Dan Feidt's log on Minnesota, Information Operations, spinstorms and latent contradictions.
Two senior AIPAC officials to be indicted by Justice Dept. under U.S. Espionage Act
Nathan Guttman | Washington | May 30
Haaretz:
The U.S. Justice Department is expected to file indictments against two former senior American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) staffers - Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman - and, according to sources familiar with the affair, the charges will be subsumed under the Espionage Act.
A Virginia grand jury is now examining the evidence in the case, which involved receipt of classified defense information from Larry Franklin, a Pentagon official, and its transfer to the representative of a foreign country, Naor Gilon, of the Israeli embassy in Washington. Sources involved in the case confirmed that the Espionage Act is on the agenda.
...According to the sources, the grand jury will submit indictments in the coming weeks against Rosen, the former head of foreign policy for the lobbying organization, and against Weissman, who was responsible for the Iranian brief in AIPAC. The grand jury is expected to hand down its indictment against Franklin this week. He is suspected of handing over the classified information. That indictment is expected to be similar to the criminal complaint already filed by the FBI.
The classified material is said to involve information about Iranian intentions to harm American soldiers in Iraq, and it was supposedly given to the two former AIPAC staffers during lunch in Virginia on June 26, 2003.
But suspicions against Rosen and Weissman focus on a meeting a year later, on July 12, 2004.... Franklin called Weissman and asked for a meeting to discuss an important subject. At the meeting, in a mall near the Pentagon, the Franklin told Weissman that Iranian agents were trying to capture Israeli civilians working in the Kurdish area in northern Iraq. Around the same time there had been conflicting reports in Washington about an Israeli presence in Kurdish Iraq. Journalist Seymour Hersh of The New Yorker had written that Israelis were operating there, but Israel -and the Americans -denied it.
At the meeting, Franklin told Weissman that the information was classified. This is significant in terms of the investigation, since it prevents the AIPAC men from claiming in their defense that they did not know they were dealing with state secrets.
...The fact that Rosen and Weissman, as American citizens, handed information to an official representative of a foreign power while knowing it was classified is incriminating under the 1917 Espionage Act, which defines as a crime receipt of classified information for the purpose of helping any foreign entity.
The moving process is a damn difficult one, especially when you live in one spot for two years and accumulate as much weird junk as I do. So I'm not done yet, and I am getting tired as hell of trying to get it all set up...
On the plus side, the Internet connection seems to be working fine. I have adjusted the DNS setting so that HongPong.com will come to the digital Selby Ave in the great infomatrix... blah blah blah... Actually the Domain Name System is pretty remarkable, as right now the updated IP number goes out into the world, one DNS server at a time.... So in other words it may take several hours for the change to register.
Something crazy happened to me at the bookstore, but I don't feel like getting into it now.
It is nearly time to relocate into 1630 Selby. Kennedy is gone for the week, visiting family, and Alison has already moved out, so it is eerily quiet at both ends. My stuff is more than half-packed up. I bid an ambivalent farewell to dowdy plaid shirts that stuck with me far longer than they should have, and threw away old notes and bits of paper, signifying elements of the trail over the last four years.
The server may go down for a while here, and may take some time to come back. Hopefully quickly.
Many objects found in the room, a mapbook of Paris, cards and CDs, photos from the war protests and London. The Hongpong.com Gentoo Linux server, a Pentium 4 Dell Dimension that has performed admirably since I got it from Dan Schned's brother Alex last summer, has faced the challenge of websurfers from the CIA and thousands of virus attacks with great stamina and more importantly, almost unshakeable stability. The server will go down after 42 days in operation. Not bad, but not as good as its all-time record of 111 days.
The electrical problems in my room (bet you didn't know the Uninterruptible Power Supply was grounded by a wire I installed) never blew up the computers, and the dust from all the shit in here didn't quite kill me.
The room was sort of an overgrown projection of my personality, hodgepodge with sprinklings of conspiracy, David's crazy art, wires and components, Rhymesayers stickers, burnt matches, post-its and printouts, critical theory readings and Poli Sci books scooped from the free table, a bookcase topped by Marx, half the Illuminatus trilogy, scribblings and bizarre charts taped to the walls. Many a long night hunched over the computer, following hyperlinks into arcane trivia until three or four in the morning. I tried real hard to "Get it" even though all too often I felt totally disconnected, hostile to the America outside.
Those days are over now... there were fun times, strange times. Someone once claimed that the center of the universe passed through the corner where the TV used to be. For some reason, I tended to believe it.
I would start with Juan Cole re our situation: "Sometimes you are just screwed." Bad things afoot towards the Syrian border, on the road to Damascus if you will. "Insurgents plotted in Syria, U.S. says." I love how our threat construction these days works a bit like the Kremlinology of old. There is civil war breaking out (Sunni v. Shiite) at Tal Afar, on said Damascene road.
What are those moustache-twirlers up to?? Reuters yesterday reported that Syria has officially broken off intelligence work with the CIA and other agencies. Of course this is a true pity, since Syria originally offered such help against Al Qaeda earlier. (The Syrian government is in a bit of a deathmatch with Al Qaeda--it hates secular governments.
Our hawks are officially fantasizing about insane Lebanon-like solutions on television. Let that alarm bell go off... I was stunned to watch this exchange about Syria on CNN the other night:
DOBBS: And the U.S. counterterrorism, counterinsurgency forces that are in Iraq working with the population there, the intelligence is obviously still woeful and is still not adequate to forestall what are now rising, not diminishing, bomb attacks against Iraqis and Americans.
GRANGE: Rising because right now it's having a tremendous effect on the morale and attitude of the units, the attitude of the people to support the government, to support the insurgency. And when you have, let's say, if it's true, the reports are true, that you have meetings going on in Syria to plan new offensive actions and car bombings, or improvised explosive devices along roads, a surge of these things, you have to nip it in the bud somewhere. Maybe in Syria. But they are coming from someplace.
DOBBS: The United States military already hard-pressed. Is it a fact within the region, whether one is talking about Syrian leaders or Iranian, that they are watching the drain on both the U.S. forces and the will of the U.S. government, at least in their own projections and assessment, that we have come up with a situation where we are limited in what we can actually -- in the ways in which we can actually extend the United States political will in that region?
GRANGE: Well, it's going to be tough for the political will, because it's a long -- it's going to take a long time to solve -- solve the situation. Counterinsurgencies last a long time. And that's hard to swallow when you want to get in there and get out.
But if the other forces aren't trained to standard yet, then the U.S. or someone has to do that. And you sure don't want to quit now. You want to win this thing. And if some things are happening, let's say supported by Syria, personally, I wouldn't let Syria get away with it.
DOBBS: What would you do?
GRANGE: Well, I would put more pressure on Syria than we have now.
DOBBS: Militarily?
GRANGE: I would use a lot of pressure. There's some behind-the- scenes pressure, but maybe you need a zone of separation that's partly into the country of Syria to stop some of this movement. Maybe 10 kilometers or so deep.
DOBBS: General David Grange, thanks for being with us.
GRANGE: My pleasure.
What an excellent justification to get Cable out of my life. CSM Article ponders the possibilities of a Colombia-like bleeding disaster or the eventual stabilization of other Central American countries. Hey, it's the End of Secularism. A depressing note from Riverbend in Baghdad. The Iraqi police forces still not measured as cohering very well. "U.S. generals issue grim outlook on Iraq".
Justin Raimondo is saying exciting things about "The Franklin Affair: A Spreading Treason." Catchy headline:
Rozen, a perceptive reporter who has been following this story from the start, gives us the essential context of the Franklin affair by showing that he was very much a part of a small, tightly-knit network inside the Pentagon dedicated to provoking war not only with Iraq but also igniting a regional conflict including Iran, Syria, Lebanon, and beyond. She does a very good job, in her piece, of showing how Franklin was at the center of this group's covert machinations: he had a penchant, as she puts it, for "showing up at critical and murky junctures of recent history":
"He was part of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, which provided much-disputed intelligence on Iraq; he courted controversial Iraqi exile politician Ahmad Chalabi, who contributed much of that hyped and misleading Iraq intelligence; and he participated with a Pentagon colleague and former Iran/contra arms dealer Manucher Ghorbanifar in a controversial December 2001 meeting in Rome – which, in a clear violation of US government protocol, was kept secret from the CIA and the State Department."
"In all these endeavors," Rozen writes, "Franklin … was hardly acting as a lone wolf." These rogue operations were projects of the neoconservative matrix in Washington, which reaches not only into the bowels of the Pentagon but also seems to have gained access to the higher echelons of this administration, and virtually taken over the Vice President's office lock, stock, and barrel.
Douglas Feith, Franklin's boss, is close to Israel's Likud party, and in 1996, he and Richard Perle, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr, Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser prepared a position paper for then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, "A Clean Break," that outlined a strategy for extracting Israel from its strategic dilemma: the invasion of Iraq, followed by the elimination of Syria, and the neutralization of Iran, topped their agenda. What they didn't say in the policy paper was that the United States would be doing their dirty work for them, but in retrospect we can see plainly enough that utilizing American military power figured prominently in their plan.
And so on and so forth. Worth looking at. So this British memo has caused some things to come up about whether Bush intended to topple Iraq way back in 2000. A fine story by Juan Cole in Salon outlines the charges. A classic Guardian link from 2003 states that "Blair 'dissuaded Bush from attack after 9/11' "...
Galloway kicked Norm Coleman's ass, (CNN link) and we are better for it. Of course, Norm is trying to peddle goods that he seems to have gotten from Chalabi and the Neo-cons, so we know it must be reliable stuff. More on Galloway. The Newsweek flap has receded a little now but it's still a small matter when compared with how crazy our government is.
The military is having trouble hanging onto young officers, especially Lieutenants and Captains, people who want to find some stability, not to keep getting churned in the system. Of course, they are also getting swooped up by Privatized Military Firms.
"At no time before has the Army had LTs [lieutenants] who have made decisions like that on a daily basis," he said. As he sees it, the military now has an entire generation of young officers who are battle-hardened and knowledgeable about battling insurgencies.
Even in Iraq, he said, senior commanders were keenly aware of those officers who might be considering leaving the military and applied various degrees of pressure to persuade them to remain in uniform.
....
Yet Tuohey, who was promoted to captain upon returning to Ft. Hood, said he was not sure whether he would stay in the Army when his commitment ended next year. He said he was tempted to work on Wall Street.
It's not the money he's after. It's the fact that an Army that was gutted after the Cold War was promising him a future of perpetual deployments fighting a war that could last for decades. That is not a future he is sure he can commit to. "What's the end point?" he asked. "When do you declare victory?"
A little more on the stuff in Uzbekistan altho of course Raimondo has something on that too. Check out Registan.net for ongoing news on that matter.
Vanity, disinformation and rumors get picked up and passed around and our BS filters get sidestepped by the sourcing of the information. Take this Elvis Presley = Nazi idea that circulated lately. Another example of the perils of the information age:
Almost 28 years after his death, fans of the King of Rock, Elvis Presley, can now see their icon in a radically different light; that as a Nazi.
The legend is seen wearing a Nazi cap and giving a Nazi salute in some pictures taken from a grainy half-hour home cine film.
The pictures, believed to be from the sixties, were taken during a boat trip with friends and have surfaced at the same time as Presley's ex-wife Priscilla released his home movies.
"I was given it ages ago, I think when I used to own a bar. But I had never watched it. It wasn't until I found it in the loft that I decided to. When I did I was shocked," Mark Vernon, who owns the tape, was quoted as saying.
The story still appears on News.com.au, an Australian site, FemaleFirst.co.uk, ContactMusic.com. Originally the British tabloid Sun propagated the story but of course the Sun's Elvis page has expired. The counter-story comes from Elvis-express.com, which is filing a complaint with the UK's Press Complaints Commission.
The other horror would be blogebrity.com, an agglomeration of big shots or something like that. So when I first visit I get the bloviating post:
While the majority of the emails we've received have been something along the lines of:
I love it....this is so much fun; I'm glad somebody finally did this, etc.
There have been a few of these:
You suck. Your list sucks and you suck and people should ONLY talk about blogs in the way I WANT THEM TO. Shame on you. Oh....and you didn't put me on your list. You suck and I hate you.
Just a clue to the haters--your whining is more transparent than a glob of used Neutrogena. But please, do keep it up....your sour grapes are like a glass of Opus One to us.
Speaking of which, I do think it's time for an eye-opener.
So right off the bat they are indulging their own egos in the mailbox. This one's destined to be a classic. On the other hand this site declared that blogging has finally passed a critical peak, from which it will roll downhill:
Blogging Jumps Shark, Becomes Trucker Hat
Following the recent whirlwind of blog hype including Nick Denton's love affair with the New York Times, his pie to the face at the Radar Magazine party, the launch of Blogebrity, Jason Calacanis' three million micro-blogs, a sudden explosion of branded character blogs and "all marketers should blog" blog conferences, it's now official. Rick Bruner and I, today, declare blogging to have gone the way of the trucker hat. In celebration of this sacred event, May 20, 2005, you can pick up your memorial, Nick Denton Trucker Hat over at Cafe Press.
That is too bad. HongPong.dyndns.org ran on a hacked-together Mac Linux server in the fall of 2000, when "blog" had not yet become soggy label to spill from the mouths of those grinning chicks on CNN... Before Hugh Hewitt and Scott Johnson appropriated something thought up by far more clever people.
So it is sorely tempting to pull the plug on HongPong.com now that the living situation is changing. Either that or some sort of drastic redesign, something overwrought and bombastic, like a John Williams score.
Elvis might be a Nazi but Jim Morrison is alive, according to rodeoswest.com. Why the hell not? I guess it reinforces my point that there is very little truth to latch onto. "FlashNews" tells us something:
Filmmaker Claims Jim Morrison Is Alive In Oregon
NEW YORK (Wireless Flash) – Here’s news that will light the fire of Jim Morrison fans: A filmmaker claims The Doors’ frontman is alive and raising horses on a ranch in southern Oregon. Rodeo photographer Gerald Pitts insists Morrison didn’t die in July of 1971 and he has current photographs and film footage of the rocker to prove it.
Pitts, who met Morrison in 1998, says the rocker staged his death because of a French conspiracy to kill him, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix with narcotics because they were all Vietnam war protestors. These days, Morrison isn’t the drug user he once was, although Pitts says when he goes over to Jim’s house he’ll “maybe have an occasional beer.”
Now Pitts claims that Morrison is announcing he’s alive, in part, to promote his recent agreement to star in a rodeo shoot-out movie based on events that actually happened to Pitts.
Yet another reason to leave this country, as Arun would put it.
In other random news an online tool called Tor provides anonymity in Internet use, and was originally developed by the Navy. It is becoming popular among government and other such types... Mysterious. But the EFF supports it, so it must be good. Sort of similar to this sourceforge project called ANts, Freenet, (Freenet-china.org looks interesting) and MUTE are all anonymizing systems--that is, they shield a user's IP number and data using layers of encryption. A major problem, for say, your software pirate or Chinese dissident, is making sure the IP can't be traced to you as you engage in things. Centralized servers are another weak point, and other technologies such as our beloved BitTorrent are getting "distributed tracker" features put into their clients. Tor sounds promising, then:
The Naval Research Lab began developing the system in 1996 but handed the code over to Roger Dingledine and Nick Mathewson, two Boston-based programmers, in 2002. The system was designed as part of a program called onion routing, in which data is passed randomly through a distributed network of servers three times, with layers of security protecting the data, like an onion.
Dingledine and Mathewson rewrote the code to make it easier to use and developed a client program so that users could send data from their desktops.
"It's been really obscure until now and hard to use," said Chris Palmer, EFF's technology manager. "(Before) it was just a research prototype for geeks. But now the onion routing idea is finally ready for prime time."
Dingledine and Mathewson made the code open source so that users could examine it to find bugs and to make certain that the system did only what it was supposed to do and nothing more.
The two programmers wanted to guard against a problem that arose in 2003 when users of another open-source anonymizer system -- called JAP, for Java Anonymous Proxy -- discovered that its German developers had placed a backdoor in the system to record traffic to one server. The developers... said they were forced to install a "crime detection function" by court order.
Law enforcement authorities have long had an uneasy and ambivalent relationship with anonymizer services. On the one hand, such services allow law enforcement and intelligence agencies to hide their own identity while conducting investigations and gathering intelligence. But they also make it harder for authorities to track the activities and correspondence of criminals and terrorists.
Anonymizer services can help protect whistleblowers and political activists from exposure. They can help users circumvent surfing restrictions placed on students and workers by school administrators and employers. And they can prevent websites from tracking users and knowing where they're located. The downside is that anonymizer services can aid with corporate espionage.
....Tor builds an incremental encrypted connection that involves three separate keys through three servers on the network. The connection is built one server at a time so that each server knows only the identity of the server that preceded it and the server that follows it. None of the servers knows the entire path the data took.
So I guess my ultimate point is that technology is offering solutions for freedom, as well as coercion. Disinformation, however, is something that only our brains seem capable of swatting away, and it's an uphill battle.
Misc:
Look at this sweet
Robot Hand. More Koran desecration rumors. "60 Minutes Wednesday" gets cancelled, y'all can't keep telling us about insane prisons....
Television newsmagazines in general have been suffering in the ratings. There was some speculation that one of ABC's newsmagazines might be canceled, but both "20/20" and "Primetime Live" were included on the schedule announced Tuesday.
"The mood in the country right now tends to favor escape," Heyward said. "There's a lot of grim news out there. In prime time, when people are looking to be entertained as well as informed, a drama or a reality show is tough competition. The thing about reality shows is they offer the same appeal of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary circumstances, but it's all a game. There's a happy ending."
Tech: Microsoft used Apple G5's to demo their Xbox games at the recent E3 conference. That's right, Apples run the Xbox software somehow... Check out ImageSavant.com: this is what the Apple spinning ball should look like.
It has been a strange week. I want to thank everyone who sent in statements about the events on 11 May, which hopefully will help us make the truth known so that these charges are dropped.
Audun's hearing is later today with Judge Mott, although I'm not sure what time. It is at the St. Paul Courthouse at 15 West Kellogg Blvd.
The whole Mac community has been very supportive of us and we appreciate it. Now if only this terrible incident would just go away...
Uhm, in other news I am moving to 1630 Selby Ave. until the end of August. My roommate will be the one and only Colin Kennedy. Sounds like it will be fun!
Stayed up late watching WarGames. WOPR always manages to figure out the Nuclear Codes, and somehow that Matthew Broderick convinces it to transcend its boundaries and comprehend the futility of nuclear war. If only things went so well in Washington today... The Experts are Really Confused about what's going on.
Our Macalester news story in the Pioneer Press. Not 100% accurate. Can't say more.
The WaPo finally tackles the British Intelligence "fixed around the policy" story which hey, Hongpong (and a zillion other sites) brought you sooner than the Mass Media. George Galloway hates on our favorite Norm Coleman.
The elections in Iraq maybe made it worse. For your shot of fatalism consider this argument: let the Shiite death squads run amok. Why not? It makes about as much sense as anything else... Keep readin Juan Cole. Sunnis hint at peace terms.
The Bolton thing really bit them in the ass. No endorsement. Voinovich's passionate statement against Bolton. Crazy brave. Brownstein on how it is playing out inside the GOP. Steve Clemons is a key guy against all this, he wrote a piece and runs the TheWashingtonNote.com, worth watching:
Whereas much of the support for Bolton has had the veneer of being about United Nations reform, what Bolton proponents really want is a ferocious show-down with Iran and North Korea through the United Nations -- not because the U.N. is a good venue for such a battle but because the weaknesses of the U.N. and the problem of getting Security Council unity behind resolutions may allow Bolton to kick apart the institution.
Another news bit.
Newsweek apologizes for the Koran toilet paper thing that set off fatal riots.
Worth looking at this major Agonist post about Franklin and the AIPAC case.
Where is the corporate cash going to paper over global warming?
Something crazy is happening around the Ferghana Valley (PDF) in Central Asia. One thought on it. Good background reading.
The Bush-Bolton Plan to Bomb Bushehr [Iran] by Jude Wanniski
A service I haven't seen before, the NY Times Link Generator for your blogging needs.
I am suddenly getting German spam to news links I can't read. Why did they send me this?
Well things have taken an unexpected turn. Can't really say anything about the situation, I'll see everyone at graduation tomorrow.
Sorry I haven't written lately. It's the last weekend of college & I just have a couple more little papers left to do. Meanwhile in the real world, it turns out that the British were Quite Annoyed about how the U.S. was trying to justify the war. They say straight up, regarding Iraq, that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."
Apparently Blair does not deny the truth of the document. Well, that moves the story forward a wee bit, doesn't it? There should be a Black Adder episode about this... "What Ho, Black Adder?" "The Americans are making shit up again! They want the oil!"
SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL - UK EYES ONLY
DAVID MANNING
From: Matthew Rycroft
Date: 23 July 2002
S 195 /02
cc: Defence Secretary, Foreign Secretary, Attorney-General, Sir Richard Wilson, John Scarlett, Francis Richards, CDS, C, Jonathan Powell, Sally Morgan, Alastair Campbell
IRAQ: PRIME MINISTER'S MEETING, 23 JULY
Copy addressees and you met the Prime Minister on 23 July to discuss Iraq.
This record is extremely sensitive. No further copies should be made. It should be shown only to those with a genuine need to know its contents.
John Scarlett summarised the intelligence and latest JIC assessment. Saddam's regime was tough and based on extreme fear. The only way to overthrow it was likely to be by massive military action. Saddam was worried and expected an attack, probably by air and land, but he was not convinced that it would be immediate or overwhelming. His regime expected their neighbours to line up with the US. Saddam knew that regular army morale was poor. Real support for Saddam among the public was probably narrowly based.
C reported on his recent talks in Washington. There was a perceptible shift in attitude. Military action was now seen as inevitable. Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.
CDS said that military planners would brief CENTCOM on 1-2 August, Rumsfeld on 3 August and Bush on 4 August.
The two broad US options were:
(a) Generated Start. A slow build-up of 250,000 US troops, a short (72 hour) air campaign, then a move up to Baghdad from the south. Lead time of 90 days (30 days preparation plus 60 days deployment to Kuwait).
(b) Running Start. Use forces already in theatre (3 x 6,000), continuous air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus belli. Total lead time of 60 days with the air campaign beginning even earlier. A hazardous option.
The US saw the UK (and Kuwait) as essential, with basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus critical for either option. Turkey and other Gulf states were also important, but less vital. The three main options for UK involvement were:
(i) Basing in Diego Garcia and Cyprus, plus three SF squadrons.
(ii) As above, with maritime and air assets in addition.
(iii) As above, plus a land contribution of up to 40,000, perhaps with a discrete role in Northern Iraq entering from Turkey, tying down two Iraqi divisions.
The Defence Secretary said that the US had already begun "spikes of activity" to put pressure on the regime. No decisions had been taken, but he thought the most likely timing in US minds for military action to begin was January, with the timeline beginning 30 days before the US Congressional elections.
The Foreign Secretary said he would discuss this with Colin Powell this week. It seemed clear that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, even if the timing was not yet decided. But the case was thin. Saddam was not threatening his neighbours, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran. We should work up a plan for an ultimatum to Saddam to allow back in the UN weapons inspectors. This would also help with the legal justification for the use of force.
The Attorney-General said that the desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action. There were three possible legal bases: self-defence, humanitarian intervention, or UNSC authorisation. The first and second could not be the base in this case. Relying on UNSCR 1205 of three years ago would be difficult. The situation might of course change.
The Prime Minister said that it would make a big difference politically and legally if Saddam refused to allow in the UN inspectors. Regime change and WMD were linked in the sense that it was the regime that was producing the WMD. There were different strategies for dealing with Libya and Iran. If the political context were right, people would support regime change. The two key issues were whether the military plan worked and whether we had the political strategy to give the military plan the space to work.
On the first, CDS said that we did not know yet if the US battleplan was workable. The military were continuing to ask lots of questions.
For instance, what were the consequences, if Saddam used WMD on day one, or if Baghdad did not collapse and urban warfighting began? You said that Saddam could also use his WMD on Kuwait. Or on Israel, added the Defence Secretary.
The Foreign Secretary thought the US would not go ahead with a military plan unless convinced that it was a winning strategy. On this, US and UK interests converged. But on the political strategy, there could be US/UK differences. Despite US resistance, we should explore discreetly the ultimatum. Saddam would continue to play hard-ball with the UN.
John Scarlett assessed that Saddam would allow the inspectors back in only when he thought the threat of military action was real.
The Defence Secretary said that if the Prime Minister wanted UK military involvement, he would need to decide this early. He cautioned that many in the US did not think it worth going down the ultimatum route. It would be important for the Prime Minister to set out the political context to Bush.
Conclusions:
(a) We should work on the assumption that the UK would take part in any military action. But we needed a fuller picture of US planning before we could take any firm decisions. CDS should tell the US military that we were considering a range of options.
(b) The Prime Minister would revert on the question of whether funds could be spent in preparation for this operation.
(c) CDS would send the Prime Minister full details of the proposed military campaign and possible UK contributions by the end of the week.
(d) The Foreign Secretary would send the Prime Minister the background on the UN inspectors, and discreetly work up the ultimatum to Saddam.
He would also send the Prime Minister advice on the positions of countries in the region especially Turkey, and of the key EU member states.
(e) John Scarlett would send the Prime Minister a full intelligence update.
(f) We must not ignore the legal issues: the Attorney-General would consider legal advice with FCO/MOD legal advisers.
(I have written separately to commission this follow-up work.)
MATTHEW RYCROFT
(Rycroft was a Downing Street foreign policy aide)
To start at the beginning, its worth noting that half a month ago, 53 percent of Americans said the war was not worth fighting, and 7 in 10 called the casualties unacceptable.
William Lind is conservative as hell, but he makes a point about how worthless an idea "the Official Iraqi Insurgency" really is:
I think Fourth Generation theory enables us to gain a better perspective on the current situation than we obtain from arguing [which side] is ahead on points. From a Fourth Generation perspective, we need to remind ourselves that the terms we all use, myself included, such as "the insurgency" or "the resistance," are an inherently misleading shorthand. In Malaya or Algeria or Vietnam, one could speak of the opponent as a something. In Fourth Generation situations such as Iraq, one cannot. There is no single opponent. Rather, what we face is a vast array of armed elements operating outside the control of the state. They range from true insurgents, such as the Baathists, through kidnappers, gangs of robbers, hostile tribes, foreign mujaheddin seeking martyrdom and party or faction militias to men out to avenge their family’s honor. The essence of the problem is not that they are fighting the American occupation – some are, some aren’t – but that they are armed elements not controlled by the state. Their very existence undermines the state to the point where it becomes a fiction.
...we see that the American challenge is not merely defeating an insurgency but re-creating an Iraqi state. Attaining that goal can be very far away even if "the insurgents" lose. If "the insurgency" were defeated tomorrow, remaining obstacles would still include a general breakdown of order in Iraqi society, mutual hatreds among Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds (one possible turn of events is that the Shiites and the Sunni "insurgents" might unite against the Kurds over Kirkuk), basic services such as power and water that don’t work, a dead economy that leaves most Iraqis un- or under-employed and an unworkable political system imposed by foreigners (how did Bremer & Co. forget that in our political system, we require two-thirds majorities when we want to make any action almost impossible?). Looming over everything is the question of legitimacy: how can a state be legitimate when its government is a foreign creation propped up by foreign troops?
For America to win in Iraq, it has to leave behind a real state. Further, that state must not be an enemy to America. The chance of meeting just the second requirement is small, given the Iraqi people’s resentment toward the occupation and the strongly Islamic character of any likely new regime. It is improbable that we will meet the first requirement either. We may leave behind us the form of a state – a capital, a parliament, a government, etc. – but in most of the country, the real power will remain where it is now, in the hands of armed elements operating outside the state. That is true whether we defeat "the insurgency" or not.
Contrary to what a number of writers on 4GW have said, Fourth Generation war is not merely a new name for insurgency or guerilla warfare. What is at stake in 4GW is not who rules the state, but the fate of the state itself.
This was an earlier article, and Lind added recently about drug cartels and guerillas running circles around the kludgy state system:
Paraguay illustrates another effective technique non-state forces use against armed forces of the state: taking them from within. The Washington Times article quotes the U.S. State Department's 2005 International Narcotics Strategy Report concerning corruption and inefficiency within the Paraguayan National Police, who have been accused of protecting Brazilian narcotics traffickers. What a surprise! Given the profits involved in drug smuggling, how hard would it be to buy off some Paraguayan cops? Or all Paraguayan cops?
Meanwhile, drug smugglers and guerilla forces like the FARC work together more easily than states do. The state system is old, creaky, formalistic, and slow. Drug-dealing and guerilla warfare represent a free market, where deals happen fast. Several years ago, a Marine friend went down to Bolivia as part of the U.S. counter-drug effort. He observed that the drug traffickers went through the Boyd cycle, or OODA Loop, six times in the time it took us to go through it once. When I relayed that to Colonel Boyd, he said, "Then we're not even in the game."
The OODA loop is interesting. that is what I'd say. As long as we are snooping around the right wing, I'd add "The Reality of Red-State Fascism" by Llewellyn H Rockwell.
also want to note a bit by ex-CIA "anonymous" Michael Scheuer, talking about the whitewash job of the 9/11 commission, fuzzing over Iraq and intelligence issues..
No "red teams" – experts who simulate enemy forces – challenged prewar intelligence on Iraq. "Structure" creates nothing; managers create red teams. It is an aberration in community practice not to have had Iraq intelligence red-teamed before the war. The absence of red teams means intelligence community leaders knew the analytic answer they wanted, or were told by administration officials the answer to deliver.
How's them apples? The Robb-Silberman report is the third coat of whitewash meant to make Americans think effective intelligence reform is underway. The commissions have produced institutional chaos and debilitating bureaucratic growth, not movement toward reform that builds on intelligence-community strengths and better defends America. In a successful effort to protect their patrons in the aristocracy of power, the commissioners let the culpable escape. Worse, they saddled America with the absurd intelligence community "structure" demanded by the uninformed 9/11 families, installed by a Congress and president who followed polls, not conscience, and led by many of the same bureaucrats who got us to 9/11 and Iraq.
Huzzah! Everyone's favorite Scheming Exile is back in play! Oil analyst and executive types are not really happy. This is yet another example of the Bushies permitting something to occur that is obviously against the interests of their favorite groups of people.
If Chalabi gets a permanent job at the oil ministry, even as a deputy rather than the oil minister, it will signal that politics rules over engineering, said Daniel Sternoff, director of geopolitics at Medley Global Advisors.
"The oil technocrats and engineers will be extremely unhappy if Chalabi is named full-time (minister or deputy minister)," said Sternoff. "These are people who suffered under Saddam and his over-politization of the oil ministry, choosing politics over what is best for Iraq and its oil industry."
"Having two close members of the same family in two key economic ministries may raise questions for the Iraqis and those who want to do business in Iraq," said Judith Kipper, director of the Middle East Forum at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.
Chalabi's checkered career is already tainted by allegations of corruption.
In Iraq, he faces a suspended charge of counterfeiting for allegedly reproducing old Iraqi dinars removed from circulation after Saddam's ouster. He was never arrested because the Interior Ministry refused to follow up on the warrant.
He is also still wanted in Jordan for a 1992 conviction in absentia of embezzlement, fraud, and breach of trust after a bank he ran collapsed with about $300 million in missing deposits. He was sentenced to 22 years in prison _ but hasn't served a day.
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Chalabi's standing with Iraqis was tenuous when he returned home in 2003 under the patronage of the United States. Using a private militia, he took over an exclusive social club in an affluent Baghdad suburb and made it the headquarters for the Iraqi National Congress, the anti-Saddam movement he headed in exile.
Since then, Iraqi security forces have raided his offices and militants shot at his convoy.
Chalabi's return from political exile began to take shape when he volunteered to mediate a truce with radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, whose militia battled U.S. troops in two separate rebellions last year. Left out of the interim government by then U.S. administrator L. Paul Bremer, Chalabi decided to build his support base among other Shiites.
Chalabi promised that if he became prime minister, he would drop murder charges against al-Sadr. He also spearheaded a drive against members of the former regime who had returned to positions in the interim government.
Justin Raimondo sputters and howls that this guy, who recently informed Iran that U.S. intelligence had acquired the ability to decrypt their communications, is now the point man for Iraqi oil. There is of course a profound connection between Chalabi, the neoconservatives and the fake war intelligence, and Raimondo speculates that this is really a vindication for the neo-cons, as well as a twisted geopolitical outcome that could work out in Israel's favor. I don't know what to make of that, but it is interesting:
Both Chalabi and the neoconservatives have a history of close ties with Israel: many of the latter have strong links to the far-right wing of Israel's Likud party. If Pentagon analyst Larry Franklin and his co-conspirators passed U.S. Secrets to Israel, then why not to Chalabi as well?
Any attempt to trace the pattern of treason – was it Neocons > Chalabi > Tehran, or Neocons > Israel > Tehran? – may be forestalled if not completely terminated if and when Chalabi emerges from the smoke-filled back rooms of Iraqi politics the victor.
With Chalabi installed as Iraq's prime minister, an investigation into his spying activities would become highly inconvenient for the U.S. government. Pressing an inquiry into Chalabi-gate under those circumstances would raise a number of embarrassing questions, the first being: Did over 1,500 Americans die so that an Iranian double agent who passed U.S. Secrets to our enemies could be elevated to power in Baghdad?
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There is another diner at the postwar feast, with the second-largest portion bitten off by our closest ally in the region, namely Israel. According to Seymour Hersh, the Israelis long ago concluded that the war against the Iraqi insurgency was unsustainable: their "Plan B," now that the Americans have botched it, is to pour money and intelligence operatives into Kurdistan. Ostensibly undertaken to keep a close watch on Iranian nuclear facilities, this effort extends Israeli influence into the very heart of the formerly Arab world.
Just think: If Chalabi becomes prime minister, he can keep his promise to build a pipeline from oil-rich Kirkuk, in Kurdistan, to Israel. If not, the Israelis can always push their Kurdish allies to opt for independence, in which case the pipeline could be built anyway – once the "Cedar Revolution" spawns a color-coded twin across the border in Syria.
Forgetting the grandiloquent promises of the inimitable Chalabi, however, the Israeli penetration of Kurdistan makes perfect sense in the context of American pressure on Prime Minister Ariel Sharon to make yet more concessions on the Palestinian question. If the Americans keep insisting on a viable Palestinian state and pressing for the dismantling of settlements, the Israelis can always tweak them where it hurts: in Iraq.
Hot damn, now that would be a twist. Project for the Old American Century and their sweet Iran-Contra page... check out what they were doing before...
Meanwhile in more miscellaneous news: Wiggy shit about DARPA. Notes from the late Marla Ruzicka, peace worker killed in Iraq [1 2 3].
"The day I prayed with George W. Bush to receive Jesus"
A Jim Lobe classic about the Neocon network. Paranoia strikes as CIA officials remove documents from Sen. Scoop Jackson's archives at the U of Washington back in February. Random but funny...