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The Real Story examines General Petraeus’ testimony and the contending forces in Iraq
Friday, April 11, 2008
Are the US and Iran backing the same horse?
More at http://therealnews.com/c.ph..
Raed Jarrar on why both Iran and the US are supporting the same players in Iraq
Raed Jarrar on why both Iran and the US are supporting the same players in Iraq
People & Power - Illegal gold
Up to 15,000 miners are devastating the Amazon rainforest in the search for gold.
Gas Prices Set Record, Oil Edges Up
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By Adam Schreck
New York - U.S. retail gas and diesel prices jumped to yet another record Friday, piling on the costs for motorists as well as consumers reliant on trucks, trains and ships to deliver goods to market.
Oil prices also edged higher after trading lower for much of the day, but remained more than $2 below an all-time high set earlier in the week. Light, sweet crude for May delivery rose 3 cents to settle at $110.14 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Gas prices at the pump added 0.8 cent to $3.365 a gallon, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. The increase marks the latest in a series of records in recent weeks, and leaves drivers paying 56 cents more a gallon now than they did a year ago.
Analysts expect gasoline prices may move even higher as more drivers take to the roads as summer approaches and refineries complete their conversion to more expensive summer-grade fuel. It is unclear how far prices will go, however, because a bigger fuel bill could convince some drivers to cut back.
"I still do not believe there's enough strength in demand that it's going to justify that move to $4 a gallon," said Tom Kloza of the Oil Price Information Service in Wall, N.J.
Retail diesel prices rose 2.1 cents to $4.066, topping the previous high set a day earlier. The spike in the key transportation fuel is significant because it affects the cost of a wide range of goods - meaning that even Americans who don't drive will feel the pinch.
"There's just not enough supply to meet demand ... and that's driving prices higher," Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch & Associates in Galena, Ill., said of diesel's surge.
An unexpected decline in U.S. crude and gasoline inventories drove oil prices to a trading record of $112.21 a barrel on Wednesday amid concerns about inadequate supplies. Prices fell Thursday.
Ritterbusch attributed the tepid performance later in the week to traders looking to lock in their gains from strong prices before the weekend.
"The main thing I see is just profit-taking after we ran things up to a record high," he said. "There's a strong possibility we'll see new record highs again next week."
Crude prices also came under pressure most of the day Friday after the International Energy Agency lowered its global oil demand forecast for the year by 310,000 barrels a day to 87.2 million barrels a day, citing lower economic output expectations in the U.S. and elsewhere.
"The suspicion is it's not just the U.S. that's going to see a slowdown," Kloza said. "I think it's significant, but I also think the would-be sellers ... are probably not yet convinced."
The U.S. dollar strengthened against the euro and the pound, also putting pressure on oil prices for much of the session.
Crude oil's recent run above $100 a barrel has been largely attributed to the steadily depreciating U.S. currency. A weakening dollar attracts investors to commodities as a hedge against inflation, but when the dollar rises, the effect tends to reverse as oil also becomes more expensive to investors overseas.
More negative U.S. economic data also appeared to have taken steam out of oil's precipitous price rise this week. The Commerce Department reported the first decline in oil imports in a year - a possible sign that high prices and an economic downturn were hurting crude sales.
In other Nymex trading Friday, heating oil futures rose 0.35 cent to settle at $3.1975 a gallon, while gasoline futures rose by 1.52 cents to settle at $2.8073 a gallon. Natural gas futures slipped by 20.9 cents to $9.889 per 1,000 cubic feet.
In London, Brent crude futures rose 74 cents to $108.94 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.
By Adam Schreck
New York - U.S. retail gas and diesel prices jumped to yet another record Friday, piling on the costs for motorists as well as consumers reliant on trucks, trains and ships to deliver goods to market.
Oil prices also edged higher after trading lower for much of the day, but remained more than $2 below an all-time high set earlier in the week. Light, sweet crude for May delivery rose 3 cents to settle at $110.14 on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Gas prices at the pump added 0.8 cent to $3.365 a gallon, according to AAA and the Oil Price Information Service. The increase marks the latest in a series of records in recent weeks, and leaves drivers paying 56 cents more a gallon now than they did a year ago.
Analysts expect gasoline prices may move even higher as more drivers take to the roads as summer approaches and refineries complete their conversion to more expensive summer-grade fuel. It is unclear how far prices will go, however, because a bigger fuel bill could convince some drivers to cut back.
"I still do not believe there's enough strength in demand that it's going to justify that move to $4 a gallon," said Tom Kloza of the Oil Price Information Service in Wall, N.J.
Retail diesel prices rose 2.1 cents to $4.066, topping the previous high set a day earlier. The spike in the key transportation fuel is significant because it affects the cost of a wide range of goods - meaning that even Americans who don't drive will feel the pinch.
"There's just not enough supply to meet demand ... and that's driving prices higher," Jim Ritterbusch, president of Ritterbusch & Associates in Galena, Ill., said of diesel's surge.
An unexpected decline in U.S. crude and gasoline inventories drove oil prices to a trading record of $112.21 a barrel on Wednesday amid concerns about inadequate supplies. Prices fell Thursday.
Ritterbusch attributed the tepid performance later in the week to traders looking to lock in their gains from strong prices before the weekend.
"The main thing I see is just profit-taking after we ran things up to a record high," he said. "There's a strong possibility we'll see new record highs again next week."
Crude prices also came under pressure most of the day Friday after the International Energy Agency lowered its global oil demand forecast for the year by 310,000 barrels a day to 87.2 million barrels a day, citing lower economic output expectations in the U.S. and elsewhere.
"The suspicion is it's not just the U.S. that's going to see a slowdown," Kloza said. "I think it's significant, but I also think the would-be sellers ... are probably not yet convinced."
The U.S. dollar strengthened against the euro and the pound, also putting pressure on oil prices for much of the session.
Crude oil's recent run above $100 a barrel has been largely attributed to the steadily depreciating U.S. currency. A weakening dollar attracts investors to commodities as a hedge against inflation, but when the dollar rises, the effect tends to reverse as oil also becomes more expensive to investors overseas.
More negative U.S. economic data also appeared to have taken steam out of oil's precipitous price rise this week. The Commerce Department reported the first decline in oil imports in a year - a possible sign that high prices and an economic downturn were hurting crude sales.
In other Nymex trading Friday, heating oil futures rose 0.35 cent to settle at $3.1975 a gallon, while gasoline futures rose by 1.52 cents to settle at $2.8073 a gallon. Natural gas futures slipped by 20.9 cents to $9.889 per 1,000 cubic feet.
In London, Brent crude futures rose 74 cents to $108.94 a barrel on the ICE Futures exchange.
$736 Million US Embassy in Iraq to Open
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Washington - U.S. diplomats will begin moving into the mammoth new, heavily fortified embassy in Baghdad next month after long delays in the $736 million project - and not a moment too soon. Increasing rocket attacks on the Green Zone have killed four Americans in recent weeks and have embassy staff wearing body armor and ducking for cover.
U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker said Friday that construction is complete at the Vatican-sized compound and that although not all buildings have yet been certified for final occupancy, transition to the facility from the less-protected location in a Saddam Hussein-era palace should start at the end of May.
"It's been a difficult few weeks, rockets are bouncing off your buildings, and maintaining focus can be an occasional challenge," Crocker said, referring to the recent spate of insurgent attacks in the Green Zone that have killed at least two U.S. soldiers and two American civilians.
"We will begin moving into the new embassy - some of the office space and the apartments - probably the end of next month, the beginning of June, so that will certainly improve quality of life and provide some added protection," he told reporters.
The rise in insurgent attacks prompted the embassy late last month to order personnel not to leave reinforced buildings and to wear helmets and body armor if they must go outside. A shortage of space in fortified areas has forced some diplomats to sleep at the new embassy site despite the lack of occupancy approvals.
"We worry a lot less about formal safety certifications and a lot more about ensuring people have a place to sleep where rockets couldn't get at them," said Crocker, who has served in battle zones before, notably in Lebanon during its civil war in the 1980s.
"Being under attack is a lot like being under attack, whether it is in Lebanon or Iraq," he said. "The incoming sounds about the same and has about the same impact."
The new embassy will be the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in the world, with fortified working space for 1,000 people and living quarters for several hundred on a 104-acre site.
But the project has been beset by construction, logistical and security hitches that caused major delays beyond its planned September 2007 opening date and angered some lawmakers.
In October, the department conceded that a host of problems, including major malfunctions in the complex's physical plant, including electrical and water distribution systems, would push back the embassy opening at least until this spring. Some of those problems have since recurred.
Some of the deficiencies have been blamed on shoddy work by the company hired to build the project, First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting Co., for $592 million. Changes to the original design have pushed the cost up by $144 million.
First Kuwaiti has been accused of tricking foreign laborers into working on the embassy, mistreating them, and paying $200,000 in kickbacks in return for two unrelated Army contracts in Iraq. The company denies the charges.
Congressional Democrats have launched investigations into whether the State Department had adequate control of the project, which has been complicated by security concerns, including a September incident in which private Blackwater USA guards are accused of killing 17 Iraqi civilians while protecting an embassy convoy.
In his comments on Friday, Crocker defended the work of private security contractors like Blackwater as "absolutely essential" to the functioning of embassy staff.
The State Department last week renewed Blackwater's contract despite the fact that an FBI investigation into the September incident is still underway.
Crocker said he and his team would not able to do their jobs if they did not have such protection.
"The challenges of getting the nation's business done in Iraq are pretty substantial," he said. "We have to function in conditions that would in most places have us pretty much in a stand-down. But this is the nation's most critical work, and it has to go on, and security contractors like Blackwater are absolutely essential to this effort."
Washington - U.S. diplomats will begin moving into the mammoth new, heavily fortified embassy in Baghdad next month after long delays in the $736 million project - and not a moment too soon. Increasing rocket attacks on the Green Zone have killed four Americans in recent weeks and have embassy staff wearing body armor and ducking for cover.
U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker said Friday that construction is complete at the Vatican-sized compound and that although not all buildings have yet been certified for final occupancy, transition to the facility from the less-protected location in a Saddam Hussein-era palace should start at the end of May.
"It's been a difficult few weeks, rockets are bouncing off your buildings, and maintaining focus can be an occasional challenge," Crocker said, referring to the recent spate of insurgent attacks in the Green Zone that have killed at least two U.S. soldiers and two American civilians.
"We will begin moving into the new embassy - some of the office space and the apartments - probably the end of next month, the beginning of June, so that will certainly improve quality of life and provide some added protection," he told reporters.
The rise in insurgent attacks prompted the embassy late last month to order personnel not to leave reinforced buildings and to wear helmets and body armor if they must go outside. A shortage of space in fortified areas has forced some diplomats to sleep at the new embassy site despite the lack of occupancy approvals.
"We worry a lot less about formal safety certifications and a lot more about ensuring people have a place to sleep where rockets couldn't get at them," said Crocker, who has served in battle zones before, notably in Lebanon during its civil war in the 1980s.
"Being under attack is a lot like being under attack, whether it is in Lebanon or Iraq," he said. "The incoming sounds about the same and has about the same impact."
The new embassy will be the largest U.S. diplomatic mission in the world, with fortified working space for 1,000 people and living quarters for several hundred on a 104-acre site.
But the project has been beset by construction, logistical and security hitches that caused major delays beyond its planned September 2007 opening date and angered some lawmakers.
In October, the department conceded that a host of problems, including major malfunctions in the complex's physical plant, including electrical and water distribution systems, would push back the embassy opening at least until this spring. Some of those problems have since recurred.
Some of the deficiencies have been blamed on shoddy work by the company hired to build the project, First Kuwaiti General Trading & Contracting Co., for $592 million. Changes to the original design have pushed the cost up by $144 million.
First Kuwaiti has been accused of tricking foreign laborers into working on the embassy, mistreating them, and paying $200,000 in kickbacks in return for two unrelated Army contracts in Iraq. The company denies the charges.
Congressional Democrats have launched investigations into whether the State Department had adequate control of the project, which has been complicated by security concerns, including a September incident in which private Blackwater USA guards are accused of killing 17 Iraqi civilians while protecting an embassy convoy.
In his comments on Friday, Crocker defended the work of private security contractors like Blackwater as "absolutely essential" to the functioning of embassy staff.
The State Department last week renewed Blackwater's contract despite the fact that an FBI investigation into the September incident is still underway.
Crocker said he and his team would not able to do their jobs if they did not have such protection.
"The challenges of getting the nation's business done in Iraq are pretty substantial," he said. "We have to function in conditions that would in most places have us pretty much in a stand-down. But this is the nation's most critical work, and it has to go on, and security contractors like Blackwater are absolutely essential to this effort."
US Fails to Move on Iraq Sexual Assault Complaints
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By Lesley Clark
Washington - While working in Iraq as a "morale coordinator" for a U.S. government contractor, a Tampa woman says, she was raped by a drunken colleague who secured a key to her apartment from an unlocked storage box.
That was in December 2005, and her attorney said he's unaware of any criminal charges in the case.
The U.S. Justice Department has the authority to prosecute, but she and at least three other women who say they were assaulted complain of being trapped in legal limbo between a military system that doesn't oversee the private contractors and a justice system that appears unwilling to do so.
"American women are vulnerable not only to assault, but to achieving justice," said Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who since December has been pressing the Bush administration for answers over the treatment of U.S. citizens sexually assaulted by contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He got a few Wednesday. Following tearful testimony at a Senate hearing from two other women who reported being raped while on the job in Iraq, the Defense and Justice departments acknowledged that though more than two dozen U.S. civilians working in the war zone have complained of sexual assaults, no one has yet been tried for a crime.
"We've got a problem that justice is breaking down here," said Nelson, whose wife Grace and daughter Nan Ellen watched grimly as the women testified about being raped - and in one case, discouraged from reporting the attack.
"I'm in a war zone, and I have to worry about my co-workers," said Mary Beth Kineston, an Ohio woman who drove a truck in Iraq for Houston-based military contractor KBR and said she was raped by another driver.
A Texas woman, who attended but did not testify at Wednesday's hearing, drew national attention to the issue last year when she told a congressional panel that she was raped by co-workers while working for KBR in Iraq in 2005.
Nelson said he got involved after that hearing when his office was contacted by the Tampa woman, who had also worked for KBR.
The woman filed suit against the company in federal court in Miami, accusing it of negligence, and the case has been referred to arbitration.
A spokeswoman for Houston-based KBR said the company "in no way condones or tolerates sexual harassment." And she said that if violations occur, "appropriate action is taken."
But the women said they are often uncertain about where to turn for help and are required to take their disputes with their employer to arbitration, rather than the U.S. courts.
Attorney Eugene Fidell, a military law expert who has been critical of the Bush administration's war policies, criticized the arrangement as creating a shield.
"There's a real problem with transparency and accountability," he said.
The administration counts on private companies - and an estimated 180,000 contract employees - to carry out many details of waging war, from providing security to feeding the troops.
A shooting last September by guards for contractor Blackwater that left 11 Iraqis dead intensified calls to hold contract employees to the same legal standards as military personnel.
But Nelson said a 2000 law, the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, could be used to charge contractors with assault.
He said the law gives federal prosecutors jurisdiction over contractors whose work is "supporting the mission of the Department of Defense overseas."
An attorney for the Defense Department told Nelson the law wasn't applicable until 2005, when the agency finished writing the rules to carry out the legislation.
A Justice Department attorney said the agency now has about a half-dozen open investigations, including a complaint filed by an Illinois woman who told Nelson on Wednesday that she sleeps only every other day after being sodomized and forced to perform oral sex by a contractor and a soldier.
Sigal Mandelker, an attorney with the department's criminal division, said the agency takes the complaints seriously, but said they can be hard to investigate.
"It is an unfortunate fact that the crimes occur in a war zone and there are numerous difficulties of investigating a case when the conduct occurred in a war zone," she said.
Figures provided by the two agencies show 26 U.S. civilians have lodged sexual assault complaints; seven have been found to have insufficient evidence and 10 resulted in "administrative action," including deportation, reprimands or firings.
An attorney with the Defense Department told Nelson the Pentagon is ramping up efforts to stamp out sexual harassment among government contractors.
The agency is starting an "effort to increase awareness, enhance accountability and ultimately to deter this kind of behavior," said Robert Reed, an associate deputy general counsel.
Nelson, who questioned whether military contracts require companies to provide training on how to handle sexual assault complaints, called the program a "step in the right direction."
But, he noted, "We're in the fifth year of a war. Why wouldn't we have made sure that every member of the total armed forces was aware already?"
By Lesley Clark
Washington - While working in Iraq as a "morale coordinator" for a U.S. government contractor, a Tampa woman says, she was raped by a drunken colleague who secured a key to her apartment from an unlocked storage box.
That was in December 2005, and her attorney said he's unaware of any criminal charges in the case.
The U.S. Justice Department has the authority to prosecute, but she and at least three other women who say they were assaulted complain of being trapped in legal limbo between a military system that doesn't oversee the private contractors and a justice system that appears unwilling to do so.
"American women are vulnerable not only to assault, but to achieving justice," said Sen. Bill Nelson, a Florida Democrat who since December has been pressing the Bush administration for answers over the treatment of U.S. citizens sexually assaulted by contractors in Iraq and Afghanistan.
He got a few Wednesday. Following tearful testimony at a Senate hearing from two other women who reported being raped while on the job in Iraq, the Defense and Justice departments acknowledged that though more than two dozen U.S. civilians working in the war zone have complained of sexual assaults, no one has yet been tried for a crime.
"We've got a problem that justice is breaking down here," said Nelson, whose wife Grace and daughter Nan Ellen watched grimly as the women testified about being raped - and in one case, discouraged from reporting the attack.
"I'm in a war zone, and I have to worry about my co-workers," said Mary Beth Kineston, an Ohio woman who drove a truck in Iraq for Houston-based military contractor KBR and said she was raped by another driver.
A Texas woman, who attended but did not testify at Wednesday's hearing, drew national attention to the issue last year when she told a congressional panel that she was raped by co-workers while working for KBR in Iraq in 2005.
Nelson said he got involved after that hearing when his office was contacted by the Tampa woman, who had also worked for KBR.
The woman filed suit against the company in federal court in Miami, accusing it of negligence, and the case has been referred to arbitration.
A spokeswoman for Houston-based KBR said the company "in no way condones or tolerates sexual harassment." And she said that if violations occur, "appropriate action is taken."
But the women said they are often uncertain about where to turn for help and are required to take their disputes with their employer to arbitration, rather than the U.S. courts.
Attorney Eugene Fidell, a military law expert who has been critical of the Bush administration's war policies, criticized the arrangement as creating a shield.
"There's a real problem with transparency and accountability," he said.
The administration counts on private companies - and an estimated 180,000 contract employees - to carry out many details of waging war, from providing security to feeding the troops.
A shooting last September by guards for contractor Blackwater that left 11 Iraqis dead intensified calls to hold contract employees to the same legal standards as military personnel.
But Nelson said a 2000 law, the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act, could be used to charge contractors with assault.
He said the law gives federal prosecutors jurisdiction over contractors whose work is "supporting the mission of the Department of Defense overseas."
An attorney for the Defense Department told Nelson the law wasn't applicable until 2005, when the agency finished writing the rules to carry out the legislation.
A Justice Department attorney said the agency now has about a half-dozen open investigations, including a complaint filed by an Illinois woman who told Nelson on Wednesday that she sleeps only every other day after being sodomized and forced to perform oral sex by a contractor and a soldier.
Sigal Mandelker, an attorney with the department's criminal division, said the agency takes the complaints seriously, but said they can be hard to investigate.
"It is an unfortunate fact that the crimes occur in a war zone and there are numerous difficulties of investigating a case when the conduct occurred in a war zone," she said.
Figures provided by the two agencies show 26 U.S. civilians have lodged sexual assault complaints; seven have been found to have insufficient evidence and 10 resulted in "administrative action," including deportation, reprimands or firings.
An attorney with the Defense Department told Nelson the Pentagon is ramping up efforts to stamp out sexual harassment among government contractors.
The agency is starting an "effort to increase awareness, enhance accountability and ultimately to deter this kind of behavior," said Robert Reed, an associate deputy general counsel.
Nelson, who questioned whether military contracts require companies to provide training on how to handle sexual assault complaints, called the program a "step in the right direction."
But, he noted, "We're in the fifth year of a war. Why wouldn't we have made sure that every member of the total armed forces was aware already?"
Bush: "I Was Aware" of Harsh Tactics
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By Jan Crawford Greenberg, Howard L. Rosenberg and Ariane de Vogue
President says he knew his senior advisors approved tough interrogation methods.
President Bush says he knew his top national security advisors discussed and approved specific details about how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to an exclusive interview with ABC News Friday.
"Well, we started to connect the dots, in order to protect the American people." Bush told ABC New s White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. "And, yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."
As first reported by ABC News on Wednesday, the most senior Bush administration officials repeatedly discussed and approved specific details of exactly how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed - down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.
These top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects - whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding, sources told ABC news.
The advisers were members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.
At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.
As the national security adviser, Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by most of the principals or their deputies.
The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of "combined" interrogation techniques - using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time - on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said.
Contacted by ABC News, spokesmen for Tenet and Rumsfeld declined to comment about the interrogation program or their private discussions in Principals Meetings. The White House also declined comment on behalf of Rice and Cheney. Ashcroft could not be reached.
Powell said through an assistant there were "hundreds of [Principals] meetings" on a wide variety of topics and that he was "not at liberty to discuss private meetings."
In his interview with ABC News, Bush said the ABC report about the Principals' involvement was not so "startling." The President had earlier confirmed the existence of the interrogation program run by the CIA in a speech in 2006. But before Wednesday's report, the extraordinary level of involvement by the most senior advisers in repeatedly approving specific interrogation plans - down to the number of times the CIA could use a certain tactic on a specific al Qaeda prisoner - had never been disclosed.
Critics at home and abroad have harshly criticized the interrogation program, which pushed the limits of international law and, they say, condoned torture. Bush and his top aides have consistently defended the program. They say it is legal and did not constitute torture.
In interview with ABC's Charles Gibson last year, Tenet said: "It was authorized. It was legal, according to the Attorney General of the United States."
The discussions and meetings occurred in an atmosphere of great concern that another terror attack on the nation was imminent. Sources said the extraordinary involvement of the senior advisers in the grim details of exactly how individual interrogations would be conducted showed how seriously officials took the al Qaeda threat.
It started after the CIA captured top al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah in spring 2002 in Faisalabad, Pakistan. When his safe house was raided by Pakistani security forces along with FBI and CIA agents, Zubaydah was shot three times during the gun battle.
At a time when virtually all counterterrorist professionals viewed another attack as imminent - and with information on al Qaeda scarce - the detention of Zubaydah was seen as a potentially critical breakthrough.
Zubaydah was taken to the local hospital, where CIA agent John Kiriakou, who helped coordinate Zubaydah's capture, was ordered to remain at the wounded captive's side at all times. "I ripped up a sheet and tied him to the bed," Kiriakou said.
But after Zubaydah recovered from his wounds at a secret CIA prison in Thailand, he was uncooperative. "I told him I had heard he was being a jerk," Kiriakou recalled. "I said, 'These guys can make it easy on you or they can make it hard.' It was after that he became defiant."
The CIA wanted to use more aggressive - and physical - methods to get information. The agency briefed high-level officials in the National Security Council's Principals Committee, led by then-National Security Advisor Rice and including then-Attorney General Ashcroft, which then signed off on the plan, sources said. It is unclear whether anyone on the committee objected to the CIA's plans for Zubaydah.
The CIA has confirmed Zubaydah was one of three al Qaeda suspects subjected to waterboarding. After he was waterboarded, officials say Zubaydah gave up valuable information that led to the capture of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammad and fellow 9/11 plotter Ramzi bin al-Shibh.
Mohammad, who is known as KSM, was also subjected to waterboarding by the CIA.
In the interview with ABC News Friday, Bush defended the waterboarding technique used against KSM.
"We had legal opinions that enabled us to do it," Bush said. "And, no, I didn't have any problem at all trying to find out what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed knew."
The President said, "I think it's very important for the American people to understand who Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was. He was the person who ordered the suicide attack - I mean, the 9/11 attacks."
At a hearing before a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay on March 10, 2007, KSM, as he is known, said he broke under the harsh interrogation.
COURT: Were any statements you made as the result of any of the treatment that you received during that time frame from 2003 to 2006? Did you make those statements because of the treatment you receive from these people?
KSM: Statement for whom??
COURT: To any of these interrogators.
KSM: CIA peoples. Yes. At the beginning, when they transferred me ...
Lawyers in the Justice Department had written a classified memo, which was extensively reviewed, that gave formal legal authority to government interrogators to use the "enhanced" questioning tactics on suspected terrorist prisoners. The August 2002 memo, signed by then head of the Office of Legal Counsel Jay Bybee, was referred to as the so-called "Golden Shield" for CIA agents, who worried they would be held liable if the harsh interrogations became public.
Old hands in the intelligence community remembered vividly how past covert operations, from the Vietnam War-era "Phoenix Program" of assassinations of Viet Cong to the Iran-Contra arms sales of the 1980s were painted as the work of a "rogue agency" out of control.
But even after the "Golden Shield" was in place, briefings and meetings in the White House to discuss individual interrogations continued, sources said. Tenet, seeking to protect his agents, regularly sought confirmation from the NSC principals that specific interrogation plans were legal.
According to a former CIA official involved in the process, CIA headquarters would receive cables from operatives in the field asking for authorization for specific techniques. Agents, worried about overstepping their boundaries, would await guidance in particularly complicated cases dealing with high-value detainees, two CIA sources said.
Highly placed sources said CIA directors Tenet and later Porter Goss along with agency lawyers briefed senior advisers, including Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Powell, about detainees in CIA custody overseas.
"It kept coming up. CIA wanted us to sign off on each one every time," said one high-ranking official who asked not to be identified. "They'd say, 'We've got so and so. This is the plan.'"
Sources said that at each discussion, all the Principals present approved. "These discussions weren't adding value," a source said. "Once you make a policy decision to go beyond what you used to do and conclude it's legal, (you should) just tell them to implement it."
Then-Attorney General Ashcroft was troubled by the discussions. He agreed with the general policy decision to allow aggressive tactics and had repeatedly advised that they were legal. But he argued that senior White House advisers should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources said.
According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."
The Principals also approved interrogations that combined different methods, pushing the limits of international law and even the Justice Department's own legal approval in the 2002 memo, sources told ABC News.
At one meeting in the summer of 2003 - attended by Vice President Cheney, among others - Tenet made an elaborate presentation for approval to combine several different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time, according to a highly placed administration source.
A year later, amidst the outcry over unrelated abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the controversial 2002 legal memo, which gave formal legal authorization for the CIA interrogation program of the top al Qaeda suspects, leaked to the press. A new senior official in the Justice Department, Jack Goldsmith, withdrew the legal memo - the Golden Shield - that authorized the program.
But the CIA had captured a new al Qaeda suspect in Asia. Sources said CIA officials that summer returned to the Principals Committee for approval to continue using certain "enhanced interrogation techniques."
Then-National Security Advisor Rice, sources said, was decisive. Despite growing policy concerns - shared by Powell - that the program was harming the image of the United States abroad, sources say she did not back down, telling the CIA: "This is your baby. Go do it."
By Jan Crawford Greenberg, Howard L. Rosenberg and Ariane de Vogue
President says he knew his senior advisors approved tough interrogation methods.
President Bush says he knew his top national security advisors discussed and approved specific details about how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency, according to an exclusive interview with ABC News Friday.
"Well, we started to connect the dots, in order to protect the American people." Bush told ABC New s White House correspondent Martha Raddatz. "And, yes, I'm aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved."
As first reported by ABC News on Wednesday, the most senior Bush administration officials repeatedly discussed and approved specific details of exactly how high-value al Qaeda suspects would be interrogated by the Central Intelligence Agency.
The high-level discussions about these "enhanced interrogation techniques" were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed - down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.
These top advisers signed off on how the CIA would interrogate top al Qaeda suspects - whether they would be slapped, pushed, deprived of sleep or subjected to simulated drowning, called waterboarding, sources told ABC news.
The advisers were members of the National Security Council's Principals Committee, a select group of senior officials who met frequently to advise President Bush on issues of national security policy.
At the time, the Principals Committee included Vice President Cheney, former National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell, as well as CIA Director George Tenet and Attorney General John Ashcroft.
As the national security adviser, Rice chaired the meetings, which took place in the White House Situation Room and were typically attended by most of the principals or their deputies.
The so-called Principals who participated in the meetings also approved the use of "combined" interrogation techniques - using different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time - on terrorist suspects who proved difficult to break, sources said.
Contacted by ABC News, spokesmen for Tenet and Rumsfeld declined to comment about the interrogation program or their private discussions in Principals Meetings. The White House also declined comment on behalf of Rice and Cheney. Ashcroft could not be reached.
Powell said through an assistant there were "hundreds of [Principals] meetings" on a wide variety of topics and that he was "not at liberty to discuss private meetings."
In his interview with ABC News, Bush said the ABC report about the Principals' involvement was not so "startling." The President had earlier confirmed the existence of the interrogation program run by the CIA in a speech in 2006. But before Wednesday's report, the extraordinary level of involvement by the most senior advisers in repeatedly approving specific interrogation plans - down to the number of times the CIA could use a certain tactic on a specific al Qaeda prisoner - had never been disclosed.
Critics at home and abroad have harshly criticized the interrogation program, which pushed the limits of international law and, they say, condoned torture. Bush and his top aides have consistently defended the program. They say it is legal and did not constitute torture.
In interview with ABC's Charles Gibson last year, Tenet said: "It was authorized. It was legal, according to the Attorney General of the United States."
The discussions and meetings occurred in an atmosphere of great concern that another terror attack on the nation was imminent. Sources said the extraordinary involvement of the senior advisers in the grim details of exactly how individual interrogations would be conducted showed how seriously officials took the al Qaeda threat.
It started after the CIA captured top al Qaeda operative Abu Zubaydah in spring 2002 in Faisalabad, Pakistan. When his safe house was raided by Pakistani security forces along with FBI and CIA agents, Zubaydah was shot three times during the gun battle.
At a time when virtually all counterterrorist professionals viewed another attack as imminent - and with information on al Qaeda scarce - the detention of Zubaydah was seen as a potentially critical breakthrough.
Zubaydah was taken to the local hospital, where CIA agent John Kiriakou, who helped coordinate Zubaydah's capture, was ordered to remain at the wounded captive's side at all times. "I ripped up a sheet and tied him to the bed," Kiriakou said.
But after Zubaydah recovered from his wounds at a secret CIA prison in Thailand, he was uncooperative. "I told him I had heard he was being a jerk," Kiriakou recalled. "I said, 'These guys can make it easy on you or they can make it hard.' It was after that he became defiant."
The CIA wanted to use more aggressive - and physical - methods to get information. The agency briefed high-level officials in the National Security Council's Principals Committee, led by then-National Security Advisor Rice and including then-Attorney General Ashcroft, which then signed off on the plan, sources said. It is unclear whether anyone on the committee objected to the CIA's plans for Zubaydah.
The CIA has confirmed Zubaydah was one of three al Qaeda suspects subjected to waterboarding. After he was waterboarded, officials say Zubaydah gave up valuable information that led to the capture of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammad and fellow 9/11 plotter Ramzi bin al-Shibh.
Mohammad, who is known as KSM, was also subjected to waterboarding by the CIA.
In the interview with ABC News Friday, Bush defended the waterboarding technique used against KSM.
"We had legal opinions that enabled us to do it," Bush said. "And, no, I didn't have any problem at all trying to find out what Khalid Sheikh Mohammed knew."
The President said, "I think it's very important for the American people to understand who Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was. He was the person who ordered the suicide attack - I mean, the 9/11 attacks."
At a hearing before a military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay on March 10, 2007, KSM, as he is known, said he broke under the harsh interrogation.
COURT: Were any statements you made as the result of any of the treatment that you received during that time frame from 2003 to 2006? Did you make those statements because of the treatment you receive from these people?
KSM: Statement for whom??
COURT: To any of these interrogators.
KSM: CIA peoples. Yes. At the beginning, when they transferred me ...
Lawyers in the Justice Department had written a classified memo, which was extensively reviewed, that gave formal legal authority to government interrogators to use the "enhanced" questioning tactics on suspected terrorist prisoners. The August 2002 memo, signed by then head of the Office of Legal Counsel Jay Bybee, was referred to as the so-called "Golden Shield" for CIA agents, who worried they would be held liable if the harsh interrogations became public.
Old hands in the intelligence community remembered vividly how past covert operations, from the Vietnam War-era "Phoenix Program" of assassinations of Viet Cong to the Iran-Contra arms sales of the 1980s were painted as the work of a "rogue agency" out of control.
But even after the "Golden Shield" was in place, briefings and meetings in the White House to discuss individual interrogations continued, sources said. Tenet, seeking to protect his agents, regularly sought confirmation from the NSC principals that specific interrogation plans were legal.
According to a former CIA official involved in the process, CIA headquarters would receive cables from operatives in the field asking for authorization for specific techniques. Agents, worried about overstepping their boundaries, would await guidance in particularly complicated cases dealing with high-value detainees, two CIA sources said.
Highly placed sources said CIA directors Tenet and later Porter Goss along with agency lawyers briefed senior advisers, including Cheney, Rice, Rumsfeld and Powell, about detainees in CIA custody overseas.
"It kept coming up. CIA wanted us to sign off on each one every time," said one high-ranking official who asked not to be identified. "They'd say, 'We've got so and so. This is the plan.'"
Sources said that at each discussion, all the Principals present approved. "These discussions weren't adding value," a source said. "Once you make a policy decision to go beyond what you used to do and conclude it's legal, (you should) just tell them to implement it."
Then-Attorney General Ashcroft was troubled by the discussions. He agreed with the general policy decision to allow aggressive tactics and had repeatedly advised that they were legal. But he argued that senior White House advisers should not be involved in the grim details of interrogations, sources said.
According to a top official, Ashcroft asked aloud after one meeting: "Why are we talking about this in the White House? History will not judge this kindly."
The Principals also approved interrogations that combined different methods, pushing the limits of international law and even the Justice Department's own legal approval in the 2002 memo, sources told ABC News.
At one meeting in the summer of 2003 - attended by Vice President Cheney, among others - Tenet made an elaborate presentation for approval to combine several different techniques during interrogations, instead of using one method at a time, according to a highly placed administration source.
A year later, amidst the outcry over unrelated abuses of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, the controversial 2002 legal memo, which gave formal legal authorization for the CIA interrogation program of the top al Qaeda suspects, leaked to the press. A new senior official in the Justice Department, Jack Goldsmith, withdrew the legal memo - the Golden Shield - that authorized the program.
But the CIA had captured a new al Qaeda suspect in Asia. Sources said CIA officials that summer returned to the Principals Committee for approval to continue using certain "enhanced interrogation techniques."
Then-National Security Advisor Rice, sources said, was decisive. Despite growing policy concerns - shared by Powell - that the program was harming the image of the United States abroad, sources say she did not back down, telling the CIA: "This is your baby. Go do it."
Risky Geopolitical Game: Washington Plays ‘Tibet Roulette’ with China
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By F. William Engdahl
By F. William Engdahl
Washington has obviously decided on an ultra-high risk geopolitical game with Beijing’s by fanning the flames of violence in Tibet just at this sensitive time in their relations and on the run-up to the Beijing Olympics. It’s part of an escalating strategy of destabilization of China which has been initiated by the Bush Administration over the past months. It also includes the attempt to ignite an anti-China Saffron Revolution in the neighboring Myanmar region, bringing US-led NATO troops into Darfur where China’s oil companies are developing potentially huge oil reserves. It includes counter moves across mineral-rich Africa. And it includes strenuous efforts to turn India into a major new US forward base on the Asian sub-continent to be deployed against China, though evidence to date suggests the Indian government is being very cautious not to upset Chinese relations.
The current Tibet operation apparently got the green light in October last year when George Bush agreed to meet the Dalai Lama for the first time publicly in Washington. The President of the United States is not unaware of the high stakes of such an insult to Beijing. Bush deepened the affront to America’s largest trading partner, China, by agreeing to attend as the US Congress awarded the Dalai Lama the Congressional Gold Medal.
The immediate expressions of support for the crimson monks of Tibet from George Bush, Condi Rice, France’s Nicolas Sarkozy and Germany’s Angela Merkel most recently took on dimensions of the absurd. Ms Merkel announced she would boycott attending the August Beijing Summer Olympics as her protest at the Beijing treatment of the Tibetan monks. What her press secretary omitted is that she had not even planned to go in the first place.
She was followed by an announcement that Poland’s Prime Minister, the pro-Washington Donald Tusk, would also stay away, along with pro-US Czech President Vaclav Klaus. It is unclear whether they also hadn’t planned to go in the first place but it made for dramatic press headlines.
The recent wave of violent protests and documented attacks by Tibetan monks against Han Chinese residents began on March 10 when several hundred monks marched on Lhasa to demand release of other monks allegedly detained for celebrating the award of the US Congress’ Gold Medal last October. The monks were joined by other monks marching to protest Beijing rule on the 49th anniversary of the Tibetan uprising against Chinese rule.
The geopolitical game
As the Chinese government itself was clear to point out, the sudden eruption of anti-Chinese violence in Tibet, a new phase in the movement led by the exiled Dalai Lama, was suspiciously timed to try to put the spotlight on Beijing’s human rights record on the eve of the coming Olympics. The Beijing Olympics are an event seen in China as a major acknowledgement of the arrival of a new prosperous China on the world stage.
The background actors in the Tibet “Crimson revolution” actions confirm that Washington has been working overtime in recent months to prepare another of its infamous Color Revolutions, these fanning public protests designed to inflict maximum embarrassment on Beijing. The actors on the ground in and outside Tibet are the usual suspects, tied to the US State Department, including the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the CIA’s Freedom House through its chairman, Bette Bao Lord and her role in the International Committee for Tibet, as well as the Trace Foundation financed by the wealth of George Soros through his daughter, Andrea Soros Colombel.
Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao has accused the Dalai Lama of orchestrating the latest unrest to sabotage the Olympic Games “in order to achieve their unspeakable goal”, Tibetan independence.
Bush telephoned his Chinese counterpart, President Hu Jintao, to pressure for talks between Beijing and the exiled Dalai Lama. The White House said that Bush, “raised his concerns about the situation in Tibet and encouraged the Chinese government to engage in substantive dialogue with the Dalai Lama’s representatives and to allow access for journalists and diplomats.”
President Hu reportedly told Bush the Dalai Lama must “stop his sabotage” of the Olympics before Beijing takes a decision on talks with the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, foreign ministry spokesman Qin Gang said.
Dalai Lama’s odd friends
In the West the image of the Dalai Lama has been so much promoted that in many circles he is deemed almost a God. While the spiritual life of the Dalai Lama is not our focus, it is relevant to note briefly the circles he has chosen to travel in most of his life.
The Dalai Lama travels in what can only be called rather conservative political circles. What is generally forgotten today is that during the 1930’s the Nazis including Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler and other top Nazi Party leaders regarded Tibet as the holy site of the survivors of the lost Atlantis, and the origin of the “Nordic pure race.”
When he was 11 and already designated Dalai Lama, he was befriended by Heinrich Harrer, a Nazi Party member and officer of Heinrich Himmler’s feared SS. Far from the innocent image of him in the popular Hollywood film with Brad Pitt, Harrer was an elite SS member at the time he met the 11 year old Dalai Lama and became his tutor in “the world outside Tibet.” While only the Dalai Lama knows the contents of Harrer’s private lessons, the two remained friends until Harrer died a ripe 93 in 2006.1
That sole friendship, of course, does not define a person’s character, but it is interesting in the context of later friends. In April 1999, along with Margaret Thatcher, and former Beijing Ambassador, CIA Director and President, George H.W. Bush, the Dalai Lama demanded the British government release Augusto Pinochet, the former fascist dictator of Chile and a longtime CIA client who was visiting England. The Dalai Lama urged that Pinochet not be forced to go to Spain where he was wanted to stand trial for crimes against humanity. The Dalai Lama had close ties to Miguel Serrano2, head of Chile’s National Socialist Party, a proponent of something called esoteric Hitlerism. 3
Leaving aside at this point the claim of the Dalai Lama to divinity, what is indisputable is that he has been surrounded and financed in significant part, since his flight into Indian exile in 1959, by various US and Western intelligence services and their gaggle of NGOs. It is the agenda of the Washington friends of the Dalai Lama that is relevant here.
The NED at work again…
As author Michael Parenti notes in his work, Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth, “during the 1950s and 60s, the CIA actively backed the Tibetan cause with arms, military training, money, air support and all sorts of other help.” The US-based American Society for a Free Asia, a CIA front, publicized the cause of Tibetan resistance, with the Dalai Lama’s eldest brother, Thubtan Norbu, playing an active role in the group. The Dalai Lama’s second-eldest brother, Gyalo Thondup, established an intelligence operation with the CIA in 1951. It was later upgraded into a CIA-trained guerrilla unit whose recruits parachuted back into Tibet, according to Parenti.4
According to declassified US intelligence documents released in the late 1990s, “for much of the 1960s, the CIA provided the Tibetan exile movement with $1.7 million a year for operations against China, including an annual subsidy of $180,000 for the Dalai Lama.” 5
With help of the CIA, the Dalai Lama fled to Dharamsala, India where he lives to the present. He continues to receive millions of dollars in backing today, not from the CIA but from a more innocuous-sounding CIA front organization, funded by the US Congress, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). The NED has been instrumental in every US-backed Color Revolution destabilization from Serbia to Georgia to Ukraine to Myanmar. Its funds go to back opposition media and global public relations campaigns to popularize their pet opposition candidates.
As in the other recent Color Revolutions, the US Government is fanning the flames of destabilization against China by funding opposition protest organizations inside and outside Tibet through its arm, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
The NED was founded by the Reagan Administration in the early 1980’s, on the recommendation of Bill Casey, Reagan’s Director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), following a series of high-publicity exposures of CIA assassinations and destabilizations of unfriendly regimes. The NED was designed to pose as an independent NGO, one step removed from the CIA and Government agencies so as to be less conspicuous, presumably. The first acting President of the NED, Allen Weinstein, commented to the Washington Post that, “A lot of what we [the NED] do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.” 6
American intelligence historian, William Blum states, “The NED played an important role in the Iran-Contra affair of the 1980s, funding key components of Oliver North’s shadowy "Project Democracy." This network privatized US foreign policy, waged war, ran arms and drugs, and engaged in other equally charming activities. In 1987, a White House spokesman stated that those at NED "run Project Democracy." 7
The most prominent pro-Dalai Lama Tibet independence organization today is the International Campaign for Tibet, founded in Washington in 1988. Since at least 1994 the ICT has been receiving funds from the NED. The ICT awarded their annual Light of Truth award in 2005 to Carl Gershman, founder of the NED. Other ICT award winners have included the German Friedrich Naumann Foundation and Czech leader, Vaclav Havel. The ICT Board of Directors is peopled with former US State Department officials including Gare Smith and Julia Taft. 8
Another especially active anti-Beijing organization is the US-based Students for a Free Tibet, founded in 1994 in New York City as a project of US Tibet Committee and the NED-financed International Campaign for Tibet (ICT). The SFT is most known for unfurling a 450 foot banner atop the Great Wall in China; calling for a free Tibet, and accusing Beijing of wholly unsubstantiated claims of genocide against Tibet. Apparently it makes good drama to rally naïve students.
The SFT was among five organizations which this past January that proclaimed start of a "Tibetan people’s uprising" on Jan 4 this year and co-founded a temporary office in charge of coordination and financing.
Harry Wu is another prominent Dalai Lama supporter against Beijing. He became notorious for claiming falsely in a 1996 Playboy interview that he had “videotaped a prisoner whose kidneys were surgically removed while he was alive, and then the prisoner was taken out and shot. The tape was broadcast by BBC." The BBC film showed nothing of the sort, but the damage was done. How many people check old BBC archives? Wu, a retired Berkeley professor who left China after imprisonment as a dissident, is head of the Laogai Research Foundation, a tax-exempt organization whose main funding is from the NED.9
Among related projects, the US Government-financed NED also supports the Tibet Times newspaper, run out of the Dalai Lama’s exile base at Dharamsala, India. The NED also funds the Tibet Multimedia Center for “information dissemination that addresses the struggle for human rights and democracy in Tibet,” also based in Dharamsala. And NED finances the Tibetan Center for Human Rights and Democracy.
In short, US State Department and US intelligence community finger prints are all over the upsurge around the Free Tibet movement and the anti-Han Chinese attacks of March. The question to be asked is why, and especially why now?
Tibet’s raw minerals treasure
Tibet is of strategic import to China not only for its geographical location astride the border with India, Washington’s newest anti-China ally in Asia. Tibet is also a treasure of minerals and also oil. Tibet contains some of the world’s largest uranium and borax deposits, one half of the world’s lithium, the largest copper deposits in Asia, enormous iron deposits, and over 80,000 gold mines. Tibet’s forests are the largest timber reserve at China’s disposal; as of 1980, an estimated $54 billion worth of trees had been felled and taken by China. Tibet also contains some of the largest oil reserves in the region.10
On the Tibet Autonomous Region’s border along the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region is also a vast oil and mineral region in the Qaidam Basin, known as a "treasure basin." The Basin has 57 different types of mineral resources with proven reserves including petroleum, natural gas, coal, crude salt, potassium, magnesium, lead, zinc and gold. These mineral resources have a potential economic value of 15 trillion yuan or US$1.8 trillion. Proven reserves of potassium, lithium and crude salt in the basin are the biggest in China.
And situated as it is, on the “roof of the world,” Tibet is perhaps the world’s most valuable water source. Tibet is the source of seven of Asia’s greatest rivers which provide water for 2 billion people.” He who controls Tibet’s water has a mighty powerful geopolitical lever over all Asia.
But the prime interest of Tibet for Washington today is its potential to act as a lever to destabilize and blackmail the Beijing Government.
Washington’s ‘nonviolence as a form of warfare’
The events in Tibet since March 10 have been played in Western media with little regard to accuracy or independent cross-checking. Most of the pictures blown up in European and US newspapers and TV have not even been of Chinese military oppression of Tibetan lamas or monks. They have been shown to be in most cases either Reuters or AFP pictures of Han Chinese being beaten by Tibetan monks in paramilitary organizations. In some instances German TV stations ran video pictures of beatings that were not even from Tibet but rather by Nepalese police in Kathmandu. 11
The western media complicity simply further underlies that the actions around Tibet are part of a well-orchestrated destabilization effort on the part of Washington. What few people realize is that the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was also instrumental, along with Gene Sharp’s misnamed Albert Einstein Institution through Colonel Robert Helvey, in encouraging the student protests at Tiananmen Square in June 1989. The Albert Einstein Institution, as it describes itself, specializes in "nonviolence as a form of warfare." 12
Colonel Helvey was formerly with the Defense Intelligence Agency stationed in Myanmar. Helvey trained in Hong Kong the student leaders from Beijing in mass demonstration techniques which they were to use in the Tiananmen Square incident of June 1989. He is now believed acting as an adviser to the Falun Gong in similar civil disobedience techniques. Helvey nominally retired from the army in 1991, but had been working with the Albert Einstein Institution and George Soros’ Open Society Foundation long before then. In its annual report for 2004 Helvey’s Albert Einstein Institution admitted to advising people in Tibet. 13
With the emergence of the Internet and mobile telephone use, the US Pentagon has refined an entirely new form of regime change and political destabilization. As one researcher of the phenomenon behind the wave of color revolutions, Jonathan Mowat, describes it,
“…What we are seeing is civilian application of Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s "Revolution in Military Affairs" doctrine, which depends on highly mobile small group deployments "enabled" by "real time" intelligence and communications. Squads of soldiers taking over city blocks with the aid of "intelligence helmet" video screens that give them an instantaneous overview of their environment, constitute the military side. Bands of youth converging on targeted intersections in constant dialogue on cell phones constitute the doctrine’s civilian application.
“This parallel should not be surprising since the US military and National Security Agency subsidized the development of the Internet, cellular phones, and software platforms. From their inception, these technologies were studied and experimented with in order to find the optimal use in a new kind of warfare. The "revolution" in warfare that such new instruments permit has been pushed to the extreme by several specialists in psychological warfare. Although these military utopians have been working in high places, (for example the RAND Corporation), for a very long time, to a large extent they only took over some of the most important command structures of the US military apparatus with the victory of the neoconservatives in the Pentagon of Donald Rumsfeld.14
Goal to control China
Washington policy has used and refined these techniques of “revolutionary nonviolence,” and NED operations embodied a series of ‘democratic’ or soft coup projects as part of a larger strategy which would seek to cut China off from access to its vital external oil and gas reserves.
The 1970’s quote attributed to then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, a proponent of British geopolitics in an American context comes to mind: “If you control the oil you control entire nations…”
The destabilization attempt by Washington using Tibet, no doubt with quiet “help” from its friends in British and other US-friendly intelligence services, is part of a clear pattern.
It includes Washington’s “Saffron revolution” attempts to destabilize Myanmar. It includes the ongoing effort to get NATO troops into Darfur to block China’s access to strategically vital oil resources there and elsewhere in Africa. It includes attempts to foment problems in Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan and to disrupt China’s vital new energy pipeline projects to Kazakhstan. The earlier Asian Great Silk Road trade routes went through Tashkent in Uzbekistan and Almaty in Kazakhstan for geographically obvious reasons, in a region surrounded by major mountain ranges. Geopolitical control of Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan, Kazakhstan would enable control of any potential pipeline routes between China and Central Asia just as the encirclement of Russia controls pipeline and other ties between it and western Europe, China, India and the Middle East, where China depends on uninterrupted oil flows from Iran, Saudi Arabia and other OPEC countries.
Behind the strategy to encircle China
In this context, a revealing New York Council on Foreign Relations analysis in their Foreign Affairs magazine from Zbigniew Brzezinski from September/October 1997 is worth quoting. Brzezinski, a protégé of David Rockefeller and a follower of the founder of British geopolitics, Sir Halford Mackinder, is today the foreign policy adviser to Presidential candidate, Barack Obama. In 1997 he revealingly wrote:
‘Eurasia is home to most of the world’s politically assertive and dynamic states. All the historical pretenders to global power originated in Eurasia. The world’s most populous aspirants to regional hegemony, China and India, are in Eurasia, as are all the potential political or economic challengers to American primacy. After the United States, the next six largest economies and military spenders are there, as are all but one of the world’s overt nuclear powers, and all but one of the covert ones. Eurasia accounts for 75 percent of the world’s population; 60 percent of its GNP, and 75 percent of its energy resources. Collectively, Eurasia’s potential power overshadows even America’s.
‘Eurasia is the world’s axial super-continent. A power that dominated Eurasia would exercise decisive influence over two of the world’s three most economically productive regions, Western Europe and East Asia. A glance at the map also suggests that a country dominant in Eurasia would almost automatically control the Middle East and Africa. With Eurasia now serving as the decisive geopolitical chessboard, it no longer suffices to fashion one policy for Europe and another for Asia. What happens with the distribution of power on the Eurasian landmass will be of decisive importance to America’s global primacy….’15 (emphasis mine-w.e.).
This statement, written well before the US-led bombing of former Yugoslavia and the US military occupations in Afghanistan and Iraq, or its support of the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan Pipeline, puts Washington pronouncements about ‘ridding the world of tyranny’ and about spreading democracy, into a somewhat different context from the one usually mentioned by George W. Bush of others.
It’s about global hegemony, not democracy. It should be no surprise when powers such as China are not convinced that giving Washington such overwhelming power is in China’s national interest, any more than Russia thinks that it would be a step towards peace to let NATO gobble up Ukraine and Georgia and put US missiles on Russia’s doorstep “to defend against threat of Iranian nuclear attack on the United States.”
The US-led destabilization in Tibet is part of a strategic shift of great significance. It comes at a time when the US economy and the US dollar, still the world’s reserve currency, are in the worst crisis since the 1930’s. It is significant that the US Administration sends Wall Street banker, former Goldman Sachs chairman, Henry Paulson to Beijing in the midst of its efforts to embarrass Beijing in Tibet. Washington is literally playing with fire. China long ago surpassed Japan as the world’s largest holder of foreign currency reserves, now in the range of $1.5 trillions, most of which are invested in US Treasury debt instruments. Paulson knows well that were Beijing to decide it could bring the dollar to its knees by selling only a small portion of its US debt on the market.
Endnotes:
1 Ex-Nazi, Dalai’s tutor Harrer dies at 93, The Times of India, 9 Jan 2006, in
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-1363946,prtpage-1.cms.
2 Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas, Black Sun: Aryan Cults, Esoteric Nazism and the Politics of Identity, New York University Press, 2001, p. 177.
3 Goldner, Colin, Mönchischer Terror auf dem Dach der Welt Teil 1: Die Begeisterung für den Dalai Lama und den tibetischen Buddhismus, March 26, 2008, excerpted from the book Dalai Lama: Fall eines Gottkönigs, Alibri Verlag,, new edition to appear April 2008, reproduced in
http://www.jungewelt.de/2008/03-27/006.php.
4 Parenti, Michael, Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth, June 2007, in www.michaelparenti.org/Tibet.html.
5 Mann, Jim, CIA funded covert Tibet exile campaign in 1960s, The Age (Australia), Sept. 16, 1998.
6 Ignatius, D., Innocence Abroad: The New World of Spyless Coups, The Washington Post, 22 September 1991.
7 Blum, William, The NED and ‘Project Democracy,’ January 2000, in www.friendsoftibet.org/databank/usdefence/usd5.html
8 Barker, Michael, ’Democratic Imperialism’: Tibet, China and the National Endowment for Democracy, Global Research, August 13, 2007, www.globalresearch.ca.
9 McGehee, Ralph, Ralph McGehee’ s Archive on JFK Place, CIA Operations in China Part III, May 2, 1996, in www.acorn.net/jfkplace/03/RM/RM.china-for.
10 US Tibet Committee, Fifteen things you should know about Tibet and China, in
http://ustibetcommittee.org/facts/facts.html.
11 Goldner, Colin, Mönchischer Terror auf dem Dach der Welt Teil 2: Krawalle im Vorfeld der Olympischen Spiele, op cit.
12 Mowat, Jonathan, The new Gladio in action?, Online Journal, Mar 19, 2005, in
http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/printer_308.shtml.
15 Brzezinski, Zbigniew, A Geostrategy for Eurasia, Foreign Affairs, 76:5, September/October 1997.
Do satellite photos show Iran ballistic missile facility?
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By Arthur Bright
By Arthur Bright
A new report by The Times of London says that satellite photographs of a site in Iran indicate the location is being used to develop a ballistic missile that could reach most of continental Europe.
The Times writes that the photographs show the launch site of a Kavoshgar 1 rocket that Iran tested on February 4. Tehran claimed that the rocket was intended to further a nascent Iranian space program, but The Times says that the photos suggest otherwise.
Analysis of the photographs taken by the Digital Globe QuickBird satellite four days after the launch has revealed a number of intriguing features that indicate to experts that it is the same site where Iran is focusing its efforts on developing a ballistic missile with a range of about 6,000km (4,000 miles).
A previously unknown missile location, the site, about 230km southeast of Tehran, and the link with Iran’s long-range programme, was revealed by Jane’s Intelligence Review after a study of the imagery by a former Iraq weapons inspector. A close examination of the photographs has indicated that the Iranians are following the same path as North Korea, pursuing a space programme that enables Tehran to acquire expertise in long-range missile technology.
Geoffrey Forden, a research associate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said that there was a recently constructed building on the site, about 40 metres in length, which was similar in form and size to the Taepodong long-range missile assembly facility in North Korea.
The Times adds that the rocket launched from the facility in February was based on Iran’s Shahab 3B missile, which is in turn based on North Korea’s Nodong missile. Geoffrey Forden, a member of the UN team monitoring Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction in 2002 and 2003, noted that while the test rocket did not indicate any significant advances in Iran’s missile technology, the launch site had "very high levels of security and recent construction activity" and appeared to be "an important strategic facility."
If the Iranian facility is indeed developing a long-range ballistic missile, it would explain NATO’s decision last week to move ahead with the missile shield program supported by the US. The Christian Science Monitor reported last week that the Bush administration scored a key success by persuading NATO to approve the missile shield, which is meant to protect against missiles like those that Iran is linked to.
NATO members all supported the US position on missile-shield defense, which is to be deployed in the Czech Republic and Poland. "There is a threat ... and allied security must be indivisible in the face of it," read the statement on missile defense.
But Iran has denied any hostile intent behind its rocket program. While Tehran has not yet commented on the Times report, after the February test of the Kavoshgar 1 rocket it stated its intent to use the technology for launching satellites, reported The New York Times.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad... said on state-run television: "We need to have an active presence in space. We witness today that Iran has taken its first step in space very firmly, precisely and with awareness."
Iran has said that it wants to put satellites into orbit to monitor natural disasters and to improve telecommunications, as well as for security reasons.
Defense Minister Mostafa Mohammad Najar said Iran would launch its domestically made satellite, called Omid, meaning Hope, in June, Fars News reported.
But US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack called the launch "troubling," noting that "the kinds of technologies and capabilities that are needed in order to launch a space vehicle for orbit are the same kinds of capabilities and technologies that one would employ for long-range ballistic missiles."
Much of the concern of both the US and the International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN’s nuclear watchdog, stems from evidence found on a laptop stolen by an Iranian in 2004 and turned over to US intelligence services. Among other documents on the laptop, investigators found "drawings on modifying Iran’s ballistic missiles in ways that might accommodate a nuclear warhead," reported The Washington Post in February. But the problem is proving that the documents are legitimate.
U.S. intelligence considers the laptop documents authentic but cannot prove it. Analysts cannot completely rule out the possibility that internal opponents of the Iranian leadership could have forged them to implicate the government, or that the documents were planted by Tehran itself to convince the West that its program remains at an immature stage....
British intelligence, asked for a second opinion, concurred last year that the documents appear authentic. German and French officials consider the information troubling, sources said, but Russian experts have dismissed it as inconclusive. IAEA inspectors, who were highly skeptical of U.S. intelligence on Iraq, have begun to pursue aspects of the laptop information that appear to bolster previous leads.
"There is always a chance this could be the biggest scam perpetrated on U.S. intelligence," one U.S. source acknowledged. "But it’s such a large body of documents and such strong indications of nuclear weapons intent, and nothing seems so inconsistent."
Despite the possibility of Iran developing a long-range ballistic missile in time, Mr. Forden says that they likely still have a long way to go. ArmsControlWonk.com, a blog on WMDs and national security, cites Forden’s observations about the flaws revealed by the February launch .
Iran’s February 4th launch of a Shahab-3 just keeps on getting more and more interesting; that is if you are interested in just how good of a missile the Shahab/No’dong is. Video from Iran’s television show that there is a failure of the missile’s thrust vector control system nineteen seconds into its powered flight. At that point, there is a brief flaring at the very end of the missile and an object is seen flying off for several seconds, until it leaves the video’s frame as the camera continues to follow the missile. Tellingly, it doesn’t just drop off the missile but is given quite a transverse boost.
Forden says that the debris indicates that the missile’s graphite jet vanes, used to steer the rocket in flight, are being "eaten away" by the rocket exhaust. Such a problem can knock a missile severely off course, he adds.
So what does this mean for missile proliferators in general and Syria and Iran (and North Korea since they are all involved in the development of these missiles) in particular? It means that they are still having a hard time producing graphite tough and pure enough to be used in large missiles. It also indicates that a top priority for their missile engineers will be to develop other thrust vector control mechanisms.
Cheney on the Warpath Again?
Go to Original
By Dan Froomkin
By Dan Froomkin
Vice President Cheney went on right-wing talk radio yesterday with a dramatic new argument for preventing Iran from getting nuclear weapons, casting the Iranian leadership as apocalyptic zealots who yearn for a nuclear conflagration.
Cheney also notably refused to comment about any recent conversations he may have had with Israeli leaders about the possibility of their bombing Iranian nuclear facilities. Some observers suspect Cheney of encouraging Israel to attack Iran as a proxy.
Conventional wisdom in Washington has it that Cheney and other supporters of military action against Iran were sidelined after a National Intelligence Estimate last November reported that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.
But the vice president sounded anything but chastened yesterday, speaking with two of his favorite media enablers. In fact, he sounded like the NIE never happened.
Here he is talking to Sean Hannity:
Hannity: "What did you make of Senator Barack Obama’s comments that he would talk to [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad, a Holocaust denier who’s repeatedly threatened to blow up and remove Israel from the state -- from the map, the world map, and obviously is pursuing some nuclear capability?"
Cheney: "Well, he is, and I think the position we’ve taken with respect to that is that we would be prepared to talk when they stopped enriching uranium. Of course, they’ve never met that condition, so we haven’t had talks at that level.
"But Ahmadinejad is I think a very dangerous man. On the one hand, he has repeatedly stated that he wants to destroy Israel. He also has -- is a man who believes in the return of the 12th Imam; and that the highest honor that can befall a man is that he should die a martyr in facilitating the return of the 12th Imam.
"It’s a radical, radical point of view. Bernard Lewis once said, mutual assured destruction in the Soviet-U.S. relationship in the Cold War meant deterrence, but mutual assured destruction with Ahmadinejad is an incentive. You have to be concerned about that."
The 12th Imam? What’s that about? Just over two hours later, Hugh Hewitt was happy to indulge Cheney on that very issue.
Hewitt: "Do you -- Mr. Vice President, do you have a personal sense of whether or not the Iranian leadership is actually motivated by this end-times, bring-back-the-12th-Imam sort of theology that we’ve read so much about?"
Cheney: "Well, I’ve read about it, too. I don’t know that that motivates all of the leadership. The one guy who talks about it repeatedly is Ahmadinejad. And -- in other words, a report even at one point that when he went to Iraq on a visit, that at least on one occasion, he insisted on there being a vacant chair at the table for the 12th Imam. And it’s a -- it’s hard to tell. I mean, if I look at what his beliefs supposedly are, the allegation that the -- a return of the 12th Imam is something to be much desired, and that the best contribution that a man can make is to die a martyr facilitating that return, and all that goes with it -- I always think of Bernard Lewis, who said that mutual assured destruction during the Cold War between the U.S. and the Soviets meant peace and stability and deterrence, but mutual assured destruction in the hands of Ahmadinejad may just be an incentive. It’s a worrisome proposition."
Hewitt: "If they actually possess nuclear weapons, do you think they’re deterable in the way that the Soviets were, or is that what you’re getting at, that they might actually use them because it’s part of the theological justification for their -- "
Cheney: "Well, I think we have to be careful, obviously -- it’s a difficult kind of a judgment to make. I think we do have an obligation to listen to what they’re saying. And there’s a great temptation, when he says truly outrageous things, for example, about the destruction of Israel, for people to write that off and say, well, he doesn’t mean it, it’s just rhetoric. But you can’t do that. And I certainly am -- I know the Israelis well enough, and I was just there a couple of weeks ago, to know there isn’t any way they’re prepared to ignore those kinds of statements coming out of Tehran. They have to take them seriously, given their history. And I think they perceive the possibility of an Iran armed with nuclear weapons as a fundamental threat to the very survival of the state of Israel."
Hewitt: "Did you talk with the Israelis in any way you can discuss about action against Israel -- against Iran’s nuclear capability?"
Cheney: "No, I couldn’t talk about those matters here."
The 12th ImamCheney’s talk of the 12th Imam marks his revival of an old neocon chestnut.
The 12th Imam, or the mahdi, is considered by devout Shiite Muslims to be a direct descendant of the Prophet Mohammed who disappeared in the ninth century and will reappear before judgment day to end tyranny and promote justice.
The man Cheney cites as an authority on Iranian apocalyptic thinking, controversial mideast scholar Bernard Lewis, hinted in an Aug. 8, 2006, Wall Street Journal op-ed that Ahmadinejad might be planning a nuclear attack on Israel just two weeks later, on the date in the Islamic calendar when the Prophet Muhammad made his mystical journey to Jerusalem.
"This might well be deemed an appropriate date for the apocalyptic ending of Israel and if necessary of the world," Lewis wrote. "It is far from certain that Mr. Ahmadinejad plans any such cataclysmic events precisely for Aug. 22. But it would be wise to bear the possibility in mind."
Needless to say, the day went by without incident.
Noah Feldman wrote in the New York Times Magazine on Oct. 29, 2006, that "the relative absence of a contemporary Shiite trend to messianic brinkmanship suggests that Ahmadinejad’s recent emphasis on the mahdi may be interpreted more in terms of an attempt to summon [Ayotollah] Khomeini’s legacy and Iran’s revolutionary moment than as a desperate willingness to bring the nation to the edge of war. . . .
"Ahmadinejad surely understands the consequences of using a nuclear bomb, and Shiite Islam, even in its messianic incarnation, still falls short of inviting nuclear retaliation and engendering collective suicide."
As for Wiping Israel Off the MapBack in March, William Branigin of The Washington Post shed some light on the administration’s continued insistence that the Iranian government had expressed its desire to wipe Israel off the map.
Branigin wrote: "In an October 2005 speech to a conference on a ’World without Zionism,’ Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was quoted by a state-run Iranian news agency as agreeing with a statement by Iran’s late spiritual leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, that ’Israel must be wiped off the map.’ Iran’s foreign minister later said the comment had been incorrectly translated from Farsi and that Ahmadinejad was ’talking about the [Israeli] regime,’ which Iran does not recognize and wants to see collapse.
"According to Farsi-speaking commentators including Juan Cole, a professor of Middle Eastern history at the University of Michigan, Ahmadinejad’s exact quote was, ’The Imam said that this regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the page of time.’ Cole has written that Ahmadinejad was not calling for the ’Nazi-style extermination of a people,’ but was expressing the wish that the Israeli government would disappear just as the shah of Iran’s regime had collapsed in 1979."
Whither U.S. Policy?Warren P. Strobel writes for McClatchy Newspapers: "The Bush administration has been divided over Iran policy almost since the day the president took office and, according to a variety of officials, it remains so today.
"One faction, led by Vice President Dick Cheney and including a sprinkling of officials at the Pentagon, State Department and elsewhere, has argued that before Bush leaves office in January, the administration should use military force to destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities and punish Iran for supporting international terrorism and thwarting U.S. aims in Iraq. . . .
"A second faction, led by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and much of the uniformed military and the intelligence community, opposes military strikes in favor of continued sanctions, diplomatic pressure and talks with Iran under certain conditions.
"This faction appears, for now, to retain the upper hand."
Well, maybe.
AFP’s Olivier Knox notes that Bush overtly threatened Iran yesterday in his speech about Iraq.
Knox writes: "Bush on Thursday lumped Iran with the Al-Qaeda terrorist group as ’two of the greatest threats to America in this new century.’ . . .
Bush "coupled the rhetorical blast with a clear warning that he would not hesitate to use force if the Islamic republic targets US interests in its strife-torn neighbor. . . .
"Iran ’has a choice to make. It can live in peace with its neighbor, enjoy strong economic and cultural and religious ties. Or it can continue to arm and train and fund illegal militant groups, which are terrorizing the Iraqi people and turning them against Iran,’ he said.
"’If Iran makes the right choice, America will encourage a peaceful relationship between Iran and Iraq. Iran makes the wrong choice, America will act to protect our interests, and our troops, and our Iraqi partners,’ he said."
Knox notes a history of hyperbole from Bush on this topic. "It was far from the first time that the deeply unpopular US president has dramatically described Iraq as the front line against Tehran and Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network as he works to revive anemic US support for the war.
"In August 2007, Bush warned that Iran’s suspect atomic program threatened to place the entire Middle East ’under the shadow of a nuclear holocaust.’
"In October 2007, Bush told world leaders that preventing Tehran from developing nuclear weapons was necessary ’if you’re interested in avoiding World War III.’
"On two occasions, in March 2008 and in August 2007, Bush wrongly asserted that Iran had openly declared that it wants nuclear weapons. The White House later said he had erred. . . .
"Bush has refused to rule out using force in the nuclear standoff, fueling worries that he will attack Iran -- which he famously called part of an ’axis of evil’ with North Korea and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq -- before leaving office.
"In October, US Vice President Dick Cheney stoked those concerns when he warned Iran to suspend uranium enrichment or face ’serious consequences’ -- the very language in the UN resolution on Iraq that the White House says justified the March 2003 invasion."
Steven Lee Myers and Thom Shanker write in the New York Times: "Mr. Bush’s focus on Iran, while not new, reflected deepening concerns in the administration and the Pentagon about suspected Iranian support for some extremists. They say that support became increasingly evident late last month during the indecisive Iraqi operation to wrest control of Basra from Shiite militias and more recently in a spate of rocket attacks on the Green Zone in Baghdad."
And the neocons are clearly restless.
Matt Corley writes for ThinkProgress.org: "On his radio show this morning, Bill Bennett told the Weekly Standard’s Bill Kristol -- who had a personal meeting with President Bush yesterday -- that a ’conclusion’ he drew was that the hearing was ’less an argument for getting out of Iraq than going into Iran.’ After suggesting that Iran may ’have to pay some price at some point on their own soil,’ Kristol said that President Bush authorizing an attack of some kind before he leaves office is not ’out of the question’":
Bennett: "Do you think there’s any chance that, and we won’t ask you to reveal anything confidential, do you think there’s any chance that we might take some action against some aspect of the Ira -- against Iran, let’s put it that way, before the president leaves office?"
Kristol: "We didn’t really talk about that, in all honesty, directly. I don’t think it’s out of the question. I think people are overdoing how much of a lame duck the president is."
Meanwhile, Charles Krauthammer takes a slightly different but also alarming tack in his Washington Post opinion column. Citing the "apocalyptic and messianic" views of the Iranian leaders, he endorses a form of deterrence that could actually increase tensions. Krauthammer writes: "President Bush’s greatest contribution to nuclear peace would be to issue the following declaration . . .: ’It shall be the policy of this nation to regard any nuclear attack upon Israel by Iran, or originating in Iran, as an attack by Iran on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon Iran.’"
What seems to be a new drumbeat for military action has thus far remained under the radar of the mainstream media. When my colleagues do take notice, I hope they point out that the advocates of a strike against Iran are the same people who enthusiastically advocated the invasion of Iraq, making similarly authoritative-sounding declarations about the uselessness of diplomacy and the easy triumph of military might.
Opinion WatchThe USA Today editorial board writes: "The Iraq war has featured a changing cast of U.S. adversaries. Saddam Hussein. Sunni insurgents. Foreign fighters. Radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
"In the latest shift, the two top U.S. officials in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker, focused in this week’s congressional testimony on ’special groups’ -- Iranian-backed militias -- as the greatest long-term threat to Iraqi democracy.
"On Thursday, President Bush endorsed the officials’ troop recommendations and again recast the enemy. Iraq, he said toward the end of his speech, is ’the convergence point for two of the greatest threats to America in this new century: al-Qaeda and Iran.’
"There’s no question that al-Qaeda and Iran represent threats. But to conflate the two is disingenuous and misleading. . . .
"Iran is a strategic adversary that hasn’t attacked the U.S. homeland. Its engagement with Iraq, its neighbor, is inevitable. . . .
"[T]he United States and Iran are facing off in a duel almost as complex as that between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. This requires a whole range of tools, beyond Bush’s bellicose warning on Thursday that Tehran ’has a choice to make.’ . . .
"Sunni al-Qaeda and Shiite Iran pose different challenges and require separate strategies. About the only thing they have in common is that neither would have a foothold in Iraq today had the United States not invaded and then mismanaged the aftermath."
Torture WatchThe Associated Press confirms and expands on ABC News’s blockbuster revelation Wednesday that top Bush aides, including Cheney, micromanaged the torture of terrorist suspects from the White House basement. (See yesterday’s column.)
The new report from Lara Jakes Jordan and Pamela Hess adds this indelible image: "At times, CIA officers would demonstrate some of the tactics, or at least detail how they worked, to make sure the small group of ’principals’ fully understood what the al-Qaida detainees would undergo. The principals eventually authorized physical abuse such as slaps and pushes, sleep deprivation, or waterboarding."
Jordan and Hess also write: "The officials also took care to insulate President Bush from a series of meetings where CIA interrogation methods, including waterboarding, which simulates drowning, were discussed and ultimately approved.
"A former senior U.S. intelligence official familiar with the meetings described them Thursday to the AP to confirm details first reported by ABC News on Wednesday. . . .
"Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., lambasted what he described as ’yet another astonishing disclosure about the Bush administration and its use of torture.’
"’Who would have thought that in the United States of America in the 21st century, the top officials of the executive branch would routinely gather in the White House to approve torture?’ Kennedy said in a statement. ’Long after President Bush has left office, our country will continue to pay the price for his administration’s renegade repudiation of the rule of law and fundamental human rights.’
"The American Civil Liberties Union called on Congress to investigate.
"’With each new revelation, it is beginning to look like the torture operation was managed and directed out of the White House,’ ACLU legislative director Caroline Fredrickson said. ’This is what we suspected all along.’"
Legal blogger Jack Balkin, who on Wednesday dismissed the notion of domestic prosecution of Bush administration officials for war crimes, yesterday mulled another possibility instead: "A series of congressional investigations into the interrogation and detention policies of the previous Administration, or a special Presidential ’truth commission’ like the 9/11 Commission would have certain advantages. They would require only that the next Administration cooperate with Congress-- for example, by declassifying certain OLC opinions and other documents that should never have been classified, and by giving permission for certain executive branch officials to testify before Congress."
Bush Approval Hits Another LowNo place to go but up just doesn’t seem to apply to this president. Two new polls find Bush’s job approval at all-time lows, with Gallup finding that Bush has dropped below his father’s all-time low, has tied Jimmy Carter’s all-time low, and looks good only by comparison to Richard Nixon and Harry Truman at their nadirs.
Frank Newport reports for Gallup: "President George W. Bush’s job approval rating has dropped to 28%, the lowest of his administration. . . .
"Bush’s low rating in the current poll is the result of an extraordinarily low average approval rating from Democrats, a low level of support from independents, and support from just two-thirds of his base of Republicans. . . .
"Bush’s current 28% job approval rating is at the very low end of the spectrum of approval ratings Gallup has recorded across the 11 presidents in office since World War II."
Alan Fram writes for the Associated Press: "Public approval of President Bush has dipped to a new low in the Associated Press-Ipsos poll, driven by dissatisfaction with his handling of the economy.
"A survey released Thursday showed 28 percent approve of the overall job Bush is doing. . . .
"Highlighting Bush’s broad unpopularity, 60 percent of Republicans approved of his overall job, his weakest showing yet with members of his own party. Just 7 percent of Democrats and 17 percent of independents approve."
Iraq WatchPeter Baker and Karen DeYoung write in The Washington Post: "With Bush effectively freezing troop levels at 140,000 in August, Congress moved to challenge him on two fronts. Democratic leaders prepared to amend war-funding legislation to limit his options and to direct money to domestic priorities, while lawmakers from both parties took on his plan to sign a strategic agreement with Iraq that would outlast his presidency. . . .
"One confrontation centers on Bush’s effort to negotiate a long-term ’strategic framework’ agreement with Iraq this summer without congressional approval. The U.N. mandate that provides a legal basis for foreign troops operating in Iraq is set to expire at the end of the year, and the administration wants the framework and a related ’status of forces’ agreement to govern the U.S. engagement in the new year.
"But lawmakers from both parties said Bush is trying to dictate war policy after he leaves office, and they maintained that an agreement with such enormous consequences should be submitted to the Senate for ratification as a treaty. At a rancorous Senate hearing, Republicans warned that they would join Democrats in fighting the pact."
Karen DeYoung has more in The Post about the two accords under negotiation -- and the congressional concerns.
The SpeechI wrote a bit about Bush’s speech on the war in Iraq in yesterday’s column.
Fred Kaplan writes in Slate that "the main question at this point is whether he instructed the speechwriters to be mendacious or merely shallow."
For instance: "’Gen. Petraeus has reported,’ Bush said today, ’that security conditions have improved enough to withdraw all five surge brigades by the end of July.’
"I hope a few people on the speechwriting team blushed when they penned this passage. Those five surge brigades were going to pull out this July no matter what the situation in Iraq happened to be. Their 15-month tours of deployment will be up by then; they will go home; the Army has no combat brigades ready to replace them. This was always the calculation. It’s the product of arithmetic, not policy."
E. J. Dionne Jr. writes in his Washington Post opinion column: "The administration and its supporters talk incessantly about winning but offer no strategy for victory, no definition of what victory would look like, no concrete steps to get us there and no real sense of where ’there’ is. . . .
"Supporters of the war say its opponents are locked in the past, stuck on whether the war was a good idea in the first place. Whether the war was right or wrong, they say, it’s time to move on and focus on the future.
"This has it backward. It’s the war’s backers and architects, including the president, who are trapped in the past. They are so invested in the original decision to invade Iraq that they won’t even consider whether the United States would be better off winding down this commitment, relieving our military of the war’s enormous burdens and redirecting our foreign policy."
Not Exactly on the Same PagePeter Spiegel and Julian E. Barnes write in the Los Angeles Times: "President Bush, accepting the recommendation of Army Gen. David H. Petraeus to halt the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq in July, said Thursday that he would give the war commander ’all the time he needs’ to decide on future troop cuts.
"But in a surprising show of public concern about an open-ended U.S. commitment, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates told a Senate hearing that he hoped to resume troop reductions soon after a ’brief’ 45-day pause this summer.
"Gates’ comments, along with similar testimony from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, were in stark contrast to those of Petraeus, who spent two days this week on Capitol Hill telling lawmakers that it could be months before conditions in Iraq permitted further troop withdrawals.
"Differences within the Pentagon over the issue have been brewing for months, but rarely have they been aired publicly. Democrats on the Senate Armed Services Committee seized on the contrasts, prompting Gates to acknowledge that there is a difference in the way he and Petraeus view troop levels."
On Permanent BasesHere’s a little item to clip and save.
The Washington Post reports: "The Bush administration has assured Congress that it does not seek to establish ’permanent’ U.S. military bases in Iraq. But an exchange yesterday among Sen. James Webb (D-Va.), State Department Iraq coordinator David Satterfield and Assistant Defense Secretary Mary Beth Long at a Foreign Relations Committee hearing suggests that permanence lies in the mind of the beholder:
"Webb: What is a permanent base?
"Satterfield: Senator, the administration has made quite clear that we are not seeking permanent bases in Iraq. . . .
"Webb: Right. But what is a permanent base? Are our bases in Japan permanent bases?
"Long: I have looked into this. As far as the department is concerned, we don’t have a worldwide or even a department-wide definition of permanent bases. I believe those are, by and large, determined on a case-by-case basis. . . .
"Webb: Well, I understand that. But basically my point is it’s sort of a dead word. It doesn’t really mean anything.
"Long: Yes, Senator, you’re completely right. It doesn’t."
Executive Privilege WatchLaurie Kellman writes for the Associated Press: "President Bush’s refusal to let two confidants provide information to Congress about fired federal prosecutors represents the most expansive view of executive privilege since Watergate, the House Judiciary Committee told a federal judge Thursday.
"Lawyers for the Democratic-led panel argued in court documents that Bush’s chief of staff, Josh Bolten, and former White House counsel Harriet Miers are not protected from subpoenas last year that sought information about the dismissals. . . .
"House lawyers told U.S. District Judge John D. Bates that subpoenaed White House officials cannot simply skip hearings as Miers did during the committee’s investigation. Further, they said, any documents or testimony believed to be covered by the privilege must be itemized for Congress’ assessment."
Cheney and the Naked LadyKevin G. Hall and George Bridges write for McClatchy Newspapers: "He shot his hunting partner, but Vice President Dick Cheney apparently doesn’t fly fish with naked women.
"Since Wednesday, the blogosphere has been atwitter over a photograph on the White House Web site of Cheney with a caption that said he was fly-fishing on the Snake River in Idaho.
"The photo is a tight shot of Cheney’s face sporting dark sunglasses and his trademark grin.
"What’s stirring all the buzz is the reflection in the vice president’s dark glasses. Some thought that the reflection looked like a naked woman and, this being Cheney and this being the Internet Age, they immediately shared that thought with the world."
Me, I see Cheney’s arm and hand, holding a fishing rod.
Cartoon WatchAn Ann Telnaes animation on what Bush really means; Walt Handelsman on what the pause really means; Jeff Danziger on the view from the ground; Daniel Wasserman on the new insurgency; Larry Wright, Richard Crowson, Jimmy Margulies and Ed Stein on exit strategy; Bruce Beattie on progress.
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