitioning of Parliament to that date. The grassroots petition drive was born of the conviction that every person has value — a conviction that should guide us today.

Our challenge is to launch a new grassroots movement across all faiths and continents, a movement that clearly states that no grievance, no complaint, no matter how legitimate, can ever justify the targeting and killing of innocent civilians. A movement that commits to teach our children that life is precious, diversity should be celebrated, and hope can conquer hate.

I have read many stories of lives cut short by acts of terrorism. Almost all the victims' families speak of the joy their loved ones brought to those around them. They didn't deserve to die. And those who killed them earned only shame, not glory. The least the rest of us can do is say so loudly and in concert.

Karen Hughes is under secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs at the State Department.

Proxy Terrorism From Iran

It's time to bring the fight against terrorists to the countries that arm and fund them.
By Natan Sharansky
Los Angeles Times
September 12, 2006

In the summer of 2000, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin told me a story that I have been unable to get out of my mind. We were meeting in the Kremlin, and I raised the grave danger facing the world from the transfer of missile technology and nuclear material to the Iranians. In Putin's view, however, the real danger came not from an Iranian nuclear-tipped missile or, for that matter, from the lethal arsenal of any nation-state.

"Imagine a sunny and beautiful day in a suburb of Manhattan," he said. "An elderly man is tending to the roses in his small garden with his nephew visiting from Europe. Life seems perfectly normal. The following day, the nephew, carrying a suitcase, takes a train to Manhattan. Inside the suitcase is a nuclear bomb."

The threat, Putin explained to me a year before 9/11, was not from this or that country but from their terrorist proxies — aided and supported quietly by a sovereign state that doesn't want to get its hands dirty — who will perpetrate their attacks without a return address. This scenario became real when Al Qaeda plotted its 9/11 attacks from within Afghanistan and received support from the Taliban government. Then it happened again this summer, when Iran was allowed to wage a proxy war through Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and northern Israel. But this time, the international community's weak response dealt the global war on terror a severe blow.

Five years ago, after 9/11, such a lack of culpability seemed inconceivable. That was when President Bush abandoned the conventional approach to fighting terror by vowing that the United States would henceforth make no distinction between terrorists and regimes that support them. You are either with us or you are with the terrorists.

In the pre-9/11 world, regimes were rarely held responsible for the actions of terror groups. Now the Taliban regime was being held accountable.

This was critically important for two reasons. First, it recognized that international terrorism relies on the support of sovereign states. It is regimes, after all, that give terror groups territory on which to train, arm and indoctrinate their members, and regimes that provide them critical financial, diplomatic, logistical and intelligence support.

Second, although shadowy terror cells are difficult to eradicate fully and suicidal fanatics impossible to deter, the regimes that support terror groups do have a return address and are rarely suicidal. Thus, holding the Taliban responsible for the actions of Al Qaeda, and elevating the logic for doing so to a central principle in the war on terror, greatly enhanced deterrence. Every single regime was immediately put on notice.

Fast forward five years. Hezbollah launches an unprovoked attack on Israel. It is clear that Hezbollah is a proxy of Iran. It is public knowledge that Hezbollah receives more than $100 million a year from the Iranian regime, as well as sophisticated weapons and training.

Yet Iran has paid no price for its proxy's actions. No military strikes on Iranian targets, no sanctions, no threat whatsoever to Iranian interests. On the contrary, in the wake of the war, there have been renewed calls in the democratic world to "engage" Iran.

Symptomatic of the moral myopia in the West is a farce worthy of Orwell: Former Iranian President Mohammad Khatami, under whom students were tortured after a 1999 crackdown at Tehran University and whose rule was marked by the continued stifling of dissent, spoke Sunday at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government on "Ethics of Tolerance in the Age of Violence."

The Iranian regime's intentions are clear. It calls for "wiping Israel off the map" and tells its followers to "imagine a world without America." It seeks to dominate the Middle East. By failing to hold Iran accountable for its brazen support of Hezbollah, the free world has undermined a central pillar in the war on terror and given the Iranian regime a huge weapon for achieving its ambitions. Now the mullahs know they can attack a democratic country with impunity.

Considering the apocalyptic fanaticism of Iran's leader, it is an open question whether the current regime in Tehran is capable of being deterred through the threat of mutually assured destruction. But given how the world has responded to Hezbollah, the point may be academic. For surely Iran would be better served by using proxies to wage a nuclear war against Israel. And if there is no accountability, why stop with Israel?

The road to a suitcase bomb in Tel Aviv, Paris or New York just got a whole lot shorter.

NATAN SHARANSKY is a former deputy prime minister of Israel and currently a member of parliament for the opposition Likud Party.

Bin Laden's Victory

By Richard Cohen
The Washington Post
Tuesday, September 12, 2006; A23

NEW YORK -- I hear Osama bin Laden laughing. I heard him all day on Sunday and Monday as the mass murder of Sept. 11, 2001, was memorialized at the Pentagon and in that field in Pennsylvania and especially here, where the most people died and where countless cameras recorded it all for posterity and an abiding, everlasting anger. He laughs, the madman does, whenever George Bush says, as he has over and over, that America is "winning this war on terror." Bin Laden knows better. He has already won.

It is not merely that bin Laden has not been captured or killed and that videotapes keep coming out of his hideout like taunts. It is, rather, that his initial strategy has borne fruit. It was always his intention to draw the Americans into Afghanistan, where, as had been done to the Soviets, they could be mauled by the fierce mujaheddin. He tried and failed when he blew up the USS Cole off Aden at 11:15 a.m. on Oct. 12, 2000, killing 17 sailors and crippling the ship. But he succeeded beyond his wildest expectations when the United States responded to the Sept. 11 attacks by invading Afghanistan and, in a beat, then going to war in Iraq. It remains mired in both countries to this day.

From bin Laden's standpoint, this has been a glorious victory, made possible, it has to be said, by the totally unforeseen incompetence of the Bush administration. It was so intent on going to war in Iraq that it would not finish the job in Afghanistan. So, to bin Laden's absolute amazement -- I am guessing here -- the United States took on his enemy, the secular and ungodly Saddam Hussein, whom bin Laden himself would gladly have murdered. It has to be a wonderful thing when your enemy vanquishes your enemy.

On "Meet the Press" on Sunday, Dick Cheney said that if he had it to do all over again, he would still go to war in Iraq -- "we'd do exactly the same thing," he said. Why? Is the man incapable of learning from experience? We now know from umpteen reports that there was no link between bin Laden and Hussein. We now know, the Weekly Standard notwithstanding, that Mohamed Atta did not meet in Prague with someone from Iraqi intelligence. We now know that Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction and that the Iraq war -- which has cost America more than 2,500 lives, 20,000 casualties, the respect of the world and billions of dollars -- is for naught. Talleyrand said of the Bourbons that they forgot nothing and learned nothing. It will be said of Cheney that he forgot everything and learned nothing.

How did bin Laden get so lucky? How did he get so fortunate in his choice of enemies? The Bush administration not only validated his wildest dreams -- dreams that even some of his aides thought were unrealistic -- but went even further. By using torture, by the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison, by employing "extraordinary renditions" of suspects to countries where they could be tortured, by insisting on going it almost alone in Iraq, by telling the international community to shove it, by declaring a war for an idée fixe -- this fierce obsession with Hussein goes back a long way -- the United States has made itself reviled in much of the world.

And here at home, here in the United States of America, it will be a long time before lots of people trust their government again. Little wonder that 16 percent of respondents said in a recent poll that it was "very likely" that the government played some role in the Sept. 11 attacks to justify a war in the Middle East. This is a shocking figure, a measure not just of irrational thinking but of the cost of the Bush administration's mauling of the truth in its mad march to war. Bush has damaged his country more than bin Laden ever could on his own.

I was here on Sept. 11, 2001 -- downtown when the twin towers collapsed. My instantaneous reaction -- the thought that came to my mind as I heard the sound of the buildings coming down -- was for revenge. I would, to this day, kill Osama bin Laden with my own hands. But as much as I hate the man, I have to recognize that from his vantage point, from his mountain fastness somewhere on the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier, he has won. What he had set out to do, he has done. That is more than we can say.

Reinforce Baghdad

By William Kristol and Rich Lowry
The Washington Post
Tuesday, September 12, 2006; A23

We are at a crucial moment in Iraq. Supporters of the war, like us, have in the past differed over tactics. But at this urgent pass, there can be no doubt that we need to stop the downward slide in Iraq by securing Baghdad.

There is no mystery as to what can make the crucial difference in the battle of Baghdad: American troops. A few thousand U.S. troops have already been transferred to Baghdad from elsewhere in Iraq. Where more U.S. troops have been deployed, the situation has gotten better. Those neighborhoods intensively patrolled by Americans are safer and more secure. But it is by no means clear that overall troop numbers in Baghdad are enough to do the job. And it is clear that stripping troops from other fronts risks progress elsewhere in the country.

The bottom line is this: More U.S. troops in Iraq would improve our chances of winning a decisive battle at a decisive moment. This means the ability to succeed in Iraq is, to some significant degree, within our control. The president should therefore order a substantial surge in overall troop levels in Iraq, with the additional forces focused on securing Baghdad.

There is now no good argument for not sending more troops. The administration often says that it doesn't want to foster Iraqi dependency. This is a legitimate concern, but it is a second-order and long-term one. Iraq is a young democracy and a weak state facing a vicious insurgency and sectarian violence. The Iraqis are going to be dependent on us for some time. We can worry about weaning Iraq from reliance on our forces after the security crisis in Baghdad has passed.

The administration emphasizes that there needs to be a political, not simply a military, solution to Iraq. This is of course true. But the violence intersects with politics. Violence is radicalizing. It serves to empower extremists who are aligned with our enemies. So long as we don't succeed in controlling the violence, it will make any political settlement far more difficult.

Indeed, the violence perpetrated by the Shiite militias is directly related to politics. It is part of a power play by the likes of Moqtada al-Sadr to marginalize moderate figures such as Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani. Sistani's recent statement of disgust with Iraqi politics suggests that Sadr's gambit may be working. Sending more American troops at this juncture would not be a simple-minded and clumsy substitution of military force for political finesse. It would be an attempt to influence Iraq's political situation in our favor.

The administration's military strategy has long been based on getting the Iraqis to do the "holding" in the counterinsurgency strategy of "clear, hold and build." That would obviously be ideal. But the experience of the past three years is that the Iraqis aren't yet up to it, at least not in hotly contested areas such as Baghdad. The administration deserves credit for the strides it has made in training the Iraqi army. But for now we have to do much of the holding ourselves for it to be effective. That simply requires more manpower.

If American troops hand neighborhoods over to Iraqis, they are likely to soon deteriorate again -- in the same dynamic we have repeatedly seen of trouble spots being brought under control by American troops only to slide back again when the Americans leave.

One reason to prefer having Iraqis hold secured areas is that indigenous forces, in theory, don't risk creating the kind of nationalist reaction that can be prompted by a foreign occupying army -- i.e., us. But in the current environment of sectarian bloodletting, all signs are that American troops are more trusted and more welcome than Iraqis. Many Sunnis -- confronted by Shiite militias -- now accept our troop presence, and moderate Shiite leaders want us to stay. In fact, the chief fear of Iraqis in Baghdad neighborhoods patrolled by Americans is apparently that we will leave, not that we will remain.

Harvard Law School's William Stuntz recently made the core point powerfully: "The territory over which we fight is among the most strategically important in the world. Victory will place the most dangerous regime on the planet, Iran's fascist theocracy, in serious peril. Defeat will leave that same regime inestimably strengthened. If there is any significant possibility that the presence of more American soldiers on the ground would raise the odds of success, not putting those soldiers on the ground is a crime."

Administration spokesmen have jettisoned talk of "staying the course" in Iraq in favor of "adapting to win." If those words are to have meaning, the administration can't simply stay the course on current troop levels. We need to adapt to win the battle of Baghdad. We need substantially more troops in Iraq. Sending them would be a courageous act of presidential leadership appropriate to the crisis we face.

William Kristol is editor of The Weekly Standard. Rich Lowry is editor of National Review.

Winning Battles--But Losing War?

A growing number of specialists -- and some U.S. political leaders -- say a fundamental overhaul of the West's counterterrorism strategy is needed.
By Warren P. Strobel and Jonathan S. Landay
Miami Herald
September 11, 2006

KABUL, Afghanistan - Five years ago, the United States fired its first shots in the post-9/11 war on terrorism in Afghanistan, evicting al Qaeda and toppling the Taliban regime that hosted Osama bin Laden's network.

Today, the United States and its allies are struggling to halt advances by a resurgent Taliban and al Qaeda fighters in large swaths of this still desperately poor and unstable country. ''Things are going very badly,'' admitted an official with the allied military forces, who asked not to be identified because the issue is sensitive. ``We've arrived at a situation where things are significantly worse than we anticipated.''

The trends in Afghanistan appear to mirror the global war on terrorism a half-decade after the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Bush administration and allied governments have won battle after battle, but appear to be in danger of losing the war. Indeed, a growing number of analysts, many of them former top government counterterrorism officials, argue that the very notion of a ''war'' on terrorism is the wrong strategy.

In relying overwhelmingly on bombs and bullets, they say, the United States has alienated much of the Muslim world, driving away even moderates who might be open to Western ideas. The West has largely failed to offer a positive vision or deal with the root causes of Islamic extremism.

The ''tactical firefighting'' of disrupting terrorist cells and stopping attacks ''works pretty well,'' said Magnus Ranstorp, a terrorism expert at the Swedish National Defence College. ``But it's not resolving the strategic problem. The ranks keep on coming.''

The ''war'' on terrorism ''is something that has outlived its usefulness as a concept,'' said Georgetown University professor Bruce Hoffman. A global counterinsurgency strategy would put ''more emphasis on political reform, economic development, information operations and less emphasis on the kinetics -- the killing and capturing,'' Hoffman said. ``I'm not saying we shouldn't be killing and capturing terrorists. But . . . we've had a disproportionate emphasis on that as a solution.''

On the ground, the good news is that bin Laden's al Qaeda network, which executed the 9/11 attacks, has been badly damaged, perhaps even crippled, by a multi-pronged international assault by soldiers, spies, policemen and bankers, according to senior U.S. officials and private analysts.

But the threat from anti-Western Islamic extremists has rebounded, mutated and grown.

Bin Laden's warped message of violent jihad has spread, with help from the Internet, like a contagious virus. The ranks of potential terrorist recruits -- while still representing a small, embittered minority of the Muslim world -- appear to be swelling.

To them, round-the-clock TV images of the war in Iraq and the recent U.S.-backed Israeli bombardment of Lebanon are proof of bin Laden's contention that the West is waging war on Islam.

With the United States bogged down in Iraq, some specialists say they worry that America's enemies feel emboldened. Some of the early gains after 9/11 -- when al Qaeda was ousted from Afghanistan and countries from Iran to Libya avoided confrontation with Washington -- may be dissipating.

A new report by the respected British research group Chatham House concludes: ``There is little doubt that Iran has been the chief beneficiary of the war on terror in the Middle East.''

In Lebanon, Iranian proxy Hezbollah is resurgent after Israeli bombs failed to dislodge it. Hezbollah has outpaced the Lebanese government in rebuilding villages, and its teams bring along TV cameras to record the effort for its propaganda value.

Islamists control ever-larger swaths of lawless Somalia, while in nuclear-armed Pakistan, President Pervez Musharraf walks a tight-rope between counterterror cooperation with the West and appeasing his own Islamists.

In Afghanistan, which has been viewed as one of the enduring successes against terrorism, the Taliban appear stronger than at any time since 9/11.

Despite successions of offensives and airstrikes more intense than those in Iraq, the Taliban and their sympathizers now operate freely in six southeastern provinces and control pockets of them, said officials from the U.S. and Afghan governments and the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force.

As the strife deepens, President Hamid Karzai's government and its foreign backers are losing the battle for the hearts and minds of the country's citizens.

Despite billions of dollars in foreign-financed reconstruction, growing numbers of Afghans -- including members of the Parliament -- are furiously questioning the inability of history's most powerful armies to halt the violence and curb the growing civilian toll.

Many Afghans -- now with access to internationally funded free media -- cite the war in Iraq and U.S. support for Israel in Lebanon and in the Palestinian territories when they accuse President Bush of waging war on Islam in the guise of fighting terrorism.

That perception has brought new motivation and recruits to the Taliban.

Western and Afghan officials insist that it's not too late to stem the crisis if the United States and its allies devote more reconstruction resources, time and troops.

''We've had a lot of success, but we have not won, and we need a major push for several years that is linked to development and security,'' said Ronald E. Neumann, the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan.

Outside the Middle East, and often under the radar, U.S. interagency teams have helped local governments develop successful counterinsurgency strategies in places as far-flung as Colombia and North Africa.

Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines are working more closely together and have shrunk the terrain in Southeast Asia where al Qaeda affiliates can operate. Two groups, Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah, are ''in the hurt locker,'' the senior official said. Jemaah Islamiyah was responsible for the October 2002 bombings in Bali, Indonesia, that killed more than 200 tourists.

Yet a growing number of specialists -- and some U.S. political leaders -- say a fundamental overhaul of the West's counterterrorism strategy is needed.

They advocate a defter approach, one that focuses less on bombs and bullets, and more on winning hearts and minds, efforts to end regional conflicts that spark resentment, development aid and trade.

'Our success in the kinetic realm [of military operations] is certainly not matched in the `soft power' realm,'' said James Forest, director of terrorism studies at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point.

Strobel reported from Washington and Landay wrote from Kabul. Greg Gordon also contributed to this report. All are McClatchy correspondents.

62,006 - 180,000, the number killed in the 'war on terror'

By David Randall and Emily Gosden
The Independent (UK)
09/10/06

The "war on terror" - and by terrorists - has directly killed a minimum of 62,006 people, created 4.5 million refugees and cost the US more than the sum needed to pay off the debts of every poor nation on earth.

If estimates of other, unquantified, deaths - of insurgents, the Iraq military during the 2003 invasion, those not recorded individually by Western media, and those dying from wounds - are included, then the toll could reach as high as 180,000.

The extraordinary scale of the conflict's impact, claiming lives from New York to Bali and London to Lahore, and the extent of the death tolls in Iraq and Afghanistan, has emerged from an Independent on Sunday survey to mark the fifth anniversary of 11 September. It used new, unpublished data supplied by academics and organisations such as Iraq Body Count and Professor Marc Herold of the University of New Hampshire, plus estimates given by other official studies.

The result is the first attempt to gauge the full cost in blood and money of the worldwide atrocities and military conflicts that began in September 2001. As of yesterday, the numbers of lives confirmed lost are: 4,541 to 5,308 civilians and 385 military in Afghanistan; 50,100 civilians and 2,899 military in Iraq; and 4,081 in acts of terrorism in the rest of the world.

The new figure on civilian deaths from Iraq Body Count, a group of British and US academics, is especially telling. Just two and a half years ago, its estimate of the number of civilian dead in Iraq passed 10,000. Today, it says, that figure has gone beyond the 50,000 mark - a huge leap largely attributable to terrorist acts and the breakdown of civil authority.

Iraq Body Count's careful methodology - of recording a death only when it appears in two independent media reports - almost certainly produces a substantial underestimate. Even the Iraqi Health Ministry reports a slightly higher figure, and President Bush's much-quoted figure of 30,000 civilian dead dates from December 2005, when it tallied with the then IBC figure. Insurgent deaths are not included in the IBC figures, and neither are those of Iraqi police when engaged in combat-style operations.

Estimates of the former are, together with the number of Iraqi military killed in the battle phase of the Iraq occupation, the biggest unknown of the conflict. One US news report guessed the insurgent dead in Iraq at 36,000 since 2003, while the number of Iraqi military killed during the invasion phase remains unknown and unknowable.

Neither category is included in our figure of 62,006 confirmed directly killed. Nor does it include any figures for people later dying from wounds received, or the increased mortality owing to lack of health care. Estimates for one or the other ranging up to 130,000 have been produced, but are based on little more than educated (and uneducated) guesswork or, as with the controversial Lancet estimate of 98,000 deaths due to extra mortality, by amplifying a survey of 988 households into a nation-wide conclusion.

What is certain is the wretched state of health care in Iraq. In March 2006 the campaign group Medact reported that 18,000 physicians have left since 2003; an estimated 250 of those that remained have been kidnapped and, in 2005 alone, 65 killed. Medact also said that "easily treatable conditions such as diarrhoea and respiratory illness caused 70 per cent of all child deaths", and that "of the 180 health clinics the US hoped to build by the end of 2005, only four have been completed and none has been opened". In May, a survey by the Iraq government and Unicef reported that a quarter of all Iraqi children suffer from malnutrition.

In Afghanistan, the most reliable recorder of civilian deaths is Professor Marc Herold, whose latest figures range from 4,541 to 5,308. He does not include those who die subsequently from their injuries or in refugee camps.These "indirect" deaths have been put at anything from 8,000 to 20,000. More accurate are estimates of refugee numbers. In July, the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants said there were 2.2 million Afghans who had fled abroad and at least 153,200 displaced internally. For Iraq, there were 888,700 external refugees, and 1.3 million people displaced inside the country. An estimated 40 per cent of the Iraqi middle class have left Iraq.

Beyond the blood price, there is a dollar and sterling cost. In July it was reported that the US Congress had approved $437bn (£254bn) for costs related to the "war on terror". This, a sum greater than those spent on the Korean and Vietnam wars, compares to the $375bn that Make Poverty History says is needed to clear the debts of the world's poorest nations. The British Government has spent £4.5bn on Iraq and Afghanistan.

IRAQ: Orphaned and badly burned at 12

The image of a despairing 12-year-old orphan lying on a filthy Iraqi hospital bed, his arms burnt off above the elbow, symbolised the "collateral damage" of the second Gulf war. Ali Abbas had 60 per cent burns after an American bombing raid on the Baghdad suburbs hit his home and killed 15 of his relatives, including his parents and his brother.

Three years later the young Iraqi, now a teenager living in Britain, enjoys cycling around London's Richmond Park on a special bicycle and playing games on his PlayStation with his feet. He will be taking his GCSEs next year, at a private school whose headmaster has waived the usual £8,000 annual fees. According to his teachers Ali, 15, is fluent in English and is particularly good at geography.

He is not a typical teenager, his therapist, Grania Hyde-Smith, said; Ali cannot brush his teeth, bathe or use the lavatory unaided. "He is a well-adjusted teenager. And when you consider what he's been through, that is a brilliant, inspirational and remarkable achievement."

Although he spends school holidays in Iraq, Ali is not sure that he will end up there. "I found my house on Google Earth the other day, where it had been. I found a white spot from the sky. When I went there last summer it seemed a dangerous place," he said.

JORDAN: Shot by a lone extremist

Christopher Stokes was with a tour group visiting the Roman amphitheatre in Jordan's capital, Amman, when he was shot by a lone extremist last week. The 30-year-old had given up his accountancy job to tour the Middle East. "Christopher lived his dreams," his father Rod, 59, said. "He travelled because he wanted to meet people."

SPAIN: Bombed on way to work

Maria Moyano did not drive to work on the morning of the Madrid bombings in March 2004; she was awaiting delivery of her new car. The 30-year-old economics student had just returned from studying in America and was planning a July wedding. Her body was so badly mutilated in the blast that it took several days to identify her.

USA: Passenger on United 93

Deora Bodley was a first-year student at a Catholic university in California. The 20-year old San Diegan was the youngest of 44 passengers killed when United Airlines Flight 93 crashed into a Pennsylvania field on 11 September 2001. She was supposed to take the flight an hour later, but wanted to get home sooner to her family and boyfriend.

AFGHANISTAN: Killed at a checkpoint

Nasrat Ali Hassan was shot as he passed a Canadian military checkpoint outside Kandahar in March. The 45-year-old father of six was a passenger in a rickshaw taxi, and was allegedly shot four times. The price of compensating his family should start with Canadian citizenship, according to the victim's eldest brother.

BALI

Although the Australian and British victims of the Bali bombings in October 2002 were widely reported, many of the dead killed in the Bali attack were Indonesian. Made Wijaya, 39, was a taxi driver waiting for fares outside the Sari Club. He left behind a wife and three children. Seven people from his village died, all of them taxi drivers.

Rescue Darfur Now

By John McCain and Bob Dole
The Washington Post
Sunday, September 10, 2006; B07

In 1995, the writing was on the wall. The conflict in Bosnia was escalating. Tens of thousands of civilians had been driven from their homes and were trapped in places the United Nations had designated as "safe areas," including Srebrenica. Only a few hundred poorly equipped U.N. peacekeepers stood between those civilians and Bosnian Serb forces. The Serbs had signaled their defiance of the United Nations, their disdain for diplomatic overtures and their determination to advance on the safe areas and finish the job of ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. All the makings of a massacre were present, and, before the eyes of the world, that is what unfolded. Eight thousand Bosnian Muslims were systematically killed at Srebrenica, and history has judged severely those policymakers who failed to heed the warning signs of mass murder.

As advocates of military action in Bosnia, we will never forget those terrible days. We remember that when the United States and its allies did finally act, military intervention saved countless lives. And all of us pledged anew that, should such a situation again unfold, we would do things very differently.

Today, the Darfur region of Sudan faces its own Srebrenica moment.

The scale of human destruction thus far in Sudan has been staggering. Already, more than 200,000 civilians have been killed, with perhaps 2.5 million forced into squalid camps. This catastrophe is the result of a directed slaughter perpetrated by the Sudanese government and allied Janjaweed militias.

Faced with its moral responsibility to act, the U.N. Security Council has adopted a resolution that would replace a courageous but inadequate African Union force with a much larger U.N. force empowered to protect civilians. Last week, the Sudanese government not only rejected the resolution but demanded that the African Union withdraw from the country, leaving civilians vulnerable. Meanwhile, government forces have launched a major offensive in Darfur to finish off any rebel forces there, pushing tens of thousands more civilians into the camps.

As with Srebrenica in 1995, the potential for further mass killing in Darfur today is plain for all to see. All the warnings have been issued, including one from the United Nations that the coming weeks may see "a man-made catastrophe of an unprecedented scale." What remains unclear is only whether the world has the will to impose an outcome on Sudan different from that which unfolded so tragically in Bosnia. Make no mistake: At some point we will step in to help victims in Darfur and police an eventual settlement. The question is whether the United States and other nations will act now to prevent a tragedy, or merely express sorrow and act later to deal with its aftermath.

Urgent action is required in the coming hours and days.

First, the United States should reject out of hand Khartoum's demand that the African Union force leave and should insist that it stay, with broad international support, until the introduction of a robust U.N. force in accordance with Security Council Resolution 1706.

Second, the United States should call on the European Union to impose financial sanctions against the Sudanese leadership and to pursue the immediate imposition of similar sanctions by the U.N. Security Council.

Third, NATO should immediately establish and enforce a no-fly zone over Darfur to ensure that Khartoum ends its offensive military flights and bombing raids, as the Security Council has already demanded.

Fourth, the United States should intensify efforts to persuade U.N. members to commit troops and funds for the U.N. force in Darfur, and it should develop plans for U.S. logistical support. The administration should push the United Nations to draw up firm plans for the entrance of a robust force into Darfur and contingency plans for the force to enter without Sudanese consent.

Fifth, U.S. and allied intelligence assets, including satellite technology, should be dedicated to record any atrocities that occur in Darfur so that future prosecutions can take place. We should publicly remind Khartoum that the International Criminal Court has jurisdiction to prosecute war crimes in Darfur and that Sudanese leaders will be held personally accountable for attacks on civilians.

Finally, the United States should increase pressure on countries friendly to Khartoum -- and particularly our allies in the Arab League -- to abandon their support for Sudan's refusal to accept the U.N. force.

Some of these steps would be dramatic and difficult. But the circumstances imposed on the people of Darfur are likewise dramatic and difficult. And so would be the consequences of inaction: a humanitarian disaster that the world will in any case have to address; a massive and possibly permanent population of refugees dependent on international support; a conflict spreading to neighboring countries with prospects for settlement even more remote; and a permanent stain on our conscience.

Throughout the world, people of conscience were shocked by and ashamed of our failure to stop the genocide in Bosnia and Rwanda. We must not repeat these mistakes. In Darfur, the moment of truth is now.

John McCain is a U.S. senator from Arizona and Bob Dole was a longtime senator from Kansas and the 1996 Republican presidential nominee.