Ignoring the PKK in Iraq: Another
Topic: Iraq
[Note: I wrote this last week just before I came down with the flu and I didn't get a chance to post it, but its still kind of timely.]

So Rummy and Condi have made another "surprise visit" to Iraq, which the administration says is intended to show the Iraqis our support for their new government. I'm not buying that explanation, though. Such a high level visit can only mean that there's some very serious news coming. My guess is that they're there to let the Iraqis know that we have to start pulling out a large number of troops.

After all, as Rummy said:

"We now are moving through another important milestone -- the formation of a new government, a sovereign government of Iraq, the first government that doesn't have a qualifier in front of it. It's not a transitional government. It's not an interim government. It's not a governing council. It's a government, a government of Iraq, and that's an important thing. This is a sovereign country, and they're making impressive progress." [defenselink]

So that means we should be able to pack up and leave right?

The midterms are coming up and I expect the pressure coming from the Republican members on the Hill is really starting to become too much to bare. Naturally, this administration makes never makes a policy decision that isn't solely for political reasons, so you've got to figure that Karl Rove has done the math and decided that cutting and running is less harmful than staying the course and getting creamed in November.

They'd better hurry up and get busy though, because the doomsday scenario is about to come crashing down on them. From the moment we invaded Iraq there was always the danger that the Turks might at some point decide to move troops into Iraq to deal with their Kurdish insurgency. [They actually did in March of 2003] Such a move would upset the whole regional applecart, pulling in the Iranians, the Syrians and God knows who else. This would also put us in the position of having to choose between our Turkish NATO ally or our Iraqi Kurdish allies, who currently are the best friends we have there.

The Iraqi Kurds don't exactly get involved with the fighting between the Kurds and the Turks, but they --and we --- have looked the other way as the PKK, the Kurdish Workers Party, has used bases inside Iraq just over Turkey's southern border, to attack Turkey. The Turks have been complaining bitterly about this for a few years now to the Bush administration, but they've essentially done nothing about it because they've been too busy with the Sunni insurgency to worry much about it.

The administration had been holding them off by promising that an Iraqi government of "national unity" would ensure that the Kurds didn't break off and declare their own independence -- a move that Turkey considers a red-line --- but the four month delay in forming a government has allowed a vacuum to develop that the PKK has taken full advantage of.

Now its all coming to a head. In fact, the Turks last week moved about 50,000 troops close to the Iraqi border and the Turkish foreign minister, Abdullah Gul, told Condi just yesterday -- while she was in Ankara for a little chitchat --- that the PPK had turned Iraq into a "training ground" and that Turkey would now "take her own precautions." [AP] Condi admitted that the U.S hadn't done enough ---another tactical error? ---but that "We believe that it is important that we make a joint effort through information sharing and other means to prevent any vacuum from being used as a way to inflict harm here in Turkey." Too late, the Turkish media is full of stories about Turkey's military build-up along the Iraqi border and I'd say it's just a matter of time before they go on over.

If Turkey were to launch an incursion into northern Iraq, the Iraqi Kurds would immediately meet them with force. The Iraqi army would pretty much cease to exist because most of the best units it has are made up of the Peshmerga. The Peshmerga, the Kudish resistance fighters that spent decades fighting Saddam, are the best fighters the army has and they would all head north to defend Kurdistan.

There's any number of variables involved with a Turkish invasion of northern Iraq, and none of them are good. So, here's yet another fine mess W. & Co. have gotten us into.


[For further reading on this issue read the United States Institute of Peace report]

Egypt, Iraq and Iran: One big mess.
Topic: War on Terror

As we're all digesting the news of yet another series of bomb attacks in Egypt, the third attack on the tourist industry in 18 months, I think back to the recent elections where the police beat opposition voters to prevent them from casting ballots for the Muslim Brotherhood. One would have thought Mubarak & Co. would have preferred a moderate secular party to deal with in parliament to counter the Brotherhood, but even Kafia's candidate, Ayman Nour, is now behind bars on a trumped up forgery charge. And local elections have been postponed for two years, in order to prevent the Brotherhood from gaining any more power, so we're pretty much back to square-one in Egypt; democracy is decidedly not on the march there.

The security forces seem to be real good at beating up voters but not so much with stopping terrorism. The government will undoubtedly call for the renewal of emergency powers, but the bombings will continue. You'd think with all the resources at the deposal of the Egyptian government they could at least protect their cash cow, the tourist industry. I think this is what happens when you have such a calcified regime that is solely focused on just holding on to power. The problem with this scenario is that, regardless of all of the American money flowing in and Egypt's strategic importance, it could all go kablooee without a whole lot of effort a la the Shah's Iran.

In this case, I guess Condi has opted for stability over democracy, unlike in Iraq, but Egypt probably would have been the better candidate for a little democratic instability. As things stand now, it's just a matter of time and the fallout could be even more catastrophic for the Middle East powder-keg than it currently is in Iraq.

Terror up in 2005:

According to a Knight/Ridder article last Friday, a new intelligence report says that terrorist attacks rose sharply in 2005, up to 10,000. Counterterrorism officials say, though, the stunning increase ---up from 3,192 in 2004 --- is due partly to "a change last year in how terror attacks are counted, coupled with a more aggressive effort to tally such violence worldwide." That's reassuring, isn't it?

The Article goes on to say that, "officials confirm, that some of the rise is traceable to the war in Iraq, where foreign terrorists, a homegrown insurgency and sectarian strife all have contributed to political bloodshed." I guess it’s lucky that we're fighting them over there instead of here, because the report also says that 85% of American citizens killed last year in terror attacks died in Iraq.

And what about OBL, by the way, is his still running or is he hiding, I can't keep track? State Department counterterrorism coordinator Henry Crumper told a congressional committee this month that al-Qaeda "may be isolated under pressure, unable to communicate effectively." But still able to carry out attacks all over the world and make audiotapes. Other than that, the struggle against violent extremism is going just grand!

In Iraq:

Especially, in Iraq, where the battling Bickersons are well on the way to forming a new government of national unity which will usher in a new dawn of democracy and peace! Not quite yet, though: Yesterday insurgents, or al-Qaeda, or someone, launched seven car bomb attacks that killed at least 10 and injured 80 in Baghdad and Mosul; at least 15 others were killed in bombings and shootings, and 15 more bodies of police recruits were found in a pick up truck in Ramadi. The body count since the new PM, Jawad al-Maliki, was sworn in is at 70 so far, according to AP. So overall, I'd say 'staying the course' is showing some great results.

On the Iran front:

Mamoud Amadinejad had another press conference yesterday and it was a whopper! I don't know about you, but I could stand for a lot more press conferences from W. and a lot less from crazy Mamoud. This time around he said that the Iranians wouldn't be answering questions about his reference to their supposed second nuclear program involving a faster enrichment method they may have gotten from Pakistani A, Q. Khan; he wouldn't be talking to the Americans about Iraq, now that they have a new government; and that sanctions or attacks on Iran would lead to them pulling out of the NPT.

The IAEA decided last week not to go back for more inspections and Mohammed ElBaradei is expected to tell the UN that Iran isn't complying with last month's stern non-binding presidential order to stop enriching uranium; which sets the stage next week for more wrangling over what to do about Iran between us, the EU, Russia and China.

There was a very interesting column by Karim Sadjadpour, an analyst with the International Crisis Group, in the Inquirer on Monday that pretty much lays out what can and can't be done about Iran. Certainly, we need much more of this type of reasonable discourse and a lot less of Paul Kane's Totale Krieg fire breathing.

Sadjadpour points out that Iran isn't a monolith, that there are elements within the leadership that could opt for a civilian program down the road, under the right conditions. Right now, the hardliners in the Ahmadinejad camp are successfully arguing "with some plausibility," that:

"Nothing short of regime change will satisfy the United States and that retreating form the nuclear guest ion would only display weakness and invite further pressure. Believing a clash with the United States inevitable, Tehran's hardliners want it to occur on their terms, when oil prices are high and the Americans are bogged down in Iraq." The only way out of this mess, Sadjadpour writes, is to appeal to the moderates and pragmatists by the U.S. offering direct talks.

"Timing is key: Offering incentives prematurely, without modified Iranian behavior, may well validate the confrontationists' approach; refusing to offer genuine incentives will undermine the pragmatists appeal. With oil prices souring and Iraq in chaos, continuing to insist on zero enrichment for zero incentives...holds little promise. The United Stats must come to terms with a reality that European, Russian, and Iranian officials privately admit: If a nuclear Iran is to be avoided, the answer lies not in European economic overtures or a Russian led technical solution, but American-led diplomacy, starting from the premise that Iran's leadership is neither monolithic nor impossible intransigent."

The only problem with this thinking is that the crazy people on both sides are in the ascendant. Mamoud Ahmadinejad is waiting for Mehdi to return and W, is waiting for the Rapture. (And in a funny way both are banking on the destruction of Israel.)

The problem with Hamas.
Topic: Israel

Back when Hamas won the elections in the PA, I thought this might be a good omen for the Israeli/Palestinian peace process, such as it is. I congratulated the Palestinian people for their enthusiastic embrace of democracy and hoped that having won such an overwhelming mandate Hamas would moderate their ideology, continue to honor agreements that the previous Palestinian governments had worked out with Israel and get the ball rolling on finally resolving this decade's long mess. [LTAD]

Briefly, it seemed like a new dawn might be emerging in the Middle East, with Sharon having left the scene and a new regime in the PA. Not that I thought Hamas was any great bargain, but it looked like they could pull off the Nixon-going-to-China thing, they having the ideologically approved credibility to negotiate with Israel in the eyes of the Palestinians.

The one little fairly important piece of the puzzle I was missing was that this is the Middle East, common sense doesn't work there. Hamas came right in and refused to recognize the existence of Israel and the various Israeli political parties vying for election were provided with an excellent whipping boy to show how tough they could be against Palestinian terror.

Now that all the political players are in place; the U.S. and the E.U have decided to pull the plug on funding for the PA, until the Hamas-led government either collapses or acquiesces to Israel's demands for recognition and a renunciation of terror. Israel is withholding the millions of dollars it takes from taxes for the PA, so money the PA actually makes itself is also gone. Hamas hasn't reacted well to the pressure and isn't really picking up the whole political give and take thing very quickly. Last week, a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv killed nine Israeli citizens. Even though the bombing was carried out by Islamic Jihad, a faction of Fatah ---our buddy Abu Mazen's outfit ---Hamas got blamed for it and didn't do themselves any favors by not condemning it.

How Hamas might have been able to stop such a bombing with no security forces under its control is a guest ion I have. One would have thought if anyone was in a position to prevent this sort of thing from happening it would have been Abu Mazen, whose Fatah party runs the security forces and has links to the party that carried out the attack. In any case, whoever controls the security forces at this point is to be getting more and more of an academic guestion because they haven't been paid in two months. Soon there may not be any security forces.

Unless, the U.S., the E.U. and Israel are prepared for a complete breakdown of all law and order in the PA, someone has to step in and make a deal with Hamas. Various leaders of Hamas have hinted that they might tolerate the existence of Israel if a deal can be made on borders and money. As usual there are no go options in this on-going conflict, but there are always worse ones. The PA descending into civil war would seem to be a lot worse than trying to meet Hamas half way on some sort of deal to restore funding for a pledge to make their cease-fire permanent and negotiations down the road.

Who knows what the real answer is, I'm just crank who writes a blog, what do I know? The best diplomatic minds in the world have spent decades banging their heads against a wall trying to cut this Gordian's knot, but I do know that one side has to blink, and I say the sooner the better.

A breakthrough in Iraqi politics?
Topic: Iraq

Or more of the same with different characters?

Word came down from Najaf and Ibrahim al-Jaafari decided to step aside after months of holding up the formation of a new government with his obstinate refusal to get lost. Jaafari said on Iraqi TV on Wednesday, "I cannot allow myself to be an obstacle, or appear to be an obstacle." (He certainly never did that!) "The one thing I cannot compromise is my dedication to this heroic people," Right, all this trouble he's caused was all in the name of democracy and the Iraqi people.

It's not going to go over well in the White House that it took Ashraf Qazi, a U.N. envoy, and a visit by him to Ayatollah ali-Sistani to get the ball rolling again. Remember, earlier on this month Condi Rice and British Foreign Secretary had made a "surprise visit" to Baghdad to try and get al-Jaafari to leave and they left empty handed. ( See, W. was right, diplomacy never works!) It looks like the Brits and the U.S. don't have too much credibility or clout when it comes to Iraqi politics these days.

Ali-Sistani does however: Robert Reid writes for the AP that, "Sistani's role was another sign of the Shiite clergy's political power. Shiite politicians turn frequently to the clergy for the politically tough decisions that they cannot make." So who's running the show over there, the democratically elected leadership or the turbaned Taliban? I'm sure all the people who have lost loved ones over there will be happy to know all their sacrifice has led to this.

Supposedly, the politicians are now on the fast track to forming new government. One little sticking point might be that part of the reason the Kurds wanted al-Jaafari out in the first place was because he had reneged on his promise to help them grab Kirkuk, an ethnically mixed city that they want rolled into their autonomous region. There isn't any guarantee that the next PM, Jawad al-Maliki, is going to be any more accommodating on that score. To be sure, any future government is going to have to deal with Turkey, if the Shiites do accede to Kurdish demands for Kirkuk. [Note: Turkey has moved 50,000 troops closer to the Iraqi border. AP]

When and if we ever leave, it looks like the militias might be ones who we leave in control. There's the Badr brigade, which is the armed wing of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution; the Mehdi army, of Muqtada al-Sadr, who we fought to a standstill twice back in 2004 and whose numbers have exploded to maybe 15,000 fighters; and a new player on the scene, the Facilities Protection Services, which Newsweek says numbers about 146,000.

The funny thing about he FPS is that no one knows exactly where they came from or who controls them. This shadowy organization was apparently the offspring of groups of armed men who were known to be "night watchmen" for the various Shiite mosques around the country under threat form the Sunni insurgents. Now, they roam around Baghdad in police pickups, in blue police uniforms and, naturally; they're armed to the teeth. The crazy Interior Minister, Bayan Jabr, denied that he has any connection to them and tells Newsweek that "they are dong some bad." He says that one element of the FPS, Battalion 16, is responsible for "sectarian killings, explosions and mortar attacks."

So even the Interior Minister, who is very likely behind many killings himself, says they're out of control. Tim Keefe, a military spokesman says, "We really don't get anywhere near them." Another American official who didn't want his named used said, "The FPS has basically become the private army for the ministries. They have no accountability."

We're pretty busy with the Sunnis and al-Qaeda, so we're staying clear of the Shiite militias and, for the moment, they're staying out of our way while they consolidate their hold over the entire country. This could change at anytime, particularly if we attack their benefactor Iran.

Iran: all options are radioactive
Topic: Bush Administraiton

On the diplomatic track, we're getting nowhere fast. After another fruitless get-together on Iran in Moscow, the under-secretary of state, Nicholas Burns, said yesterday that all sides agreed that Iran should stop its enrichment program...and that's about it. Burns offered that if the UN wouldn't do anything maybe individual countries could. Russia should stop selling missiles to Iran, for a start, and he said: "Its time for countries to start using their influence." Burns prefers to go through the UN Security Council, but "it's not beyond the realm of the possible that at some point in the future" other countries might, "take collective economic action or collective action on sanctions." (Or not.)

The NYT reports that the European chief negotiator, Javier Solana, has advocated penalties on Iran that would include, "stricter export controls on high technology shipments to Iran and revocation of visas for Iranian officials linked to the nuclear program." The Times noted, though, that another official pointed out that Solana had said these proposals were "options for reflection" not "options for action." For the Russian's part, Foreign Minister Sergie Lavrov said he would need proof that Iran is actually building a bomb before he would support sanctions.

While Burns is getting nowhere on convincing the rest of the world to do anything about Iran, the State Department's top arms-control official, Robert Joseph, is pushing the panic button. He says, "In terms of activities on the ground in Iran, it's fair to say, I believe, that the Iranians have put both feet on the accelerator." He also went on to say that, "We are very close to that point of no return." (Isn't that what the Israelis have been saying for the past year?)

Rummy backed up this assertion, in the friendly confines of the Laura Ingrahm show, by saying he has no confidence in the CIA's estimate that Iran is five to ten years away from having a bomb. "I think it's very difficult target for our intelligence community. They work hard at it, and they're fine people, but it's a difficult thing to do. Our visibility into their circumstance is imperfect." In other words, "the absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence."

Regime change, again:

And even if the CIA's intelligence is correct, that doesn't mean we're not going to go in with guns blazing anyway. Today the NYT reports that yet another former CIA official has come out to say that Rummy & Co. ignored evidence that Iraq didn't have WMD. Tyler Drumheller, the CIA's former head of the European operation, is going to say on 60 Minutes this Sunday that a paid informant in Saddam's inner circle, Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, told the CIA in September of 2002 that Iraq had no WMD. [Reuters]

CIA chief George Tenet, Bush and Cheney all knew this, so Drumheller thought the war must be off. He was surprised to find out shortly afterwards that it wasn't. Drumheller recalled, "And we said, 'Well, what about the intel?' And they said, 'Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change."

That's the plan in Iran, too: Regime change. The U.S. going to spend $80 million to broadcast anti-regime propaganda into Iran and support organizations that want democracy in Iran. Of course, this type of thing could backfire. Michael Hirsh in an article in Newsweek points out that, "outside interference tends to enrage Iranians, who have never forgiven Washington for the CIA-assisted coup that toppled elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh in 1953."

Iran's ambassador to the UN, Javad Zarif, says, "It’s not new. They increased their activities in Iran two or three years ago and now instead of a reformist president we have a conservative president. That tells you how successful they were." Remember, Bush came out before the Iranian elections and questioned their legitimacy, which just pissed Iranians off even more. Hirsh writes that, "Even affluent voters who said they hated the Shiite mullahs told a Newsweek reporter in Iran at the time that American arrogance so angered them that they decided to vote for Ahmandinjad, the radical candidate."

So, what are the options here? Trying to force democracy down the Iranian's throats doesn’t seem to be going too well and the rest of the world doesn't appear to be buying the line that Iran is the biggest threat to world peace since Hitler, either. The military option is "on the table," but that would be a catastrophe of biblical proportions if we used it, so the only other option is talking to the Iranians one-on-one. If W. & CO. were really as interested in a peaceful solution as they profess to be, they would do everything possible, including talking to the Iranians.

But U.N. ambassador John Bolton told the Inquirer yesterday that "we have nothing to say to them." Bolton complains that, "One of the ironies here is that the Bush administration so often is criticized for being unilateralist cowboys, but we've been trying for 3 1/2 years to work our way through the board of governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency and [are] now trying to work our way through the U.N Security Council. But the purpose of these efforts is not just to chitchat about the Iranian nuclear-weapons efforts, but to bring them to a halt."

Of course, the truth is that for the past five years, beyond calling Iran part of the "axis of evil," the Bush administration has done zilch on Iran. They haven't been "trying for 3 1/2 years" to do anything, they've outsourced the diplomacy to the Europeans. W. & Co. have been dithering on Iran the entire time they've been in office and it's just now that they've gotten around to developing a policy of their own and, typically, it's all big sticks and no carrots.

I'm with Tom Friedman on this, if there's a "choice between another Rumsfeld-led confrontation and just letting Iran get nukes and living with it, we should opt for the latter."

Go to Non Sum Dignus

I'm soory I haven't been posting here too much lately, I've been a bit short on time. I have been posting at Non Sum DignusNon Sum Dignus everyday, though, so go there for more on what's going on.

My take on the visit of Hu Jintao is there today.

Rummy's war.
Topic: Iraq

There's still no sign in Iraq that the various squabbling political factions are any nearer to any kind of agreement on forming a new government. The speaker of the Iraqi parliament, Adnan Pachachi, canceled Monday's meeting of the 275-member national assembly because no one can agree on what to do about the PM, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, who still refuses to step aside. There was talk last week that the more secular types in the main Shiite bloc along with the Kurds and the Sunnis might be able to agree to work out a deal on picking a new candidate for PM, but al-Jaafari is having none of it. Stepping down is "out of the question," he said today. [AP]

Members of his Dawa party might be open to picking a new candidate from their party if Jaafari decides step down, but there's no sign that he will. Hence the stalemate, or gridlock, or whatever you want to call it. It's only been four months since the election, though, so what's the rush, right? That's what Mamoud Othman, a Kurdish leader told Nancy Youssef of the Inquirer. "I don't think anybody is in a hurry. They are completely out of touch with the voters," he said. (Imagine that!)

Meanwhile the country continues to fall apart. Last week we suffered 24 Marine casualties in one battle and this week the death count for the Marines is at 6. Yesterday, AP reported that insurgents in Anbar province launched a full out coordinated assault against the main government building in Ramadi, using suicide car bombs, RPGs and automatic weapons. The Marines were able to hold their own, but this is the second time in less than two weeks that Sunni insurgents have launched these types of attacks. Ramadi has been and remains an insurgent stronghold. The Marines may patrol there, but they do so in large numbers and inside heavily armored vehicles.

If anything, Anbar seems to be getting worse. All the major operations of a few months ago in Anbar province, much ballyhooed by the military and the press have apparently come to nothing. The insurgents seem to be getting stronger and more sophisticated in their tactics. In Baghdad, while the politicians fiddle, U.S. troops and the Iraqi army have fought pitched battles in the Sunni neighborhood of Adhamiya, killing several civilians in the process. [NYT]

This had been going on now for a few days and despite the military sealing off Adhamiya, the fighting isn't diminishing. In this case, it appears that the people we're fighting are regular citizen soldiers, not insurgents, who initially started firing on Iraqi forces who they thought were Interior Ministry troops. The Interior Ministry troops, there is no question, are the same bunch that's been responsible for the hundreds of bodies popping up all over Baghdad every week. No wonder then that the Sunnis are barricading their neighborhoods and climbing to the rooftops to defend their homes and families.

And then, of course, there's the daily body count of car bomb victims; drive by shooting victims; kidnappings and other crimes and misdemeanors. Not all related to sectarian violence; some of the killing is the result of tribal rivalries and criminal gang activity.

And we can add this to the indictment of Rummy's mismanagement: The Inquirer ran a story yesterday about all the missteps Rummy & CO. have made in the emergence of the Shiite militias, who now have totally infiltrated the security forces, the ones that we're expecting to stand up so we can stand down. While the brain trust in the pentagon was focused on the Sunni insurgency, the Badr brigade was busy spreading its tentacles throughout the Interior Ministry. The other Shiite militia, Muqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi army, has grown from a disorganized rabble of maybe 5000 street fighters to a new and reorganized force of 15,000, according to Time magazine.

Ton Lasseter writes that, "U.S. inaction gave the militia’s time to become a major force inside and outside the Iraqi government and American officials acknowledge that dislodging them now would be difficult." In fact, the military says the militias are a greater danger to the country than the Sunnis are. Whereas the Sunnis were killing perhaps a few dozen people a week in car bombings and such, the Shiites are killing hundreds every week. They're going around Baghdad, picking up 20 or 30 Sunnis at a pop, who then later wind up dumped in the streets with bullets in their heads.

Our inability to stop the Sunnis from killing Shiites has led to them building up their own armies to protect themselves. Abu Haider Lami, a Badr official, says, "They forget that the Sunnis have been killing us for 45 years. What do you expect?" (But, didn't Paul Wolfowitz say that Iraq had no history of sectarian strife?) It's not bad enough that we've created the conditions for a full blown civil war that could pull the whole region into a conflagration of biblical proportions, but we've actually helped the combatants get themselves ready for it.

Obviously, we were at the beginning and remain completely clueless about what we've got ourselves into in Iraq. Adnan Pachachi, the only sane person in this whole thing told Tom Lasseter that, "The so-called Sunni insurgency is active in hostilities toward the Americans, while Badr --- and perhaps the Mehdi army --- is not attacking Americans. Badr has been rather careful not to attack the Americans, not to provoke them." He could have added 'yet' to that sentence. If we attack Iran, that all could change: the security forces that we've been trying to so hard and spending so much money to build up, could turn all that equipment and training against us in a heartbeat.

Faced with this reality, any talk of forming a new government and basing timelines for troop withdrawals on that very dubious outcome, seems just a little beside the point. As long as W. and Rummy and their supporters in the Congress hold on to this idea that everything is going to work out the way they want, we'll keep losing troops, money and our ability to maneuver diplomatically internationally.

China and Russia can afford to keep blowing us off about doing anything serious about Iran's nukes because they can see we're wounded and bleeding in Iraq. Until we get some new blood and new thinking into the White House and the pentagon, we're doomed to just keep flailing and floundering and our enemies will reap the benefit at our expense.

War with Iran is inevitable, according to the Inquirer.
Topic: Bush Administraiton

I found this article in the Inquirer interesting. According to Warren P. Strobel, John Walcott and Jonathan S. Landay of the Inquirer Washington Bureau:

"The evidence that Iran is trying to develop nuclear weapons is stronger and more widely accepted --- internationally and within the U.S. government --- than the Bush administrations' flawed case about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction four years ago."

Is it? Maybe, in some circles inside the White House and pentagon but internationally? Just last week, even after Iran claimed to have enriched uranium, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said he wasn't convinced. Iran "never stated that it is striving to possess nuclear weapons," he said. The jury is still out also on what India, Turkey, China and whole bunch of other countries think about Iran's intentions.

Even if the Iranians do want nukes, though, they won't have the capability to make them for years. U.S. intelligence estimates still say Iran is 5 to 10 years away, but, the Inquirer says, "Some independent experts put it at as little as three years." Of course, they don't say who these "independent" experts are. Could it be one of those former Israeli intelligence officers making the rounds in the U.S. saying Iran is not far from the "point of no return?"

And the article says, "There's good reason to question" the CIA's estimates: "The CIA was surprised, for example, when India conducted underground nuclear tests in May 1998." Yes, but the Indians lied to us about what they were doing and they didn't sign the NPT. Iran has and does get inspected. And a lot of what the CIA said about Iraq was actually right, but W. & CO. were manufacturing their own intelligence in the bowels of the pentagon to make sure all caveats were dismissed.

Maybe if we had access to A.Q Khan, we could figure out what exactly he gave the Iranians, but until recently our good friend Pervez Musharraf hasn't be too helpful. I read recently that the CIA was being giving limited access to Khan but that he might be just telling them what they want to hear in order to get better treatment. Where have we heard that before?

Couldn't we just talk to the Iranians?

"The administration has rejected the only other diplomatic course: direct talks with Iran about it nuclear program. A growing number of analysts and former top U.S. officials argue that the White House should reconsider."

Sounds reasonable, but the Inquirer goes on to say, "There's no guarantee that diplomacy, either through the U.N., or one-one, can succeed, and President Bush is adamant that Iran can't be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons. That stance, and Iran's pledge that it will proceed with more centrifuges, means that U.S. air strikes, among then the large enrichment facility at Nantaz, might be the only option."

Well, that's that. One-on-one negotiation with Iran might fail, so we're not even going to try. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition! This is the best the Inquirer's senior Washington staff can come up with? Making Bush's case for another war? Nice going Fourth Estate!

Winning hearts and minds in Afghanistan continued:
Topic: War on Terror

The NYT reports that Afghan security forces, back by U.S. helicopters and Canadian troops fought a pitched battle with the Taliban on Friday in Kandahar province:

"The U.S helicopters, according to villagers, fired on farmhouse compounds, wounding civilians, damaging homes and killing animals...The governor of Kandahar province, Asadullah Khaled, said in a news briefing on Saturday that 41 rebels had been killed. Six Afghan policemen were killed --- including four who may have been possibly killed by fire from U.S. helicopters --- and nine police were wounded...At least one Afghan woman was killed in the cross fire, and two more civilians were injured, officials and villagers said.

Villagers who were caught in the cross fire on Friday in the village of Sartak confirmed that a large number of Taliban had come into the area several days earlier but said they had not come into the village. They angrily denounced the police and the coalition for coming to fight them in the village and causing civilian casualties and damage to homes."

Didn't I hear somewhere that the Taliban were finished? If anything the battles against them are escalating as we head toward summer. You can pin this one on Rummy, too. If he hadn't let OBL and the Taliban go on their merry way, maybe we wouldn't be rerunning the Russian occupation again.

The fruitcake file.
Topic: War on Terror
Mamoud Amadinejad is back in the news: At a two-day conference in Tehran to raise money for the Hamas led government in the PA, he said Israel was an "unending and unrestrained threat" to the Islamic world. He also said that Israel was "a decaying and crumbling tree that will fall with a storm." Hannah Allam of the Inquirer reports:

"Huge pro-Palestinian posters hung throughout the conference hall, including one that showed the Israeli flag superimposed over the face of Adolph Hitler...One video showed the Star of David made of barbed wire and emanating flames."

All of this coming on the heels of this week's nuclear saber rattling and you really have to wonder if this guy isn't really working for us. He's so crazy, so belligerent, that he just makes W.'s and Israel's case for a military strike. Unfortunately, words aren't a causus belli for most of the rest of the world. Condi Rice is calling for "strong steps" in the face of Iran's defiance from the UN Security Council when it meets on April 28th, but again, the Russians and the Chinese aren't looking too likely to go along with much of anything the administration wants. Rice said that steps had to be taken to "maintain the credibility of the international community." The one little fly in the ointment is, though, is that the United States has no credibilty after our blundering in Iraq. Nice work Condi!

Despite the heated warnings from Stephen Rademaker of Iran being able to make a bomb 16 days after they get those 54,000 centrifuges spinning and Iran's bellicose posturing, the intelligence community says Iran is still a long way away. On Wednesday, the NYT reportes that, "Western nuclear analysts said...that Tehran lacked the skills, materials and equipment to make good on its immediate nuclear ambitions." The analysts called Iran's claims to rapidly construct enough centrifuges to make a bomb "exaggerated." The thinking is that they might be able to do something in 5 to 10 years and "some analysts have said it could come as late as 2020."

But then again, all the intelligence agencies and analysts were "wrong" about Saddam's WMD weren't they? Well actually, many of them were right about the mobile chemical labs and the aluminum tubes and "curveball" and Chalabi being liars etc., they just weren't listened to. I'm sure as we speak there's some enterprising ladder climbers in the DIA or the CIA saying just what Cheney & CO. want to hear. The American people this time around aren't going to be as easily convinced, though. A new poll shows that a majority don't trust W. on the Iran threat. As W. said, "There's an old saying in Tennessee — I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says, fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again."