barrylando

Afghanistan: Coffins for the U.S. & NATO; contracts for China

2012-01-23T08:11:00.000-08:00

Some bitter ironies in Afghanistan these days: U.S. andFrench soldiers gunned down by the very Afghan troops they work with. Americaand its NATO allies, facing huge budget problems themselves, persist insquandering billions in Afghanistan, to defeat Islamic radicals and create a propitiousclimate for growth and investment. Right now, the largest investments so safeguarded are Chinese.

Another paradox, it was American engineers who, in thesummer of 2010, completed a survey concluding that Afghanistan sits atop onetrillion dollars of untapped copper, iron and lithium deposits. If it couldjust get its act together, the country had a promising future. Skepticsimmediately claimed that rosy estimate didn’t take account Afghanistan’s woefulinfrastructure: it could cost more to mine those resources than they wereworth.

But that’s not how the Chinese see it. A few weeks ago, China’sNational Petroleum Corporation became the first foreign company to beallowed to explore Afghanistan’s oil and gas reserves in the Amu Darya Basin. Thedeal is estimated to be worth more than $700 million. Some speculate it couldultimately be worth ten times that amount to China.

Even before that deal, however, China was already thelargest foreign investor in Afghanistan. In 2007 Beijing signed a $3 billion agreementto explore huge copper deposits in Mes Aynak, south of Kabul.

India is the only other country to go after Afghan minerals.Last November a deal was signed giving Indian firms the rights to 1.8 billiontons on iron-ore, one of the largest untapped deposits in Asia.

It’s very unlikely that theChinese [and Indians] would be making such risky bets without the securityprovided by the U.S. and its allies. After the copper deal was inked, 2,000U.S. troops were deployed to provide general security in Logar Provincewhere the Mes Aynak mine is located. They also protected the projected routesof the road and railway which will service the huge development. Another 1,500Afghan National Police, presumably paid and trained by the U.S. and its allies,were sent to guard the mine itself.

In addition, facing restlessMuslim groups in their own country, the Chinese are not at all unhappy aboutthe U.S. and Nato taking on Islamic militants in Afghanistan.

Yet, all the while, Chinahas consistently refused to contribute to the joint Western military force.They even turned down a request to permit NATO to ship non-lethal supplies viaChina to Afghanistan.

So why aren’t the U.S. and its allies screaming about thesituation? Because, if they are tohave a face-saving way out of Afghanistan that doesn’t disintegrate into chaos,they desperately need China’s huge new investments to continue and prosper.

As things now stand, once the income from opium productionis deducted, 97% of Afghanistan’s GNP comes from foreign aid. A whole new economy is needed.

After China’s National Petroleum Council signed its recentoil agreement with Kabul, expertswarned that success was far from a sure thing: it could take five to tenyears of expensive exploration to see if the oil fields are really worthdeveloping.

But the Chinese are aftermore than oil and copper. They see each deal as another foot in the door. The arealso determined to reap huge potential profits to come from rebuilding Afghanistan’sshattered infrastructure and economy, among such projects, a high-speed railsystem. In this way, withoutmassive military deployments, China has already become a major player throughoutthe region. [I’ve written about China’s activities in Pakistan, Iran, Iraq andthe Gulf inother recent blogs]

A particularly insightfulcomment on China’s tactics in Afghanistan followed an article in TheDiplomat:

“Achievinga peace agreement is always the number one preference for Chinese government.By nature Chinese are not interested in “beating” other group of people, butare interested in “gaining” concrete benefits. This is due to the Chineseculture and history. In Chinese culture, people believe in “harmony bringswealth”. Therefore, when dealing with a dispute, a Chinese normally do not sethis goal as completely beating the others, but rather sequence his goalsaccording to priority, and try to achieve the goal with the highest priorityfirst, and so on. Each disputant may achieve some goal upon settlement of thedispute.” 

Case in point: thanks to the Chinese, the Afghans may benefitfrom a real high-speed rail system before the United States.

Iran, Israel, the U.S: Blind Mans Buff

2012-01-16T12:18:00.000-08:00

In a perilous spiral of assassinations, threats andcounter-threats, the leaders of Washington, Jerusalem and Tehran keepratcheting the tension. What is most alarming about the situation, is that the principleplayers and their advisors are engaged in an incredibly dangerous three-waygame of blind mans buff.

None of them expresses a real understanding of the others: oftheir motives, their concerns, nor their likely reactions. That’s true evenwith Israel and the United States: though the U.S. risks being sucked into any conflict betweenIsrael and Iran, the Obama administration is currently forced to guess what itssupposed Israeli allies are planning.

What would America or Israel --or any country-- do if fiveof its scientists were assassinated by an enemy power? How would they react if, at the sametime, the mightiest country on the planet dispatched its forces towards theirborders even as it tightened a blockade to garrote their economy?

Would they kowtow to the demand that they terminate anyactivities related to the research or development of nuclear weapons [which, ofcourse, both Israel and the U.S. possess]--or lash out in violent reprisal?

A lot of people with important sounding titles pontificateon what lies ahead, but who are they kidding? It’s like we’re watching kids playingaround with vials of highly volatile chemicals. No one’s sure when an explosionwill come, nor how calamitous might be the chain reactions it ignites.

What makes the situation even more perilous is the fact thatthe leaders of the three countries involved—Israel, Iran and the U.S.--are all challengedby strident enemies in their own countries. Since this current dispute plays front and centre, every movethey make is automatically the target of virulent homegrown--and often woefullyignorant--opponents.

In other words, if the leaders and their advisors were moresecure on their respective thrones, they might all be able to follow a much cooler,more rational course. They might even be able to sit down and negotiate.

Worse, is the likelihood that the principle actors, theiradvisors, intelligence agencies and domestic critics, don’t really comprehendwhat the others are up to—where they are coming from and what they want toachieve.

If it’s not blind-man’s buff, it’s shadow boxing—sparringwith caricatures: In this corner, the deceitful bearded mullahs in Tehranobsessed with obtaining nuclear weapons to exterminate Israel and establish anew Caliphate. In that corner, the grasping imperialists in Washington, who for decades have used the CIAand American military to put down movements of national liberation, sustain theZionist State of Israel and the corrupt oil-rich Arab dictators.

Those caricatures become so deeply embedded that even thesupposedly objective intelligence agencies of each of the combatants—not tomention the mainstream media--tend to censor, edit out, or shy away frominformation that runs counter to official “truth”.

I had a personal run-in with this phenomenon in 1980 when Iwas a producer at 60 Minutes covering the on-going revolution in Iran duringthe hostage crisis.

Travelling back and forward between Tehran, New York andWashington, I was struck by the total inability of Americans—even at the highestlevel—to understand the emotions and history that drove the hatred of allthings American that had exploded in Iran with the fall of the Shah.

Just up West 57^th street from CBS News, forinstance, was a huge billboard with the diabolical image of Khomeini gloweringdown on New York.

I suggested we do a report to give Americans a better ideaof what was driving Iran’s revolutionaries and their violent feelings againstthe United States.

Though certainly encouraged by radical elements in Tehran, thathatred was fueled by real facts: the shameful history of U.S. intervention inIran, from the CIA’s organizing a coup to oust the democratically elected nationalistleader Mohamed Mossadegh in 1953 to America’s subsequent backing of the Shah ofIran.

That support included the closest of relations between theCIA and the Shah’s infamous secret police, the SAVAK, notorious for torture andbrutality. [In the future, of course, SAVAK’s brutality would pale beside thehorrific prisons and savage repression of Khomeini and the regimes to follow. ]

To give an idea of America’s relations with the Shah andSAVAK, I stitched together a tough report with Mike Wallace based on a seriesof interviews in New York and Washington. “You’d have to be blind, deaf anddumb and a presidential candidate not to know there was torture going on inIran under the Shah,” Jesse Leaf, a former C.I.A. analyst told us.

“We knew what was happening and we did nothing about it andI was told not to do anything about it. By definition, an enemy of the Shaw wasan enemy of the CIA. We were friends. This was a very close relationshipbetween the United states and Iran.”

Another former CIA officer, Richard Cottam, also condemnedthe U.S. and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, for turning a blind eyeto the excesses of the Shah, and refusing to have any contact with theopposition groups.

“What you seemed to be saying, Professor Cottam, “Mike Wallaceinterjected, “is that when the question “Who lost Iran?” is finally asked,Henry Kissinger is at the top of your culprit’s list.”

“I think Henry Kissinger’s idea of diplomacy in this senseis…is intolerable,” replied Cottam.

We also reported on some of the classified U.S. governmentdocuments divulged by the Iranians who had taken over the American Embassy.Those documents showed that American diplomats based in Teheran had warnedWashington months earlier of the threat of a possible hostagetaking--particularly if the U.S. allowed the despised Shah to come to Americafor medical treatment, as the U.S. ultimately did. Those warnings had beencompletely ignored by Washington.

In return for releasing the hostages what the Iranian governmentof President Bani-Sadr was demanding was a pledge by the U.S. not to interferein the future affairs of Iran and an agreement not to block their efforts toget back the Shah and the wealth of Iran he embezzled. They also wanted anadmission by the U.S. of past wrongs. In light of that past, we asked, werethose demands so outrageous?

In the context of America’s superheated passions at thetime, however, even posing that question was considered outrageous.

Over the next few days, as we were preparing the report, wereceived calls from many Washington officials concerned about the broadcast. Thiswas capped by President Jimmy Carter himself who called Bill Leonard, thePresident of CBS News, to try to convince him not to broadcast report. Itwould, he said, undermine U.S. negotiations with Iran at a very delicate time.

To his credit, Bill Leonard refused to back down. The only thinghe requested was to change the title of our report from “Should the U.S. Apologize?” to a more neutral “The Iran file.”

When questioned by Leonard, we argued that it was difficultto understand how our report could upset the hostage negotiations. We were not revealing any secrets toIran. The Iranians already knew well the role of the U.S. in their own history.The people we were informing were 20 million Americans—who didn’t understandwhat was really roiling Iran.

And still don’t.

Iraq-Leave the wretches to their fate..

2012-01-05T10:56:00.000-08:00

I get the feeling, with the flurry of bloody new terroristattacks in Iraq, that we’re watching the smoldering shell of a tanker carryinghigh-octane fuel that’s just run off the road--waiting for the climactic explosionthat will perhaps finally blow the country apart.

The temptation is to blame it all on the Iraqisthemselves—those corrupt, grasping politicians and sectarian leaders, thoseperverse, bloody-minded peoples—they deserve what they get. Enough Americanlives have been lost. If after all the U.S. sacrifice, the Iraqis still want toslaughter each other, so be it. We’reout of there.

But the fact is that we in the West—and particularly theU.S. –are as—if not more-- responsible for Iraq’s tragic plight and itsforeboding future as are the Iraqis themselves.

I’m not just talking about the past few years-but—as mostcommentators refuse to acknowledge--Iraq’s entire sorry, history.

Case in point: one of the most chilling reports about Iraq was produced by a group ofHarvard medical researchers who found that the children of Iraq were "the most traumatizedchildren of war ever described."

The experts concluded that "a majority of Iraq'schildren would suffer from severe psychological problems throughout theirlives."

Particularly appalling, that report was published morethan 20 years ago, in May 1991—almost twelve years before America’s disastrousinvasion, which resulted in the deaths of more than 100,000 Iraqis.

From the very beginning, course, Iraq was an unstable,totally artificial creation, cobbled together out of disparate remnants of theOttoman Empire, by the British and French, as the Americans looked on withapproval.

Now, fast-forward through sixty years of politicalturmoil, military coups, constant foreign meddling, the seizure of power SaddamHussein, and his ill-fated decision to invade Iran.

FromSeptember, 1980 to August, 1988 more than a million Iraqis and Iranians died inwhat was the longest war of the twentieth century. As that conflict raged,Saddam also launched his genocidal attacks against the Kurds --which PresidentsReagan and Bush Senior-then Saddam's de facto allies against Iran, did theirbest to ignore.

Next came Saddam's disastrous invasion of Kuwait in August1990--there again the U.S.played a hand. -followed by an abortive popular uprising against

Saddam. That revolt, which George H.W. Bush had calledfor, ended with Saddam's slaughter of tens of thousands of Shiites--as U.S.troops stood by.

At the same time, the United Nations Security Council wasimplementing a Draconianembargo on all trade with Iraq. Indeed, when the Harvard study cited abovewas carried out, those sanctions had been in effect for only seven months. Theycut off all trade between Iraq and the rest of the world. That meanteverything, from food and electric generators to vaccines, hospitalequipment--even medical journals. Since Iraq imported 70% of its food, and itsprinciple revenues were derived from the export of petroleum, the sanctions hadan immediate and catastrophic impact.

Enforced primarily by the United States and Great Britain,they remained in place for almost thirteen years and were in their own way aweapon of mass destruction far more deadly than anything Saddam had developed. Two U.N. administratorswho oversaw humanitarian relief in Iraq during that period, and resigned inprotest, consider the embargo to have been a "crime againsthumanity."

Early on, it became evident that for the United States andEngland, the real objective of the sanctions was not the elimination of SaddamHussein's WMD but of Saddam Hussein himself, though that goal went far beyondanything authorized by the Security Council.

The effect of the sanctions was magnified by thewide-scale destruction of Iraq's infrastructure--power plants, sewage treatmentfacilities, telephone exchanges, irrigation systems-wrought by the air androcket attacks preceding the war. Iraq's contaminated waters became abiological killer as lethal as anything Saddam had attempted to produce.

There were massive outbreaks of severe child and infantdysentery. Typhoid and cholera, which had been virtually eradicated in Iraq,also packed the hospital wards.

Added to that was a disastrous shortage of food, which meantmalnutrition for some, starvation and death for others. At the same time, themedical system, once the country's pride, was careening towards total collapse.Iraq would soon have the worst child mortality rate of all 188 countriesmeasured by UNICEF.

There is no question that U.S. planners knew what theawful impact of the sanctions would be. The health calamity was first predictedand then carefully tracked by the Pentagon's DefenseIntelligence Agency. Their first study was entitled "Iraq's WaterTreatment Vulnerabilities."

Indeed, from the beginning the intent of U.S. officialswas to create such a catastrophic situation that the people of Iraq--civiliansbut particularly the military--would be forced to react. As Dennis Halliday,the former U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, put it to me, "the U.S.theory behind the sanctions was that if you hurt the people of Iraq and killthe children particularly, they'll rise up with anger and overthrowSaddam."

But rather than weakening Saddam, the sanctions onlyconsolidated his hold on power. The government's rationing system became vitalto the survival of the people, even though it provided less than a third of aperson's nutritional requirements. Iraqis were so obsessed with simply keepingtheir families alive that there was little interest or energy to plot theoverthrow of one of the most ruthless dictatorships on the planet. "Thepeople didn't hold Saddam responsible for their plight," Dennis Hallidaysaid. "They blamed the US and the UN for these sanctions and the pain andanger that these sanctions brought to their lives."

But rather than ending the sanctions or modifying them totarget those items truly crucial to building WMD, the Clinton administrationcontinued the futile policy: decimating an entire nation in order to destroyone leader.

Neither for the first nor the last time, the people ofIraq were victims of failed U.S. policy.

The Oilfor Food program which was introduced in 1996 and expanded over thefollowing years was billed as a major humanitarian measure by the U.S. Itallowed Iraq to sell unlimited amounts of petroleum to pay for vital imports,not just food. But Hans Von Sponeck, who also resigned his post as U.N.coordinator in Iraq, condemned the program as "a fig leaf for theinternational community."

There is no question that Saddam ripped off money duringthe sanctions regime to attempt to rebuild his military and support hisfamily's lavish lifestyle, but that point hides the basic issue: Iraq's needswere enormous. Even if Saddam had invested everything he skimmed from thesanctions into rebuilding his country and feeding his people, those sums wouldhave never prevented the colossal devastation that sanctions brought about.

By the time the sanctions were finally removed, May 22,2003, after the U.S.-led invasion, an entire generation of Iraqis had beendecimated by the failed policy. A Unicef study in 1999 concluded that half amillion Iraqi children perished in the previous eight years because of thesanctions--and that was four years before they ended. Another American expertin 2003 estimated that the sanctions had killed between 343,900 to 529,000young children and infants. The exact number will never be known. It was,however, certainly more young people than were ever killed by Saddam Hussein.

(In a statement right out of Orwell on March 27, 2003 TonyBlair actually cited the dramatic increase in infant mortality in Iraq tojustify the invasion.)

Beyond the death and destruction of infrastructure, thesanctions had another, equally devastating, but less visible impact, asdocumented early in 1991 by the group of Harvard medical researchers. Theyreported that four out of five children interviewed were fearful of losingtheir families; two thirds doubted whether they themselves would survive toadulthood. The experts concluded that a majority of Iraq's children wouldsuffer from severe psychological problems throughout their lives. "Thetrauma, the loss, the grief, the lack of prospects, the feeling of threat hereand now, that it will all start again, the impact of the sanctions, make us askif these children are not the most suffering child population on earth."

Those sanctions, I reemphasize, lasted for another 12 yearsafter that study --terminating only with the American led invasion of Iraq,which unleashed its own horrific debacle.

It is that generation of "the most traumatizedchildren of war ever described," who have come of age. It is they who--if they had not fledthe country –are the new military and police commanders, businessmen and bureaucratsand political and sectarian leaders and suicide bombers, all now confrontedwith the calamity that is Iraq .

It is also they, as the months pass, who will be increasinglyblamed --along with Obama’s decision to withdraw all U.S. troops --for the next–and perhaps final-- cataclysm that awaits their country.

Ahmed Chalabi:the Conning of America

2011-12-17T06:30:00.001-08:00

It’s ironic that only now, eight and ahalf years after the U.S. invasion of Iraq, as the last American troops pullout, that we finally get a book dissecting the machinations of one of the menmost responsible for that catastrophe: Ahmed Chalabi, the brilliant,treacherous, endlessly scheming Iraqi refugee who, from 1991 to 2004, played asingular role in contorting U.S. policy towards Iraq.

The book, “Arrows of the Night,”(Doubleday) written by “60 Minutes” producer, Richard Bonin, is based on lengthyand remarkably frank interviews with Chalabi as well as scores of others whodealt with him over the years. The result is a chilling chronicle of how thischarismatic and totally amoral Iraqi exile, without any power base among hisown people, was, at various times, able to con everyone from the New YorkTimes, to the CIA, to the U.S. Defense Department, to Dick Cheney-- even Iran’sintelligence chiefs--in his single-minded determination to overthrow SaddamHussein and take power himself.

It is a also an alarming tale of how afeckless American President, George W. Bush, buffeted by conflicting counselsof feuding advisors, stumbled into one of the most disastrous military quagmiresin America’s history.

Chalabi was born to an Iraqi family ofimmense wealth and influence, remarkable because they were Shiites in a countrydominated by a Sunni minority. In 1958 ,however. the family was forced to fleeIraq after a military coup. Almostfrom the beginning, the young exile was obsessed with overthrowing the regimein Baghdad which, after 1968, was led by Saddam Hussein.

Chalabi studied first in London, then atthe University of Chicago and MIT. He was an outstanding mathematician, but witha con man’s soul. At age 32 he founded what would quickly become Jordan’ssecond largest bank. But his triumph was brief: Chalabi was obliged to flee thatcountry as well when he was charged –and then convicted—of fraud andembezzlement of more than a hundred million dollars.

The contretemps might have ended thecareer of lesser men, but not Ahmed Chalabi. Still determined to topple Saddam,he came to the United States, convinced that the path to Baghdad led throughWashington, D.C.

Lacking any real backing from Iraqis, byhis own brilliance and conniving, Chalabi created a support network amonginfluential Americans, many of them prominent neo-conservatives. They saw inthe articulate Iraqi an ingenious strategist whose vision of sparking anuprising in Iraq with U.S. help, coincided with their own view: it was time forAmerica to step forward and wield its vast power to promote democracy and othervital U.S. interests abroad. (Key among such interests were ensuring access toMiddle Eastern oil and the survival of Israel.) Chalabi and his new allies setout to transform Iraq and Saddam into a hot-button U.S. political issue.

In 1991, George H.W. Bush agreed toclandestinely fund an Iraqi exile group and Chalabi was picked to head theoperation, receiving a stipend of $340,000 per month. Actually, as theadministration and the CIA saw it, that move was just window dressing to makeit appear as if the U.S. was really doing something to overthrow Saddam.

In fact, they had no intention ofgetting the U.S. involved militarily. Nor did they want a popular uprising thatcould have brought the majority Shiites to power, and increase the influence ofneighboring Iran. What they wanted was to topple Saddam by a military coup andreplace him with a more tractable government of Sunni generals.

But Ahmed Chalabi had different ideas.Rather than the CIA using him, he would use them. He deployed his secret U.S.backing to get himself elected leader of the exile group, the Iraqi NationalCongress, then started dictating policy to an outraged CIA. His plan, to takepower himself after a popular uprising, protected by an American militaryumbrella.

Incredibly, at the same time he waspocketing Washington’s money, Chalabi was also dickering with Iran. Hecalculated that to take power in Baghdad, he would also have to win the backingof America’s prime foe in the region, the mullahs in Tehran. And, for a while,he did. In fact, in 1995, by his cunning and deceit, Chalabi almost succeededin provoking a U.S. military intervention in Iraq and a possible war betweenIraq and its neighbors.

When outraged government officials triedto rein him in, Chalabi turned to his powerful Washington backers. Over theyears, they would include such figures as Steve Solarz, John Murphy, DouglasFeith, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Scooter Libby and Dick Cheney. Shrewd,supposedly worldly men with brilliant Washington resumes, they were dazzled byChalabi: he was an Iraqi De Gaulle, a George Washington. They ridiculed CIA andState Department experts and rode roughshod over their warnings.

In 2001, George W. Bush came to powerand Chalabi’s lobby grew more shrill. To build their case to invade Iraq, theWhite House turned to Chalabi’s INC for hard evidence of Saddam’s WMD’s and hislinks with Al Qaeda. And, presto, Chalabi produced informants with preciselythe tales required. After the invasion, when it was revealed that thoseinformants were lying, Chalabi was unabashed.

Similarly, when Washington asked Chalabito gather his much-vaunted thousand-man Iraqi army, only a motley 600 showedup, many of them Iranian-speaking with no knowledge of Arabic. Turned out theywere mercenaries hired at $5000 a piece—on America’s tab.

Still Chalabi’s Washington fans wereunfazed. When the U.S. occupied Iraq, the exile leader was appointed to keypositions in the interim government—which he then milked to build his own politicalbase as well as a huge personal fortune.

And all the while, he continued hisdouble-dealing with Iran; for instance, turning over to them sensitive filesseized from Saddam’s secret police. Finally, in March 2004, outraged Americanintelligence agents discovered that Chalabi had informed the Iranians that theU.S. was deciphering Iran’s most sensitive communications.

Incredibly, Chalabi still had hisprotectors in Washington. President Bush only learned of the Iraqi’s treacherywhen he read about it in the May 10, 2004 edition of Newsweek. He also learnedof Chalabi’s $340,000 monthly stipend—which was still continuing.

According to Bonin’s account, at ameeting of his National Security Council, Bush asked Secretary of DefenseDonald Rumsfeld, “Who does Chalabi work for? Who pays him?” Rumsfeldclaimed not to know, though Chalabi’s payments were coming from thePentagon’s own intelligence agency.

“If we’re paying this guy and he’s givingaway our secrets” Bush ordered. “it needs to stop. Condi look into it.”

But even the President’s NationalSecurity Advisor, Condelezza Rice, was no match for Chalabi’s Pentagonsupporters: it took two more NSC meetings, the President growing ever more irate,before, on May 19, Paul Wolfowitz announced that the INC stipend was ending.Not because of Chalabi’s treachery, but because it wasn’t “appropriate” for theU.S. to be funding an Iraq political party.

Ironically, it was the Iranians who finallythwarted Chalabi’s ambitions. In February, 2005 the Iranian ambassador to Iraqbluntly ordered Chalabi to drop out of the race for prime minister. Tehran would never accept a secular Shiite like Chalabi running Iraq. Chalabimight defy the Americans, but never the Iranians. “He would be dead in twodays, and he knew it,” a Chalabi aide later told Bonin.

In 2007, however, Chalabi would againprofit from U.S. backing. With the support of U.S. General David Petraeus,Chalabi was appointed by prime minister Nouri al-Maliki to another key post,charged with restoring Baghdad’s shattered infra-structure.

True to form, within a few months Chalabibetrayed Maliki and the Americans by siding with Iranian-backed Shiite radicalMoqtada-al-Sadr, whose goal was to drive the Americans from Iraq.

Today, according to Bonin, Chalabiremains ensconced in his sprawling Baghdad compound, surrounded by a small armyof security guards, and the enormous wealth his government positions enabledhim to amass. But he’s no longer a contender to lead post-Saddam Iraq. History,says Bonin, has finally passed him by.

-- -

America’s military adventure in Iraq is,hopefully, ended. But there’s still much to be learned from this case study ofnational hubris--how the policies of the most powerful country on the planetwere shaped by a group of arrogant players with insiders’ cunning and theirown, often shadowy, agendas.

It’s a lesson particularly relevanttoday, as the political climate heats up and another American president ratchetsup tensions with Iran, while simultaneous dispatching U.S. troops to thePacific in a new but vague and open-ended challenge.

Iran-A murky, perilous game

2011-12-10T06:19:00.001-08:00

The downing of a sophisticated U.S. RQ-170 Sentinel droneover Iran is the latest ratcheting of tension between Washington and Tehran andJerusalem. Iran’s nuclear enrichment facilities have been crippled bysophisticated cyber attacks; key Iranian scientists and officials have been killed,including a senior Iranian Revolutionary GuardCommander who died when a rocket research site was hit by a spectacular andstill unexplained explosion.

That we know. But what else is going on in this murky, perilous game?

In July, 2008, SeymourHersh reported in the NewYorker that in 2007 the U.S. Congress agreed to a request from President GeorgeW. Bush “to fund a major escalation ofcovert operations against Iran, according to current and former military,intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which thePresident sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in aPresidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize thecountry’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of theminority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. Theyalso include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weaponsprogram."

That American backing included support for actions,which, were they to be committed against the United States or one of its allies,would definitely qualify as “terrorism”.

Hasthe support for such operations continued under President Obama? If so, what doesit include? Just financial backing? Training? Logistics? Clandestine raids intoIran? American “boots on the ground”?

Predictably,such aggressive acts will provoke retaliation from Iran—a situation, which, inthe context of America’s superheated presidential primaries, could spiraldangerously out of control. Which is just what militants in Tehran, Jerusalem,and Washington may be out to provoke.

Weknow from President George H.W. Bush’s decision to fund the opposition toSaddam Hussein in 1991, that once such a program is launched it takes on a lifeof its own--extremely tricky to control, even more difficult to shut down bysucceeding presidents, as Bill Clinton would discover. The funding created itsown lobby, ready to run to the media and sympathetic congressman at any attemptto rein it in.

Sucha potentially explosive situation would be nothing new. Washington has alreadybeen involved in a much more violent clandestine war against Iran, via its de facto ally of the time, Saddam Hussein,who invaded Iran in 1980.

Fromearly in the conflict, the U.S. secretly supplied Saddam with arms as well assatellite intelligence. By 1987, Washington was shipping American-made weaponsdirectly to Iraq from the sprawling U.S. Rhine-Mein Airbase in Frankfurt. Someof Saddam's elite troops were even being sent to the United States forinstruction in unconventional warfare by U.S. Special Forces at Fort Bragg.

As Idetail in my book, Webof Deceit, the Reagan administration would be dangerously sucked evendeeper into the conflict. Encouraged by the U.S., Saddam intensified hisattacks against vital Iranian economic targets, including neutral tankers inthe Gulf. Iran of course retaliated. Concerned about the safety of their ownships, the Kuwaitis asked for protection.

SomeU.S. officials worried back then--just as they do today--that by venturing intothe narrow confines of the Gulf, the U.S. risked direct conflict with Iran.Despite such concerns, American warships were dispatched.

On May 1987, it became dramatically clear how dangerous thatpolicy was. An Iraqi Air Force plane mistakenly attacked an American frigate,the U.S.S. Stark, killing thirty-seven of the crew.

Then, to counter mounting congressional opposition to theoperation, the Reagan administration decided to go one step further. They wouldjustify a continued U.S. presence in the Gulf by permitting Kuwaiti ships tooperate under the American flag.

That fiction would give the Kuwaitis the right to Americanprotection.

A U.S. liaison officer was stationed in Baghdad to avoid arepeat of the Stark incident.

That, at least, was the cover story; in fact, over thefollowing months, American officers would help Iraq carry out long-rangestrikes against key Iranian targets, using U.S. ships as navigational aids."We became", as one senior U.S. officer told ABC'sNightline, "forward aircontrollers for the Iraqi Air Force."

The Reagan administration, in effect, decided to undertake asecret war, not bothering with congressional authorization.

Heavily armed U.S. Special Operations helicopters, stealthy,sophisticated killing machines that could operate by day or night, were orderedto the Persian Gulf. Their mission was to destroy any Iranian gunboats theycould find. Other small, swift American vessels, posing as commercial ships,lured Iranian naval vessels into international waters to attack them. TheAmericans often claimed they attacked the Iranian ships only after the Iraniansfirst menaced neutral ships plying the Gulf. In some cases however, the neutralships which the Americans claimed to be defending didn't even exist.

Beginning in July 1987, the CIA also began sending covertspy planes and helicopters over Iranian bases. Several engaged in secretbombing runs, at one point destroying an Iranian warehouse full of mines. InSeptember 1987, a special operations helicopter team attacked an Iranianmine-laying ship with a hail or rockets and machine-gun fire, killing threeIranian sailors. Official authorization for those clandestine attacks waspurposely restricted to a low level in the Reagan administration so that topgovernment officials could deny all knowledge of the illegal operations.

By early 1988, officers from the Pentagon's DefenseIntelligence Agency dispatched to Baghdad were actually planning day-by-daystrategic bombing strikes for the Iraqi Air Force. In April 1988, the daybefore a key Iraqi offensive, U.S. forces sank or demolished half the Iraniannavy--one destroyer and a couple of frigates.

If Saddam had not ultimately prevailed, the Pentagon hadprepared an even more ambitious strategy: to launch an attack against theIranian mainland. "The real plans were for a secret war, with the U.S. onthe side of Iraq against Iran, on a daily basis," retired LieutenantColonel Roger Charles, who was serving in the office of the secretary ofdefense at the time, told British reporterAlan Friedman.

As Admiral James A. "Ace" Lyons, who was commanderin chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet put it, "We were prepared, I would sayat the time, to drill them back to the fourth century."

Relatively cooler heads prevailed. According to Richard L.Armitage, who at the time was assistant secretary of defense "The decisionwas made not to completely obliterate Iran. We didn't want a naked Iran. Wewanted a calm, quiet peaceful Iran. However, had things not gone well in theGulf, I've no doubt that we would have put those plans into effect."

Whichbrings us back today.

U.S.Pakistan Shipwreck:China Cleans Up-Again

2011-11-28T13:32:00.001-08:00

The killing of 24 Pakistan troops by NATO forces is just thelatest disastrous chapter in U.S. Pakistan relations. As affairs go from bad tocatastrophic, it’s not just the Taliban who will benefit, but also China.

For several years now the Pakistanis have found China a verywilling and increasingly powerful counterweight to the Americans and theiroften strident—you could call it arrogant--political demands.

Toeing Washington’s line, in other words, is no longer theonly game in town. And the pragmatic Chinese, as always, seem willing to workwith whomever holds power.

Take for instance, theoutrage in both the U.S. and Pakistan after American troops secretly enteredPakistan last May 2, to kill Osama Bin Laden. The day after the killing, asAmericans officials in Washington intimated that top duplicitous Pakistani militaryhad been harboring the Al Qaeda leader, and fulminating U.S. congressmen were demandingimmediate cuts in aid, a foreign ministry spokesperson in Beijing lept toPakistan’s defense. He declaredthat "The Pakistani government isfirm in resolve and strong in action when it comes to counterterrorism -- andhas made important contributions to the international counterterrorismefforts." America shouldrespect Pakistan’s sovereignty the Chinese said.

As U.S.-Pakistani relations continued to curdle, the Chinese andPakistanis only tightened their embrace. .Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf RazaGilani, on an official visit to China toldChinese state radio, "We appreciate that in all difficultcircumstances China stood with Pakistan -- therefore we call China a truefriend and a time-tested and all-weather friend."

During that trip China’s Premier proved that friendship by announcingthat China would supply Pakistan with 50 JF-17 fighter jets equippedwith sophisticated avionics, the planes to be paid for by China.

Pakistan’s nuclear program provoked a similar flurry. TheU.S. very upset by Pakistan’s clandestinedevelopment of nuclear weapons, had been looking at Pakistan’s program witha baleful eye. Not the Chinese, who raised hackles in Washington when they soldthe Pakistanis two new nuclear reactors, supposedly to be used only forcivilian purposes. The deal, the Chinese insisted, was peaceful. [The Pakistanisare quick to point out that the U.S. has been much more willing to forgive India—America’sally--for also developing clandestine nukes.]

In fact, for years now, China has been the major supplier ofmilitary hardware to Pakistan. The two countries also have arms manufacturing coproduction deals, and carryout jointmilitary exercises.

But military links are just for starters. While the U.S. hasspent billions on military bases in the Persian Gulf, the Chinese have been fundinga sophisticated deepwater commercial port in Gwadar,Pakistan near the Persian Gulf. Just as important, they’re also rehabilitatinga 1300 kilometer long highway toconnect that Gwadar to China through Pakistan. You may never have heard ofGwadar, but you will in the future. “Come back in a decade and this place willlook like Dubai,” a developer recently said.”

Trade between China and Pakistan has soared from $2 billion in 2002 to $7billion in 2009. After a flurryof new agreements, they are hoping to hit $18 billion by 2015. Those agreementstarget everything from agriculture to heavy machinery, to space and upperatmosphere research, alternative energy projects, power plants, and urbansecurity.

The Chinese are also aiming to increase investment in Pakistan from thepresent $2 billion a year, to more than $3bn a year by 2012. That’s double theannual $1.5bn in economic assistance from the United States that supposedly haskept the Pakistani military in line all these years.

Indeed, since 9/11 2001, the United States has provided Pakistan withsome $20 billion in aid, mostly military--in effect pay-offs for Pakistan’scooperation in fighting terrorism. But that aid —more like mercenary payments—hasdone little to prevent the disastrous decline in relationship between the twocountries.

The basic reason is simple: China and Pakistan have more interests in common than do America andPakistan. Looking to the future, powerful elements in Pakistan’s military havelong viewed America’s enemies in Afghanistan, the Taliban, as valuable alliesagainst India when America inevitably pulls out of Afghanistan. China, likePakistan, also regards India as a regional rival to be harassed and thwarted.

By working together China and Pakistan will be able to challenge notjust India, but also the United States and with its claims to hegemony in thearea—particularly since President Obama’s recent announcement that 2500 U.S.marines would be stationed in Australia as part of America’s determination to increaseits presence in the Pacific.

China’s swollen coffers now also enable it to use foreign aid in theway that America did in Washington’s plusher days. After the disastrousfloods in Pakistan last summer, for instance, China announced its biggest-everhumanitarian aid program including $250 million in donations. It also includeda $400 million loan to help Pakistan tackle the financial impact of theflooding, and a cash grant of $10m towards a fund to compensate people renderedhomeless.

--As part of thisnew “hearts-and-minds” policy the Chinese offered 500 university scholarshipsover the next three years for Pakistani students, with programs focusing ontechnological areas of expertise not taught in Pakistan. The two countries willalso exchange high-school students, young entrepreneurs, and voluntary socialworkers. Meanwhile, Chinese surgeonsare being dispatched to Pakistan to perform cataract operations on 1,000 blindpatients.

Such efforts are obviously paying off. It turns out thePakistanis are now also proselytizing for the Chinese.

According to the New YorkTimes earlier this year, “At a key meetingon April 16 in the Afghan capital, Kabul, top Pakistani officials suggested toAfghan leaders that they, too, needed to look to China, a power on the rise, ratherthan tie themselves closely with the United States, according to Afghanofficials.

“You couldn’ttell exactly what they meant, whether China could possibly be an alternative tothe United States, but they were saying it could help both countries,” anAfghan official said afterward.”

And all that was before this last catastrophic weekend.

Egypt's Military: State within a State

2011-11-26T09:49:00.000-08:00

On Friday, Washington added its voice to Egyptians demanding that the Egyptian military give way to civilian rule. It’s instructive, however, to consider why the Egyptian brass are so reluctant.

Their resistance stems not just from a fear of an ultimate takeover by radical Muslims. There is also the fact that real civilian rule could spell an end to the system of massive military corruption and patronage that has gone on for decades in Egypt, a system that has given the military unimpeded control over a huge sector of the Egyptian economy: “a state within a state” as a well-informed Egyptian friend of mine puts it.

That’s the state that’s now being challenged.

For years, Egypt’s top military ranks have enjoyed a pampered existence in sprawling developments such as Cairo’s Nasr City, where officers are housed in spacious, subsidized condominiums. They enjoy other amenities the average Egyptian can only dream of, such as nurseries, bonuses, new cars, schools and military consumer cooperatives featuring domestic and imported products at discount prices. In other areas, top officers are able to buy luxurious apartments on generous credit for 10% of what those apartments are actually worth.

But we’re not just talking about sensational official perks. Many of Egypt’s brass are notoriously corrupt. Vast swathes of military land, for instance, were sold by the generals to finance some major urban developments near Cairo-with little if any accounting.

Other choice military property ran on the Nile Delta and Red Sea coast boasted idyllic beaches, and exquisite coral reefs. In return for turning the land over to private developers, military officers became key shareholders in a slew of gleaming new tourist developments.

The reason Egypt’s military became so involved in non-military activities was because, after peace was signed with Israel in 1975, the military lost much of its raison d’etre, as did its military factories. The problem, though, was how to keep those factories going and employ the hundreds of thousands of young men who would otherwise flood the domestic market?

The answer was the military would also produce for the civilian market. Thus the generals came to preside over 16 enormous factories that turn out not just weapons, but an array of domestic products from dishwashers to heaters, clothing, doors, stationary pharmaceutical products, and microscopes. Most of these products are sold to military personnel through discount military stores, but large amount are also sold commercially.

The military also builds highways, housing developments, hotels, power lines, sewers, bridges, schools, telephone exchanges, often in murky arrangements with civilian companies.

The military are also Egypt’s largest farmers, running a vast network of dairy farms, milk processing facilities, cattle feed lots, poultry farms, fish farms. They’ve plenty left from their huge output to sell to civilians through a sprawling distribution network.

The justification for all this non-military activity is that the military are just naturally more efficient that civilians. Hard not to be “more efficient” when you are able to employ thousands of poorly paid military recruits for labor.

Many civilian businessmen complain that competing with the military is like trying to compete with the Mafia. And upon retiring, top military officers are often rewarded with plum positions running everything from factories and industries to charities.

Whatever the number, Robert Springborg, who has written extensively on Egypt, says officers in the Egyptian military are making "billions and billions and billions" of dollars.”

But there’s no way to know how efficient or inefficient the military are, nor how much money their vast enterprises make, nor how many millions or billions get skimmed off since the military’s operations are off the nation’s books. No real published accountings. No oversight. Just as there is no civilian oversight of the entire military budget, and that’s the way the current military regime have said they aim to keep things

Of course none of the above is a surprise to U.S. officials who dole out some 1.3 billion dollars a year in military aid to the Egyptian Army, and hope that sum and the neat weapons it provides will keep the army in line. [One of the most detailed studies of the military’s non-military activities was done by a U.S. military researcher at Fort Leavenworth.]

A perceptive look into all this comes via a 2008 U.S.diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks. The writer in the U.S. Embassy in Cairo ticked off the various businesses the military was involved in, and considered how the military might react if Egypt's then president, Hosni Mubarak, were to lose power.

The military would almost certainly go along with a successor, the cable's author wrote, as long as that that successor didn't interfere in the military's business arrangements. But, the cable continued, "in a messier succession scenario, it becomes more difficult to predict the military's actions."

Thus, the messier scenario today.

China and the Gulf: Learning from a Lab Rat: Part Two

2011-11-22T08:00:00.000-08:00

In my previous blog, I cited the old chestnut: What’s the difference between a laboratory rat and a human being? Answer: The lab rat finally ceases scurrying through a maze when he realizes there is no cheese at the end. Human beings, on the other hand, never stop trying.

Confronted with the maze that is the Arabian Gulf, the Chinese are the lab rats. To make that point, in the previous blog, I discussed how China, while resisting calls for sanctions against Iran for its alleged nuclear weapons program, has actually benefited from those sanctions: Iranian oil becoming more important to China than Saudi’s oil is to the United States.

China’s activities in the Gulf, however, are not restricted to Iran. Just as American troops and bases have spread along the Gulf, so have China’s businessmen, eager to exploit the vital resources that the U.S. military is thoughtfully protecting.

The surprising twist is that the Gulf is far more vital to China than to the United States. China gets 58% of its oil from the region. Estimates are that by 2015, that dependence will soar to 70% . [By comparison, the U.S. gets only18.2% from the Gulf. ]

Another irony: while China has developed close ties with America’s prime enemy in the region, Iran, Beijing has been even more successful in wooing Washington’s major Arab ally in the Gulf , the Saudis.

Mao’s revolutionary China decried the Saudis and the feudal sheikdoms of the Gulf. But that’s then and now’s now. The Saudis currently provide China with 20% of its crude oil imports—and Saudi leaders have assured Beijing they will furnish all the crude China will need over the coming decades.

China has also offered to sell the Saudis intercontinental ballistic missiles. But in deference to Washington, the Saudis have so far turned down such proposals. Meanwhile, business is booming: China’s annual trade with Saudi Arabia totals $60 billion, the Saudis selling not just petroleum but chemicals for China’s surging manufacturing sector.

The Saudi’s new found ties with China, also enable Riyadh to pay less heed to annoying calls out of Washington for democratic reforms—an issue that never bothers the Chinese.

Iraq’s relations with China represent another bitter paradox: You’d think that America’s huge sacrifice of treasure and blood in Iraq would have brought the U.S. some benefit--the inside track, for instance on the development of Iraq’s massive petroleum reserves. That’s what Dick Cheney and his friends were supposedly after. But in Iraq, as in Iran, the Chinese have been willing to take risks few American firms were willing or able to take.

As a result, China winds up as one of the largest oil beneficiaries of the Iraq War.

In fact, the first major deal for oil exploration signed by the new Iraqi government with foreigners was with a couple of Chinese companies: a 23 year agreement for $3 billion in 2008 to pump oil from the Al Adhab field. In 2009 PetroChina teamed up with Britain’s BP to win a 20 year contract to boost output from Iraq’s largest oil field, Rumaila—the only contract awarded in Iraq’s first post Saddam auction of oil licenses.

Earlier this year, Iraq President Maliki journeyed to China hoping to convince more Chinese companies to invest in Iraq—in everything from energy, oil, transport, housing, telecommunication and agriculture. He even welcomed Chinese military aid.

With China’s commercial successes in mind, it might be instructive to compare the size of China’s Embassy in Baghdad with the sprawling American compound, the largest U.S. Embassy in the world, staffed by 16,000 employees, protected in turn by an army of 5,000 “independent contractors”.

Beijing however, would probably favor a continued U.S. combat presence in Iraq. Many of the Chinese companies now operating there are afraid to expand further because of the on-going danger of terrorist attacks.

Not that the Chinese are uninterested in strategic facilities of their own.

China has contributed $200 million to construct a deep-sea port in the Baluchistan Province of Pakistan, only 250 miles from the key Strait of Hormuz. Nearby is the port of Salalah in Oman, where Chinese navy escort force now dock to resupply; not to mention the Chinese warships that have docked in Abu Dhabi.

But there’s no way the Chinese military presence will ever challenge the U.S. in the Gulf. Nor is there any evidence they want to. The hulking American bases have their own obvious downside: Remember, it was the huge inflow of American “infidel” troops into Saudi Arabia in 1990 following Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait, that provoked Osama Bin Laden’s outrage and provided him with thousands of similarly inflamed recruits.

Concern about continued opposition to U.S. troops in Saudi lay behind the decision to move the American centre of operations to nearby Qatar. As a result, since the drawdown in Iraq, the vast new air base of Al Udeid in Qatar has become a lynchpin for the U.S. buildup in the Gulf.

But Qatar also boasts the third-largest reserves of gas in the world, and the Chinese are thus very present.

In May 2010, CNPC (the China National Petroleum Corporation) signed a 30-year deal for gas exploration and production in Qatar. That was just for starters. CNPC, Shell and Qatar have also put together a joint venture to build a 10 billion dollar petrochemical complex in Eastern China.

Nearby Abu Dhabi also has huge oil reserves, and in 2009 a Chinese firm for the first time won a service contract to supply oil rigs for onshore drilling. The deal came after a visit to China by Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi. The goal: to foster strategic co-operation with Beijing. The Crown Prince was also Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces.

Oil-rich Kuwait, of course, was the country that the U.S. went to war to “save” in 1991 after Saddam’s troops invaded. In 2009, a Chinese state-controlled oil company, Sinopec, won a $140m contract to supply drilling rigs to the Kuwait Oil Company after Kuwait promised to export 500,000 barrels per day of oil to China by 2015. Kuwait Oil and Sinopec have also agreed to build a $9 billion oil refinery in China.

But it’s not just oil. Trade between China and the Gulf is a two-way affair. In 2009, the same year that China became the largest importer of oil from the Gulf, it also passed the United as the largest single importer to the region.

Remarkably, there are now more Middle Eastern visitors to Yiwu, a city in China that houses tens of thousands of retailers, than there are to the entire United States. Cross-border investment from the Middle East in Chinese financial institutions also represents a new mode of exchange. By 2020 annual trade between China and the Gulf will top $350 billion,

And perhaps that’s how things will continue to go: a strange symbiosis: American bases and Chinese markets.

Or maybe not. As Jon B. Alterman at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies observes “there is something inherently unstable about a region that relies on the West for security and the East for prosperity.”

China and Iran. Lessons from a Lab Rat

2011-11-15T08:08:00.000-08:00

Remember the old chestnut? What’s the difference between a laboratory rat and a human being? The lab rat finally ceases scurrying through a maze when it realizes there is no cheese at the end. Human beings, on the other hand, never stop trying.

Confronted with the maze that is the Middle East and Central Asia these days, the Chinese are the lab rats. Take Iran, for instance.

Though careful not to directly challenge the Americans, China’s diplomats and businessmen have followed a sinuous route, publicly urging Iran to back away from plans to produce nuclear weapons, but refusing to support American and European calls for tougher sanctions.

True to form, the Americans have been pushing trade sanctions in various degrees of severity ever since American diplomats were taken hostage in Tehran back in 1979.

The Chinese argue the current stiff sanctions won’t convince the Iranians to stop their nuclear program. However, those sanctions have certainly helped the Chinese gain a remarkable foothold in Iran.

So much so, that today 15% of China’s petroleum and gas imports come from Iran, which makes Iran more vital to China than Saudi Arabia is to the United States [the Saudis provide 11% of U..S. petroleum imports].

At one time or another, all the great powers have had their eyes on Iran’s oil and gas reserves, the second largest in the world. But, because of the U.S. embargo, Iran suffered from a woeful lack of modern technology, engineering expertise, and capital.

The Chinese, however, have been willing to offer Iran much of what it needs to develop--as well as sophisticated arms, anti ship-missiles and nuclear technology.

In return, of course the Chinese obtained access to Iran’s massive energy reserves. In 2004, for instance, Iran signed a $100 billion dollar deal for a Chinese company to develop Yadavaran, Iran’s largest undeveloped oil ﬁeld. That concession in exchange for China’s receiving 10 million tons of Iranian liquiﬁed natural gas annually for a period of 25 years.

That deal was followed by other huge gas and oil exploration contracts, as well as a plan to deliver Iranian oil from the Caspian Sea, through a pipeline from Kazakhstan to China.
In another convoluted agreement, a Chinese company CNPC bought the Iranian subsidiary of Sheer Energy in Calgary, Alberta, thus winding up with a 49 percent stake in another Iranian oil field.

The flourishing Chinese-Iranian trade is not restricted to the energy sector.
Chinese companies have won contracts to build everything from broadband fiber optics, to television sets, to automobiles, not to mention a $680 million contract to expand the Tehran subway system.
And all the while, Washington has continued to view Iran as THE menace looming over the Gulf.

Thus the Americans made an ally out of Saddam Hussein after he invaded Iran, and continued to back him despite his use of nerve gas and long range rockets against civilian targets.

Again, in 1991 when Iraq’s Shiites and Kurds rose against the Iraqi tyrant following the first Gulf War, the United States stood by as tens of thousands of Iraqis were slaughtered by Saddam—despite the fact that George W. Bush had himself called for the uprising. The reason for the betrayal: Washington was afraid that an Iraq governed by its Shiite majority would open the doors to an Iranian takeover of Iraq.

Fast forward twenty years. After having spent literally trillions of dollars to oust Saddam, U.S. troops are withdrawing from Iraq, leaving the shattered country governed by---a Shiite majority. Many of those Shiites sympathetic to Iran and still deeply embittered by America’s betrayal in 1991.

But even as they withdraw from Iraq, America has been pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into Iraq’s neighbors to ensure a massive and enduring military presence in the oil-rich Gulf. Their major purpose again, a bulwark against Iran.

In addition, Washington has reportedly been funding and training opposition groups in Iran to carry out activities that, were they directed against American targets, would certainly be labeled as “terrorist.”

That American military build-up in the Gulf has long provided Iran’s leaders with a rationale for developing nuclear weapons: not to incinerate Israel, but to defend Iran against an American/Israel attack. For years now, American officials have calmly and openly discussed such military action as an on-going and viable option.

What American officials don’t like to discuss is the fact—repeatedly cited by Iran’s leaders hard-line and moderate --that Israel, which clamors most shrilly about the Iranian nuclear threat, possesses an “illegal” nuclear arsenal that American has never been officially willing to deal with.

However, despite enduring U.S. hostility, the regime in Tehran is still very much in place, its nuclear weapons program still apparently active. And while revolts are still roiling much of the Arab world, the iron-fisted mullahs in Tehran have managed to squelch internal opposition. Indeed, there are those who argue that the embargo and constant threat of an American cum Israel military attack have in fact strengthened the hands of Tehran’s often feckless and feuding leadership.

And as all this has been going on, the Chinese have been prospering. Chinese/Iranian trade has mushroomed from $3.3 billion in 2001 to $30 billion in 2010, and is expected to hit $50 billion by 2015. The prize, though is the gas and petroleum.

No wonder, then, that the Chinese are as solicitous of Tehran’s interests as the folks in Washington are of the Saudis.

Their interest is not just economic.

Like Russia, China views Iran as a quasi-ally in their effort to check American power and inﬂuence in the Middle East and Central Asia. One particularly ironic blow came in July 2005, when Iran (along with India and Pakistan) was granted observer status in the Shanghai Co-operation Organization, a regional-security arrangement—established to combat separatism, extremism and terrorism.

China’s activities in the Gulf, however, are not restricted to Iran. While the U.S. continues its huge military expenditures, the Chinese are making impressive inroads throughout the region—which, ironically, in the end, may cause them to back off their stubborn support of Iran.

More of that in my next blog.

Norway and America's Radical Right (New Version)

2011-07-26T06:10:00.000-07:00

In his voluminous writings, Norwegian terrorist Anders Behring Breivik cited American Pamela Geller, who runs the site, Atlas Shrugs, and has made a career from her shrill Islamophobia.

Geller has scrambled to distance herself from Breivik’s horrific acts. “No dealings, no emails, no nothing,” Geller said. “He mentions me once in a 1,500 page ‘manifesto,’ and this is the tie? Does anyone see how completely ridiculous this whole thing is?”

Intrigued by the mention of Geller in my original blog on this subject, John Smith decided to check out Geller’s site. “It looks like she’s been ‘scrubbing her links” Geller wrote me, but what he uncovered on Google’s cache of Atlas Shrugs, was –particularly in light of the racist rampage in Norway—an incredibly chilling email sent to Geller on June 24,2007.

Introducing it simply as an “Email from Norway,” Geller wrote:

“I am running an email I received from an Atlas reader in Norway. It is devastating in its matter-of-factness:”

According to her Norwegian reader:

“Well, yes, the situation is worsening. Stepping up from 29 000 immigrants every year, in 2007 we will be getting a total of 35 000 immigrants from somalia, iran, iraq and afghanistan. The nations capital is already 50% muslim, and they ALL go there after entering Norway. Adding the 1.2 births per woman per year from muslim women, there will be 300 000+ muslims out of the then 480 000 inhabitants of that city.

“Orders from Libya and Iran say that Oslo will be known as Medina at the latest in 2010, although I consider this a PR-stunt nevertheless it is their plan.

“From Israel the hordes clawing at the walls of Jerusalem proclaim cheerfully that next year there will be no more Israel, and I know Israel shrugs this off as do I, and will mount a strike during the summer against all of its enemies in the middle east. This will make the muslims worldwide go into a frenzy, attacking everyone around them.

[Lando: my italics added]

“We are stockpiling and caching weapons, ammunition and equipment. This is going to happen fast.

Before, I thought about emigrating to Britain, Israel, USA, South Africa, etc. for taxes and politics, but instead (although I believe we are the very last generation on earth before the return of God) I will stay and fight for the right to this country and indeed the entire peninsula, for the God-fearing people, just in case this isn't the end of the world after all. Doesn't hurt to have a backup plan.

“It's far from impossible to achieve, after all my people has done it every time before, in feats that match the ancient greek, hebrew and british "legends".

“Oslo and the southeast may fall easily, but there are other lines than "state"-borders drawn across this country since long before there was even a single muslim in the world, and we have held them this long, against everyone else too. We are entering a new golden age for my people, and those of a handful other countrys, but only through struggle.

“Never fear, Pamela. God is with you too in this coming time.”

Was Anders Behring Breivik the author of that message? If not—as Geller now claims-- it was a countryman with equally apocalyptic—and frightening views.

Did Geller worry that talk of stockpiling and caching weapons and equipment went too far? Did she consider turning over that email to Norwegian authorities? Did she at the very least counsel her Norwegian correspondent—and her readers-- that the problem of immigration and Islamic fundamentalism would not be solved by armed violence? This, after all, was not the kind of action she was calling for. Right?

Nope, she posted those views on her site for her radical followers using their pseudonyms to debate, cheer on, or become inspired by—as the majority of the comments made clear. [I suggest you read them all in full, but here are some excerpts]:

“Miluimnik said…

What a wonderful letter. We've come to expect this sort of exceptional correspondence an the pages of Atlas...but I remain in awe of your readership and their commitment to freedom and liberty nonetheless.

…………………

John Jay said…

christians and jews:

to arms!! to arms!!

if our leaders betray us, and surely norwegian leaders betray their citizens, then we have no one left to betray us, except our selves and our own cowardice.

are we to slip into an eternal dark ages without a fight?

so, i say.--

to arms!! to arms!!

the fight has started, and we must respond.

………………….

wxjames said….

“I only hope that in the event civil war breaks out there or any other democracy, that the US still has enough moral clarity to supply the native populations with guns and ammunition if not troops.
I fear, however that the world is in such a general state of instability that it may become every man for himself. Even here in the USA, people speak of civil war to overthrow leftism and political correctness and the general loss of individual rights to regulations and special interests.
How much further can we go down this road ? How much more crap before critical mass is reached. … The time is close.

…………………..

turn said…..

There's an Old Testament blood-bath comin'.

Question remains: Are there enough Norsemen that will hear the Wyking song pulse in their veins?

Season after season Norway (and Sweden) are conceding whole neighborhoods populated by 'immigrants' as no-go zones. Police and EMS won't respond there. It's the friggin' death-cry of civilization when the barbarians can intimidate in this manner.

So...yes. A very nice letter to you, Pam, from a Norwegian Atlasite (Atlasonian?). Unfortunately, he or she could be prosecuted under hate-speech laws for writing or posting in Norway what you have passed on to us.

To which Geller replied:

"yes turn, which is why I ran it anonymously"

Norway: A warning ignored by America's radical right?

2011-07-25T07:41:00.000-07:00

According to his attorney, the man behind this weekends slaughter of 92 people in Norway, Anders Behring Reivki, feels that his actions were “atrocious” yet “necessary”. Why necessary?

In his voluminous writings, Reivki frequently cited such right-wing American Islamaphobes, as Robert Spencer and Pamela Gellert as providing the intellectual underpinning for his rabid views. Spencer and Gellert are now scrambling to distance themselves from the Norwegian’s horrific acts.

Question: If Pamela Gellert really believes her clarion warnings of racial apocalypse, how could she not foresee that one of her admirers would choose to stop writing and start acting, courageously perform that “necessary” act: sacrificing himself—and—regrettably--others----to defend Civilization as we know it.

After all, if all we hold dear is at stake, it’s long past the time for mere words!

In fact, Reiki may not only have been just a consumer of Geller’s site Atlas Shrugs, but also a contributor.

John Smith, responded to my original blog about Geller’s possible intellectual links with Norway’s tragedy by pointing to an “intriguing post on Geller's site, dated June 24, 2007 - titled "Email from Norway".

Wrote Smith: It looks like she's been "scrubbing" her links, but you can still see it on Googlecache:http://web cache.goog leusercont ent.com/se arch?q=cac he:LCzO2Vc j8s8J:atlasshrugs200 0.typepad. com/atlas_ shrugs/200 7/06/email -from-norw .html

Herewith the quote from Geller’s site:

“I am running an email I received from an Atlas reader in Norway. It is devastating in its matter-of-factness:

“Well, yes, the situation is worsening. Stepping up from 29 000 immigrants every year, in 2007 we will be getting a total of 35 000 immigrants from somalia, iran, iraq and afghanistan. The nations capital is already 50% muslim, and they ALL go there after entering Norway. Adding the 1.2 births per woman per year from muslim women, there will be 300 000+ muslims out of the then 480 000 inhabitants of that city.

“Orders from Libya and Iran say that Oslo will be known as Medina at the latest in 2010, although I consider this a PR-stunt nevertheless it is their plan.

“From Israel the hordes clawing at the walls of Jerusalem proclaim cheerfully that next year there will be no more Israel, and I know Israel shrugs this off as do I, and will mount a strike during the summer against all of its enemies in the middle east. This will make the muslims worldwide go into a frenzy, attacking everyone around them.

“We are stockpiling and caching weapons, ammunition and equipment. This is going to happen fast.
Before, I thought about emigrating to Britain, Israel, USA, South Africa, etc. for taxes and politics, but instead (although I believe we are the very last generation on earth before the return of God) I will stay and fight for the right to this country and indeed the entire peninsula, for the God-fearing people, just in case this isn't the end of the world after all. Doesn't hurt to have a backup plan.

“It's far from impossible to achieve, after all my people has done it every time before, in feats that match the ancient greek, hebrew and british "legends".

“Oslo and the southeast may fall easily, but there are other lines than "state"-borders drawn across this country since long before there was even a single muslim in the world, and we have held them this long, against everyone else too. We are entering a new golden age for my people, and those of a handful other countrys, but only through struggle.

“Never fear, Pamela. God is with you too in this coming time.”

Note the paragraph, which I italicized, talking of stockpiling and caching weapons.

Did Ms. Geller consider turning over that email to Norwegian authorities? Didn’t she worry at the time that such violent talk went too far? That here was a tragedy in the making that she could prevent? Did she counsel her Norwegian correspondent that the problem of immigration should not be dealt with armed violence? This, after all, was not the kind of action she was calling for. Right?

Nope, she posted his views on her site, for thousands of radical thinkalikes to cheer on—or, who knows, become inspired.

But, before posting those views she carefully removed the name of her Norwegian email admirer--as my correspondent John Smith pointed out, calling attention to one of the comments on Geller’s site on the Norwegian email:

"A very nice letter to you, Pam, from a Norwegian Atlasite (Atlasonian?). Unfortunately, he or she could be prosecuted under hate-speech laws for writing or posting in Norway what you have passed on to us."

Geller replied:

"yes turn, which is why I ran it anonymously"

Norway: Rampant anti-Semitism in Europe-anti which Semites?

2011-07-24T12:42:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, before the terrifying bloodshed in Norway, I received an email from the U.S. denouncing the alarming rise of anti-Semitism in France: “Will the world say nothing—again—as it did in Hitler’s time?” The author catalogued a list of attacks against Jewish targets in France over the past few months. He called for a boycott of France and French products: “Only the Arab countries are more toxically anti-Semitic and, unlike them, France exports more than just oil and hatred.”

I’ve been getting such emails now for years since I’ve been living in France. In my view the major reason for the attacks on Jewish targets is political rather than racial. Provoked by the fact that the leadership of the Jewish community in France (which does not represent the majority of French Jews) has been outspoken in supporting the right-wing policies of the current Israeli government.

What has long bothered me about such emails, however, is not just a misreading of the cause, but a tunnel vision on the part of many Jews--a total disregard for those other Semites: the rampant growth of anti-Islamic and anti-Arab sentiment in France and across Europe over the past few years. The number of attacks on Arab targets and new legislation relating to the practice of Islam in several European countries which would have had the world’s Jewish community in full cry if they’d been directed against Jewish targets.

Along with that has been the rapid growth of right-wing parties across much of the continent. Those parties in the past had a strong explicitly anti-Jewish content. The principle targets now are immigrants, mainly Arabs and Muslims. Those parties are no longer confined to kooks and misfits. Anti-Arab/Muslim sentiments are everywhere, from polite dinner time conversation to exchanges in the street markets to supposedly harmless jokes relayed on the Internet, like the one we received the day after I received the alert on anti-Semitism in France:

Three men, a Frenchman, a Tunisian and an Algerian who find themselves together in a raunchy Parisian bar. They down one beer after another. At one point the Tunisian tosses his empty beer bottle into the air, yells “we’ve got so many empty bottles in Tunis”, pulls out a gun and blasts the bottle apart in mid air.

The Algerian also throws his bottle into the air, “says we’ve got so much sand in Algeria, there’s no shortage of glass,” pulls out a gun and shatters the bottle.

The French guy takes a disgusted look at the other two, pulls out a pistol and yells, “We’ve got so god damn many Arabs in France, I never have to drink with you two creeps again, and he guns both of them down.

I was still thinking about that the next day, when news came of the horrific slaughter in Norway and the gradual disclosures that the author was not an bearded Arab terrorist, but a blond, clean-cut White convinced that he was a soldier in the War of Civilizations, defending the Christian west against the threat of Islam.

On his site he cited such ideological soul-mates as Pamela Geller, a notorious right-wing, pro-Israel, Islamophobic blogger, whose principal mouthpiece (when she’s not on Fox TV) is Atlas Shrugs. A poster shows a recent event which she backed, along with Robert Spencer who operates Jihad Watch.

People like Geller and Spencer and right-wing leaders across Europe are already attempting to distance themselves from any responsibility for the outrage in Norway. Their excuses ring hollow, in view of their rabid language and incendiary rhetoric.

But a more basic question is: to what degree are the growing anti-Islamic views, held by tens (if not hundreds) of millions of ‘decent” Europeans—folks who would never consider themselves right-wing or racist—like the ones who chuckle at the bar room joke above—to what degree are they—or their silence --also a part of the context for what could be even more horrifying acts to come?

For with growing economic turmoil in Europe and huge numbers attempting to flee the bloody uprisings across much of North Africa, this problem is only going to get worse.

Pakistan's Incredible Duplicity-Chapter Two

2011-07-20T08:47:00.000-07:00

After the allegations that top-level Pakistani officials have secretly aided Al Qaeda and the Taliban, sheltering Osama Bin Laden himself, now comes a startling new charge: “Pakistan’s Military Plotted to Tilt U.S. Policy, FBI says.”

Now we wait for the predictable stream of American outrage. Pure hypocrisy: the Pakistanis have done nothing more than take a page from the CIA playbook.

According to the New York Times, the FBI investigation, involved at least (count them) eight FBI field offices, They conclude that Pakistan’s military and the ISI, its powerful spy agency, have used front groups to funnel campaign donations over the past two decades to members of the U.S. Congress and presidential candidates. This in blatant disregard of the law prohibiting foreign governments from making donations to American political candidates.

The dastardly aim of that operation? To counter the Indian lobby in Washington and persuade the United States government to push India to allow a vote in Kashmir that would let Kashmiris decide on their own future. I mean—can you imagine!!

The total amount involved: $4 million over two decades—which works out to $200,000 per year. That included $250.00 donations to the 2000 and 2008 presidential campaigns of al Gore and Barack Obama. The congressmen involved claimed they had no knowledge that the money actually originated with the Pakistani government.

Of course, the Pakistani effort is pocket money compared to what the United States has been up to clandestinely for more than half a century, spending billions not just to “tilt” policy of other countries, but to literally buy elections, legislators, intelligence chiefs, generals, cabinet ministers, and entire governments around the globe—starting with Italy and Greece and Iran post World War II and continuing across every continent since.

Take for instance, last year’s revelations that several of Afghan President Karzai’s top officials—including some of the most corrupt---are on the U.S. intelligence payroll.

As for Pakistan itself, its military have been on the receiving end of billions of dollars in “military aid” , both parties realizing that horde is little more than a bribe to keep the military at least officially on side.

Such pay-offs are just for starters. Why bother “tilting” a government—when you can work to overthrow it or knock off its leader? i.e. Mossadegh in Iran, (1953) Arbenz in Guatemala (1954), the Congo (1960, Iraq (1963), Cuba (1959 to this day) Chile (1964-73), Brazil (1962-64), Indonesia 1965, Angola (1975), Nicaragua (1981 to 90) Grenada (1983), Saddam Hussein 2003. And so on—more than fifty instances over the past fifty years.

Who are the headline writers kidding? You don’t need to be an investigative reporter or a congressman privy to secret intelligence briefings. It’s all out there on Google.

The Pakistanis have been tightly linked to (if not allied with) the CIA for decades. It would have been amazing if they had not been up to such games.

God help us if they, the Russians, Chinese or anyone else ever decide to really follow the American lead—like liquidating anyone they consider a mortal enemy with their own global-roaming Predators.

What Obama Should have told AIPAC

2011-05-22T12:22:00.000-07:00

The Presidents Speech-Or What Obama Should have said to AIPAC

My fellow Americans, I could say it is an honor to speak again before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. I could also dish out the usual rhetoric you expect from American political leaders of both parties,-—an emotional, iron-clad guarantee to maintain America’s undying support for Israel, the embattled outpost of democracy, and so on and on and on, to great applause..

But —as befits a conversation among long time friends - I’d rather be frank.

As we all know, the reason I’m here is because you are the most powerful lobby in Washington—the mightiest senators and congressmen live in terror of your disapproval. Your decision on who to support will be a key factor in the coming Presidential elections.

That power has brought you innumerable victories. Though Israel is one of the smallest nations, altogether since World War II it has received more foreign aid from the U.S. than any other country. Though we condemn Iran’s nuclear program, we still officially ignore the fact that Israel has had the bomb for more than 40 years.

Our leaders have gone along with the fiction that Israel is somehow a key strategic asset for the U.S. in the Middle East, when, in fact, the opposite is true. Our unwavering support of Israel has won us the hostility of the entire Arab and much of the Moslem world.

O.K. But that’s the past. Today the U.S. and Israel face huge new challenges in the Middle East. And I have decided that provoking your disapproval is a risk I must take…for the sake of America—as well as Israel..

We can no longer afford to confuse supporting the State of Israel, with supporting the policies of the leaders who control the Israeli government at a particular time. The interests of the two are not necessarily the same. Particularly when, in my view—and the view of many Israelis as well—those policies undermine the long-term security of the Israel.

As President of the United States, I was elected to serve the interests of all 300 million Americans——not a tiny minority, numbering just 2.2% of our population. Of course, we value your great contributions to all facets of our society and our culture, but that does translate into continuing to give AIPAC the right to call the shots on a key element of our Middle Eastern Policy.

Indeed, within the American Jewish community itself, there are new lobbying groups, such as JPAC, who are highly critical of Israel’s current leaders, and make it clear that AIPAC may not represent the consensus of American Jews.

As I have said, the government of Israel can no longer put off serious negotiations with the Palestinians. Population growth and the current uprisings sweeping the region are certain to work against Israel’s long-run security.

Unfortunately, Prime Minister Netanyahu, has made it more than clear that his government has no real interest in taking the steps needed to convince the Palestinians that negotiations would be worth their while. This is not just me saying this. The Prime Minister’s political opponents and important Israeli commentators are saying it as well.

Therefore, as President of the United States—of all Americans —I am today announcing a change in policy towards the Middle East. I have decided that we will no longer stand in the way of the Palestinian drive for a United Nations resolution next September to recognize the existence of a Palestinian State. I realize that resolution will not actually create a state —but it may be the best way to start the process going.

I am also calling once again on the government of Israel to cease the construction of illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank. I made that same request a few years ago, but backed down when Prime Minister Netanyahu refused. I was wrong to back down. It will not happen again.

The Israeli government charges that Hamas is a terrorist organization. It is, and we have labeled it as such. I call upon Hamas to reconsider its aims if it truly wants to achieve a settlement with Israel.

On the other hand, many violent groups once labeled terrorist organizations—such as the IRA --changed their tactics with the lure of peace negotiations. Indeed, at one time in their careers two of Israel’s most renowned leaders—Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir-- were condemned as terrorists themselves.

I realize this new policy may well subject me to a barrage of the most virulent political attacks--from right wing TV talk shows to lurid ads filling our media, to congressional resolutions. It will be charged that all along I—Barrack Hussein Obama-- have been secretly plotting with radical Islam to destroy Israel. And after Israel, the United States.

They will say of course, that I am anti-Semitic—a charge that is leveled these days against any prominent individual who criticizes the current government of Israel. An irony, since—as I’ve said--some of the strongest attacks on Israeli’s current policies come from Israeli Jewish commentators and politicians themselves.

I understand the emotional storm that is roiling this audience right now—I can hear the boos and catcalls. I can feel your enormous upset. But I ask you members of AIPAC --before you and your allies unleash an attack against me in the media and in the Congress and local communities across the country--I ask you, by unleashing such a massive campaign—if in the end, isn’t there a danger that such a massive campaign may demonstrate to the American people –to all the American people—exactly the point I have been making in this speech? That is-- the extent to which your lobby has distorted the workings of our democratic system.

In short, in the end, your attempt to defeat my desire to pursue a policy that is in the interests of all Americans—as well as the State of Israel-- could lead to your own downfall.

Think about it. And thanks for letting me talk.

Follow me on Twitter @barrylando

Whose War on Terror?

2011-05-19T07:25:00.000-07:00

At a time when the White House is spending hundreds of billions and has dispatched killer teams to liquidate Osama Bin Laden and lesser targets, imagine what the leaders of other countries might do if they were to declare their own War on Terror. Cuba, for instance. That question is provoked by a disturbing new documentary chronicling the past half century of Cuban-American relations and titled, “Will the Real Terrorist Please Stand up.”

Written and Directed by radical, Emmy-award-winning filmmaker Saul Landau, the report shies away from revolutionary cant and vague rhetoric. Instead, Landau backs up his case with research and interviews that, taken together, represent a damning indictment of U.S. policy. Most of the facts he cites are not news to those who have closely followed relations between Cuba and the U.S. since February, 1959 when Castro came to power. But the great majority of Americans have not paid attention. And most of what they have been told has been filtered through a Cold War prism that continues to warp U.S. -Cuban relations to this day.

Washington’s war against Castro began long before May 1961 when he declared himself a Marxist-Leninist. Indeed, almost from the time that Castro marched into Havana and made it clear his revolution was the real thing, American Presidents—Republican and Democrat--have attempted to combat and then overthrow his regime by every possible means, from an embargo that strangled the country’s economy, to allowing Cuban exiles operating from Florida to attack Cuba’s refineries, infrastructure, sugar cane fields, and assassinate government officials. Of course, there were also notorious attempts by the CIA to kill Fidel himself. And then came the disastrous Bay of Pig’s Invasion in 1961.

Incredibly, after Cuba charged—accurately—that the U.S. was behind the invasion, U.N. Ambassador, Adlai Stevenson, had the gall to “categorically” deny the allegation: “The United States has committed no offense against Cuba and no offensive action has been launched from Florida or any part of the United States”

As part of the agreement ending the Missile Crisis in the Fall of 1962, President Kennedy pledged that the U.S. would not invade Cuba, but the White House and the CIA continued to support the radical exile groups based in the U.S. intent on using terror and violence to topple Fidel.

According to Landau’s report, for instance, in October 1976, the CIA had information that one of the Cuban exiles linked to them was planning to plant a bomb on a Cuban airliner—but the U.S. never informed the Cuban government. All seventy-three passengers were killed. Altogether, the Cubans estimate that more than three thousand of their people have been died in such terrorist acts.

All this, of course, would have been immediately denounced and massively countered by the United States --if such a campaign had been waged against the U.S. or its allies by the likes of Iran, North Korea, Hamas--or Cuba.

On several occasions, Castro attempted to negotiate with the U.S. government. And there were Americans who argued for a change in policy. As John Burton, the former President of the California Senate put it, “We do business with all sorts of bad quote undemocratic countries without free elections, but we pick on Cuba because we can, because they're small because they're political benefit to doing it in Florida.”

Even after the end of the Cold War, millions of voters in Florida still view the struggle to bring down Castro as a holy crusade, which is the reason no American President—including Obama--has had the guts to change course. In effect, Florida is the only state with its own foreign policy. One of the best comparisons is the lock that the powerful pro-Israel lobby in the U.S. has had on America’s Mideast policy.

In the face of unrelenting attacks from U.S. territory, Castro’s government did what any government would have done: it dispatched intelligence agents to the U.S. to infiltrate radical exile Cuban groups and thwart their plans.

One of the groups they targeted was “Brothers to the Rescue”, flying small planes out of Florida to buzz Cuban cities, dropping anti-Castro leaflets and propaganda. According to Landau’s report, the group was also experimenting with weapons that could be fired from the air.

In 1996, Fidel Castro told visiting Bill Richardson, the former governor of New Mexico: “You’ve got to tell your government to get control of these people.” As Fidel declared, “What would the U.S. do to if the Cubans flew over Washington? How long would that plane last?” Richardson relayed the message to Morton Halperin point man for Cuba on Clinton’s National Security Council staff. Halperin said he would raise the issue with the FAA. The flights continued.

Again, a top Cuban official asked Saul Landau to alert Halperin that there would be drastic consequences if the U.S. didn’t stop the flights. According to Landau, Halperin indicated he would have the FAA cancel the licenses of the exile Cuban pilots. But the FAA didn’t. And on February 24,1996 Cuban Migs shot down two of three small Cessnas over international waters, killing their passengers. Clinton, who reportedly had been hoping to loosen American policy towards Cuba, instead was forced by political pressure to further tighten the embargo.

Radical Cuban exile groups also targeted Cuba’s vital tourist industry, warning potential visitors they would turn the island into a free-fire zone. They bombed several Havana hotels, injuring and killing the innocent.

According to Landau, in 1998 Fidel Castro gave a letter to Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez to transmit to President Clinton: to stop the violent exile groups, Cuba would be willing to cooperate with the FBI. An FBI team was dispatched to Havana and the Cubans supplied them with substantial information about exile terrorist activities.

Instead of dismantling those exile groups, the FBI used the information to discover the identities of the undercover agents in Florida working for the Cuban government. On September 12, 1998, five Cuban intelligence officers were arrested in Miami and charged with, among other things, conspiracy to commit espionage and murder. Among the allegations--they had giving the Cuban government the information needed to shoot down the “Brothers” illegal flights.

The Cubans denied that charge, but spent more than a year in solitary confinement and—most important—were denied a motion to move the trial from Dade County, an area seething with anti-Castro sentiment. They were found guilty and received maximum sentences; in the case of one of them, two life sentences without possibility of parole. Last October, the U.S. Supreme Court turned down their appeal to have the trial remanded for change of venue.

A couple of months later, on the other side of the world, a CIA contract operative, Raymond Davis, was arrested by Pakistani authorities after killing two men in Lahore, presumably part of America’s War on Terror. After a barrage of calls to Pakistani officials from the highest levels in the U.S. government and the payment of “blood money” to the murdered men’s relatives, Davis was quietly released to American authorities and spirited out of Pakistan.

Meanwhile, in Florida the most prominent of the radical Cuban exiles—those proudly linked to the campaign of terrorism against Castro’s Cuba--remain free and the toast of many inside and outside the exile community.

Osama Bin Laden-Everyone's Missing the Point

2011-05-02T06:22:00.000-07:00

A tale of two Arabs: Osama Bin Laden and Mohamed Bouaziziz

The jubilation of Americans and Western leaders at the death of Osama Bin Laden, though understandable, misses the point. In many ways, the figure gunned down in Pakistan was already irrelevant—more a symbol of past dangers than a real threat for the future.

Indeed, from the point of view of America and many of its allies, the most menacing symbol in the Arab World today is not Osama Bin Laden but another Arab who recently met a violent death--Mohamed Bouazizi, the 26-year-old Tunisian fruit vendor who chose to set himself on fire after being harassed by corrupt local police.

His act, of course, ignited the storm that has spread across the Arab World and proven a much more serious threat to America’s allies in the region than Al Qaeda ever was. Ironically, his sacrifice probably also dealt a far more devastating blow to Al Qaeda’s fortunes than the assassination of Osama Bin Laden.

The Arab world today bears no relationship to the situation a decade ago after 9/11. Obsessed by Bin Laden and Al Qaeda, the U.S. has been sucked into a vast quagmire--a disaster for the Americans, their economy, and their standing in the Arab World.

What particularly provoked Osama Bin Laden—a Saudi--was the decision of Saudi rulers to accept the presence of more than a hundred thousand “infidel” U.S. troops and their allies in Saudi Arabia following Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. In general, |he and his followers were outraged by U.S. support for corrupt, repressive regimes from Saudi Arabia, to Egypt to Yemen, as well, of course, for America’s backing of Israel.

As Osama himself told CNN in 1997, “the U.S. wants to occupy our countries, steal our resources, impose agents on us to rule us and then wants us to agree to all this, If we refuse to do so, it says we are terrorists…Wherever we look, we find the U.S. as the leader of terrorism and crime in the world.”

Bin Laden’s message reverberated throughout the Muslim world. But U.S. officials remained deaf to its meaning, and continued obsessed by Al Qaeda and its Taliban allies. The upshot--U.S. policy was the best recruiter Osama could have asked for. Over the past decade, hundreds of thousands of American soldiers, CIA killer teams, mercenaries, predators and, and “diplomats” swarmed across the region from Iraq, to Afghanistan to Pakistan to Yemen and Somalia, supported by sprawling new bases and pharaonic embassies.

The bill for all this—for an America crippling cutbacks in health, infra-structure. and education-- will be in the trillions of dollars. But despite this massive effort, none of those targeted Arab countries could by any stretch of the imagination be considered a success story. Hostility to the U.S. is high throughout the region. In polls, the majority of those Arabs queried consider the United States a greater threat than Al Qaeda.

In Pakistan, despite the U.S. lavishing tens of billions of dollars on that country’s military, it turns out that, Osama Bin Laden, rather than groveling as an outlaw in the isolated tribal regions, has been living in a fortified villa near the country’s major military academy and a large army base, just a few miles away from the capital city.

America had also launched an ambitious civilian aid program: 7.5 billion dollar over five years, designed to win Pakistani hearts and minds and bolster the civilian government. But, corruption is so rife throughout the Pakistani government, and its officials so incompetent, that the U.S. has been unable to disburse most of the aid. As the New York Times reports,

Instead of polishing the tarnished image of America with a suspicious, even hostile, Pakistani public and government, the plan has resulted in bitterness and a sense of broken promises…

The economy is failing. Education, health care and other services are almost nonexistent, while civilian leaders from the landed and industrialist classes pay hardly any taxes.

Pakistanis see the aid as a crude attempt to buy friendship and an effort to alleviate antipathy toward United States drone attacks against militants in the tribal areas.

The same reports come from Afghanistan. A decade after the U.S. invaded, tens of thousands of American troops are still fighting what seems to be, at best, a see–saw battle against the Taliban. There also, according to another report in the New York Times, the U.S. is backing incompetent, corrupt, unpopular leaders. Millions of dollars of U.S. funds actually get diverted as payoffs to the Taliban and their allies—bribing them not to attack U.S. projects, such as $65 million highway that may never be completed in Eastern Afghanistan.

The vast expenses and unsavory alliances surrounding the highway have become a parable of the corruption and mismanagement that turns so many well-intended development efforts in Afghanistan into sinkholes for the money of American taxpayers, even nine years into the war.

Now back to Mohamed Bouazizi the Tunisian fruit vendor, whose death unleashed the Arab Spring that is still roiling the region,

Though Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda have yet to be credited with overthrowing an Arab regime, the spark provided by Bouazizi has already led to the downfall of American-backed tyrants in Tunisia and Egypt, and continues to threaten other despots in Libya, Yemen, Syria and Bahrain.

Ironically, most of the leaders overthrown or desperately trying to hang on to power, had declared themselves implacable enemies of Al Qaeda. Yet, again, it was not Bin Laden but Bouazizi that turned out to be a far greater menace.

Precisely for that reason, it is Mohamed Bouazizi’s Arab Spring, not sophisticated U.S. killer teams, that most threaten Al Qaeda and its allies. By demonstrating that secular uprisings can succeed in toppling the aged, crusty tyrannies, young Arabs across the region have—so far--undercut the appeal of the Islamic radicals.

So far, because despite the early successes in Tunisia and Egypt, the future of the Arab Spring is far from clear. The current process will take decades to play out. The political and economic establishments have been decapitated in Egypt and Tunisia, but not decimated. In the rest of the region, though seriously shaken, the old order still reign supreme.

The same corrupt Saudi regime that fueled Bin Laden’s outrage is still in power, still backed by the United States. Indeed, they have been doing their utmost to tamp the spreading revolt, spending millions to bribe Yemen’s tribal leaders, dispatching their troops to Bahrain to help crush the uprising of the Shiite majority in that country.

Indeed, that brutal repression may radicalize thousands of young Shiites, generating hosts of new recruits for Al Qaeda or other extremists Islamic groups—even as the corpse of Osama Bin Laden lies somewhere at the bottom of the sea.

A Tale of Two Hospitals: Kuwait 1991, Bahrain 2011

2011-04-22T07:50:00.001-07:00

Scene: The Human Rights caucus of the U.S. Congress hears the testimony of a fifteen-year old girl, introduced by only her first name Nayira, in order, the audience is told, to protect the safety of her family. The young girl recounts how invading soldiers had stormed into the hospital where she says she had been working as a volunteer. Tearfully, she describes how rampaging soldiers had trashed the hospital, brutalized patients, gone “into rooms where fifteen babies were in incubators. They tore the babies out of the incubators, took the incubators, and left the babies on the floor to die.”

That story is flashed around the world by a horrified media. “I don’t believe that Adolph Hitler ever participated in anything of that nature,” declares the outraged American President.

If anything justified the U.S. going to war against Saddam in 1991 to a wavering Congress and American public, that performance was it.

The problem was that the story was not true. Kuwaiti medical authorities denied that the incubator incident had ever occurred. It was only after the end of the Gulf War, however, that the deception was finally revealed. It was a total fabrication, right out of the fertile, high-priced imagination of Hill and Nolton, the Kuwaiti ruling family’s Washington P.R. firm. Nayira, the tearful fifteen-year-old girl who had so convincingly recounted the atrocity, turned out to the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States; she had never been in Kuwait after the Iraqi invasion. By the time that was discovered, however, the U.S.-led coalition had charged in and the Kuwaiti royal family was securely back on its throne, and the folks at Hill and Knolton had earned their pay.

Scene two: Police swarm through the wards of another major Arab hospital. At least 32 doctors, including surgeons, physicians, pediatricians and obstetricians, are arrested and detained. Their apparent crimes, guaranteeing medical care to people wounded in a popular uprising against an aged, corrupt dictator.

According to emails received from a surgeon at the hospital and published by The Independent, “One doctor, an intensive care specialist, was held after she was photographed weeping over a dead protester. Another was arrested in the theatre room while operating on a patient...many of the doctors, aged from 33 to 65, have been ‘disappeared’ – held incommunicado or at undisclosed locations. Their families do not know where they are. Nurses, paramedics, and ambulance staff have also been detained. The emails provide a glimpse of the terror and exhaustion suffered by the doctors and medical staff.

‘The author of the emails, a senior surgeon, was taken in for questioning at the headquarters of the interior ministry. He never re-emerged. No reason has been given for his arrest, nor has there been any news of his condition.”

A hospital in Libya? In battered Misurata, perhaps? Where President Obama has ordered a couple of Predator drones to join in the flailing struggle against the barbarous Muammar Gadhafi, where Senator John McCain jetted in himself for a quick look-see and instantly declared the rebels—my heroes. Libya, where France and England have dispatched an unknown number of military trainers to see if they can whip the hapless, squabbling rebels into shape?

No,that hospital is not in Libya but in Bahrain: the Salmaniya Medical Complex, the tiny state’s main civil hospital. And, of course, the more than one thousand heavily armed invading troops who are backing the local police terrorizing the hospital, “disappearing” doctors, and brutally crushing the local uprising are Saudis.

The same Saudis who gave the U.S. and Nato the green light to intervene to save the largely Sunni rebels in Libya. In exchange for which America discretely turned its back as the Saudis invaded Bahrain to prevent a Shiite majority there from toppling a repressive Sunni monarch. God only knows what the experience will do to radicalize tens perhaps hundreds of thousands of Shiites.

But true to its promise, America’s back remains turned.

A footnote: Such smarmy diplomatic trade-offs are not at all unique. In 1991, for instance, the U.S. and its coalition allies were also looking for Arab “cover” for their move into Kuwait. In exchange for agreeing to back the invasion, Syria was given—among other things--a free hand to take control of most of Lebanon. The European Community also lifted economic sanctions it had imposed against Syria, while Britain restored diplomatic relations. In the end it was all symbolic: none of the 18,000 Syrian troops who joined the coalition forces in Saudi Arabia ever fought. [See Barry Lando Web of Deceit, (Other Press, New York.2006) pp. 140-141]

Secret History of the "Arab Spring" Chapter 7

2011-04-07T10:11:00.000-07:00

Recruits for Al Qaeda

Since 9/11 the overriding concern of U.S. policy across the Middle East and Central Asia has been to defeat Al Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups. Hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent on that obsession. Yet when the secret history of the current “Arab Spring” is written, we may learn that one of the many unintended consequences of U.S. attempts to keep up with—and influence--the historic events, was to provide a flood of new recruits to radical Islam.

The immediate cause: Saudi intervention in Bahrain.

While America and its allies have launched a military effort to protect the rebels in Libya, America has voiced only muted protests as its major Arab ally in the region, Saudi Arabia, crushes the rebels in Bahrain—with what could be ruinous reverberations for all concerned.

The rebels in Bahrain are predominately Shiites—who have long chafed under minority Sunnite rule. Riding a mounting wave of popular protests, the Shiites seemed to be on the road to forcing the government in Manama to accept at least some of their demands.

With the Fifth Fleet based in Bahrain, U.S. officials have also been concerned about the unrest. But their attempts to encourage the government to meet some basic demands for change failed. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates, visiting Manama on 12 March, criticized the regime for its “baby steps” toward reform.

Meanwhile King Abdullah in neighboring Saudi Arabia looked on with horror as the Arab Spring came sweeping towards him. The Saudis (Sunnis) have their own restive Shiite minority. The King was also concerned that a Shiite breakthrough in Bahrain would strengthen Iran’s sway in the region.

Even more alarming for Abdullah--the alacrity with which Obama turned his back on one-time dictator allies. America’s unceremonious dumping of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak was a shocking harbinger. Could Washington’s remaining key Arab ally be next?

Thus, on March 14^th the Saudis (along with their Gulf allies ) finally acted--dispatching a thousand troops along with tanks and armored vehicles across the causeway that separates them from Bahrain-to help brutally stifle the revolt.

In the process, the Saudi king reportedly ignored a specific request from Obama to stay out. The Hell with the duplicitous Americans! He’d had enough of following Washington’s lead. The Americans were shocked and humiliated. Relations between the two governments are supposedly at a nadir.

That’s the official version. But when the history of these events is written, I imagine the real facts will tell a more Machiavellian tale: that the U.S. in fact gave a tacit go ahead to the Saudis to act—with disastrous results.

There have been some unconfirmed reports to that effect, and they make sense. There was a trade off: Libya for Bahrain. Without the Saudis, the U.S. could never have convinced the Arab League to ask for the creation of a no-fly zone over Libya. And without that Arab League resolution, the intervention in Libya would never have occurred. The Saudis and their Gulf partners are also taking part to some extent in that intervention, to provide at least a façade of Arab participation.

In return, U.S. officials have been very muted in any criticism of the brutal crack-down in Bahrain—a country much more vital to Saudi interests, than is Libya.

And brutal it has been: Backed up by the Saudis, Bahraini security forces and pro-regime thugs armed with swords and clubs attacked demonstrators throughout the kingdom. Human rights activists have reported that a total of 26 people have been killed, 300 have been imprisoned, and at least 35 people are missing in the three weeks since the crackdown began in earnest.

Yet scarcely a peep out of Washington.

O.K. you say, what’s wrong with the U.S. trading Bahrain for Libya. It’s realpolitik, right out of the Henry Kissinger playbook.

Except that the consequences of that Saudi intervention may prove much more disastrous to Western (and Saudi) interests than any possible positive fall-out from the adventure in Libya.

That according to a study just issued by the International Crisis Group. What has happened, says the report, is that that from those hundreds of thousands of largely peaceful Shiite protestors in Bahrain, who had thought they could achieve change through peaceful protests--as the Americans have been advocating--that many of those thwarted, bloodied protestors may now turn to violence—exactly as Al Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups have been preaching.

As the report puts it, “Manama’s crackdown and Saudi Arabia’s military intervention are dangerous moves that could stamp out hopes for peaceful transition in Bahrain and turn a mass movement for democratic reform into an armed conflict, while regionalizing an internal political struggle. They could also exacerbate sectarian tensions not only in Bahrain or the Gulf but across the region.

“Along with other member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), Saudi Arabia purportedly is responding to dual fears: that the takeover would be tantamount to an Iranian one. Both are largely unfounded. It also is concerned protests might inspire similar movements among its own Eastern Province Shiites, oblivious that its involvement is likelier to provoke than deter them.

“Bahrain’s brutal crackdown and Saudi interference fan flames both want to extinguish. The most effective response to the radical regime change threat or greater Iranian influence is not violent suppression of peaceful protests but political reform. Time is running short and trends are in the wrong direction.”

“In short, the intervention likely achieved precisely the opposite of what it intended.”

Over the years, throughout the region, from Egypt to Yemen to Saudi Arabia, such repression and subsequent radicalization has been a vital source of recruits for Al Qaeda.

Yet, on his latest visit to Saudi Arabia, Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense of what is still billed as the most powerful nation on the planet, Robert Gates reportedly didn’t even dare raise the issue of Bahrain issue King Abdullah.

Just imagine having to face the monarch’s wrath!

Secret History of the Libyan Uprising

2011-04-04T03:49:00.000-07:00

The secret history of the Libyan Uprising (what you’re probably going to read some day)

U.N. resolution 1973 authorizes action to create a no-fly zone in Libya. It does not authorize the use of foreign troops on the ground.

President Obama seemed to accept that limitation when he made his famous “no U.S. boots on the ground” declaration--a statement that has been repeated by every U.S. spokesman since.

Since Obama’s declaration however, we have learned that, in fact, for several weeks CIA operatives have been active in Libya, supposedly to find targets for the missile and rocket attacks of the U.S. and its allies, as well as to get some idea of who the opposition is that Obama and Sarkozy et al have chosen to support.

The joke was those CIA types are not wearing boots, but sneakers.

O.K. but now we learn, via Al Jazeera English, that there is a secret training site in Eastern Libya where U.S. and Egyptian Special Forces are giving basic weapons training to selected rebels. Those rebels are also now receiving more sophisticated weapons.

You can be sure those U.S. advisers are wearing boots. 0

That report was long expected. For when the secret history of this current struggle is written (there are already several books in the works), we will almost certainly learn that, despite Obama’s public protestations, he was advised prior to launching his Libyan adventure that U.S. “advisors” would more than likely also be needed.

Revelations will probably also make it clear that President Obama was also advised that those U.S. advisors could not just be limited to instructing the rebels how to fire their weapons, but would also have to train them, give them basic military skills. And it probably wouldn’t stop there.

Those advisors are likely also—behind the scenes—already filling key command roles: advising the rebels when and how to advance—either directly or in liaison with special forces from other countries with boots on the ground in Libya--everyone doing their best to maintain the fiction that those “advisors” aren’t there. And that the rebels are calling their own shots.

For those American spooks and troops are not alone

According to other reports, special “Smash Squads” from Britain’s famed SAS have also been on the ground in Libya for several weeks now pursuing similar missions.

Perhaps they’re the same SAS teams who Britain supposedly dispatched to train Khadaffi’s Special Forces a year or so back —part of the warming of relations between the two countries.

And considering the determination of France’s President Sarkozy to push for the original attacks, reports that elite French troops are also on the ground in Libya are almost certainly true as well.

The above would mesh with an unconfirmed report from a Pakistani newspaper claiming that:

“According to an exclusive report confirmed by a Libyan diplomat in the region “the three Western states have landed their “special forces troops in Cyrinacia and are now setting up their bases and training centres” to reinforce the rebel forces who are resisting pro-Qaddafi forces in several adjoining areas.

A Libyan official who requested not to be identified said that the U.S. and British military gurus were sent on February 23 and 24 night through American and French warships and small naval boats off Libyan ports of Benghazi and Tobruk.”

Which brings us to the declaration of an American military official briefing the press. When he was asked, whether the coalition forces communicate with the rebels in Libya, he said, no. “Regarding coordination with rebel forces, nothing. Our mission is to protect civilians,” said the official. “It’s not about the rebels, this is about protection of civilians,” he added.

Libya and the Danger of Universal Principles

2011-03-19T09:32:00.000-07:00

There’s a problem when world leaders announce fervid support for universal principals: there is no way those high-flying words are not going to be flung back at them at some another time, during some other crisis. When they will have no choice but to lie or duck and scamper for cover.

Case in point: At the Elysees Palace in Paris today, President Nicholas Sarkozy’s declaration after France, the U.S. and several European and Arab states met to work out the mechanics of the no-fly zone over Libya.

France and its partners are acting, Sarkozy declared, to support the legitimate democratic aspirations of the Libyan people--unarmed civilians who have risen up to overthrow a detested dictatorship. There is no way the international community could stand by and watch innocent civilians be slaughtered. This was the same justification cited by President Obama the day before after the U.N. Security Council vote.

Sarkozy took no questions after his statement. Nor did Obama. For good reason.

-Questions such as—Mr. President, how do you justify intervening in Libya to prevent the bloody repression of a popular uprising, when we watch as your good allies, the Saudis--move their forces into Bahrain to quash a popular uprising in that country (where U.S. warships are permanently based.)?

-Or, Mr. President, do you have anything concrete to say about plans for U.N. intervention in Yemen, where more than 50 demonstrators were shot down in cold blood, by snipers dressed as civilians, but apparently carrying military I.D.?

-Or, President Sarkozy, does your declaration mean that France is now going to move militarily in your former colony, the Cote D’Ivoire, where your foreign minister has just condemned “a deliberate massacre of civilians” by the forces of President Laurent Gbagbo, the after another bombardment killed almost thirty in Abidjan. Gbagbo’s refusal to cede power after losing an election has resulted in the deaths of thousands. So , Mr. President??

-And, while we’re at it, Mr. President, what should the U.N. or your allies do if the people of Zimbabwe rise up? Or the folks in Shanghai?

Our leaders’ dilemma is made much worse by technology.

There was a time, before the Internet and mobile phones, before satellites, and 24/7 television, when events took time—sometimes weeks or months--to unfold, When negotiations—say, between rebels in America and the British Crown, transpired with the stately speed of a sailing ship, when word of massacres and revolts could be written off as rumor, repressed for months or be buried for ever.

No longer.

Now events move at the speed of the Internet. Once isolated villages in Tunisia and Yemen and the Northeastern coast of Japan are all part of the global village. Billions across the planet can both report and witness. Ambassadors become figures of ceremony, looking on with the rest of us as world leaders, who once had days or weeks to ponder their communications, now address each other directly, responding almost instantly—blustering, menacing--with no time for thought or reflection. Bouncing off each other like billiard balls.

The result also is that the duplicity that underlies what we call “affairs of state,” --the hypocrisy and cynicism that used to be veiled by vague declarations, by time and distance—that deception becomes ever more blatant.

Such as the Orwellian exchange recently on Al Jazzeera English--when a representative of the Iranian government excoriated a Saudi official for using its army to repress the popular democratic uprising in Bahrain. And the Iranian did it with a straight face, mind you.

On the other hand, the leaders of the United Arab Emirates have managed a bow to all sides:
They are participating in the Saudi-led repression in Bahrain. But their Minister of Foreign Affairs, H.H Sheikh Abdullah Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, also showed up today in Paris to announce UAE backing for the no-fly zone and the rescue of the democratic uprising in Libya.

Being an accomplished statesmen, I imagine the good sheikh made that statement with a straight face, as well.

Libya 2011-Iraq 1991

2011-03-03T06:40:00.000-08:00

Rebels rise up to overthrow a bloody dictator and the world looks on as the revolt turns into a stand-off. Libya in 2011 is a distant echo of Iraq in 1991, when Iraqi Shiites and Kurds erupted after U.S. forces defeated the Saddam’s military after Iraq invaded Kuwait.

That led to one of the more shameful episodes in America’s dealings with Iraq: an American president calling for an uprising, then turning his back, leaving tens, possibly hundreds of thousands to be slaughtered. I recounted that sorry affair in a documentary about “The Trial of Saddam Hussein”,excerpted on Youtube. See part5 and part 6.

In fact, it was President George H.W. Bush who, in February 2001, as the Iraqi army was being driven from Kuwait, called on the people of Iraq to rise up and overthrow Saddam Hussein.

That call was rebroadcast in Iraq by clandestine CIA radio stations and printed in millions of leaflets dropped by the U.S. Air Force across the country. Problem was, the Iraqis didn't realize until it was too late that Bush and James Baker, his pragmatic secretary of state, didn't really mean it.

When it looked as if the insurgents might actually succeed, the American president turned his back. The White House and its allies wanted Saddam replaced not by a popular revolt which they couldn't control but by a military leader more amenable to U.S. interests. They were also fearful that Iranian influence might spread in the wake of a Shiite takeover. In fact, however, American officials refused to meet with rebel leaders desperate to explain their cause.

Though Washington explained later explained they had turned against the uprising because key Arab allies in the region, like the Saudis, were fearful of a Shiite victory in Iraq, in fact, the U.S. later turned down a Saudi proposal to continue aiding the Shiites.

So, as the United States permitted Saddam's attack helicopters to devastate the rebels, American troops just a few kilometers away from the slaughter were ordered to give no aid to those under attack. Instead they destroyed huge stocks of captured weapons rather than let them fall into rebel hands. According to some of the former rebels in Iraq, American troops prevented them from marching on Baghdad.

Then, as Saddam's forces began carrying out the horrific acts of repression, American forces were ordered to withdraw from Iraq. And all the while George H.W. Bush answered calls for the U.S. to act with denials that the U.S. had any responsibility in fomenting the rebellion in the first place.

In the end he agreed to provide a no-fly zone to protect the Kurds in the North, but that was only because the plight of the Kurdish refugees was being dramatically broadcast around the globe by CNN. Bush had no choice. There was no such TV coverage of the slaughter of the Shiites in the South. So no need for Bush to react.

(The description of the U.S. role in the 1991 uprising is recounted at length in my book Web of Deceit-a History of Western Complicity in Iraq from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush--and (as mentioned above) in video form, from a segment of a documentary I did on the Trial of Saddam Hussein, which is posted on Youtube )

Egypt and Iran: A tale of 2 Revolutions

2011-02-16T16:40:00.000-08:00

Egypt in February 2011 is not Iran January 1979. And those darkly predicting that Egypt’s revolution is fated to turn into another Islamic dictatorship are ignoring the many stark differences between the two situations. But as Egypt enters an unknown course, I am reminded of the fate of Sadegh Ghotzbadeh, once Iran’s Foreign Minister, ultimately destroyed by the man and movement he devoted his life to bring to power.

I first met him in October 1976 in Paris when I was a producer at 60 Minutes, teamed up with Mike Wallace. I was investigating the activities outside Iraq of the Shah’s feared secret police, the Savak. The most remarkable story came from Ghotzbadeh, then a 37 year-old Iranian dissident, active with one of the many exile groups in the French capital. A handsome, impeccably dressed Iranian, he spoke fluent English and French and had been working against the Shah since his university days in the United States. He introduced us to a stocky 67 year-old Armenian by the name of Jules Khan Pira—his would-be assassin.

In heavily accented French, Khan Pira recounted how, under threat of a complex blackmail scheme by the Savak, he had been ordered to assassinate several opposition leaders. At the top of the list was Zadegh Ghotbzadeh.

This led the to one of the most unlikely interviews we had ever filmed: a large suite at the George V, a dapper Ghotzbadeh, in dark blazer and tie, sitting next to him, the shabbily dressed Khan Pira, the two revolvers that Khan Pira said he had received from the Savak agent, sitting on a table between them.

Improbable as it seemed, Khan Pira's tale checked out both in France and the U.S. But what is most revealing in retrospect is that nowhere in the 60 Minutes report did we feel the need to mention specifically what Ghotbzadeh was up to in Paris. He was the major representative in Western Europe and America of an elderly, bearded, Iranian cleric, who was then exiled in Iraq and hardly known in the West, the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. At the time, in fact, Khomeini seemed to be a very discardable footnote to our story.

Over the next few months, however Ghotzbadeh, with the fervor of the true believer, continued to provide me the latest printed petitions and protests from the Iranian opposition, condemning this or that brutal aspect of the Shah's regime and calling on a highly indifferent world to take action.

Most intriguing of all to me was the key role that Moslem clerics, and their leaders, such as Khomeini, were playing in all of this, even from exile. There was an underground network among the theological centers of learning and the mosques across Iran. There were clandestine newspapers and an elaborate system of circulating Khomeini's revolutionary speeches via audio cassettes throughout the country. Very little of this had been noticed by the Western press.

Which was the major reason I was unable to convince 60 Minutes to do a report. Finally, in October 1978, with introductions arranged by Ghotzbadeh, I flew to Teheran and was plugged into the clandestine network of the Islamic movement. They were a curious mixture of professors and students or all ages, of Muslim clerics from ragged villages in the countryside to the Holy City of Qom, of wealthy shop keepers from Teheran's sprawling Bazaar, of middle class professionals. Many of them, like Ghotzbadeh, had been educated in the U.S. or Western Europe.

I was impressed by their fervor, but also by the fact that, when pressed , none seemed to be able to define precisely what an Islamic Revolution was all about. One evening I met with a group of about ten young men and women in Tehran , many of them university students and teachers. After a lengthy discussion of the on-going revolt, I suddenly asked what an Islamic government would actually look like. Well, for one thing, said one young man in a dark turtleneck. “Women would have to cover their hair.” The women in the room seemed to agree.

“But what if a woman didn’t want to cover her hair?” I asked.

“Then her brother or her husband would take her aside and try to convince her, ” said another man, with a soft smile.

“And what if she still didn’t want to?”
“We would keep trying to convince her,” said the man, still smiling.

“And, if after all that, she finally still refused?

“That would be her right,” said one of the women.

“No, said a man, “in that case, she would not be allowed to go out.”

“And if she still insisted?”

“We might have to put her in prison.” said the man in the turtleneck. His words seemed to surprise several in the room.

“For now such questions are secondary,” one of the teachers said. “The immediate work at hand is to bring down the Shah. Defining the new government will come later through democratic elections.”

The revolution was now gaining momentum, with weekly marches and weekly martyrs. The Shah seemed totally unable to deal with the situation Back in Paris, Ghotzbadeh, told me he was heading to Iraq to see Khomeini. "Look," I said, "if I can get you a small film camera would you take pictures of him for us?” He was delighted with the idea, he said, since it would also give him a chance to get some film footage of Khomeini to circulate in Iran for his own purposes. Up till then, he had none.

But events were moving too fast. The French government, always attuned to the changing political winds, yielded to Ghozbadeh’s entreaties and allowed Khomeini to come to Paris.

By December 1978, it was obvious that the Shah was out. Ghotzbadeh was exultant as we entered a fine restaurant for lunch in Paris. He was immediately recognized by the maitre de, escorted to the best table. The 39-year-old dissident, who for years had travelled about from one Western capital to another, staying in shabby hotels, attempting to interest reporters and politicians with his apparently forlorn cause, representing an Iranian cleric none had even heard of, was now appearing on everyone's TV screen. He was one of the key spokesmen for the bearded Ayatollah, whose image was now recognized around the world. They were on the brink of power. The Shah's rapid collapse had amazed everyone, including the opposition.

In a few days they would fly to Teheran, Ghotbzadeh told me with supreme confidence. Khomeini would be their spiritual leader, but the real source of government, he assured me, would be Western-educated reformers like himself.

I raised the question of the world’s great revolutions and how they all seemed to follow the same dynamic--from the French to the American to the Russian-- how they all seemed to arrive at some Terror, how they devoured their young before they subsided and the political pendulum gradually swung back to centre. How will you avoid being devoured? I asked Ghotbzbadeh , only half in jest. "Don't worry,” he said. “We know what we're doing."

That's, of course, not the way it worked out. The revolution became increasingly chaotic, increasingly radicalized, as competing parties and factions struggled violently for power, particularly after the American hostages were taken. Zadegh manoeuvred desperately trying to stay on the political tightrope—head of Iranian TV, ultimately Foreign Minister.

He helped us get an exclusive interview with Khomeini after the hostages were taken. Nine months later, in December 1980, with the hostages still being held, we returned to Iran. War had broken out with Iraq after Saddam invaded, quietly encouraged by the United States.

We interviewed Iranian President Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, an economist turned President, and totally out of his element. The war had even further radicalized politics in Iran and Bani-Sadr had become a virtual prisoner in his own presidential palace. The Imam Khomeini had thrown in his lot with the Islamic radicals. The Western educated revolutionaries like Bani-Sadr and Sadegh Ghotbzadeh had been thrust to the side.

In a Kafkaesque interview, Bani-Sadr talked frankly of the mounting wave of torture and repression under what in theory was his own government. He condemned the road the revolution seemed to be taking. Shortly afterwards he fled Iran for his life to become an exile in Paris.

Zadegh Ghotzbadeh chose a different fate. A few months before our visit he had been thrown in prison, charged with conspiring against the regime. It was only Khomeini's personal intervention that saved him. Ghotzbadeh was released, and ordered by the Imam to go home, stay there and stop his plotting.

Our last evening in Teheran in December 1980, Mike and I went over to Ghotbzadeh's spacious residence. He greeted us with a wan smile. He was blunt in his criticism of Khomeini and the way in which the Revolution had been perverted from the goals that Western-educated Iranians had hoped it would take. "The Imam," said Ghotzbadeh, "had promised us before the Shah fell that, once the Revolution had won, he would go back to the Holy City of Qom and give us occasional spiritual guidance. But the real job of government would be left to us. But he misled us. Once he tasted power, he liked it. We were betrayed."

It was obvious Ghotzbadeh was ignoring Khomeini’s stern warning to stop conspiring. Several people were there, some of them mullahs, others with the bearing of military officers. They talked softly in small groups. Occasionally one came over to speak in Farsi with Ghotzbadeh. Yet Sadegh was still optimistic about the future, he said as we left. It was after midnight. The others remained.

Ghotzbadeh was rearrested a few months later and charged with attempting to overthrow the Islamic government in order to establish a secular republic. Though at his trial he denied the accusation, he was also charged with planning to assassinate the Imam Khomeini, the man he helped bring to power.

On September 21, 1982, at Teheran's infamous Evin Prison, Zadegh Ghotzbadeh was placed before a wall and executed, shot through the neck.

Mubarak out--so many other countries to go

2011-02-11T09:21:00.000-08:00

From the New York Post January 21
Saudi King Abdullah and his enormous retinue needed "at least a dozen" tractor-trailers to load their mountain of luggage and an army of outside contractors to do security screening before he could fly out of JFK last week. A source told us, "The amount of luggage they had from shopping they did in New York was awe-inspiring. Airport workers joked they must have been 'a mini-stimulus package' for the city." The king, 87 -- who was in town for two months for back surgery and booked whole floors of the Plaza and Waldorf-Astoria to recover -- and his entourage left on more than six private jets. Sources said he flew out on his own Boeing 747 while two wives left on smaller jets. One source said, "There were separate jets for wife No. 1 and wife No. 2 and their own retinues. The entourage was so large that the Transportation Security Administration was forced to hire an outside company to complete the screening."

Kissinger on Egypt: Give us a break, Henry

2011-02-07T06:46:00.000-08:00

Always comforting to have Henry Kissinger around to advise the current U.S. administration what to do. His latest advice to Obama re Egypt: slow down, take things easier, don’t rush Egypt’s sensitive leaders.

"We should be looking at a democratic evolution," said Kissinger. But he warned the U.S. should cultivate key democratic reformists and military leaders in a low-key fashion during the process. "It should not look like an American project. The Egyptians are a proud people. They threw out the British and they threw out the Russians."

On the other hand, when thin-skinned right wing dictators in Argentina, Chile and Uruguay were disappearing “democratic reformists” by the thousands in 1976, Henry Kissinger, then Secretary of State—not having to worry about lurid accounts of torture on Twitter and Facebook and Al Jazeera-- advised South American generals to get on with their grisly task so as not to provoke censure from a U.S. Congress beginning to waken to the on-going slaughter. Or, as Kissinger put it to Argentine Foreign Minister Admiral Cesar August Guzzetti, in June 1976, "If there are things that have to be done, you should do them quickly. But you should get back quickly to normal procedures."

The things to be done were no secret: human rights organizations and State Department memorandum supplied all necessary details. In Argentina alone more than 10,000 people had been “disappeared” by the end of 1976. But, in the name of fighting the Cold War, those messy kinds of things had to be done said the Generals and their apologists—Kissinger included.

Ironically, for the past thirty years, Hosni Mubarak and his apologists have justified his brutal repression in similar terms. Some are still doing it. It’s just the name of the bogeyman that’s changed: from Communism to Radical Islam aka the Moslem Brotherhood—from Fidel Castro’s revolutionary virus to Osama Bin Laden’s Al Qaeda. The fact that Al Qaeda’s leaders have condemned the Moslem Brotherhood for its willingness to participate in Egyptian politics is a detail.

The parallels between Egypt and the trio of South American military dictators is striking. According to the State Department memo on the June 10 meeting between Kissinger and Admiral Guzzetti, obtained by the National Security Archives, the Argentine told Kissinger, "Our main problem in Argentina is terrorism. It is the first priority of the current government that took office on March 24. There are two aspects to the solution. The first is to ensure the internal security of the country; the second is to solve the most urgent economic problems over the coming 6 to 12 months. Argentina needs United States understanding and support…."

The NSA analysis of that memo continued, “This at a time when the international community, the U.S. media, universities, and scientific institutions, the U.S. Congress, and even the U.S. Embassy in Argentina were clamoring about the indiscriminate human rights violations against scientists, labor leaders, students, and politicians by the Argentine military, Secretary Kissinger told Guzzetti: "We are aware you are in a difficult period. It is a curious time, when political, criminal, and terrorist activities tend to merge without any clear separation. We understand you must establish authority."

The U.S. Ambassador had earlier protested to the Argentina government about the disappearance and torture of human rights workers, including American citizens. Kissinger, however, told Guzzetti, “In the United States we have strong domestic pressures to do something on human rights… We want you to succeed. We do not want to harrass [sic] you. I will do what I can…."

One could almost hear an American official today—sotto voce—giving similar advice to Egypt’s new Vice-President General Omar Suleiman, the man, let’s not forget, who for the past eight years headed up the feared Intelligence Directorate —infamous for systematic brutality, torture and disappearances; so skilled at their work that it was Suleiman and his uniformed thugs who were frequently used by the CIA’s rendition program.

All of a sudden though, Suleiman with his impeccable dark suit and tie and unflappable demeanor—is now not only the go-to man for torture but also, the go-to man to engineer “a transition to democracy.”

Not too fast a transition though, and certainly not too democratic.

Just as Henry the K. would advise.

The Egytian Army: The Big Unknown (Updated)

2011-02-04T00:30:00.000-08:00

The Egyptian Army: Question Marks

In attempting to convince Mubarak to leave the scene, Washington desperately wants to avoid further radicalization on the streets of Egypt and, above all, to ensure that the Egyptian Army remains unscathed. That interest, of course, coincides with the aim of Egypt’s top brass.

The generals are intent on continuing to exercise power behind the scenes—as they have for decades.

The announcement that the Army would refuse to take up arms against the people was part of that game plan. It undercut Mubarak and prevented him from attempting a bloody showdown that could have been disastrous—for the people, and the army. In fact, the Egyptian military made that same announcement in 1977 when they were called in to quell riots after President Sadat announced cuts in basic food subsidies. The Army refused to intervene unless the subsidies were reestablished. Sadat restored the subsidies.

That doesn’t mean that the Army would be willing to step aside for whatever the will of the people turns out to be. But, if they could be assured that they could remain the nation’s guardian, as in Turkey, for instance, what are the political limits the Army would accept?

Of course, the Army is not monolithic. Its ranks are filled with hundreds of thousands of conscripts, drawn from the most humble levels of society. It has traditionally been the most important means of socializing the lower classes, inculcating them with a sense of pride and patriotism. Indeed the 1971 Constitution says that the Egyptian Army shall “belong to the people This sentiment was made dramatically clear by the iconic images of soldiers shaking hands and embracing the demonstrators, even allowing them to paint slogans on their battle tanks.

How then explain the fact that on Wednesday, February 2 in Cairo, organized bands of armed thugs were reportedly allowed to pass through military checkpoints to attack the anti-Mubarak crowds, while the military stood aside, and watched.

That tactic makes eminent sense from the point of view of generals determined to keep themselves from the abyss. Now that Mubarak has said he won’t run for another term, the generals would like the people to return obediently to their homes. The military will oversee things now, thanks. Only the people won’t go. They don’t trust Mubarak. But, since the army doesn’t want to endanger its own future by using bloody force at this point, let others do the dirty work. The military will keep its hands clean, and pretend it has no responsibility for the bloodshed.

So far, the tactic didn’t work: the people refused to back down.

The top military ranks have concerns other than just protecting their own institution. They’re also worried about their own skins. They can never forget the lurid spectacle of Iranian generals being executed in the aftermath of Khomeini’s revolution in Iran. Iran also demonstrated that a radical revolution also means a radically transformed military, with the traditional army shunted aside. (Egypt’s generals have a constant reminder of that lesson nearby: The Shah is buried in a Cairo mosque.).

Under Mubarak, the top military ranks have also enjoyed a pampered existence in rambling developments such as Cairo’s Nasr City, where officers are housed in spacious, subsidized condominiums. They enjoy other amenities the average Egyptian can only dream of, such as nurseries, schools and military consumer cooperatives featuring domestic and imported products at discount prices.

One of the most indulged divisions is the Egyptian Republican Guard, responsible for defending Cairo and key government institutions. They are under the control of the Minister of Defense. It is apparently the only significant military unit allowed in central Cairo, apart from the intelligence service’s military branch. Its ranks are filled primarily by highly-trained, highly motivated volunteers rather than conscripts. They are rewarded with bonuses, new cars and subsidized housing.

The Guard was created originally in 1952 as a kind of Praetorian Guard by Nasser to protect the presidency. Do they still view that as their main mission today?

But we’re not just talking about official perks. Many of Egypt’s military brass are notoriously corrupt. It was military land, for instance, that was sold by the generals to finance some major urban developments near Cairo-with little if any accounting.

The military also presides over 16 sprawling factories that turn out not just weapons, but an array of domestic products from dishwashers to computers to medical diagnostic equipment. The military’s farms also produce enough food to feed their ranks with plenty left over to sell to civilians.

The justification for all this non-military activity is that the army is just more efficient that civilians. But that’s hard to prove since their operations are off the books. Many civilian businessmen complain that competing with the military is like trying to compete with the Mafia.

The U.S. also has a 1.3 billion dollar carrot dangling in front of the Egyptian Army. That annual American military aid to Egypt has allowed the Egyptian officers to get their hands on lots of nifty weapons—as we’ve seen over the past few days in and over downtown Cairo.

The generals realize there is no way the U.S. will continue paying for those playthings if a new regime more hostile to the U.S. and/or Israel takes power in Cairo.

Will the generals be willing to forego that aid?

There has also reportedly been a surge recently of religious feeling among the ranks of the military themselves—and their wives.

Will they be willing to reconsider their traditional antipathy to the Moslem Brotherhood and more radical Islamic movements?

Tune in tomorrow.

The Egyptian Army: The Unknown Factor

2011-02-01T15:15:00.000-08:00

In attempting to convince Mubarak to leave the scene, Washington obviously wants to temper any further radicalization on the streets of Egypt and, above all, to ensure that the Egyptian Army remains unscathed. That would enable the generals to remain the power behind the scenes in the coming weeks and months—ready to step in, if necessary, to veto any attempt by Islamic fundamentalists to come to power—even by free and open elections.

But determining what the Egyptian Army will ultimately do requires weighing a host of factors.

The announcement, for instance, that the Egyptian Army would refuse to take up arms against the people played perfectly into Washington’s game plan. It undercut Mubarak and prevented him from attempting a bloody showdown that could have been disastrous. In fact, the Egyptian military made that same announcement in 1977 when they were called in to quell riots after President Sadat announced cuts in basic food subsidies. The Army refused to intervene unless the subsidies were reestablished. Sadat restored the subsidies.

But does that mean the Army would be willing to step aside for whatever the will of the people turns out to be? For a government dominated by the Moslem Brotherhood, for instance? For a government hostile to the U.S.? to Israel?

Of course, the Army is not monolithic. Its lower ranks are very much of the people: filled with hundreds of thousands of conscripts, drawn from the most humble ranks of society. The army has traditionally been the most important means of socializing and educating the lower classes, in theory, inculcating them with a sense of pride and patriotism. Indeed the 1971 Constitution says that the Egyptian Army shall “belong to the people”" This sentiment was made dramatically clear by the iconic images of soldiers shaking hands and embracing the demonstrators, even allowing them to paint slogans on their battle tanks.

The top ranks of the army, however, have other concerns—beginning with personal survival. They certainly will never forget the lurid spectacle of Iranian generals being publicly executed in the aftermath of Khomeini’s revolution in Iran. Iran also demonstrated that a radical revolution also means a radically transformed military. (Egypt’s generals have a constant reminder of that lesson nearby: The Shah is buried in a Cairo mosque.).

Under Mubarak, the top ranks of the Egyptian army have also enjoyed a pampered existence, in sprawling developments such as Cairo’s Nasr City. There, as elsewhere in Egypt, officers are housed in spacious condominiums, at highly subsidized rents, They enjoy other amenities the average Egyptian can only dream of, such as nurseries, schools and military consumer "cooperatives" selling a range of domestic and imported products at discount prices.

One of the most indulged units is the Egyptian Republican Guard, a heavily armored division, with the main responsibility of defending Cairo and key government institutions. They are under the control of the Minister of Defense. It is apparently the only significant military unit allowed in central Cairo, apart from the intelligence service’s military branch. Its ranks are filled primarily by highly motivated volunteers rather than conscripts. They are rewarded with bonuses, new cars and subsidized housing and greater training than the regular army.

The Guard was created originally in 1952 as a kind of Praetorian Guard by Nasser to protect the presidency. Do they still view that as their mission today?

But we’re not just talking about subsidized apartments. Many of Egypt’s military brass are notoriously corrupt. They have used their power to line their pockets, just as have their civilian government counterparts. It was military land, for instance, that was sold by the generals to finance some major urban developments near Cairo-with little if any accounting.

The military also presides over a sprawling network of 16 factories across the country, employing tens of thousands of Egyptians. These factories turn out not just weapons, but an incredible array of domestic products from dishwashers to computers to medical diagnostic equipment. The military’s farms produce enough food to feed their ranks with plenty left over to sell to civilians.

The military’s justification for all this non-military activity is that the army is just more efficient that civilians. But many civilian businessmen complain that competing with the military is like trying to compete with the Mafia. The army’s operations they say are riddled with cozy inside dealings. In any case, once again, there is no public accounting. No one is quite sure whether they are making or losing money or who is pocketing the profits. Their operations are all off the books.

Though unspoken, such considerations will certainly be in the minds of the generals calling the shots in Cairo.

The U.S. also has a 1.3 billion dollar carrot dangling in front of the Egyptian Army. That annual American military aid to Egypt has allowed the Egyptian officers to get their hands on some of the most sophisticated of modern weapons—as we’ve seen over the past few days in downtown Cairo.

The generals realize there is no way the U.S. will continue paying for those goodies if a new regime more hostile to Israel takes power in Cairo.

Will they be willing to let that go?

On the other hand, there has reportedly been a surge in Islamic militancy among the ranks of the military themselves—and their wives.

A frightening new era opens for Israel and its American friends.

It's (partially) the food, stupid!

2011-01-29T06:57:00.000-08:00

On the face of it, the protests currently sweeping across the Arab world have been driven by overwhelmingly leaderless, frustrated, impoverished, unemployed youths battling, geriatric dictatorial regimes, supported by a pampered military--and the United States.

Fueling all these protests though, from Egypt, to Yemen, to Jordan to Tunisia to Algeria is another common factor: rocketing food prices, just as they fueled the French revolution.

A “perfect storm” of natural disasters around the globe, plus rising oil prices and rapacious speculators have produced the current dramatic spike in food prices, but even without those events, the fact is food prices will continue to spiral upward, and will continue roiling the planet, no matter who is governing.

What is outrageous is that our leaders know this—they’ve known it for years--but, like deer transfixed by the lights of an onrushing truck—they’ve done precious little to avert catastrophe. Indeed, rather than deal with impending disaster, they’ve made the situation even worse.

The statistics are stark: Almost 7 billion people currently inhabit this planet, one billion of whom are already on the brink of starvation. By 2050 the total will be 9.2 billion, with higher incomes for many; thus much larger and demanding appetites.

The bottom line is the world will need 70% more food in 2050 than it produced in 2000. But at the same time, the resources available are plummeting. The amount of agricultural land per person on the planet will drop from 10.6 acres in 1961 to 3.7 acres in 2050.

As for water, just to maintain current levels of (mal) nutrition--never mind improving things—farmers will need 17% more fresh water by 2050. Problem is 70% of the world’s fresh water is already used for irrigation.

But instead of investing in agriculture, the world’s leaders, and development organizations have been obsessed with industrialization. The statistics are shocking: development assistance from all sources to agriculture went from 20% of all aid twenty-five years ago--to only 4 % today.

Developing countries themselves reduced their own investment in agriculture from 11% twenty-five years ago to 7% in 2007.

These figures from Pandey Shivaji, a soft-spoken Indian official I spoke with at the U.N.’s Food and Agricultural Offices in Rome.

First off, he says, food production has to be transformed from a dull, bureaucratic backwater to page one of the international agenda. 75% of the world’s hungry and poor still live in rural areas and derive their livelihood from the land.

O.K., I ask, but surely it makes sense to industrialize, get those people good factory jobs and off the over-crowded land, right?

Wrong, he says. “Agriculture has been shown to be twice as effective in eliminating hunger and poverty as any other kind of development. There is scientific evidence that every one percent increase in crop productivity will reduce the number of poor and hungry by .4 percent.”

What about the wonders of the “green revolution”? That’s over,” says Shivaji. “Sixty years ago, rice, wheat and maize yields in countries like India, were dramatically rising at 3% a year. No longer. The rate of growth instead is declining heading for about one percent a year by 2050.”

It was the soaring food prices of 2007 and 2008 and the radical political unrest they sparked, that finally got the world’s leaders to start paying attention. One result, Pandev Shivaji heads a steering committee under the auspices of the FAO, tasked with figuring out how to dramatically increase food production without at the same time destroying the ecology.

One of the first things he did was to tell his experts to stop their research. “Of, course, there are still things to learn,” he says, “but we already know a lot of the answers. We’ve known for decades.”

The problem is that the politicians who call the shots have refused to listen.

-To arguments against protectionism, for example. According to Mark Malloch Brown, the former head of the UNDP, the developed world, lavishes a billion dollars a day on subsidies and support prices to protect their farmers, many of them huge agribusinesses. That protection costs developing countries $50 billion in potential lost agricultural exports. That sum is the equivalent of all development assistance to the third world.

--Another well-known problem: since bio energy became the flavor of the month, almost 5% of the world’s cereals are now used not to feed people but to produce 0.3% of the world’s energy.

--One major problem, says Pandey Shivaji, is that many of the new technologies have been developed for rich, large farmers. Governments have generally ignored the 400-500 million of the world’ farmers who cultivate less than 5 acres of land. “They have no strong political voice, but those small farmers produce more than half of the world’s food.”

It was small farmers tilling an average 2.7 acres of land in India’s Punjab who were responsible for the Green Revolution in the 60s and 70s, a revolution that took India from the brink of famine and to actually exporting food by 1985. Similarly, the agriculture revolution that occurred in China in the past twenty-five years occurred on the back of farmers with less than half an acre of land.

The “white revolution” that made India the world’s number one milk producer was achieved by women and men farmers with only one or two cows.

Says Shivaji, “In a country like Madagascar, where seventy percent of the population live on less than one dollar a day, where agriculture is the most important contributor to the GDP, if it is not agriculture that will get them out of their misery what do the so called experts propose? So many other countries are in that same situation in Africa.

“Certainly some consolidation of small land holdings would be better, but today we can make this world a better place only by making it easier for those who’ve been ignored for so long.”

--But one of the biggest victims of the lack of investment in agriculture is teaching and research. Says Shivaji, “Around the globe, many of the so-called “agriculture experts” are less qualified than they were fifty years ago. Many don’t even understand what they’re supposed to be teaching. They don’t even know that they don’t know.”

-There’s also been no investment in infrastructure to aid the farmer. That means roads, storage, electricity, and access to credit.

Of course, all that costs money. But some solutions are remarkably—if deceptively--simple. For instance, huge numbers of small landholders across the globe don’t have title to their farms. Says Shivaji, “If I don't own it I’m not going to invest in it or protect it. So they don’t invest.” In Vietnam in 1989, in the face of a dramatic food crisis, the Communist government—which was importing food--gave titles to the peasants. Within just three years, Vietnam became the world’s third largest rice exporter. “It wasn’t the only factor, but giving those titles had a major impact. Even Cuba now is talking about giving 7000 square meters of land to farmer.”

Some ways of raising production would actually save money. Thirty years ago, for example, the “experts” advised farmers to thoroughly plow their land, get rid of all weeds, ruffage and waste. Bad advice, says Shivaji. Such methods actually destroy the soil.

“Now we tell them to till the earth only when and where necessary.” Sounds simple, and there are dramatic side effects. In addition to saving the land, less plowing also means the farmer spends less for tractors and fuel. It also means less greenhouse gas emissions—in two ways: less fuel burned, but also, if the soil isn’t thoroughly plowed, more carbon remains trapped in the earth —74 kilograms per acre per year.

“This reform actually means spending less, and it requires no new technology. It’s just teaching the farmer not to do something,” says Shivaji.

-It all seems obvious, but less than 10% of global farmland—largely in North and South America --is under this kind of system.

-Other reforms—like rotating crops, cutting back on rampant use of pesticides and fertilizers—are nothing new, but they can have a revolutionary impact, often in ways you would never think of. Such as teaching farmers not to burn their waste, but to use it as a mulch on their fields. That improves soil quality, but it also means less evaporation, which means farmers will need 30% less water. Also, in Australia researchers found out that such mulching also reduces the temperature of the plants by one degree--which could greatly reduce the impact of climate change on crop production.

Shivaji’s task force will present these and other strategies to agricultural ministers from around the world in Rome this June. “We’re going to boil thing down to 100 to 120 pages, something that national leaders can digest in a couple of hours while they’re flying from one spot to another.”

On one hand, there’s reason for optimism, says Shivaji, “The lessons we have learned in the past 40 to 50 years have taught us now we can produce more on the same amount of land, and can do it in a way that does not destroy the ecosystem.”

Problem is, implementation is not in the hands of FAO experts. They have to convince policy makers to make the reforms, many of which have been proposed for decades.

Perhaps this current dramatic wave of unrest will convince at least some leaders they no longer have a choice.

A tale of Two Tyrants

2011-01-19T15:37:00.001-08:00

There's a certain irony to the fact that as a bloody, corrupt Tunisian dictator headed off to ignominious exile in Saudi Arabia, thousands of miles away, Jean-Claude "Baby Doc" Duvalier, another corrupt and bloody former dictator,who had fled his country ignominiously almost 25 years ago, returned to Haiti-- to the jeers, but also the cheers, of a mob of supporters.

Another irony: despite his brutal reign, France had welcomed Baby Doc when he originally escaped his homeland, but France refused entry to Tunisia's equally repugnant Ben-Ali . Yet just three days before the Tunisian dictator was forced to leave his homeland, as his police were shooting down scores of protestors in the streets, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs, Michele Alliot-Marie, had proposed a new French security agreement with the Tunisian police. (Of course, the current centrist-right Sarkozy government was able to defend itself by pointing to the times that previous French socialist officials had welcomed Ben Ali with high praise and open arms.)

There are many, of course, who are demanding that Duvalier be put on trial for the brutal acts and flagrant corruption of his regime. But it's highly unlikely he would have risked a return without having first worked out a deal with what passes for a government in Port au Prince--at the cost perhaps of a few of the hundreds of millions of dollars he is said to have stolen from his woebegone people.

Ironic also how the image of brutal dictators can be transformed over the years. When Baby Doc fled a quarter century ago, Haiti's economy was in ruins, his people the poorest in the Hemisphere. With his panicked departure, the ecstatic crowds in the streets cheered on a new era: things were going to radically change. New untried leaders-many returning from exile-promised an end to corruption and poverty, a glorious future for all---.the same refrains we're hearing from Tunisia these days.

Unfortunately, in Haiti, thanks to the acts of Man and Nature, those hopes were never borne out. So for a large number of Haitians, Duvalier may, incredibly enough, remain a political option--or at least a possible ally in the current scramble for power.

Under the ruthless Duvalier regimes there was at least a semblance of order. The woefully impoverished people in Haiti today have not even that. The torture, imprisonments and killings under the Duvaliers, the lurid tales of corruption, may be forgiven or forgotten or rationalized: Yes, he robbed, but...Yes, he had to clamp down on his opponents, but they were irresponsible, bickering and inept. What else could he have done? Once again we need a strongman to bring order.

(Europeans need not look down their noses at such sentiments. After all, it's disgust with the political options in Italy that's partially behind the Italians' continuing willingness to put up with Sylvio Berlusconi, no matter the charges of corruption nor the tender age of the prostitutes he's said to consort with.)

Hopefully, Tunisia will emerge from the darkness of dictatorial rule and, its leaders somehow make their way through the looming political turmoil. Of course. their history and culture are totally different from Haiti's as is their natural wealth and level of education. On the other hand, there are too many radical political groupings bubbling to the surface in Tunisia, too many foreign powers ready to interfere,and probably at least a few Tunisian generals ready to heed the call to save their nation.

Above all,there are few examples around anywhere of countries that have managed to make a smooth transition from iron-fisted dictatorship to something resembling democracy. The odds are not with them.

Tunisia: Democratic Triumph or Prelude to U.S. Disaster?

2011-01-16T09:14:00.000-08:00

Officially, the Obama administration greeted the “Jasmine” revolution in Tunisia with open arms, calling for free and fair elections as the U.S. scrambled to get aboard the democratic bandwagon.

Celebration is restrained, however in Washington. Instead, there’s serious concern about who will take the place of the corrupt, 74 year-old Tunisian dictator, who, until the end, was considered an important American ally in the War against Terror.

Assuming the Tunisian military actually agrees to hold free elections [not at all a sure thing] will the generals really throw open the doors to all political groups? Nationalists? Islamists? Marxists? Anti-militarists? What forces will roil to the surface after decades of political repression? Will they throw in their lot with America’s War against Terror, or join the ranks of those in the Middle East who increasingly see what’s going on as the U.S.’s war against Islam?

Washington’s ambivalent view was evident even before the revolution was victorious. In Doha on Thursday, Hillary Clinton lectured Arab autocrats and others meeting there on the urgent need for reform and an end to rampant corruption if they wanted to save their regimes.

But just a couple of days earlier, as young demonstrators were being gunned down in the cities and towns of Tunisia, when Hillary was asked which side the U.S. was on, she replied that the U.S. was “not taking sides"”

U.S. officials have reason to hesitate. Jasmine uprisings across the Middle East and Central Asia could spell disaster for American policy.

--There is no way, for instance, that Hosni Mubarak, who has ruled Egypt for 30 years, will permit a democratic opening. Thanks to his ironclad dictatorship, the only group who has been able to organize politically are the Islamic radicals. More secular-minded opponents have been either co-opted or imprisoned or totally cowed. The influence of the religious extremists has grown throughout the country--anti-American and anti-Israel. It’s only the military that stand between Mubarak and chaos.

But, like a deer frozen in on-coming headlights, Washington seems immobilized. On the one hand, there’s the corrupt, despotic, and failing Mubarak. But he’s a friend. On the other hand, truly free and fair elections would almost certainly bring leaders to power much more virulently anti-Israel and opposed to U.S. policies. Perhaps they’re hoping for the Egyptian the military to step in again to save itself and its privileges--and the U.S.

-Indeed elsewhere throughout the region, from Saudi Arabia to Jordan to Yemen to Ethiopia to Afghanistan and Pakistan, the picture seems markedly similar: U.S. allies are invariably corrupt dictators, maintained in power by lavish patronage and the military.

-Ironically, in Lebanon, where the public has had a growing voice in national politics, it’s the anti-American and anti-Israel Hezbollah who have ridden popular acclaim to become the decisive voice in the country.

-Similarly in Iraq, popular participation has also benefited America’s most outspoken enemy there: Moqtada al-Sadr., whose followers fought bloody battles against the U.S. after the invasion. Seemingly vanquished, he has returned from three years in Iran to wield a decisive political voice in Iraq. He demands the withdrawal of all U.S. troops and bases from his country.

Ironically, because of the elections in Iraq, the country that will almost certainly be calling the shots there in the future will not be the United Statues—but Iran.

-Meanwhile moderates pushing for something akin to democracy and secular rule are losing ground. In Pakistan, the soldier who killed the governor of Punjab, Salman Taseer, who had been outspoken in his fight against religious fundamentalism, that soldier was showered with rose petals while many of the country’s lawyers—who had once gone to the streets demanding democratic reform—celebrated the murderer as a national hero.

-And democracy in Israel? A true democracy with a vote for every person—Jews and all the Arabs under Israeli control—including those living on The West Bank? Forget it. It would be the end of the Zionist dream of a Jewish State. We don’t hear Hillary or Obama talking much about that these days.

-Indeed, at the end of her lecture to the Arab leaders in Doha, one of Hillary’s Arab audience asked why the U.S. wasn’t doing it’s share to fight the war against Islamic fundamentalism by putting more pressure on Israel to deal with the Palestinians. Her answer –pointing out that the U.S. paid more to finance the Palestinian Authority than did most of the Arab countries—simply dodged the issue.

-Of course, it would be unfair to point out that, after her civics lesson in Doha, Hillary returned to Washington where, even after the lurid shootings in Arizona, U.S. legislators are unable to even to discuss clamping down on firearms, because of the all-powerful gun lobby. It’s also Washington where American officials, from Obama on down, are terrified of taking on the pro-Israel lobby - not because the lobby represents the views of the majority of Americans—or even a great majority of American Jews, but because it wields a very undemocratic power far beyond its numbers.

Congresswoman Giffords meets Julian Assange:The Liberal's Dilemma

2011-01-10T10:26:00.000-08:00

We Liberals instinctively rose to defend Julian Assange’s right to publish hundreds of thousands of confidential government documents on Wikileaks. Freedom of the Press, the public’s right to know trumps all.

But the Internet is also threatening our liberal democracy-as the flood of oped comments generated by Congressman Giffords' shooting makes clear: any frenzied zealot has a forum to spew the most incendiary lies to millions around the globe. They are abetted, of course, by rabid TV broadcasters whose ratings are directly related to their gall.

This in a country already roiled by political passions, where any half crazed lunatic can get hold of a semi-automatic pistol, including those unhinged enough to believe that their mission is to save the nation or mankind from the forces of darkness.

For instance, the same day the Congresswoman was shot, a friend in Vancouver Canada relayed a blog to me vilifying financier George Soros in the most violent terms:

‘George Soros is an evil man. He’s anti-God, anti-family, anti-AmerIcan, and anti-good. He killed and robbed his own Jewish people. What we have in Soros is a multi-billionaire atheist, with skewed moral values, and a sociopath’s lack of conscience.

“Soros is the main obstacle to a stable and just world order in the United States.”

“Soros has vigorously, cleverly and insidiously planned the ruination of American and his puppet, Barack Obama is leading the way.”

On the face of it, the charges were outrageous, But the author of the blog attributed the statements to “four months of research” by Steve Croft at Sixty Minutes.

That attribution was the reason my friend, a very educated sophisticated woman, had not simply deleted it. After all, Steve Croft. Sixty Minutes.

“Is this true?” she wanted to know.

Google showed me that these charges had been ricocheting around the Internet in basically for more than ten years. Many of the paragraphs were verbatim the same. This despite the fact that Soros’ lawyers in several jurisdictions had obtained public apologies from editorialists in the U.S. and Canada who had repeated the lies.

What about the attribution to Steve Croft and Sixty Minutes?

In fact, none of those wild-eyed charges were actually reported by Croft in his 1998 Sixty Minutes profile of Soros.

The only unattractive fact from the report that came to close to anything in the blog, was the explanation that Soros was born Jewish and when the Nazis took over Hungary in 1944, Soros father bribed a government official to “adopt” the young Soros, as his godson.

As thousands of Jews were being deported to the death camps, the official protected Soros, occasionally taking him on official rounds, once while confiscating property of a large Jewish landowner who had fled the country. Croft asked Soros how he felt about that situation.

KROFT: And you watched lots of people get shipped off to the death camps.

Mr. SOROS: Right. I was 14 years old. And I would say that that's when my character was made.

KROFT: In what way?

Mr. SOROS: That one should think ahead. One should understand and -- and anticipate events and when -- when one is threatened. It was a tremendous threat of evil. I mean, it was a -- a very personal experience of evil.

KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.

Mr. SOROS: Yes. Yes.

KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.

Mr. SOROS: Yes. That's right. Yes.

KROFT: I mean, that's -- that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?

Mr. SOROS: Not -- not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don't -- you don't see the connection. But it was -- it created no -- no problem at all.

KROFT: No feeling of guilt?

Mr. SOROS: No.

KROFT: For example that, 'I'm Jewish and here I am, watching these people go. I could just as easily be there. I should be there.' None of that?

Mr. SOROS: Well, of course I c -- I could be on the other side or I could be the one from whom the thing is being taken away. But there was no sense that I shouldn't be there, because that was -- well, actually, in a funny way, it's just like in markets -- that if I weren't there -- of course, I wasn't doing it, but somebody else would -- would -- would be taking it away anyhow. And it was the -- whether I was there or not, I was only a spectator, the property was being taken away. So the -- I had no role in taking away that property. So I had no sense of guilt.”

In America Soros has poured billions of dollars into liberal causes, from the Democratic Party to legalizing marijuana, making him a prime target of the right. They’ve had no hesitation in transforming a frightened, 14 year old Soros into “Hitler’s henchman”

Take for instance, Anne Coulter on the March 26, 2009 Fox News Hannity:

COULTER: I don't think George Soros' name should come out without pointing out that this is not the first crisis he's done well in. He collaborated with the Nazis in Hungary, as he admitted, so he did well under the Nazis.”

But that’s just for starters: a March 10, 2009, Human Events Online column:

“Soros is a behind-the-scenes despot. He is an evil man who has used his wealth to further all the causes the Democrat Party holds dear. He was also a Nazi collaborator. ”

Or March 11, 2009, Investor's Business Daily editorial:

“His ultimate goal is to create a global socialist collective where we hand over our money and/or freedom and sing "Kumbaya."

Repeating these charges in the blog that was sent to me, the anonymous author called Soros “One Evil Son of Satan.”

And he concluded: The words of Patrick Henry are apropos: "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty, or give me death!"

After such rhetoric, why wouldn’t a gullible young patriot pick up his semi-automatic, write a Facebook farewell, and head out to save his nation by blowing a apart that Evil Son of Satan? Or better yet, Barak Obama himself. Don’t forget millions of Americans view the president as a witting ally of radical Islam.

We’ re getting similar panicked calls for action in France, where political rhetoric is also roiling. The day after receiving the Soros blog, I was forwarded another blog predicting the imminent “French revolution” --provoked by the inexorable flood of Muslims swamping the country.

This from another very well educated, sophisticated friend in Paris—who herself has long been convinced that the Muslims will in fact take over.

Source for that story? Supposedly a CNN report which I was never able to find. But the facts given were wrong and the sites posting that blog were mainly right wing backers of the virulently anti-immigrant Jean-Marie Le Penn.

Still, the statistics presented to prove a Muslim takeout appeared to be solid, accompanied by neat graphs demonstrating the soaring Muslim birthrate and the waning population of native French. Problem is these days it’s easy for anyone to make neat look graphs and power point presentations.

And how do you argue with statistics, right? A birth rate is a birth rate is a birth rate.

In fact, the statistics are wildly inaccurate and blown out of context.

I know all this because I went to the trouble of checking the stories out. There are sites around like SNOPES which make it their business to examine sensational charges. But most people, even if they’ve heard of such sites, don’t take the time to check. Life is too hectic.

When they get a startling blog they read it, shake their head, and, as often as not, send it on to their friends. After all, if Steve Croft of 60 Minutes reported those facts about Soros, must be something to it.Twitter and Facebook and Youtube transform that process into a whirlwind.

And even if discredited once, the lies never disappear. A story shot down in 1998, as were the charges against Soros, for instance can be revived by anyone retrieved from their resting place on the Internet and sent coursing again around the globe, igniting the demented passions, perhaps, of yet other killers.

How are liberals to deal with this dilemma? Hope that the spewers of hate can be convinced to tone down their rhetoric?

They won’t.

So then what?

In our Matrix World

2011-01-03T04:09:00.000-08:00

A glance at the New York Times this morning (downloaded to my iPad in Rome) and it’s evident we’re already in a Matrix world. A threat by Julian Assange last November 29^th to “take down” a major American bank and reveal an ‘ecosystem of corruption’ plucked from an unnamed executive’s hard drive, has set off a massive internal investigation by a team of 5 to 20 top Bank of America officials who fear that missing hard drive may be from one of their own.

With their stock price falling, the bank has also hired the consulting firm of Booz Allen Hamilton to join in the inquiry. Meanwhile, of course, the world’s media is still feeding off the hundreds of thousands of classified Pentagon and State Department documents, new revelations continue each day.

Meanwhile Mark Zuckerberg’s personal fortune may have doubled after a massive new investment of $500 million from Goldman Sachs and a Russian investor that values Facebook at…..$50 billion. Another social buying site, Groupon, just recently $6 billion takeover bid from Google.

And ebook sales are soaring—will surge by one billion dollars per year in 2011—headed for 3 billion by 2015. As for traditional publishers, like Borders, well, they’re shutting down brick and mortar stores in an attempt to survive.

We’re on an IT rollercoaster. And what lies beyond the next curve? Who knows? Who just five years ago could have predicted the mammoth presence of Facebook and Wikileaks and Kindle?

As this New Year begins, you can either rail against it all—or hold on—and enjoy the ride.

Disappearances in Pakistan: Lessons learned

2010-12-30T02:30:00.000-08:00

Difficult to believe that the New York Times could publish today’s headline with a straight face. “Disappeared with reported ties to Pakistan worries U.S.”

“WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is expressing alarm over reports that thousands of political separatists and captured Taliban insurgents have disappeared into the hands of Pakistan’s police and security forces, and that some may have been tortured or killed.”

According to the Times, many of those who have vanished have nothing to do with the Taliban, but are Baluchis, a restive people in Pakistan long intent on forming an independent state. Equally alarming, the Pakistani authorities are refusing to admit any knowledge about most of the cases.

The matter has become so grave that U.S. military is now actually refusing to train Pakistani military units who have been involved in torturing and killing detainees.

Of course, the U.S. will have nothing to do with such brutal tactics. Of course, the Obama administration is alarmed.

One can imagine the Pakistani officials shaking their heads wonder. One can also wonder how U.S. officials could make their protests without a sickening sense of cynicism and shame.

I mean, c’mon guys---this, is the same U.S.—different President, but same country—that disappeared thousands of suspected Al Qaeda and Taliban militants—some only teenagers—into places like Abu Ghraib, Bagram and Guantanamo or rendered others off to allies for brutal interrogation. And aren’t CIA drones currently blowing apart scores of supposed Taliban and others in Pakistan—and elsewhere—without the inconvenience of arrest, questioning and trial?

We could go on and on about all this but we won’t. Surely, someone at the Times will bring it up in an editorial or Op Ed piece in the next one or two days.

[They might even point out another subtler irony: that the restive Baluchis also live in Iran. And that is where, according to investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, under the Bush administration, the CIA began aiding the Baluchis to carry out terrorist attacks in hopes of undermining the regime in Teheran.

Nor that different from the tactics the Pakistini Intelligence Organization, the ISI, are using in supporting some Taliban in Afghanistan—even as they arrest others in Pakistan.]

The War on Terror-Christmas at the Forgotten Front

2010-12-17T09:03:00.000-08:00

Almost ten years ago, President Bush announced the global War on Terror… Since then hundreds of thousands of soldiers and mercenaries have been dispatched to Central Asia and the far corners of the globe, and hundreds of billions, probably trillions, of dollars have been poured into the effort.

But over that same period, the lot has only worsened of some of the most terrorized people on the planet, millions of people across a huge swathe of Central Africa, living in constant fear—of a horde of bloody marauders known as the Lords Resistance Army.

At Christmas time, the threat is only worse.

One survivor of the LRA’s bloodlust is Josephine, [not her real name] an eighteen year old girl, who was having lunch with her family when a group of men stormed into her village.

“They tied us up and then shot and then killed my grandfather right in front of me.” Two of her brother were led off. She never saw them again. She was forced to pack heavy loads for her captives, repeatedly raped, then assigned as a “wife” to one of her captors, a young boy. “They sometimes would take one boy,” said Josephine, “Tie him up, then force another boy to kill him by hitting him on the back of the head with a heavy stick or a machete.”

Another young man who was kidnapped was tied to other boys from his village, then forced to carry the loot the marauders had stolen, as they continued their attacks.

“We walked three kilometers to the next village, where the LRA men did the same thing, kidnapping more than 100 people. This time though, they counted out 20 people, tied them up, and killed them by hitting them on the back of the head. .

Every few kilometers we would stop and they would count out another 20 people and walk them into the bush. After a while, I was among the group that the LRA separated from rest. They tied our arms together behind our backs and forced us to kneel down. They took hammers, machetes and heavy sticks and began killing people one by one. One of the LRA men took a big stick and hit me hard on the back of my head. I blacked out.”

“When I woke up, I was still tied up and had several dead bodies piled on top of me. I spent four days drifting in and out of consciousness, tied up and bleeding in that stack of bodies. When people arrived to bury us, they discovered that I was still alive’. They untied me and carried me to the nearest hospital, where I took six months to recover.”

Over the past few years across a huge expanse of Central Africa, such tales have become commonplace: thousands of civilians have been hacked, stabbed and bludgeoned to death; thousands of girls have been raped, young boys kidnapped and murdered or forced to commit heinous atrocities themselves, turned into criminal outcasts, so they will never be able to return to their tribes. Instead, they have come to fill the ranks of the LRA.

What’s remarkable is that, despite the widespread savagery and terror across the region, the LRA probably has only a few hundred ragged men and boys under arms.

Their leader is a demented despot by the name of Jospeh Kony, a character out of Conrad-- a faith-healer, self –styled revolutionary and Christian fundamentalist, who launched the LRA more than twenty years ago in Northern Uganda with support from the Sudan. Over the years, the group has morphed into an increasingly bloody band of killers, intent on rape, plunder and murder.

Two years ago, U.S. troops aiding the Ugandan Army, helped organize an attack on the LRA but failed to capture the major leaders. The result was catastrophic. Determined to exact bloody vengeance, the IRA metastasized, carrying out hundreds of raids again isolated villages, not just in Uganda, but across the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Central African Republic, and the Sudan as well.

No one seemed to give much of a damn except the usual NGO’s desperately trying to cope with the situation in the field, often at the risk of their own lives. Trying to get the attention of world leaders who claim to be in an all-out war against terrorism. Problem is, the LRA are not the right brand of terrorists.

If their leader was a radical Muslim instead of wacky Christian fundamentalist, things would be different. Sophisticated spy satellites, high-flying Predators or gung-ho mercenaries and Special Forces killer teams would have taken them out long ago.

Instead, UN peacekeeping forces have more than 80,000 troops stationed in the area trying to end the chaos that has wracked Central Africa for decades. It’s the largest U.N. contingent anywhere, but only 850 of them are in the area where the LRA is active.

As Marcel Stoessel, the Swiss head of Oxfam for the Congo told me by phone, “those figures show that the priority is not here, and it should be here, because the IRA is the most active and deadly of all the groups active in this region.”

But it’s hard to blame the U.N. commanders. Their troops are poorly armed, mostly poorly trained, (often feared themselves by the local population) and woefully underequipped; lacking for instance, a modicum of helicopters to patrol a huge region where decent roads are virtually non-existent. Their annual budget it more than $1.3 billion. Which sounds impressive, until you remember that the U.S. spends that same amount in Afghanistan every four days.

The International Tribunal issued a warrant for Joseph Kony’s arrest more than five years ago, and world leaders have at various times pledged to take action. Yet Kony and his rag tag forces are more feared and deadly now than at any time in the LRA’s twenty year history—particularly feared as Christmas approaches.

Perversely, Christmas is the season when the LRA has carried out some of their most barbarous acts.

According to a press release just put out by Oxfam and other NGO’s operating in the region:

“On Christmas Eve 2008 and over the following three weeks, 865 women, men and children were savagely beaten to death and hundreds more abducted by the LRA in north-eastern DRC and southern Sudan. Last year, between 14 and 17 December 2009, LRA commanders oversaw the killing of more than 300 people. These attacks have largely gone unnoticed by the outside world.”

Says Marcel Stoessel, “It is unbelievable that world leaders continue to tolerate brutal violence against some of the most isolated villages in central Africa and that this has been allowed to continue for more than 20 years”

Fortunately, over the past few years, the depredations of the IRA and the plight of young people in Central Africa also stoked the outrage of thousands of high school and university students in the U.S., who, through their organizations “Invisible Children” and “Resolve”, launched a massive lobbying campaign. In response, last Spring the U.S. Congress called for the Obama Administration to develop a plan to deal with the IRA scourge. In November, 2010 a special task force announced a plan of action.

But so far, it is just a plan, long on promises, short on funding and action.

And now it’s Christmas again.

Kissinger on gassing the Jews--nothing new.

2010-12-12T14:44:00.000-08:00

Alot of Henry Kissinger's remaining fans were stunned by the publication this past Saturday of another batch of secret Nixon White House tapes--in which Henry Kissinger states that the Soviet Union gassing the Jews would not be a U.S. problem.

As the Jewish Telegraph Agency reported today:

"If they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern," then-US sec. of state tells Nixon on 1973 tape.

WASHINGTON – Henry Kissinger is heard saying the genocide of Soviet Jews would not be an American problem on newly released tapes chronicling President Nixon’s obsession with disparaging Jews and other minorities.
Kissinger’s remarks come after a meeting between the two men and former prime minister Golda Meir on March 1, 1973, in which Meir pleads for US pressure on the Soviet Union to release its Jews.

The men dismiss her plea after Meir leaves.!!

“The emigration of Jews from the Soviet Union is not an objective of American foreign policy,” The New York Times on Saturday quoted Kissinger, then secretary of state, as saying on the tapes. “And if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern. Maybe a humanitarian concern.”
Nixon replies: “I know. We can’t blow up the world because of it.”
Six months later, during the Yom Kippur War, Nixon rejected Kissinger’s advice to delay an arms airlift to Israel as a means of setting the stage for an Egypt confident enough to pursue peace; Nixon, among other reasons, cited Israel’s urgent need.
Nixon secretly recorded his White House conversations.""

While startling, such views are unfortunately par for the Kissinger course. What's suprising, is that people are still surprised.

If I may draw your attention to an article I wrote last February for Counterpunch.

Master of Treachery

Kissinger on Iraq

By BARRY LANDO
It is amazing how Henry Kissinger has been able to retain his aura of invincible genius in international relations, continuing to counsel presidents, foreign governments and major global businesses, while occasionally writing lofty Op Ed pieces advising the U.S. on what it should or should not be doing next. This mind you, despite Kissinger’s own history of monumental cynicism and duplicity when he was guiding foreign policy for President’s Nixon and Ford. Indeed, it’s a tribute to the ability of mainstream American media to forgive and forget.
The latest example is an Op Ed piece Kissinger just wrote for the New York Times warning American leaders that they are no longer giving Iraq the attention it deserves.
The fact is, however, when Kissinger was in charge of U.S. policy for Iraq, the results for its people, particularly the Kurds, were disastrous. I wrote about it in my book "Web of Deceit-the History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush."
Over the decades, the Kurds quixotic struggle for some form of independence doomed them to a seemingly endless cycle of rebellion followed by incredibly vicious repression. Those uprisings were usually encouraged by enemies of Iraq’s rulers who made use of the Kurds to destabilize the regime in Baghdad. It was a ruthless, deceitful process, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of Kurds being slaughtered and displaced over the years. And it was an ideal playing field for Kissinger.
For years, the Shah of Iran had been secretly supporting the Iraqi Kurds to put pressure on Baghdad. So were the Israelis, who hoped to distract Iraq’s increasingly virulent leader from joining an Arab attack on the Jewish state. In 1972, Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, motivated by fear that Iraq was becoming too cozy with the Soviet Union, agreed to a request from the Shah to help back the Kurds.

For the sake of deniability, the U.S. supplied the Kurds with Soviet arms seized in Vietnam, while Israel provided Soviet weapons that it had captured from the Arabs. According to the Washington Post’s Jon Randal, the clandestine operation was kept secret even from the U.S. State Department, which had argued against any such support. The Kurd’s news friends, however, did not want their protégées to win their struggle. An independent Kurdish state would be much too disruptive for the region, they felt. Their support was carefully doled out—enough to keep the revolt going, but not enough to take it to victory.

The Kurdish leader, Mustafa Barzani, was hard-headed enough to understand his people were being used by Iran, but not worldly enough to comprehend that his American backers could be equally duplicitous. “We do not trust the Shah,” Barzani told reporter Randal in 1973. “I trust America. America is too great a power to betray a small people like the Kurds.”
It was to be a fatal error of judgment. In 1975 the Shah and the leaders of Iraq abruptly agreed to settle their disputes and signed a treaty of friendship. A key part of the agreement was that Iran would immediately cease its support of the Iraqi Kurds. Overnight, Iranian army units that had been supporting the Kurds—with artillery, missiles, ammunition, and even food—retreated across the border into Iran. The U.S. and the Israelis similarly called a sudden halt to their support. At the same time, Iraqi troops began a massive offensive against the hapless Kurds.

Thus, without any warning, the Kurds were abandoned; not just their fighting men, the pesh merga, but their villages, wives, and children, were exposed to a ferocious Iraqi onslaught. Barzani sent a desperate plea to Kissinger for aid. “Our movement and people are being destroyed in an unbelievable way with silence from everyone. We feel, Your Excellency, that the United States has a moral and political responsibility towards our people, who have committed themselves to your country’s policy. Mr. Secretary, we are anxiously awaiting your quick response.”
Twelve days later, a U.S. diplomat in Tehran cabled CIA director William Colby, noting that Kissinger had not replied and warning that if Washington ”intends to take steps to avert a massacre it must intercede with Iran promptly.”

Meanwhile, a quarter of a million Kurds fled for their lives to Iran. Turkey closed its borders to thousands of others seeking refuge. Many of the militants left behind—especially students and teachers—were rounded up by the Iraqi, imprisoned, tortured, and executed. Some 1,500 villages were dynamited and bulldozed.

Over the following weeks and months, as the killing continued, Barzani issued more desperate appeals to the CIA, to President Gerald Ford, to Henry Kissinger. No one answered. Kissinger not only refused to intervene but also turned down repeated Kurdish requests for humanitarian aid for their thousands of refugees.

This duplicity of American officials might never have surfaced but for an investigation in 1975 by the U.S. Congress’s Select Committee on Intelligence headed by New York Democrat Otis Pike. The Pike report concluded that for Tehran and Washington the Kurds were never more than “a card to play.” A uniquely useful tool for weakening Iraq’s “potential for international adventurism.” From the beginning said the report, “The President, Dr. Kissinger, and the Shah hoped that our clients [Barzani’s Kurds] would not prevail.” The Kurds were encouraged to fight solely in order to undermine Iraq. “Even in the context of covert operations, ours was a cynical enterprise.”
The report’s damning conclusions continued: Had the U.S. not encouraged the Kurds to go along with the Shah and renew hostilities with Iraq, “the Kurds might have reached an accommodation with [Iraq’s] central government, thus gaining at least a measure of autonomy while avoiding further bloodshed. Instead the Kurds fought on, sustaining thousands of casualties and 200,000 refugees.”

One of the officials who testified before the committee in secret session was Henry Kissinger. When questioned by an appalled congressman about the U.S.’s decision to abandon the Kurds to their bloody fate, Kissinger chided the committee, “One should not confuse undercover action with social work.”

Barry M. Lando, a graduate of Harvard and Columbia University, spent 25 years as an award-winning investigative producer with 60 Minutes. The author of numerous articles about Iraq, he produced a documentary about Saddam Hussein that has been shown around the world. He lives in Paris. His latest book is “Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush.” He can be reached through his blog.

ASSANGE STRONG POSSIBILITY FOR NOBEL PEACE PRIZE:ED DIAMOND

2010-12-11T09:54:00.000-08:00

Assange and the Noble Peace Prize. Absurd? Not at all according to my associate, Ed Diamond.

Diamond, is an investigative reporter based in Paris for Focus, America’s most watched TV new magazine. I quote from Diamond’s blog:

I’ve just heard from an excellent source on the Nobel Prize Committee in Oslo that the committee is seriously considering nominating jailed Wikileaks head, Julian Assange, for the prestigious Nobel Peace Prize.

Word of that possibility has already touched off a storm of controversy between members of the committee, the Norwegian Government and top members of the Obama administration. The State Department and White House have been pulling out all stops. Rumours are the CIA will also become involved. At 3 A.M. Washington time today, an outraged Hillary Clinton personally phoned the Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Soltenberg to warn that if the Committee goes through with the nomination, the U.S. will boycott not only that particular award, but all future Nobel Prize ceremonies. She also hinted darkly about possible economic sanctions (almost 25% of foreign investments in Norway are made by U.S. companies.)

If Assange is in prison and unable to attend the ceremony, my source on the Committee says they will make use of the same empty chair, that symbolized the absence of Chinese Poet Liu Xiaobo when he received the award on December 10.

Many, of course, will be shocked by any comparison between the anarchic, self-promoting Assange and the highly respected Chinese dissident.

But as my source on the Committee put it just an hour ago: “Of course, we realize how controversial this decision is, and how many people may be shocked by it. On the other hand, consider the fact that the last recipient of the Peace Prize was President Obama, based solely on his lofty utterances, not on any actual deeds.

“Now, when we look for deeds, what do we find: America is still spending a trillion dollars a year building its military might and still has tens of thousands of troops and mercenaries deployed across Central Asia, not to mention clandestine and other forces involved in conflicts around the globe.

“Also, let’s not forget how quickly Obama kowtowed to Israel’s Prime Minister Nethanyahu’s refusal to suspend construction of settlements on the West Bank. So much for an American brokered peace in the Middle East!

“So, now” said my source on the Committee “we’re looking at Assange.”

There is no question that some of the material leaked by Assange could be detrimental to U.S. diplomacy and security. There is also no question that many of the issues revealed by Wikileaks had not been previously unreported. On the other hand, their content has certainly been judged important enough to be the obsession of the world’s leading media over the past few weeks.

The documents have demonstrated the miasma of duplicity and deceit that underlie much of U.S. policy today. The fact, for instance, that the U.S. continues to pour enormous human and material resources into Afghanistan, even as American diplomats continue outraged by the pervasive corruption and dithering of the feckless leaders the U.S. is supporting. Ditto: Pakistan—only there U.S. forces have operated much more clandestinely.

-Or the fact that, despite years of U.S. protests, that the Arab countries which are supposedly key U.S. allies in the Middle East—Saudia Arabia and the Gulf States—are still the major source of “charitable” funds that sustain Al Qaeda and other radical Islamic groups, sworn enemies of the United States and Israel. At the same time, despite what they are telling their own people, the incredibly wealthy despots who run these countries are quietly assuring American diplomats that they will be delighted if the U.S. were to take military action against Iran.

-Or the fact that, leaders in Yemen who have received impressive U.S. military aid-- supposedly to battle Al Qaeda in Yemen--have in fact used those American resources against their own local opposition groups, blatantly ignoring the continued protests of American officials.

Question: Who is the Obama administration most concerned about reading these revelations? The Pakistanis? The Afghans? The Saudis? The Yeminis? Or the American public?

Hard to argue that venting such information can only fuel those demanding a change in current U.S. policies—policies that continue to be based on hypocrisy, fear and military force.

“Thus,” sums up my source on the Nobel Committee, “The reason we want to give the Prize to Assange and Wikileaks.”

More as this story develops.

Ed Diamond.

Henry Kissinger, Master of Treachery.

2010-02-04T01:09:00.000-08:00

It is amazing how Henry Kissinger has been able to retain his aura of invincible genius in international relations, continuing to counsel presidents, foreign governments and major global businesses, while occasionally writing lofty Op Ed pieces advising the U.S. on what it should or should not be doing next. This mind you, despite Kissinger’s own history of monumental cynicism and duplicity when he was guiding foreign policy for President’s Nixon and Ford. Indeed, it’s a tribute to the ability of mainstream American media to forgive and forget.

The latest example is an Op Ed piece Kissinger just wrote for the New York Times warning American leaders that they are no longer giving Iraq the attention it deserves.

The fact is, however, when Kissinger was in charge of U.S. policy for Iraq, the results for its people, particularly the Kurds, were disastrous. I wrote about it in my book "Web of Deceit-the History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush."

Over the decades, the Kurds quixotic struggle for some form of independence doomed them to a seemingly endless cycle of rebellion followed by incredibly vicious repression. Those uprisings were usually encouraged by enemies of Iraq’s rulers who made use of the Kurds to destabilize the regime in Baghdad. It was a ruthless, deceitful process, which resulted in hundreds of thousands of Kurds being slaughtered and displaced over the years. And it was an ideal playing field for Kissinger.

For years, the Shah of Iran had been secretly supporting the Iraqi Kurds to put pressure on Baghdad. So were the Israelis, who hoped to distract Iraq’s increasingly virulent leader from joining an Arab attack on the Jewish state. In 1972, Henry Kissinger and Richard Nixon, motivated by fear that Iraq was becoming too cozy with the Soviet Union, agreed to a request from the Shah to help back the Kurds.

For the sake of deniability, the U.S. supplied the Kurds with Soviet arms seized in Vietnam, while Israel provided Soviet weapons that it had captured from the Arabs. According to the Washington Post’s Jon Randal, the clandestine operation was kept secret even from the U.S. State Department, which had argued against any such support. The Kurd’s news friends, however, did not want their protégées to win their struggle. An independent Kurdish state would be much too disruptive for the region, they felt. Their support was carefully doled out—enough to keep the revolt going, but not enough to take it to victory.

The Kurdish leader, Mustafa Barzani, was hard-headed enough to understand his people were being used by Iran, but not worldly enough to comprehend that his American backers could be equally duplicitous. “We do not trust the Shah,” Barzani told reporter Randal in 1973. “I trust America. America is too great a power to betray a small people like the Kurds.”

It was to be a fatal error of judgment. In 1975 the Shah and the leaders of Iraq abruptly agreed to settle their disputes and signed a treaty of friendship. A key part of the agreement was that Iran would immediately cease its support of the Iraqi Kurds. Overnight, Iranian army units that had been supporting the Kurds—with artillery, missiles, ammunition, and even food—retreated across the border into Iran. The U.S. and the Israelis similarly called a sudden halt to their support. At the same time, Iraqi troops began a massive offensive against the hapless Kurds.

Thus, without any warning, the Kurds were abandoned; not just their fighting men, the pesh merga, but their villages, wives, and children, were exposed to a ferocious Iraqi onslaught. Barzani sent a desperate plea to Kissinger for aid. “Our movement and people are being destroyed in an unbelievable way with silence from everyone. We feel, Your Excellency, that the United States has a moral and political responsibility towards our people, who have committed themselves to your country’s policy. Mr. Secretary, we are anxiously awaiting your quick response.”

Twelve days later, a U.S. diplomat in Tehran cabled CIA director William Colby, noting that Kissinger had not replied and warning that if Washington ”intends to take steps to avert a massacre it must intercede with Iran promptly.”

Meanwhile, a quarter of a million Kurds fled for their lives to Iran. Turkey closed its borders to thousands of others seeking refuge. Many of the militants left behind—especially students and teachers—were rounded up by the Iraqi, imprisoned, tortured, and executed. Some 1,500 villages were dynamited and bulldozed.

Over the following weeks and months, as the killing continued, Barzani issued more desperate appeals to the CIA, to President Gerald Ford, to Henry Kissinger. No one answered. Kissinger not only refused to intervene but also turned down repeated Kurdish requests for humanitarian aid for their thousands of refugees.

This duplicity of American officials might never have surfaced but for an investigation in 1975 by the U.S. Congress’s Select Committee on Intelligence headed by New York Democrat Otis Pike. The Pike report concluded that for Tehran and Washington the Kurds were never more than “a card to play.” A uniquely useful tool for weakening Iraq’s “potential for international adventurism.” From the beginning said the report, “The President, Dr. Kissinger, and the Shah hoped that our clients [Barzani’s Kurds] would not prevail.” The Kurds were encouraged to fight solely in order to undermine Iraq. “Even in the context of covert operations, ours was a cynical enterprise.”

The report’s damning conclusions continued: Had the U.S. not encouraged the Kurds to go along with the Shah and renew hostilities with Iraq, “the Kurds might have reached an accommodation with [Iraq’s] central government, thus gaining at least a measure of autonomy while avoiding further bloodshed. Instead the Kurds fought on, sustaining thousands of casualties and 200,000 refugees.”

One of the officials who testified before the committee in secret session was Henry Kissinger. When questioned by an appalled congressman about the U.S.’s decision to abandon the Kurds to their bloody fate, Kissinger chided the committee, “One should not confused undercover action with social work.”

America's complicity with Chemical Ali

2010-01-25T08:42:00.000-08:00

Today in Baghdad, Saddam Hussein’s cousin, Ali Hassan al-Majeed, known as Chemical Ali, was finally hanged, charged with crimes against humanity committed during Saddam’s reign. If not also joining Chemical Ali on the scaffold, some American leaders should have at least been charged along with him.

The fact is that the U.S. and several of its allies were themselves complicit in many of Chemical Ali’s (and Saddam’s) most savage acts--acts which set the stage for the bloody, trillion dollar quagmire that Iraq has become. (I wrote at length about that history in my book Web of Deceit.)

But good luck to anyone searching the Western mainstream media for details on that unholy alliance. Ever since the fall of Saddam, the whole sordid story has been consigned to the black hole of history.

But when Saddam and Chemical Ali and the rest of Saddam’s killers were doing their worst, the U.S. governments of Ronald Reagan and later George Bush Senior were their de facto allies, providing them with vital satellite intelligence, weapons and financing, while shielding them from U.N. investigations or efforts by the U.S. Congress to impose trade sanctions for their depredations.

But you have to hand it to the U.S. (and Iraqi) officials who set up and then manipulated the Special Iraqi Tribunal so that the complicity of the U.S. and other Western countries with Saddam and his crimes was never discussed.

For some reason I’ve never been able to fathom, virtually none of the American reporters covering the Tribunal and its aftermath have ever chosen to write about that shameful tale either.

So here’s a sampling. In the light of where we’re at in Iraq today, it’s worth combing through.

The most horrific crime that Chemical Ali was charged with was his role in the slaughter of tens of thousands of Shiites following the abortive uprising or Intifada of 1991. Too bad the Special Iraqi Tribunal couldn’t also subpoena, George H.W. Bush and some of his top officials.
It was H.W. who in February 1991, as American forces were driving Saddam's troops out of Kuwait, called for the people of Iraq to rise up and overthrow the dictator. That message was repeatedly broadcast across Iraq. It was also contained in millions of leaflets dropped by the U.S. Air Force. Eager to end decades of repression, the Shiites arose. Their revolt spread like wildfire; in the north, the Kurds also rose up. Key Iraqi army units joined in. It looked as if Saddam's days were over.

But then George H. W. Bush blew the whistle. Things had got out of hand. What Bush had wanted was not a messy popular uprising but a neat military coup -- another strongman more amenable to Western interests. The White House feared that turmoil would give the Iranians increased influence, upset the Turks, wreak havoc throughout the region.

But the Bush administration didn't just turn its back; it actually aided Saddam to suppress the Intifada.

The Uprising Smashed

When Saddam's brutal counter-attack against the rebellions began, the order was given to American troops already deep inside Iraq and armed to the teeth not to assist the rebellion in any way -- though everyone knew that they were condemning the Intifada to an awful defeat. Thanks to their high-flying reconnaissance planes, U.S. commanders would observe the brutal process as it occurred.

At the time, Rocky Gonzalez was a Special Forces warrant officer serving with U.S. troops in southern Iraq. Because he spoke Arabic, he was detached to serve with the Third Brigade of the 101st Infantry when the ground war began. There were about 140 men in his unit, which was stationed at Al Khadir on the Euphrates, just a few kilometers from Kerbala and Najaf.

Rocky was one of the few Americans who could actually communicate with the Iraqis. When the Intifada erupted, the Americans prompted the rebels to raid the local prison in Kerbala and free the Kuwaitis who were being held there. "We didn't think there was going to be a lot of bloodshed," said Gonzalez, "but they executed the guards in the prison." Prior to the uprising, the rebels had also been feeding intelligence to the Americans on what Saddam's local supporters were up to.

From their base, Rocky and his units watched as Saddam's forces launched their counterattack against the rebel-held city. Thousands of people fled toward the American lines, said Gonzalez. "All of a sudden, as far as the eye could see on Highway Five, there was just a long line of vehicles, dump trucks, tractors -- any vehicle they could get -- coming to us in streams."

"The rebels wanted aid, they wanted medical treatment, and some of the individuals wanted us to give them weapons and ammunition so they could go and fight. One of the refugees was waving a leaflet that had been dropped by U.S. planes over Iraq. Those leaflets told them to rise up against the regime and free themselves."

"They weren't asking us to fight. They felt they could do that themselves. Basically they were just saying 'we rose up like you asked us, now give us some weapons and arms to fight.'"

The American forces had huge stocks of weapons they had captured from the Iraqis. But they were ordered to blow them up rather than turn them over to the rebels. "It was gut-wrenching to me," said Gonzalez. "Here we were sitting on the Euphrates River and we were ordered to stop. As a human being, I wanted to help, but as a solider I had my orders."

Ironically, according to a former U.S. diplomat, some of the arms that were not destroyed by American forces were collected by the CIA and shipped to anti-Soviet rebels in Afghanistan, who at the time were being clandestinely backed by the U.S.

A Shiite survivor of the uprising later said he had seen other American forces at the river town of Nassiriya destroy a huge cache of weapons that the rebels desperately needed. "They blew up an enormous stock of arms," he said. "If we had been able to get hold of them, the course of history would have been changed in favor of the uprising, because Saddam had nothing left at that moment."

Indeed, Saddam's former intelligence chief, General Wafiq al-Samarrai, later recounted that the government forces had almost no ammunition left when they finally squelched the revolt. "By the last week of the intifada," he said, "the army was down to two hundred and seventy thousand Kalashnikov bullets." That would have lasted for just two more days of fighting.

In his autobiography, General Schwarzkopf, without giving details, alludes to the fact that the American-led coalition aided Saddam to crush the uprising. According to his curious reasoning, expressed in another interview, the Iraqi people were not innocent in the whole affair because "they supported the invasion of Kuwait and accepted Saddam Hussein."

Iraqi survivors of the Intifada also claimed that U.S. forces actually prevented them from marching on Baghdad. "American helicopters landed on the road to block our way and stopped us from continuing," they said. "One of the American soldiers threatened to kill us if we didn't turn back." Another Shiite leader, Dr. Hamid al-Bayatti, claimed that the U.S. even provided Saddam's Republican Guards with fuel. The Americans, he charged, disarmed some resistance units and allowed Republican Guard tanks to go through their checkpoints to crush the uprising. "We let one Iraqi division go through our lines to get to Basra because the United States did not want the regime to collapse," said Middle East expert Wiliam Quandt.

The U.S. officials declined even to meet with the Shiites to hear their case. As Peter Galbraith said, "These were desperate people, desperate for U.S. help. But the U.S. refused to talk to any of the Shiite leaders: the U.S. Embassy, Schwarzkopf, nobody would see them, nor even give them an explanation."

The stonewalling continued even when evidence that Saddam was using chemical weapons against the rebels emerged. "You could see there were helicopters crisscrossing the skies, going back and forth," Rocky Gonzalez said. "Within a few hours people started showing up at our perimeter with chemical burns. They were saying, 'We are fighting the Iraqi military and the Baath Party and they sprayed us with chemicals.' We were guessing mustard gas. They had blisters and burns on their face and on their hands, on places where the skin was exposed," he said. "As the hours passed, more and more people were coming. And I asked them, 'Why don't you go to the hospital in Kerbala,' and the response was that all the doctors and nurses had been executed by the Iraqi soldiers, 'so we come to you for aid.'"

One of the greatest concerns of coalition forces during Desert Storm had been that Saddam would unleash his WMD. U.S. officials repeatedly warned Iraq that America's response would be immediate and devastating. Facing such threats, Saddam kept his weapons holstered -- or so the Bush administration led the world to believe.

Rocky's suspicion that Saddam did resort to them in 1991 was later confirmed by the report of the U.S. Government's Iraq Survey Group, which investigated Saddam's WMD after the U.S.-led invasion in 2003 and concluded that Saddam no longer had any WMD. Almost universally ignored by the media, however, was the finding that Saddam had resorted to his WMD during the 1991 uprising. The "regime was shaking and wanted something 'very quick and effective' to put down the revolt." They considered then rejected using mustard gas, as it would be too perceptible with U.S. troops close by. Instead, on March 7th, 1991 the Iraqi military filled R-400 aerial bombs with sarin, a binary nerve agent. "Dozens of sorties were flown against Shiite rebels in Kerbala and the surrounding areas," the ISG report said. But apparently the R-400 bombs were not very effective, having been designed for high-speed delivery from planes, not slow-moving helicopters. So the Iraqi military switched to dropping CS, a very potent tear gas, in large aerial bombs.

Because of previous U.S. warnings against resorting to chemical weapons, Saddam and his generals knew they were taking a serious risk, but the Coalition never reacted. The lingering question is why. It's impossible to believe they didn't know about it at the time. There were repeated charges from Shiite survivors that the Iraqi dictator had used chemical weapons. Rocky Gonzalez said he heard from refugees that nerve gas was being used. He had also observed French-made Iraqi helicopters -- one of which was outfitted as a crop sprayer -- making repeated bomb runs over Najaf.Gonzalez maintained that, contrary to what the ISG report said, many of the refugees who fled to U.S. lines were indeed victims of mustard gas. "Their tongues were swollen," he said, "and they had severe burns on the mucous tissue on the inside of their mouths and nasal passages. Our chemical officer also said it looked like mustard gas." Gonzalez suggested that local Iraqi officials, desperate to put down the uprising, may have used mustard gas without permission from on high. "A lot of that was kept quiet," he said, "because we didn't want to panic the troops. We stepped up our training with gas masks, because we were naturally concerned."

Gonzalez's unit also passed their information on to their superiors. "There was no way that officers higher didn't know what was happening," Gonzalez said. "Whether those reports went above our division, I have no idea." Gonzalez's former commander turned down my request for an interview. At the time, few subjects were more sensitive than Saddam's potential use of WMD. It's difficult to believe that reports from Gonzalez's unit weren't flashed immediately up the chain of command in the Gulf and Washington.

There were other American witnesses to what happened. U.S. helicopters and planes flew overhead, patrolling as Saddam's helicopters decimated the rebels. Some of those aircraft provided real-time video of the occurrences below. A reliable U.S. intelligence source confirmed that such evidence does indeed exist.

On March 7th, Secretary of State James Baker warned Saddam not to resort to chemical weapons to repress the uprising. But why, when the U.S. was notified that the Iraqi dictator actually had resorted to chemical weapons, was there no forceful reaction from the administration of the elder Bush?One plausible explanation--denouncing Saddam for using chemical weapons would have greatly increased pressure on the U.S. President to come to the aid of the Shiites.

Instead, the American decision to turn their backs on the Intifada gave a green light to Saddam Hussein's ruthless counterattack. General Wafiq al-Samarrai learned of the decision after Iraqi units intercepted frantic conversations between two Islamic rebels near Nassariya. One told the other that he had gone to the Americans to ask for support, and twice was rebuffed. "They say, 'We are not going to support you because you are Shiites and are collaborating with Iran.'" After hearing that message, al-Samarrai recalled, "The position of the regime immediately became more confident. Now [Saddam] began to attack the Intifada."

The repression when it came was as horrendous as everyone knew it would be.

"Women were being raped. People were being shot in the streets and just left to rot there." Zainab al-Suwaij recounted. "The citizens were forbidden to bury the bodies. Many of them were eaten by the dogs. The government ordered people out of Kerbala to take the road to Najaf. They were slaughtered and executed along the roadway. Many of those killed were teenagers."

As an object lesson to his people, Saddam Hussein himself ordered Iraqi television to record and broadcast scenes of the repression: appalling scenes of captured Shiites, some with ropes around their necks, being kicked and beaten and insulted, threatened with pistols and machine guns, a few pleading for mercy. Most of them, eyes downcast, are eventually dragged away to execution.

The Bush administration attempted to disengage itself from any responsibility. They were helped by the fact that there were no graphic news reports in the West of the slaughter that was taking place. U.S. intelligence agencies had their own accounts and explicit images, but they weren't sharing them with the press or the public. Anonymous government figures, wise in the ways of Realpolitik, were making statements such as, "It is far easier to deal with a tame Saddam Hussein than with an unknown quantity."

Because of Saddam's savage repression of the uprising, the ensuing U.N. sanctions, and the carnage unleashed by the 2003 invasion, at least one million Iraqis have probably lost their lives since 1991.

Imagine if, instead of blocking the Intifada, George H.W. Bush had given a green light -- without even sending American troops to Baghdad -- just sent the needed signals: met with rebel leaders, ordered Saddam to stop flying his helicopter gunships.

Granted there would have been a period of tumult. The Kurds might have achieved an autonomous or semi autonomous state, which is probably what they will wind up with. The Iranians would have certainly increased their influence through their Shiite allies, but probably no more than they have today.

Indeed, some in the Bush I administration were recommending that he do just that: support the revolt he had called for. They were overruled.

Barry Lando is the author of "Web of Deceit: The History of Western Complicity in Iraq, from Churchill to Kennedy to George W. Bush (Other Press,N.Y. Doubleday, Toronto.)

You can also view segments of a documentary Lando produced with Michel Despratx at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UeY05iS5iv0&feature=related

22 month old Ethan and his Ipod Touch

2010-01-20T23:32:00.000-08:00

Following along on my previous blog, here now is 22 month old Ethan at play with his Ipod Touch...

Ipod Touch and the under two market-pros and cons

2010-01-20T06:33:00.000-08:00

I was going to blog further about Haiti today, but then got to thinking about something I did the other day and wanted to tell you all about it: I bought my grandson an Ipod Touch. What is so remarkable about that? The fact that my grandson, Ethan, is only one year and ten months old

Even the Apple sales woman was somewhat taken aback. But there he was yesterday afternoon happily playing away with several different Apps, his small fingers flicking across the screen manipulating one game after another: Elmo in one, a series of toy trains in another, instinctively interacting with his world of the future that is already here.

That fact is that for several weeks Ethan has already been playing with a couple of Apps on his father's Iphone.

But won't it corrupt his spirit? Digitize his soul before he has learns to explore the real world out there on his side of the Ipod screen? Of course, I had a serious conversation with my son and daughter-in-law before I made the move. And they are as concerned about their childrens' upbringing as any parents could be: No TV violence allowed.

And the Brave New Digital World can be frightening. This past New Years for instance, we were at dinner in our hotel, and at the table next to us was a family of five, two young children, probably three and five, and three adults. The three adults were all on their mobiles, probably exchanging New Years greetings with friends on the other side of the world. And the two children? They each had their own small DVD readers or laptops in front of them on the table, each one viewing a different Disney-like video. Again, they were all sitting around the same table--"together"--but they were also all off in their own little worlds.

Not good, we agree.

And I would hope that limits will be put on his Ipoding.

On the other hand, that is the world that my grandson already inhabits. And we are descending ever deeper into that digitized world at an astonishing rate, much faster than most of us realize. Think of the glut of notepads and tablets and e-book readers and smart phones that are now the hottest selling items in our stores, economic crisis or not. Think of bing and twitter and plaxo and Facebook. Ask yourself how many of those items you had even heard about a couple of years ago. Now ask yourself what will be on the market two years from now.

But if I can give my grandson the tools he needs to inhabit that new world, why not? Those Apps he is already playing with could, of course, turn him into some kind of digital vegetable --on the other hand, properly used, they can also teach him mathematics and spelling and geography and logic, and that's just the threshold. I also bought an Ipod for his seven year old sister which she has no problem mastering. She's had her own computer for years. His father, a film maker, is himself exploring the limits of digital video and editing and blogging his results. My other son, seventeen, is now coming home from school in Paris to log on to MIT's site and follow a (free) series of lectures on calculus. He is also in daily contact via Facebook with twenty or thirty other young people around the world who are going to be attending the same university beginning next September. But why wait til then to get to know each other and exchange ideas?

In other words, no one knows where this revolution is headed. Not even the people caught up in it. It's like a surfer trying to ride a tsunami. Of course, we have the choice not to join in this world. But I figure that my grandson is already there.

Which is why I bought him his Ipod Touch.

Haiti and Al Qaeda Memo 2

2010-01-19T06:51:00.000-08:00

Memo from the Director of the Save Haiti NGO
Haiti and Al Qaeda, developments

Eyes Only

Further to my memo of yesterday, I have further researched the plan presented and find that we may already have fertile fodder in-country, saving us the expense of importing talent. Indeed, Haiti already has 3250 Muslims. True, that's only 0.04 percent of the population, but, hey, surely one despairing type would be willing to don a pair of loaded briefs and hop a plane to New York. We may try contacting the Bilal Mosque and Islamic Centre in Cap Haitien, which has a mosque and an Islamic study center. There is also the spiritual centre Alahu al Akhbar in Port au Prince. Maybe we could offer scholarships in Salafist studies.

In fact, according to revisionist history, Douty Boukman, whose death supposedly kicked off Haiti's revolution, may well have been of Muslim origin. Some later Muslim immigrants were Palestinians. (Signal the Israelis) They even had a Muslim representative in their Chamber of Deputies.

I would only think it's a question of time before one of the horde of reporters in Haiti covering the current disaster checks all this out and files a piece.

So, I ask you, what more do we need?

Haiti and Al Qaeda-A Modest Proposal

2010-01-18T06:26:00.000-08:00

Memo from the Director of the Save Haiti NGO
To: Top Staff
Confidential
Al Qaeda in Haiti

In a few days, when the world tires of the horrific images from Haiti, when the bodies are buried, the wreckage bulldozed, the hordes of reporters and foreign military have pulled out, then what happens to Haiti? Does it slink back to its status as one of the poorest countries on the face of the globe? In other words, how do we keep the momentum going? How do we keep Haiti and its desperate plight on page one? How do we get the tens of billions of dollars of long term aid and effort that this country needs?

I think I've found the answer. We close down our regular programs, our school lunches, and seed development and well-drilling and free dental clinics---Instead we launch Al Qaeda in Haiti. Through cut-outs of course.

We get a couple of hundred of young Haitians, desperate for anyway out of their poverty, we import a couple of fire-breathing radical Muslims to give appropriate cover to the operation, we give our Haitians a few weeks of clandestine training, and then we're ready. We could start with a suicide bomb attack on the U.S. Embassy to announce that Al Qaeda in Haiti has arrived, follow that up with a flurry of roadside bombs, attacks against smaller police stations and city halls across the country.

There results are obvious: The U.S. media arrive once again en masse. The original skeptical reports give way to shock, alarm, and calls for the American president to act. We're no longer talking about the threat from radical Islam in far-off Afghanistan. It's here, at our door step!

Then we move to the big time: two of our trainees get picked up sailing a fishing boat towards Galveston, its hold filled with fertilizer-based explosive, another gets caught boarding a plane for New York from Port Au Prince, each of his voodoo beads filled with nerve gas.

By now thousands of American troops are back in Haiti. Now, instead of a few million dollars in U.S. aid, America is pouring billions into Haiti--training a brand new Haitian army, educating thousands of civil servants, rooting out corruption, building new roads and bridges, working with every local community organization they can find.

As far as continuing to supply new recruits to our operation, the U.S. will take care of that as well. They'll be there with their Predators and frightened, trigger-happy young soldiers who know nothing about our culture and people. In fact, once we have started the ball-rolling it will maintain a momentum of its own.

Indeed, if this model works as well as I think it will, we might try it out in some of our other locations around the globe. But let's start with Haiti.

Haiti and the Times

2010-01-17T10:40:00.000-08:00

Take a look at the front page of today's New York Times (and the rest of the world's media) and you would swear that chaos and violence are running rampant in Haiti, that everyone from journalists to relief workers must be risking their necks just to venture out into the streets. You would think! But then listen to the audio feed from the same New York Times reporters who wrote the article on all that violence, and, turns out, folks, there's just a few pockets and a small number of vandals at work. The overwhelming majority of Haitians are attempting to survive without trashing their stores and knifing each other over welfare supplies. Even more ironic, the Times audio report says that fears of such violence are playing a part in delaying the aid effort, with relief workers leary of possible danger. Unfortunately the Times itself, by playing the sensational photos for all they are worth, is itself putting out a badly distorted picture of what is actually going on.