U.S. Plans New Arms Sales to Gulf Allies

$20 Billion Deal Includes Weapons For Saudi Arabia
By Robin Wright
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 28, 2007; A01

The Bush administration will announce next week a series of arms deals worth at least $20 billion to Saudi Arabia and five other oil-rich Persian Gulf states as well as new 10-year military aid packages to Israel and Egypt, a move to shore up allies in the Middle East and counter Iran's rising influence, U.S. officials said yesterday.

The arms deals, which include the sales of a variety of sophisticated weaponry, would be the largest negotiated by this administration. The military assistance agreements would provide $30 billion in new U.S. aid to Israel and $13 billion to Egypt over 10 years, the officials said. Both figures represent significant increases in military support.

U.S. officials said the arms sales to Saudi Arabia are expected to include air-to-air missiles as well as Joint Direct Attack Munitions, which turn standard bombs into "smart" precision-guided bombs. Most, but not all, of the arms sales to the six Gulf Cooperation Council countries -- Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman -- will be defensive, the officials said.

U.S. officials said the common goal of the military aid packages and arms sales is to strengthen pro-Western countries against Iran at a time when the hard-line regime seeks to extend its power in the region.

"This is a big development, because it's part of a larger regional strategy and the maintenance of a strong U.S. presence in the region. We're paying attention to the needs of our allies and what everyone in the region believes is a flexing of muscles by a more aggressive Iran. One way to deal with that is to make our allies and friends strong," said a senior administration official involved in the negotiations.

The arms deals have quietly been under discussion for months despite U.S. disappointment over Saudi Arabia's failure to support the Iraqi government and to bring that country's Sunni Muslims into the reconciliation process.

The administration's plans will be announced Monday in advance of trips next week to the Middle East by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, and are expected to be on their agenda in Egypt and Saudi Arabia. The administration has a notional list of arms to sell to the Gulf states, but there are no final agreements on quantities and specific models, U.S. officials said.

State Department and Pentagon officials started briefing key members of Congress about their intentions over the past week, U.S. officials said. The initial reception has been positive, said officials involved in those briefings. They acknowledged, however, that some parts of the deal are supported more than others. Arms sales to Gulf countries have often been controversial.

The administration hopes to provide a full rundown this fall for congressional approval.

"We want to convince Congress to continue our tradition of military sales to all six" states, the senior administration official said. "We've been helping Gulf Arabs for years, and that needs to continue."

Sunni regimes in the Gulf region have felt particularly vulnerable since the election of a pro-Iranian Shiite government in neighboring Iraq last year. "There's a sense here and in the region of the need to build up defenses against Iranian encroachment," said a U.S. official familiar with the deals.

The aid packages to Israel and Egypt are further along. A U.S.-Israel agreement, to replace a 10-year arrangement that expires this year, has been under discussion since February, U.S. officials said. The new U.S. package will include strictly military aid and would expand the U.S. contribution 25 percent over the current $2.4 billion per year; economic assistance has been discontinued now that Israel is considered a developed economy, U.S. officials said.

President Bush said last month, after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, that he was strongly committed to a new 10-year agreement that would increase U.S. assistance "to meet the new threats and challenges [Israel] faces." Washington has long promised to help Israel sustain a so-called "qualitative military edge" over other major powers in the region.

Rice is expected to announce Monday that, after her Middle East trip, Undersecretary of State R. Nicholas Burns will finalize the agreements with Israel and Egypt.

US angry over Saudi role in Iraq

Agence France Presse
Fri Jul 27, 2007

The US administration is deeply frustrated with Saudi Arabia over its role in Iraq, accusing the Saudis of trying to undermine the Baghdad government and failing to stem the flow of volunteers joining the insurgency there, the New York Times reported on Friday.

The Saudis view Iraq's Shiite prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, as an agent of Iran and appear to have stepped up efforts to weaken his government, providing funding for Sunni groups, the Times wrote, citing senior US officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.

One official told the paper that there was evidence Saudi Arabia was supplying money to Maliki's opponents but declined to say if that funding was going to Sunni insurgents.

"That would get into disagreements over who is an insurgent and who is not," the official said.

Officials in President George W. Bush's administration also say that of an estimated 60 to 80 foreign fighters who enter Iraq every month, nearly half come from Saudi Arabia and the Saudi leadership has not done enough to counter the influx.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates planned to raise Washington's concerns in a visit next week to Saudi Arabia, the paper said.

The Bush administration has refrained from publicly criticizing its long-time ally over Iraq and has instead blamed Iran and Syria for fomenting violence and sectarian divisions.

But the officials spoke to the Times with the clear intention of sending a signal to the Saudis after previous private appeals failed to produce results, the newspaper said.

US-Saudi relations have been increasingly strained since the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. In March, King Abdullah slammed the "illegitimate foreign occupation" of Iraq.

Tensions have also flared over the Arab-Israeli conflict, with Washington struggling to persuade Saudi Arabia to give full backing for US diplomatic efforts.

An illustration of the US-Saudi rift over Iraq came during a meeting in Riyadh in January, when Saudi officials confronted US envoy Zalmay Khalilzad with documents suggesting Iraq's prime minister could not be trusted, the paper said.

One document claimed Maliki was an Iranian agent and another purportedly showing Maliki warning radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr to keep a low profile during a planned increase in US troops, the paper said.

Khalilzad protested to King Abdullah and US officials insisted the documents were forgeries. "Maliki wouldn't be stupid enough to put that on a piece of paper," one official told the Times.

The Saudis, however, remained skeptical, officials said.

War Crimes and the White House

The Dishonor in a Tortured New 'Interpretation' of the Geneva Conventions
By P.X. Kelley and Robert F. Turner
The Washington Post
Thursday, July 26, 2007; A21

One of us was appointed commandant of the Marine Corps by President Ronald Reagan; the other served as a lawyer in the Reagan White House and has vigorously defended the constitutionality of warrantless National Security Agency wiretaps, presidential signing statements and many other controversial aspects of the war on terrorism. But we cannot in good conscience defend a decision that we believe has compromised our national honor and that may well promote the commission of war crimes by Americans and place at risk the welfare of captured American military forces for generations to come.

The Supreme Court held in Hamdan v. Rumsfeld last summer that all detainees captured in the war on terrorism are protected by Common Article 3 of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, which prescribes minimum standards of treatment for all persons who are no longer taking an active part in an armed conflict not of an international character. It provides that "in all circumstances" detainees are to be "treated humanely."

This is not just about avoiding "torture." The article expressly prohibits "at any time and in any place whatsoever" any acts of "violence to life and person" or "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment."

Last Friday, the White House issued an executive order attempting to "interpret" Common Article 3 with respect to a controversial CIA interrogation program. The order declares that the CIA program "fully complies with the obligations of the United States under Common Article 3," provided that its interrogation techniques do not violate existing federal statutes (prohibiting such things as torture, mutilation or maiming) and do not constitute "willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual in a manner so serious that any reasonable person, considering the circumstances, would deem the acts to be beyond the bounds of human decency."

In other words, as long as the intent of the abuse is to gather intelligence or to prevent future attacks, and the abuse is not "done for the purpose of humiliating or degrading the individual" -- even if that is an inevitable consequence -- the president has given the CIA carte blanche to engage in "willful and outrageous acts of personal abuse."

It is firmly established in international law that treaties are to be interpreted in "good faith" in accordance with the ordinary meaning of their words and in light of their purpose. It is clear to us that the language in the executive order cannot even arguably be reconciled with America's clear duty under Common Article 3 to treat all detainees humanely and to avoid any acts of violence against their person.

In April of 1793, Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson wrote to President George Washington that nations were to interpret treaty obligations for themselves but that "the tribunal of our consciences remains, and that also of the opinion of the world." He added that "as we respect these, we must see that in judging ourselves we have honestly done the part of impartial and rigorous judges."

To date in the war on terrorism, including the victims of the Sept. 11 attacks and all U.S. military personnel killed in action in Afghanistan and Iraq, America's losses total about 2 percent of the forces we lost in World War II and less than 7 percent of those killed in Vietnam. Yet we did not find it necessary to compromise our honor or abandon our commitment to the rule of law to defeat Nazi Germany or imperial Japan, or to resist communist aggression in Indochina. On the contrary, in Vietnam -- where we both proudly served twice -- America voluntarily extended the protections of the full Geneva Convention on prisoners of war to Viet Cong guerrillas who, like al-Qaeda, did not even arguably qualify for such protections.

The Geneva Conventions provide important protections to our own military forces when we send them into harm's way. Our troops deserve those protections, and we betray their interests when we gratuitously "interpret" key provisions of the conventions in a manner likely to undermine their effectiveness. Policymakers should also keep in mind that violations of Common Article 3 are "war crimes" for which everyone involved -- potentially up to and including the president of the United States -- may be tried in any of the other 193 countries that are parties to the conventions.

In a letter to President James Madison in March 1809, Jefferson observed: "It has a great effect on the opinion of our people and the world to have the moral right on our side." Our leaders must never lose sight of that wisdom.

Retired Gen. P.X. Kelley served as commandant of the Marine Corps from 1983 to 1987. Robert F. Turner is co-founder of the University of Virginia's Center for National Security Law and a former chair of the American Bar Association's Standing Committee on Law and National Security.

A Destination, Not a Road Map

By Daoud Kuttab
The Washington Post
Monday, July 23, 2007; A17

I vividly remember the weeks leading up to the first international conference for Middle East peace. U.S. Secretary of State James A. Baker III, who had shuttled frantically to resolve the issue of Palestinian representation, kept the 1992 conference's location under wraps. Once he declared Madrid the site, many of us Palestinians felt a sense of jubilation at the looming discussions.

I thought of this after President Bush's call last Monday for an international parley on the Middle East to be chaired by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. I and many other Palestinians are much more skeptical now. Attending the Madrid conference felt essential, but the importance of summits has diminished as such forums have failed to produce results.

Palestinians have been more hurt than helped by the false trappings of a state that were provided as part of the Oslo peace process and the famous White House handshake of 1993. Palestinians got an elected president and a government whose ministers and legislators are not guaranteed passage between Gaza and the West Bank; passports whose numbers must be entered into Israeli computers; a postage system and lightly armed police -- but no real sovereignty over the land or contiguity between our communities in Gaza and the West Bank.

Palestinians have been made to endure hundreds of checkpoints in the West Bank, an eight-foot wall deep in our territories and tight Israeli control over borders. In return, Israel was relieved of the need to guard populated Palestinian areas and was no longer obliged to pay public servants or support the occupied population economically as stipulated by international law.

Israeli, Palestinian and other world leaders promised that these imbalances would eventually be rectified and that Palestinian sovereignty would be solidified. But that has not happened, thanks to Israel's backtracking on its obligations, its settlement activities and the disruptive actions of Islamists who had little interest in the Oslo process or even the idea of a two-state solution.

In the absence of an effective plan leading to independence from Israeli occupation and the ability to govern a sovereign, contiguous state, dissent has been on the rise among Palestinians. Some, seeing so many Jewish settlements dotting the West Bank, want to scrap the two-state solution and focus on a single bi-national state.

Forty years after the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including Jerusalem, Palestinians have yet to find the formula for liberation. They have attempted cross-border violence (late 1960s), Arab and international diplomacy (1970s and '80s), the first intifada (1987), secret talks in Oslo (1993), suicide attacks (throughout the 1990s and culminating in the second intifada), cross-border rocket attacks (2006 and this year), regional Arab initiatives (2000 and this year), international initiatives and peace envoys (since 1967) -- but nothing has succeeded.

The transcripts of conferences, peace initiatives, lofty speeches and U.N. agreements aimed at resolving the conflict could fill rooms. The reality is that, in defiance of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, which states that it is inadmissible to occupy land by force, Palestinian territories are still under foreign military occupation.

Skeptics of U.S. motives have good reason for concern. To overcome mistrust based on past failures, President Bush will need to spend substantial political capital. In the early days of the Bush administration, the idea of using the cachet of the office of the president was anathema because of Bill Clinton's failed attempts to broker a peace agreement. But such high-level influence is critical today.

Bush sent an early positive sign, beginning his speech last Monday by saying that "Iraq is not the only pivotal matter in the Middle East." He appeared to have accepted the advice of Rice and the recommendations of the Iraq Study Group. Bush and other Westerners must understand that winning the hearts and minds of Arabs and Muslims cannot be accomplished by creating an Arabic satellite station or congratulating Muslims on the month of Ramadan. It requires a just solution to the Palestinian conflict.

We can no longer afford a step-by-step approach like the process begun in Madrid. In the past, plans employing incremental improvements have been targets for extremists seeking dates and locations to use to derail the peace process. Consider what a radical Israeli citizen did to Yitzhak Rabin in 1995. And Palestinian extremists have carried out suicide bombings and other horrific acts on the eve of Israeli elections and important redeployments, virtually guaranteeing the abandonment of Israeli withdrawal plans.

What we need, as suggested in the Arab peace initiative and a number of Palestinian-Israeli peace initiatives, is an agreed-upon final status -- something like the 1967 borders -- and the process to implement terms that will be agreed to by all parties. Otherwise, future summits will continue to fail.

The writer directs the Institute of Modern Media at al-Quds University in Ramallah and founded the Arab world's first Internet radio station, Ammannet.

How Many U.S. Forces Required For Iraq?

The number depends on who sets timetable and role for Americans
By David Wood, Sun Reporter
Baltimore Sun
July 22, 2007

WASHINGTON--For all the fierce debate over withdrawing troops from Iraq, no one has been able to shed light on the main question: How many troops are we talking about?

Virtually everyone, from the White House to the Democratic presidential candidates, agrees that some of the 156,247 men and women in Iraq, as of July 15, eventually must be withdrawn.

"Bringing our troops home," President Bush said last week, "is a goal shared by all Americans."

Pulling out all combat units, as some have demanded, would reduce the force by less than half, leaving more than 80,000 support troops in Iraq without protection and allowing the insurgency to run rampant.

To avoid that, nearly everyone also agrees that some combat forces should remain in Iraq to fight foreign insurgents, to train the Iraqi army and police, and to protect remaining American troops, diplomats and contractors.

How many soldiers and Marines will that take?

"I think in the tens of thousands," said Lee Hamilton, who co-chaired the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel that recommended in December that the U.S. begin scaling back its military operations in Iraq.

"Only military professionals can determine those numbers," Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel of Nebraska said on the Senate floor.

"We have not asked [the Pentagon] for an estimate," said Sen. Jack Reed, a Democrat of Rhode Island. And, in any event, "I think it would be difficult to get," Reed admitted.

The commander of U.S. ground forces in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, said he hadn't been asked.

"What do they want me to achieve? Once I'm given that, I'll be able to give you an assessment of what's needed," he told a recent Pentagon briefing, adding that it could take until November to make such an assessment.

Yet the question could become more pressing long before then.

While Senate Democrats have set aside, for now, their drive to force Bush to begin a troop withdrawal, that effort will likely intensify in September, when Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, is due to report with U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker on progress under the 28,000-man "surge" that the president ordered in January.

At the same time, the Pentagon is running out of fresh troops to maintain the current force of almost 160,000.

In March, many of those troops are scheduled to rotate home after 15 months in combat. The Army says it will have "a very difficult time" finding enough troops to replace them, a staff officer said.

By April, the military's ability to sustain current troop levels in Iraq "vanishes," Reed, a former Army paratrooper, said July 13 on CSPAN.

For these political and military reasons, "it is likely that there will be changes in military missions and force levels as the year proceeds," said Republican Sen. Richard G. Lugar of Indiana.

Already, the 74,600 combat soldiers and Marines in Iraq are far too few to carry out the counter-insurgency strategy developed last fall by Petraeus. That strategy, enshrined in U.S. Army Field Manual FM100-34, calls for 20 troops for every 1,000 persons in the local population, a formula which would put 120,000 soldiers just in Baghdad.

For those advocating even further reductions, matching troop numbers to a specific military mission has been difficult.

For example, a plan championed by Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the Democratic chairman of the Armed Services Committee, would require that a much smaller U.S. combat force be authorized to fight only those insurgents associated with al-Qaida, but not other insurgents, a distinction that could be difficult to make in a firefight.

A plan advanced by Illinois Sen. Barrack Obama, a Democratic presidential candidate, would remove "all United States combat brigades" from Iraq - except those needed to fight terrorists, train Iraqis, protect Americans "and other purposes" the president may decide. No numbers were specified.

Republican Sen. John W. Warner of Virginia and Lugar urge that U.S. forces be refocused on these same missions, which would require "some level" of troops, their proposal said.

Outside the military, a lively chorus of civilian analysts and academics has been at work figuring out how small the U.S. combat force should become.

Shrinking the total number is difficult because of the enormous support community needed to maintain combat troops in the field: headquarters staffs, intelligence, medical, communications and logistics specialists, civil and combat engineers, civil affairs and explosive ordnance detachments, technicians, mechanics and others.

At present, roughly 80,000 American troops provide these services, including about 6,000 military personnel working as advisers and trainers with Iraqi police or Army units, and about 3,000 Special Forces soldiers, sailors and airmen. In addition, at least 20,000 American civilians work in Iraq as contractors.

All of them need bases in which to operate, and the bases must be supplied. At present, 2,000 trucks are on Iraq's roads every day in normal supply operations.

That support should be sharply reduced to a leaner force, some analysts said.

"I'm saying take the force down to 100,000 immediately, and then to 50,000 to 60,000," said Frank Hoffman, a retired Marine officer and well-known strategic analyst in Washington. "Of course, that means you have to do without your dentists and chaplains, and go without ice cream every night."

The Center for a New American Strategy, a centrist think-tank in Washington, proposed a gradual reduction to 60,000 troops by 2009, a force that would include a substantial expansion of American advisers to 20,000 soldiers, more than triple the current number.

"That's back-of-the-envelope planning," said James Miller, a senior vice president of the center and former Pentagon war planner. "Our real recommendation is that the military should do this."

But a smaller combat force may itself be problematical.

For a force that is half of today's size, "it's very hard to find something for them to do that is simultaneously safe and useful," said Steven Biddle, senior analyst on defense issues for the Council on Foreign Relations.

"So you end up with a kind of worst-of-both-worlds situation," Biddle said in an e-mail interview. "You have too few troops to do anything useful, but too many to reduce casualties to an acceptable level."