Dan Feidt's log on Minnesota, Information Operations, spinstorms and latent contradictions.
I am supposed to write a proposal for my final paper in International Security class tonight. But given what's been happening the last few weeks, what can I address that isn't tearing apart like wet toilet paper? Where can I stand when the sands are shifting so? Is it possible to research and write on security in this snake pit? I'm hoping you guys might have suggestions!
This deserves to go first: a report from Haaretz that America plans to make 'implied' recognition of the illegal Israeli settlements. Holy land, gotta gotta get it!
U.S. assures Israel no retreat to 1967 lineBelow is my round-up on the Iraq and the Fallujah-mercenary issue, Pakistan, military-industrial corruption, the Uzbekistan aftermath, Clarkestorm 2004 and further Israel-Palestine tidbits. (crossposted on DKOS diary)
The U.S. will assure Israel that it will not have to withdraw to the Green Line in a future permanent settlement with the Palestinians.The promise appears in a letter of guarantees drafted by the American administration in exchange for Sharon's disengagement plan.
The U.S. rejected Israel's request to recognize the future annexation of the large settlement blocs in Ma'ale Adumim, Ariel and Etzion. Instead of referring explicitly to the settlements, the Americans propose a vaguely worded letter, which Israel would be able to present as implied recognition of the settlement blocs.
My special thanks go to those following the best of mainstream and alternative media every day at WarInContext. The Agonist is a news blitz all day long--they are making a full-time go at it. New frontiers of journalism or just obsessed people?
That's Robert Fisk reporting "Things are getting much worse in Iraq" today, a brutally honest British reporter who has given a totally different slant to the war, but then again he said it would be a quagmire from the very beginning. Juan Cole is an expert who just plain gets it:
Our hands were numb, recording all this, so swiftly did General Kimmitt take us through the little uptick [in violence].
A marine vehicle blown off the road near Fallujah, a marine killed, a second attack with small-arms fire on the same troops, an attack on an Iraqi paramilitary recruiting station on the 14th July Road, a soldier killed near Ramadi, two Britons hurt in Basra violence, a suicide bombing against the home of the Hillah police chief, an Iraqi shot at a checkpoint, US soldiers wounded in Mosul ... All this was just 17 hours before Fallujah civilians dragged the cremated remains of a Westerner through the streets of their city.
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But there was an interesting twist - horribly ironic in the face of yesterday's butchery - in General Kimmitt's narrative. Why, I asked him, did he refer sometimes to "terrorists" and at other times to "insurgents"? Surely if you could leap from being a terrorist to being an insurgent, then with the next little hop, skip and jump, you become a "freedom-fighter". Mr Senor gave the general one of his fearful looks. He needn't have bothered. General Kimmitt is a much smoother operator than his civilian counterpart. There were, the general explained, the Fallujah version who were insurgents, and then the al-Qa'ida version who attack mosques, hotels, religious festivals and who were terrorists.
So, it seems, there are now in Iraq good terrorists and bad terrorists, there are common-or-garden insurgents and supremely awful terrorists, the kind against which President George Bush took us to war in Iraq when there weren't any terrorists actually here, though there are now. And therein lies the problem. From inside the Green Zone on the banks of the Tigris, you can believe anything. How far can the occupying powers take war-spin before the world stops believing anything they say?
What would drive the crowd to this barbaric behavior? It is not that they are pro-Saddam any more, or that they hate "freedom." They are using a theater of the macabre to protest their occupation and humiliation by foreign armies. They were engaging in a role reversal, with the American cadavers in the position of the "helpless" and the "humiliated," and with themselves playing the role of the powerful monster that inscribes its will on these bodies.I was disturbed by the 'frenzy of violence' in Iraq, as the Star Tribune headline put it, although perhaps I see the frenzy occurring over a longer timeframe. The images they printed had a distinct Mogadishu overtone, it's hard to deny.This degree of hatred for the new order among ordinary people is very bad news. It helps explain why so few of the Sunni Arab guerrillas have been caught, since the locals hide and help them. It also seems a little unlikely that further US military action can do anything practical to put down this insurgency; most actions it could take would simply inflame the public against them all the more.
As recounted by Clarke in his book, and confirmed by documents provided to NEWSWEEK, Emerson and his former associate Rita Katz regularly provided the White House with a stream of information about possible Al Qaeda activity inside the United States that appears to have been largely unknown to the FBI prior to the September 11 terror attacks.In confidential memos and briefings that were sometimes conducted on a near weekly basis, Emerson and Katz furnished Clarke and his staff with the names of Islamic radical Web sites, the identities of possible terrorist front groups and the phone numbers and addresses of possible terror suspects—data they were unable to get from elsewhere in the government.
Experts say the bloodshed could signal the resurgence of the regional Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), which has revitalized itself in the lawless Pakistan-Afghan border area, under the leadership of Tohir Yuldashev. Or it could point to a violent offshoot of the local, moderate Hizb-ut-Tahrir, fed up with years of brutal crackdowns by Uzbek President Islam Karimov on Islamic believers of all types.This Yuldashev character is being called the new "Al Qaeda leader" of the moment. Is he really internationally evil??
Well, that's about the most comprehensive war mosaic I can put together today.
So what the hell do I do about my final paper?
I will have some information about the Falluja incident in the next post. In the meantime, a couple stories about pre-destination in foreign policy.
Yes, the no-fly zones captured Georgie's imagination right away. Thanks, CNN:
BARBARA STARR, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Frustrated that Iraqi gunners were shooting at American planes, within weeks of coming into office, President Bush approved war plans for a massive retaliatory attack on Iraq if a U.S. pilot had been shot down.CNN has learned that the secret plan Operation Desert Badger called for escalating air strikes within four to eight hours of a shootdown. Pentagon sources say a long list of targets across the country would be hit, crippling Iraqi air defenses and command and control. The plan went far beyond the Clinton administration's 1998 Operation Desert Fox, which hit 100 targets in four days.
President Bush revealed Desert Badger's existence in January, responding to criticism he planned to invade Iraq from the beginning.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Like the previous administration, we were for regime change. And in the initial stages of the administration, you might remember, we were dealing with Desert Badger or flyovers, and fly-betweens and looks.
And so we were fashioning policy along those lines.
This says that the guy chairing the 9/11 commission, Zelikow, said that Israel's security was a prime motive in the decision to invade Iraq. Come again!?!?War Launched to Protect Israel - Bush Adviser::
Iraq under Saddam Hussein did not pose a threat to the United States but it did to Israel, which is one reason why Washington invaded the Arab country, according to a speech made by a member of a top-level White House intelligence group.WASHINGTON, Mar 29 (IPS) - IPS uncovered the remarks by Philip Zelikow, who is now the executive director of the body set up to investigate the terrorist attacks on the United States in September 2001 -- the 9/11 commission -- in which he suggests a prime motive for the invasion just over one year ago was to eliminate a threat to Israel, a staunch U.S. ally in the Middle East.
Zelikow's casting of the attack on Iraq as one launched to protect Israel appears at odds with the public position of President George W. Bush and his administration, which has never overtly drawn the link between its war on the regime of former president Hussein and its concern for Israel's security.
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Zelikow made his statements about ”the unstated threat” during his tenure on a highly knowledgeable and well-connected body known as the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB), which reports directly to the president.He served on the board between 2001 and 2003.
”Why would Iraq attack America or use nuclear weapons against us? I'll tell you what I think the real threat (is) and actually has been since 1990 -- it's the threat against Israel,” Zelikow told a crowd at the University of Virginia on Sep. 10, 2002, speaking on a panel of foreign policy experts assessing the impact of 9/11 and the future of the war on the al-Qaeda terrorist organisation.
”And this is the threat that dare not speak its name, because the Europeans don't care deeply about that threat, I will tell you frankly. And the American government doesn't want to lean too hard on it rhetorically, because it is not a popular sell,” said Zelikow.
The statements are the first to surface from a source closely linked to the Bush administration acknowledging that the war, which has so far cost the lives of nearly 600 U.S. troops and thousands of Iraqis, was motivated by Washington's desire to defend the Jewish state.
The administration, which is surrounded by staunch pro-Israel, neo-conservative hawks, is currently fighting an extensive campaign to ward off accusations that it derailed the ”war on terrorism” it launched after 9/11 by taking a detour to Iraq, which appears to have posed no direct threat to the United States.