Civilian Deaths Undermine War on Taliban

The amount of civilian deaths caused by US air strikes in Afghanistan are threatening internal support for Karzai's government and causing extreme strain within the Nato alliance. I think most American's have scant understanding of how unpopular this aspect of US military planning was during the initial stages of the Afghanistan war throughout Europe. The United States have never experienced a blitz and therefore have no understanding of how such a policy plays out in places that have.

The Powell Doctrine of using massive air power before employing ground troops is seen throughout Europe as essentially a doctrine of cowardice, as it sacrifices civilians in preference to ground troops. This may play better to an American home audience, but Europeans find it baffling, especially as many Europeans still remember what it was like to be the recipients of such a random force as air strikes.

Karzai has been forced, yet again, to condemn the American and NATO tactics, and even the entire international effort in his country.

Afghan patience is wearing dangerously thin, officials warn.

The civilian deaths are also exposing tensions between American commanders and commanders from other NATO countries, who have never fully agreed on the strategy to fight the war here, in a country where there are no clear battle lines between civilians and Taliban insurgents.

At NATO headquarters in Brussels, military commanders and diplomats alike fear that divisions within the coalition and the loss of support among Afghans could undermine what until now was considered a successful spring, one in which NATO launched a broad offensive but the Taliban did not.

American officials are admitting that they have been forced to use air power more extensively as they simply don't have enough troops on the ground to do the job any other way. However, no matter how precise the US may claim their weaponry to be, it is undeniable that air power carries with it the increased risk of civilian casualties.

The anger is visible here in this farming village in the largely peaceful western province of Herat, where American airstrikes left 57 villagers dead, nearly half of them women and children, on April 27 and 29. Even the accounts of villagers bore little resemblance to those of NATO and American officials — and suggested just how badly things could go astray in an unfamiliar land where cultural misunderstandings quickly turn violent.

The United States military says it came under heavy fire from insurgents as it searched for a local tribal commander and weapons caches and called in airstrikes, killing 136 Taliban fighters.

But the villagers denied that any Taliban were in the area. Instead, they said, they rose up and fought the Americans themselves, after the soldiers raided several houses, arrested two men and shot dead two old men on a village road.

After burying the dead, the tribe’s elders met with their chief, Hajji Arbab Daulat Khan, and resolved to fight American forces if they returned. “If they come again, we will stand against them, and we will raise the whole area against them,” he warned. Or in the words of one foreign official in Afghanistan, the Americans went after one guerrilla commander and created a hundred more.

These are ordinary Afghans who are now rising up to fight against the American army, as they are sickened by the price that they are being asked to pay because the US is unwilling to employ enough troops to lessen the need for such reliance on air power.

In time the US will no doubt seek to portray such people as Taliban, but that excuse simply won't wash, certainly not in western Europe or amongst it's Nato allies. The people of Afghanistan had nothing to do with 9-11 and had nothing to do with bin Laden choosing to base himself in their country. They have spent the past six years under constant bombardment from the US and it's allies and it is unsurprising that they have come to a point where their patience is snapping.

There is a shocking lack of empathy amongst supporters of Bush's War on Terror for the very real price that is being paid by ordinary families in Afghanistan for Bush's decision not to employ sufficient numbers of soldiers to carry out the task that he has assigned them. And whilst I completely understand the logic - that American casualties are deeply unpopular at home - I am left wondering why supporters of this conflict don't seem to understand that the Afghans have a similar attitude to death, and that the horrific amount of civilian casualties they have endured is turning the people of Afghanistan against their supposed "liberators" and against the government of Karzai.

However, it appears that the US is unwilling to change it's tactics.

The subject of civilian casualties was the source of intense discussion on Wednesday in Brussels when the NATO secretary general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, met with the North Atlantic Council, the top representatives of the coalition. But the conversation was less about how to reduce casualties, according to participants, than about how to explain them to European governments, who say their troops are there for reconstruction, not hunting the Taliban or terrorists. “The Europeans are worried about a lack of clarity about who is responsible for the counterterror mission,” said one participant in the debate. “They are worried that if NATO appears responsible for these casualties, it will result in a loss of support” for keeping forces in Afghanistan.

This particular participant in the debate seems to find European distaste for civilian casualties a sign of weakness. Perhaps if American cities had ever experienced the Blitz then he would understand better the collective revulsion that such casualties provokes amongst Europeans.

And therein lies the essential difference between Europe and the US.

Bush talks of his country being at war and many supporters of Bush repeat this fallacy. The US is not at war, it's army is. There are no bombs landing nightly on American cities, there is no food rationing, life in the US goes on as normal and supporters of the war on terror are able to do so whilst paying no personal price.

The same applies to Europe. However, the essential difference is that Bush and his supporters seem to think that any action they take during their war is justified, any price in terms of civilian casualties is a price worth paying for the overall aim of defeating the al Qaeda. European leaders realise that their own populations, having once been the civilians who endured aerial bombardment, will not support their own governments if they attempts to carry out a similar campaign against the people of Afghanistan.

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Tags: Afghanistan, war on terror, taliban, Karzai, Nato, Powell doctrine, Bush

Bloodshed rises in Iraq as US demands 'victory'

By Patrick Cockburn:

It will be a long war. The rumble of artillery, broken by the clatter of helicopters passing overhead, resounded across Baghdad late last week as US forces fought insurgents in their stronghold in the sprawling district of Dohra, in the south of the capital. Early yesterday, five US soldiers were killed and three are missing after an explosion in Mahmoudiyah, near Baghdad.

The three-month-old US plan to regain control of Baghdad is slow to show results, despite the arrival of four more US brigades. Security in the heart of the city may be a little better, but the US and the Iraqi government are nowhere near to dealing a knockout blow to the Sunni insurgency or Shia militias.

The Sunni guerrillas trying to isolate Baghdad from the rest of the country exploded truck bombs on three important bridges last week, killing 26 people. One blew up in a queue of cars on the old Diyala bridge, just south of Baghdad. Two minutes later a truck exploded on a newer bridge over the same river. North of Baghdad, at Taji, long a centre for insurgents, a third vehicle bomb made impassable a bridge linking Baghdad with northern Iraq.

This is the situation as Tony Blair, with President George Bush the chief architect and defender of the Iraq war, prepares to leave office. But as the fierce fighting continued, far to the south Mr Bush's Vice-President, Dick Cheney, was proclaiming defiance to Iran. "With two carrier strike groups in the Gulf, we're sending clear messages to friends and adversaries alike," he told sailors assembled on one of the carriers. "We'll stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating the region."

The US administration is not backing away from its confrontation with Iran, despite being nudged by the Iraqi government towards talks. Hoshyar Zebari, the Iraqi Foreign Minister, says that whether the Americans and the Iranians like it or not, they are both players in Iraq. In an interview with The Independent on Sunday in Baghdad, he laughed as he pointed out that Iran and the US both genuinely support the Iraqi government of Nouri al-Maliki. The Iranian stance contrasts with that of Arab states, such as Saudi Arabia, where King Abdullah refuses to meet the Iraqi Prime Minister.

"Ironically," said Mr Zebari, "the Iranian statement on majority rule in Iraq [at the conference on Iraq at Sharm el-Sheikh 10 days ago] agrees entirely with what we and the Americans say."

The US may be more interested in cultivating Syria than Iran, but it is Syria that has the greater desire to see the Maliki government overthrown. When it comes to Syria, "we are assuming goodwill but we are not so dumb that we do not know what is going on", said Mr Zebari.

For the Iranians, Mr Cheney's message probably will make the most impression. "The American people will not support a policy of defeat," he said. "We want to complete the mission, we want to get it done right, and then we want to return home with honour."

His words are a recipe for a long conflict. As soon as the US and Britain overthrew Saddam Hussein, the detested enemy of Iran, in 2003, Iranian influence in Iraq and her power in the Gulf increased. When the Shia religious parties won the parliamentary elections in Iraq in 2005, Iranian influence grew again.

Iran has longstanding links with the Shia parties in Iraq, the powerful Shia religious hierarchy and the Kurdish leaders it supported during their wars with Saddam. Tehran also has more covert links to the Sunni insurgents. "The Iranians are supporting anybody who is against the Americans," says Dr Mahmoud Othman, a veteran Kurdish politician and member of parliament.

In Iraq, even supposed allies don't trust each other. Dr Othman, speaking before a truck bomb killed 16 people outside the Interior Ministry in the Kurdish capital, Arbil, last week, said Kurdish security had discovered an Ansar al-Sunna cell in the city of Sulaimaniyah, dedicated to planting bombs, whose members admitted to being trained in Iran.

The Americans also wonder what deals with Iran their Kurdish and Shia allies have. Dr Othman suspects the failed US raid to capture senior Iranian security officers on an official visit to Kurdistan on 11 January was motivated by suspicions of the Kurdish leaders.

"The attack showed the dissatisfaction of the Americans with [Iraqi President Jalal] Talabani and [Kurdish President Massoud] Barzani," said Dr Othman. "The Americans think that Talabani and Barzani are hiding things from them. It was a message to both."

The political and military position in Iraq is one of stalemate. The 28,000 US reinforcements, most of whom have already arrived, are having an impact in Baghdad, but not enough for the "surge" to be regarded as a success. A sign of this is that the two million Iraqis who fled the country are not coming home, and Baghdad remains divided into Shia and Sunni bastions.

Some Iraqi and Western officials buoy themselves up with hopes that the followers of the Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr are divided, and that the Sunni tribes in Anbar province are turning against al-Qa'ida in Iraq.

Underestimating the Sadrist movement has been a repeated US and British mistake in Iraq since 2003. Another frequent error has been to believe that the Shia alliance, so powerful because the Shia are 60 per cent of the population, is always on the verge of collapse.

Peace, when it finally comes to Iraq, will inevitably be the result of a package deal of which a timetable for a US withdrawal is likely to be a central part.

The Sunni insurgency is not going out of business, or even showing signs of being seriously weakened, and the economy is in ruins. President Bush's strategy of confronting Iran and seeking to pacify Baghdad by sending US troop reinforcements is not working.

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Tags: Iraq, Iraq war, Patrick Cockburn, Surge and Accelerate, Baghdad

Fury over Zimbabwe's UN role

I've spoken often of my dismay at the failure of African nations to take a more robust stance against the dictatorial actions of Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. It often appears to me as if they simply roll over and play dead every time the old dictator makes a demand.

However, their obsequience to Mugabe has now reached a new nadir with African nations voting at the UN to put Zimbabwe in charge of a key United Nations committee on the environment, despite the country's political repression and economic chaos.

This has, understandably, caused outrage amongst Europeans who are left wondering just why the African nations seem to be so in awe of this tyrant. Do they have no compassion for the people of Zimbabwe? Do they simply not care about their fate?

"Zimbabwe's election will be seen as an outrage by millions of people who look to the United Nations for help to escape from poverty," said Ian Pearson, Britain's minister for climate change and the environment. "They will be asking how the body charged with promoting sustainable development will be able to maintain credibility while being chaired by a representative of a government whose failed policies have destroyed its own economy." Inflation in Zimbabwe is running at 2,000 per cent as corruption, farm seizures and political violence disrupt the economy.

Daniel Reifsnyder, the US deputy assistant secretary for environment, said: "We really think it calls into question the credibility of this organisation to have a representative from a country that has decimated its agriculture, that used to be the breadbasket of Africa and can't now feed itself."

I am not an expert in African politics and find myself simply dumbstruck by this decision. Nor can the African nations pretend that this outcome is one that has in any way surprised them as the complaints emanating from the UN are that the past fortnight has descended into "a sequence of scripted speeches without setting targets for renewable energy and other environmental policies." So this was always the result that they were aiming for.

The only thing I can think of is that perhaps this is Africa's form of protest against the travel restrictions that have been imposed on Zimbabwe's officials. However, if this is the case, then I rather suspect they are being outraged by the wrong thing.

They should surely be more outraged at the attack on democracy Mugabe is carrying out in that country and reserving their condemnation for the policies that have left millions of Zimbabweans facing possible starvation.

There are very few times when I am genuinely dumbstruck, but I easily confess that this is one of those occasions.

The fact that the African nations seem Hellbent on protecting Mugabe strikes me as an abdication of their responsibility towards the citizens of one of their neighbouring countries.

And it is simply absurd to put anyone from Zimbabwe in charge of any forum on sustainable development, when the country is enduring the world's highest inflation and is unable to feed it's own people.

A US state department spokesman, Tom Casey, has said: "We don't think that Zimbabwe would be a particularly effective leader of this body."

He said development there had "been going in only one direction - and it's backwards".

I'm sure there is some skewered logic behind this decision, but it's not one that is immediately apparent.

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The Great Pretender takes his final bow.

I was out of the country last week when Blair finally succumbed to the inevitable and named the day that he would leave office. Though I couldn't help but notice that, even as he fell on his sword, he misrepresented what we were witnessing.

"The only way to conquer the pull of power is to set it down."

This gives the clear impression that he has decided to stand down of his own accord, indeed, it implies that he is actually being honourable whilst doing so and deciding that the "pull of power" is something that men of honour like himself somehow manage to avoid being lured by.

This totally ignores the fact that it was only a coup last year which ever brought him to state before a thankful Labour conference that this would be the last time he ever addressed them as their leader.

He makes it sound like none of this happened and that he has decided "enough is enough" which is markedly different from what has actually taken place here.

Indeed, the doors of Number Ten have the marks of his fingernails such was his desire not to be forced through those doors.

He then mounted what many have depicted as his defence and his mea culpa, both of which I regard as false impressions of what we have witnessed. He stated:

"Hand on heart, I did what I thought was right," he said. "I may have been wrong. That's your call. But believe one thing if nothing else. I did what I thought was right for our country."

As defences go, it's a rather weak one and not dissimilar from the type of defence that could be constructed by Saddam or Mugabe. I mean it's an almost meaningless claim. Is he arguing that other politicians do things that they know to be bad for the country? And that, if that is not their intention, then any action they take is ultimately forgivable?

For the truth is that there were many people advising Blair that the action he was about to embark on was not a clever one. Two million of us marched through London begging him to reconsider the suicidal course he had set for himself, he ignored us.

Blair always wanted to dance on the world stage and Bush offered him the chance to do so and Blair grabbed the opportunity. Rumsfeld made clear that the US did not need Britain militarily, our function was always simply to provide the US with the fig leaf of respectability - as they ripped up international consensus - and allow the Bush administration to fool their own public that the endeavour they were embarking on was a multilateral one.

It was a decision that, even as he leaves office, he refuses to admit was wrong. He stands by the justification that he has concocted for himself, that he acted "in good faith" and that he therefore did no wrong.

I personally think his fate was sealed in Kosovo. I well remember Blair marching through a genuinely liberated people as they cried, "Tony, Tony". Grown men wept as they stretched to shake his hand. Such a thing leaves a mark on a man and I'm convinced that this left it's mark on Blair. It's why, incredulously, he and his cohorts spoke of the possibility of the Baghdad Bounce helping Labour at the election following the war. The possibility that this wouldn't be the reaction of the British people simply never occurred to Blair.

It was a great shame as there was much in his premiership to be proud of. He redistributed wealth and enhanced the rights of minorities through the introduction of civil partnerships. He invested more money into hospitals and schools which, after years of Tory misrule, produced better health charts and education results which were so good that newspapers started to ask if exams were being dumbed down.

Indeed, in Northern Ireland, he produced a peace which in any other circumstances would be the definition of a great premiership.

Sadly, as he himself now admits, his tombstone will consist of one small word.

Iraq.

And he only has himself to blame. Blair's greatest weakness was his ability to convince himself that he was right about anything. As Dominic Lawson points out:

It reminds me of a similar remark, which Mr Blair wheeled out in his Labour Party Conference speech two years ago: "I only know what I believe." Most of us, I hope, would say that this is getting things exactly the wrong way around: we should only believe what we know. This, however, is faith-based politics, to which Mr Blair has always adhered: it has nothing to do with Christianity, whatever might be said about it. The person we are being asked to have faith in is Mr Blair himself; he, in turn, obeys the emanations of his own conscience.

Blair believed that Saddam had WMD and therefore did not need proof. Indeed, he constructed dossiers out of facts that were known to be "partial" in order to convince the nation that it should go to war based on nothing more substantial than the fact that he believed.

Because of this tens of thousands of people are now dead.

What, other than that, can he possibly be remembered for? For compared to previous Labour leaders there is no substantial creation that bears his fingerprints.

The reason why Clem Attlee will always hold the palm among Labour leaders (in which capacity he served, incidentally, for a record total of 20 years) is that he actually transformed the economic and social contours of Britain. Put alongside his achievement - the National Health Service, the welfare state, to say nothing of the conquest of unemployment - Blair's impact on the life of the nation cannot help but seem pretty puny. In fact, I am sometimes tempted to suspect that it was his frustration with his failure to introduce all the radical domestic changes that he would have liked which led him to prefer playing a mixture of Woodrow Wilson and William Ewart Gladstone on the world stage - with the dismal results which he yesterday sounded strikingly unrepentant about.

There was always a fatal tendency on Blair's part - and, for that matter on George Bush's - to take a Manichean view of the universe and that seldom goes along with being either effective or efficient. It was Winston Churchill who, on the eve of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941, famously remarked: "If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable mention of the Devil in the House of Commons.'' It is that sense of cynical detachment in the pursuit of British interests that historians are likely to find wholly lacking in Blair's world view - consisting, as it does, of good and evil, right and wrong, darkness and light. His interventions in Kosovo and Sierra Leone may have justified themselves but his actions, with Bush in Iraq and Afghanistan now threaten to haunt him for the rest of his days.

Bush and Blair were perfect soul mates, both believing that reality could be what they wished it to be, rather than what it was.

They were a dreadful combination, each reinforcing the others simplistic "black or white", "with us or against us" world view.

Berlusconi, gone. Aznar, gone. And now, finally, Blair; gone.

Bush is now the only person left in power who thinks his Iraq plan was a good one. And Blair's reputation will forever be stained because of the plots he and the current American President hatched. It needn't have been so. And that is Blair's tragedy.

Tags: Blair, resignation, Iraq, Iraq war, Bush

GOP Congressmen to Bush: You've Lost Credibility

I just arrived back last night and am too knackered to post much this morning, however, this does strike me as significant.

Tags: Bush, Olbermann, Iraq war, Republicans

Away for a week

I'm afraid that I am away from home all this week and that I have no time to blog due to other commitments. Normal postings will resume Saturday, May 12th.

Pelosi tells Bush why he is Wrong

Tags: Pelosi, Bush, Iraq war, Iraq war funding bill, troop withdrawal

Chris Mooney - "The Republican War on Science"

I offer this in response to the question asked at last night's GOP debate over which Republican nominees didn't believe in evolution. It's startling how many Republicans ignore science in order to push their creationist agenda. These people are unhinged.

Tags: bush, science, conservative, liberal, american, intelligent design, ID, congress, lobbyist, evolution, global warming, fora, fora.tv

Thousands of Israelis rally to call for prime minister to quit over Lebanon

They say democracy represents the will of the people and yet, there are some politicians who manage to hold on to power despite huge protests against them. I'm thinking of Olmert in Israel, a man whose poll figures have been in single figures since his botched attempt to wipe out Hizbullah and rescue two kidnapped Israeli soldiers. He achieved neither and succeeded only in revealing the weakness of Israel's position when employing a traditional army against a guerilla force.

Yesterday, the protesters took to the streets of Tel Aviv in an attempt to tell Olmert that his time was up and that, if he had any sense of decency, he would simply hang up his hat. All indications are that the Olmert camp feel that they have ridden out this particular storm.

Among those gathered in Tel Aviv last night were reservist soldiers who fought in the war, relatives of some of those who died, and an array of critics of the government from the left and right wing. Ofer Winestok, 25, a student who voted for the Labour party in the last election and served in the infantry in the Lebanon war, said: "There was no leadership in this war. I saw how it was and they just reacted to what happened. The orders changed every few minutes; nobody knew what has happening or what were the targets."

He wore a T-shirt bearing a photograph of his cousin Guy Hasom, 24, an infantry soldier killed on the last day of the war. "The government needs to resign. They're not qualified to do their jobs," he said. The rally alone is unlikely to be enough to unseat Mr Olmert and his coalition government but it offered echoes of previous demonstrations of Israeli street power.

Protests in 1974, after the Yom Kippur war, eventually brought the resignation of the prime minister, Golda Meir. Tens of thousands gathered in the square in 1982 to protest against the invasion of Lebanon.

Malcolm Dash, 69, who fought in the Yom Kippur war, said: "Our government has failed, completely and utterly, and there is no room left for them. They have no plan or programme, and all they are doing is looking after their own seats. In any other nation they would have resigned by now." He said the capture of the two Israeli soldiers on July 12, which triggered last year's war, had needed a response but not a 34-day conflict. "They took us into a war when it should have been a reprisal."

Of course, Mr Dash is completely correct and is only echoing what many of us said at the time. There was never any need for a war in response to the kidnap of two Israeli soldiers. It was not only a chosen response, it was the wrong chosen response, as war was never going to be the way to achieve the kidnapped soldiers release; indeed, as I argued at the time, it was much more likely that such a step would result in the death of the soldiers before it guaranteed their release.

Olmert was, of course, not open to reason. The destruction he unleashed upon Lebanon was, in fact, criminal.

As I said at the time:

For make no mistake, what we are watching Israel do is disgusting. It's nothing less than the wanton destruction of an entire country.

The country that Hariri rebuilt, against all the odds, after years of civil war and after a twenty year Israeli occupation, is being systematically torn to pieces. It's bridges, it's power plants, it's roads, it's buildings, it's airport, are all being levelled. Even the viaduct has been broken.

Beirut, the "Paris of the East" is being reduced to rubble. And for what? For what?

When all this rampant, disgraceful destruction is over, the Israelis will still have to carry out their prisoner swap if they want their soldiers returned. Hizbullah will still be standing as a political force.

However, the damage done to Beirut will be nothing to the damage done to Israel's reputation. Or the damage done to the reputations of the leaders of the EU who stood silently by whilst war crimes were committed and said nothing.

It's taken a while, but the people of Israel have risen up against what was done in their name, if only because they realise that Olmert's actions have actually made them less safe rather than more.

Before this disgraceful war Israel was considered a superpower in the region and a power that couldn't be messed with. Olmert, by engaging in an ill thought out war with ever changing objectives, revealed Israel's weaknesses. She did not destroy Hizbullah, as Olmert had announced as his war aim, nor did she succeed in having her soldiers returned.

It was, in the eyes of many Israelis, a national humiliation. And for that, they want Olmert's head.

However, in Israel - as in the US and the UK - it appears that there is no mistake large enough to force any politician to stand down on a matter of honour.

Both Bush and Blair took their respective country's to war on what transpired to be a false prospectus. They have paid no price and both have since been re-elected. Anthony Eden had to resign in shame after Suez, Lord Carrington resigned after the Argentineans invaded the Falklands even though he had actually done nothing wrong. But he felt that, when national honour had been impugned then someone had to fall on their sword for the sake of uniting the nation.

Bush has responded to being totally wrong by declaring himself "the decider", a bizzare title to award himself when all of his decisions have proven erroneous. Perhaps what he means is that he gets to decide what reality itself is, for that certainly seems to be what he is doing when he sees progress in Iraq.

However, I don't get the feeling that Olmert will be able to avoid reality in the same way. He may have survived for the moment, but one gets the distinct feeling that his days are numbered.

Bush and Blair, however, will leave office at a time of their own choosing. That's not only unfortunate, that's an affront to democracy and accountability.

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Tags: Olmert, Livni, Israel-Lebanon war, war crimes, street protest, thousands march

Keith Olbermann Special Comment on Mission Accomplished

I know I've covered a lot of this before, but Olbermann's take on things is always interesting.

Tags: Olbermann, Countdown, Bush, Iraq war, Iraq war funding, Mission Accomplished four years on

John Edwards produces an ad against Bush's veto

Tags: John Edwards, Iraq, Iraq war, Iraq war funding bill, President Bush, veto

It's about the oil stupid.

US Labor Against the War is sending every member of the Congressional Out of Iraq Caucus the letter contained in the PDF attached below. It concerns the Iraqi oil laws that the Bush administration are foisting upon Iraq.

Two paragraphs buried at the bottom of a long New York Times article today say it all (allowing the Times to later claim to have reported it):

"The draft oil law would allow regions to enter into production-sharing agreements with foreign companies, which some Iraqis and critics of the Bush administration say could lead to foreigners reaping too much of the country’s oil wealth.

"Iraqi officials say all contracts will be subjected to a fair bidding process, but there are fears that American companies could be favored."

And we are supposed to believe that the war wasn't about oil? Don't make me puke...

Read the entire letter here.

Here's a taster of what it says:

This oil law is not the product of a deliberative process by Iraqis within the Iraq. It was not conceived by Iraqis at all. It was imposed upon the Iraqi Council of Ministers by the Bush administration with cooperation from the International Monetary Fund with instructions to submit it to the Iraqi parliament for approval. The law had its origins in a report prepared by a group of oil industry executives and consultants provided to the Bush administration before the invasion of Iraq. The recommendations of that report provided the essential features for the law that was developed at the behest of the Bush administration and delivered to the Iraqis.

Everyone who argued for this invasion should be knee deep in shame by now, but I already understand that these people are beyond such emotions.

Click title for full letter.

Tags: Iraq war, Iraq's oil, Iraq's new oil laws, Bush, Cheney

Britain's war in Afghanistan: life and death on the M*A*S*H shift

Declan Walsh has prepared a stunning slide presentation for the Guardian covering medical teams in Afghanistan as they struggle to do their work. Click here to watch it.

Tags: Afghanistan war, UK, US, medics

US hopes for breakthrough talks with Iran

The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, and Iran's Foreign Minister, Manouchehr Mottaki, are both attending a summit in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, for Iraq and its neighbours that will attempt to contain the Iraqi conflict as well as offer financial, political and technical support.

It's the nearest thing the US will have to a chance to negotiate with Iran since George Bush came to power.

Nicholas Burns, the US Undersecretary of State, speaking in London, expressed the hope that Ms Rice would be able to meet her Iranian counterpart in Sharm el-Sheikh, saying that the Americans looked forward to a "good discussion" on reducing the sectarian violence in Iraq.

Officials have made it clear that there is no connection between the Egyptian talks focusing on Iraq, and the international attempts to curb Iran's nuclear programme. But Mr Burns said: "Surely it is better for us to take the time now to see diplomacy play out, both on the nuclear issue, and on the issue of Iraq, and see if it's possible to build a few bridges with our two countries."

Ms Rice said: "I think I can handle any question that is asked of me. If we encounter each other and wander to other subjects I am prepared to address them at least in terms of American policy."

This is the nearest thing to an attempt to save face and reverse US policy that we have seen since the Bushites came to power. Their position regarding possible negotiations has always been spectacularly perverse, demanding that the other side admit defeat before any possible negotiation can take place. There has always been a boring degree of machismo to the way the Bush administration approached any possible talks, as if the whole idea of talking was somehow defeatist. To them, the military route is the only route that a "real man" can take.

As with North Korea, there position vis a vis Iran has been to demand that Iran suspend all uranium enrichment before any talks would become possible. Of course, whilst this might appeal to their own supporters, the inherent flaw in such an approach is that it ignores the fact that the side you are attempting to influence also has it's own supporters, it's own people on the street if you will, and that this approach - which really amounts to calling for the other sides abject surrender - is guaranteed to fail. Any government who agreed to such a deal would be committing an act of national disgrace and would have to resign.

However, team Bush have never appreciated such diplomatic niceties. Until now.

However, even as they offer an olive branch team Bush can't help emphasising who has the biggest cock.

"We have the patience to see diplomacy play out," said Mr Burns, although he added that all options - including a military strike - are under consideration.

They can't help themselves these people. They are so dysfunctional, so wedded to violence as a way of solving all political problems that, even as they propose a possible diplomatic solution, they can't help but remind you that they might attack you anyway.

Or perhaps they simply bring up the possibility of violence as a way of disguising the fact that they are engaging in a U-turn.

Bush's policy towards Iran has been an abject failure. Threats of violence have simply been ignored by the Iranians which has only caused Bush to further up the ante and threaten even nuclear strikes, making the American government appear slightly unhinged.

By attempting to force Ahmadinejad into a corner, Bush has succeeded only in cornering himself. The military option towards Iran was always a suicidal option, albeit one that we all worried that Bush might be insane enough take.

Now he attempts diplomacy, however, even as he does so, he can't help pointing to that big gun he possesses.

It's pathetic and infantile. However, as it is a U-turn, I'm going to be gracious and wish them well.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Bush, Ahmadinejad, Rice, negotiations, US, Iran

Livni tries to hold on to her office despite attempting a coup.

Political deaths are always slow things to witness. Only rarely, as in the case of Thatcher, are they carried out swiftly and in the open.

Olmert is facing such a political death, indeed, his head has been on the block since Israel's defeat at the hands of Hizbullah last summer in a war of choice. It was Olmert's decision to wage the war, a war whose aims seemed to continually change, and his tactics grew more cruel and mindless the longer the conflict raged. And, as the war drew to a close, his decision to bombard Lebanon's civilian areas with cluster bombs appeared to many of us to be a war crime.

A recent report into the war has left Olmert on the ropes with few of us thinking that he can survive.

However, even in extraordinary circumstances, Tzipi Livni's decision to publicly call for the Premier's resignation whilst proposing that she remains in office is simply unheard of. It's like Condaleezza Rice calling for the resignation of Bush and yet failing to stand down herself whilst she makes the call. Or Jack Straw demanding that Blair must go whilst thinking that he, himself, could make such a call and retain his office.

And yet there are people surrounding Olmert who are asking that he retain Livni despite her public betrayal.

Public Security Minister Avi Dichter on Thursday counseled Prime Minister Ehud Olmert against firing Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni after she publicly called on him to resign over the damning report into the handling of the Second Lebanon War.

Dichter said Livni had expressed her views with integrity and courage, and added that he was pleased Olmert had not heeded calls to fire her.

"Woe betide us," he told Israel Radio, "if heartfelt statements are twisted into a sharp-edged sword against those who make them."

I rather think Dichter is missing the point. Heartfelt statements regarding policy are one thing, calling for the resignation of the Prime Minister is quite another. Indeed, Livni has only called for Olmert's resignation because she perceived him to be sufficiently weakened politically for her to be able to do so. If Olmert now allows her to remain in his cabinet - and he might - then he will only be underlining the point that he is weakened beyond repair and that his position is simply untenable.

People who attempt coups are fired, for if they are not then the coup succeeds. And let's face it, Livni not only called for Olmert to resign but she offered herself as a possible replacement for his position.

"Kadima needs to choose its leadership in a democratic manner, in primaries, and when the time comes I plan to submit my candidacy," Livni said. "Now is the time to restore the public's trust in the government."

Readers here will know that I have been thinking that Olmert is bound to fall since late last summer, indeed, his continuing to hold his post simply staggers me.

However, Livni's call strikes me as simply outrageous, especially as she did not resign in order to make the call. It would appear that Livni wants to have her cake and eat it.

Olmert yesterday won the support of the rest of the members of the Kadima Party, which I would have thought must render Livni's position untenable.

Don't get me wrong, I actually agree with what Livni said, I think Olmert has to go. However, Livni has placed him in an unforgivable position. By allowing her to remain in office he will signal to the rest of the country his awful impotence. He really has no choice. He has to fire her.

There are many within Olmert's camp who suspect that the coalition chairman, Yitzhaki, co-ordinated this assassination attempt with Livni, but at least Yitzhaki resigned on a point of principle before he made the call.

Livni has made the call and appears to think there will be no punishment. From Olmert's point of view that simply can't be allowed.

Olmert is already weakened beyond belief, if he allows Livni to stay at her post then he's toast.

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Tags: Israel, Israel-Lebanon war, Olmert, Livni

The Olmert Report

The similarities between Olmert and Bush.

Tags: Bush, Iraq war, Olmert, Israeli-Lebanon war, Hizbullah, neo-cons, Livni, Israel, Lebanon, Palestine

Loan Wolf

More on the World Bank:

Tags: Paul Wolfowitz, World Bank, scandal, Daily Show, Jon Stewart

The Waning of the GOP

I am not the only person who sees the destruction of the Republican Party as a possible outcome of the Iraq war. William F. Buckley Jr., one of their own, has written an article in the National review that I am simply going to post here in it's entirety.

Bush really is losing everyone other than his most fanatical base supporters the more he keeps insisting that the Iraq war can be won, a belief that the majority of Americans have long given up on.

By William F. Buckley Jr.

The political problem of the Bush administration is grave, possibly beyond the point of rescue. The opinion polls are savagely decisive on the Iraq question. About 60 percent of Americans wish the war ended — wish at least a timetable for orderly withdrawal. What is going on in Congress is in the nature of accompaniment. The vote in Congress is simply another salient in the war against war in Iraq. Republican forces, with a couple of exceptions, held fast against the Democrats’ attempt to force Bush out of Iraq even if it required fiddling with the Constitution. President Bush will of course veto the bill, but its impact is critically important in the consolidation of public opinion. It can now accurately be said that the legislature, which writes the people’s laws, opposes the war.

Meanwhile, George Tenet, former head of the CIA, has just published a book which seems to demonstrate that there was one part ignorance, one part bullheadedness, in the high-level discussions before war became policy. Mr. Tenet at least appears to demonstrate that there was nothing in the nature of a genuine debate on the question. What he succeeded in doing was aborting a speech by Vice President Cheney which alleged a Saddam/al Qaeda relationship which had not in fact been established.

It isn’t that Tenet now doubts the lethality of the terrorists. What he disputed was an organizational connection which argued for war against Iraq as if Iraq were a vassal state of al Qaeda. A measure of George Tenet’s respect for the reach and malevolence of the enemy is his statement that he is puzzled that Al Qaeda has not, since 2001, sent out “suicide bombers to cause chaos in a half dozen American shopping malls on any given day.” By way of prophecy, he writes that there is one thing he feels in his gut, which is that “Al Qaeda is here and waiting.”

But beyond affirming executive supremacy in matters of war, what is George Bush going to do? It is simply untrue that we are making decisive progress in Iraq. The indicators rise and fall from day to day, week to week, month to month. In South Vietnam there was an organized enemy. There is clearly organization in the strikes by the terrorists against our forces and against the civil government in Iraq, but whereas in Vietnam we had Hanoi as the operative headquarters of the enemy, we have no equivalent of that in Iraq, and that is a matter of paralyzing importance. All those bombings, explosions, assassinations: we are driven to believe that they are, so to speak, spontaneous.

When the Romans were challenged by Christianity, Rome fell. The generation of Christians moved by their faith overwhelmed the regimented reserves of the Roman state. It was four years ago that Mr. Cheney first observed that there was a real fear that each fallen terrorist leads to the materialization of another terrorist. What can a “surge,” of the kind we are now relying upon, do to cope with endemic disease? The parallel even comes to mind of the eventual collapse of Prohibition, because there wasn’t any way the government could neutralize the appetite for alcohol, or the resourcefulness of the freeman in acquiring it.

General Petraeus is a wonderfully commanding figure. But if the enemy is in the nature of a disease, he cannot win against it. Students of politics ask then the derivative question: How can the Republican party, headed by a president determined on a war he can’t see an end to, attract the support of a majority of the voters? General Petraeus, in his Pentagon briefing on April 26, reported persuasively that there has been progress, but cautioned, “I want to be very clear that there is vastly more work to be done across the board and in many areas, and again I note that we are really just getting started with the new effort.”

The general makes it a point to steer away from the political implications of the struggle, but this cannot be done in the wider arena. There are grounds for wondering whether the Republican party will survive this dilemma.

The problem for Bush now resembles the problems faced by Thatcher towards the end of her tenure: Even the believers have stopped believing, and he is now supported only by the fanatical wing of the Republican party.

I know the American system is very different from the British system, and for that Bush should be thankful. For were he a British leader, people would by now be stalking the corridors of Westminster with long knives looking for his back.

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Tags: Buckley, Bush, Iraq war, Republican party

Only Veto the good shit...

Bush's hypocrisy knows no bounds. First, he has always attempted to micromanage the war from 6,000 miles away, by stating how many troops were needed before the war began - against the advice of his generals - and then by attempting the "surge" itself, which his generals at the time did not support.

And as for the question of timetables, Pelosi points out that Bush called upon Clinton to declare a timetable for American troops when they were in Kosovo, although he now states that timetables make no sense and aid the enemy. Pelosi points out that Bush wants a blank cheque and adds, "We're not going to give it to him".

We now have a President going against the wishes of Congress and the American people, yet claiming that others will be punished by the public if they don't accede to his wishes. He now borders on delusional.

Tags: Bush, Iraq war, Iraq war funding bill, veto, Pelosi

Mission Accomplished: Four Years On...

Tags: Bush, Iraq war, Mission Accomplished

Chavez pulls out of IMF and World Bank

Hugo Chavez has announced that Venezuela are to pull out of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. He has also promised to nationalise four oil field projects currently being run by foreign companies.

Though Venezuela has paid off its loans to the two international lending organisations, Mr Chavez's announcement that he intends to quit the organisations is powerfully symbolic. It is likely to lead to other smaller nations to question their membership and demand a greater say in the organisations' policies.

"We will no longer have to go to Washington, nor to the IMF, nor to the World Bank, not to anyone," said Mr Chavez. "I want to formalise our exit from the World Bank and the IMF."

Despite Venezuela's close trading relationship with the US over oil - it is the fourth largest supplier of crude in the United States - Mr Chavez has long been critical of US interference in Latin America, be it political, military or economic. He has long derided the IMF and the World Bank for being controlled by US and Western interests and has said their policies of tight budget controls, privatisation and open markets have benefited foreign companies while leaving much of Latin America in grinding poverty.

Chavez has done wonderful things since taking power and has used Venezuela's considerable wealth to huge effect reducing poverty inside Venezuela and increasing access to education and healthcare for his population. These are all moves that the World Bank and US controlled IMF would no doubt dismiss as socialism, but then the US system of healthcare is not one that is emulated by any other developed nation, most of which recognise the principle of healthcare being available to all irrespective of wealth.

The irony, of course, is that the US spend a larger amount of their GDP (15%) on healthcare than anyone else in the world, and yet their system is ranked 37th in the world according to the World Health Oraganisation, so one wonders what position they are in to criticise Chavez.

One also must remember that the IMF supported the groups that briefly managed to oust Chavez in the 2002 coup, so there really is no love lost between Chavez and these financial organisations.

Mark Weisbrot, director of the Washington-based Centre for Economic Policy Research, was refreshingly frank when he spoke of the IMF:

"The IMF is not really an independent actor," said Mr Weisbrot. "I don't think there's anyone in this town who would tell you with a straight face that it is not controlled by the US Treasury. There was no reason for Venezuela to remain a member... I think it's possible that other countries will pull out."

It will be interesting to see what the US do next as Chavez has promised to use Venezuela's oil wealth as a "Bank of the South" to help other nations and provide an alternative to the US controlled IMF and World Bank.

Mr Chavez made his announcement on Monday, a day after criticising the lending organisations during a meeting with leaders from Bolivia, Nicaragua, Cuba and Haiti. He predicted that "sooner or later, those institutions will fall due to their own weight".

On Monday, Mr Chavez announced that some of the world's largest oil companies would lose operational control over projects in the Orinoco Belt reserve in Venezuela. Britain's BP, the United States' ConocoPhillips, Chevron and Exxon Mobil, Norway's Statoil and France's Total agreed to obey a decree to transfer operational control. The move came a year after the Bolivian President Evo Morales took control of his country's gas fields.

"President Chavez has ordered us to take full control over the sovereignty of our oil, and we are doing that today," said Venezuela's Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez.

Good for Chavez. I expect the Jackals are being despatched by Washington as we speak, after all democracy is something they only respect when it yields results that they agree with.

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Tags: Chavez, Venezuela, World Bank, IMF, International Monetary Fund

Four years after declaring victory, Bush vetos Iraq withdrawal plan

Four years to the day since he landed a plane on an aircraft carrier dressed in a pilot's costume and declared "mission accomplished", the deserter George Bush has vetoed a bill promising $124bn (£62bn) for American troops. He has done so because the said bill also includes a withdrawal date for the troops, which prevents Bush being able to hand the responsibility for the Iraq war over to his successor, which is actually his deepest wish.

Bush wants to be able to claim that he did not lose the Iraq war and is anxious to push that ignominy towards whoever succeeds him, and he's not too concerned over how many young men and women, both American and Iraqi, have to die to enable him to carry out this subterfuge.

The truth is that Bush has no plan for victory. His "surge" is simply an attempt to take Baghdad in the hope that, having control of the capitol, the rest of the country will fall into line. This theory has already been revealed as flawed in Afghanistan where Karzai controls Kabul and bugger all else. But then, the point of "the surge" has never actually been victory, the point of "the surge" is to stave off the day when the size of Bush's defeat becomes impossible to ignore.

On that day Bush hopes to be no longer in office so that he can claim that, were he still the President, he would have handled things differently.

It's not a particularly honourable way to behave, but then, he's not a particularly honourable man.

3,350 US servicemen have died in a war that has cost more than $400 billion and Iraq is less stable now than it was four years ago.

Mr Reid and Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, are due to meet President Bush today to discuss a way forward, but nothing the latter said last night contained any hint of compromise.

Such a clash on war powers between America's executive and legislature is rare, even though the Iraq conflict has lasted longer than America's involvement in the Second World War. Even the "quagmire" of Vietnam produced nothing quite like it, although that war lasted eight years and claimed 58,000 US lives.

The Democrats have suggested that a possible compromise might be to impose a series of benchmarks upon the new Iraqi government, but all indications are that the Bush administration will resist this. The administration's line appears to be to warn the Iraqis that their patience is not "unlimited" whilst showing them that, as long as Bush is in power, their patience will never run out.

However, there are some signs that Bush's own party may be growing tired of his intransigence.

But the Republican whip, Roy Blunt, the party's No 2 official in the House, said it would be " premature" to rule out benchmarks. Republican wavering reflects the unpopularity of a war that two-thirds of Americans oppose. These doubts are set to grow as the 2008 election approaches ­ and with it the prospect of another Republican drubbing.

Any Republican who faces re-election in 2008 knows how deeply unpopular this was has become and there must surely be many who would like to face the electorate with this nightmare behind them.

The notion that this war can simply be fronted out and turned into a question of patriotism has been shown by the campaign of Senator McCain to be a suicide course. The American public aren't going to buy that line.

So, I can see why it suits Bush to try to stave off the inevitable, but I can't for the life of me see how this helps his party.

Maybe these rubber stamping lemmings will eventually act to save their own skins, for if they don't, then the November mid terms will be only a taster for the fate that awaits them in 2008.

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Tags: Bush, veto, Iraq war, Iraq war funding, Pelosi, Reid

Malkin loses her marbles....

Michelle Malkin is slightly deranged at the best of times, but she excels herself with this offering. I mean, seriously, what would make any sensible person take part in such a stunt? This is actually quite a good example of the level of political discourse that Malkin aspires to. It's possibly the most cogent argument she has ever made.

For, like Bush with his bullhorn, she is essentially no more than a cheerleader.

Tags: Michele Malkin, nutcase

Two month vacation for Iraqi Parliament. What could possibly go wrong?

As Condaleezza Rice reminds the Iraqis that America's "patience is not unlimited" the Iraqi government respond by announcing that they are about to have a two month vacation.

Tags: Iraq, Iraq war, Bush, Iraq funding bill, Condaleezza Rice, Maliki

Wolfowitz Goes on the Attack, but Hints at a Deal

Wolfowitz has come out fighting claiming that there has been “orchestrated leaks of false, misleading, incomplete and personal information” intended to “undermine my effectiveness as president.”

“The goal of this smear campaign, I believe, is to create a self-fulfilling prophecy that I am an ineffective leader and must step down for that reason alone, even if the ethics charges are unwarranted,” he said. “I, for one, will not give in to such tactics. And I will not resign in the face of a plainly bogus charge of conflict of interest.”

However, within those words are hints that he might step down if the bank's board finds that he acted in good faith rather than dishonourably.

Mr. Wolfowitz’s hint that he might be receptive to a deal was in the last paragraph of the seven-page statement released by the office of his lawyer, Robert S. Bennett, shortly after the bank president read it in a private session at the World Bank headquarters in Washington. At the end of the day, Mr. Wolfowitz sent it by e-mail to bank employees.

“Only when the cloud of these unfair and untrue charges is removed, will it be truly possible to determine objectively whether I can be an effective leader of the World Bank,” Mr. Wolfowitz said, in what was widely seen at the bank as an indication he would consider resigning.

The statement appeared to show his recognition of the loss of confidence he has suffered among a growing number of officials, for several reasons. Among those reasons have been his crackdown on corruption and his reliance on a small group of close aides brought from the Bush administration, where he had served as deputy defense secretary and an architect of the Iraq war.

Looks like Wolfie's heading for the door after all, but first he wants people to admit that he did nothing wrong.

What is the mindset of these people? He will only resign if people clear him of charges?

That's simply back to front and yet that is the deal that he is attempting to make. This ignores the fact that this is not the only reason that World Bank staff feel he should go.

Mr. Wolfowitz has also come under fire as internal documents have surfaced indicating that his aides may have pressed for Bush administration policies downplaying the importance of global warming and opposing contraceptives and abortion in family planning programs.

However, Shrub has raced to his rescue:

The White House has consistently supported Mr. Wolfowitz, and on Monday, President Bush did so again, though in a low-key manner.

“My position is that he ought to stay,” Mr. Bush said. “He ought to be given a fair hearing.”

Which is enough to make most Europeans determined to push Wolfie out the door.

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Tags: Wolfowitz, World Bank, Bush

Blair's bloody legacy: Iraq

Tomorrow will mark the tenth anniversary of Tony Blair's historic election victory which brought to an end eighteen years of Tory misrule.

I can remember that day with such clarity. We had longed for it, scarcely daring to believe that he could pull it off. And on that bright, bright May morning, Britain really did feel as if we were on the verge of a new dawn. Enthusiastic crowds lined the streets to cheer him on his way to the palace and then on to Downing Street.

How very different things look ten years on. We could never have imagined on that bright spring morning that the legacy of a man hurtled to power to save the NHS and vowing to concentrate on "Education, education, education" would be a disaster in the Middle East. And yet, in a recent survey, seven out of ten Brits thinks that Iraq will be Blair's legacy.

As the Prime Minister prepares to announce his resignation next week, the survey by Communicate Research reveals that 69 per cent of the British public believe he will be remembered most for the Iraq war. Remarkably, his next highest "legacy rating" - just 9 per cent - is for his relationship with the American President, George Bush.

Four years after the US-led invasion, Iraq still dwarfs all other issues. Only 6 per cent of voters believe Mr Blair will be remembered most for the Northern Ireland peace process, which he will hail as an important part of his legacy when self-government is restored in the province a week today.

Just 3 per cent think the Prime Minister will be remembered most for the cash-for-honours affair, with the same proportion citing the introduction of the national minimum wage and being associated with "spin".

A tiny 2 per cent of people believe Mr Blair's legacy will be his central goal to improve public services, one he put in the spotlight yesterday when he claimed he had achieved the mission he set out exactly 10 years ago to "save the NHS". Only 1 per cent of people believe he will be remembered most for his three general election victories, with the same proportion citing Scottish and Welsh devolution.

There is, however, some good news for Blair amongst all the gloom. 61% believe he has been a good Prime Minister overall with a mere 36% believing that he has been a bad one.

Only one in 10 Labour supporters say he has been a bad Prime Minister, while 89 per cent regard him as having been a good one.

The poll suggests there is strong respect for Mr Blair across the political spectrum. A majority (62 per cent) of Liberal Democrat supporters think he has been a good Prime Minister, while only 36 per cent of them regard him as a bad one. Almost half (45 per cent) of Tory voters believe he has been a good Prime Minister, while 53 per cent judge him a bad one.

The tragedy of Blair's premiership - and it is a bloody tragedy - is that he followed Bush into Iraq based on nothing more solid than a gut feeling that Saddam was a bad man who surely must possess WMD. He convinced himself, without evidence to back his assertion, that the notion of Saddam destroying his arsenal on his own was simply without merit. Those who feel Blair lied rather miss the point. One of the most striking things about Blair's Premiership has been is ability to sincerely convince himself of whatever was most politically convenient at the time. Blair wanted to deny the Tories access to George Bush and to prove that he could foster a similar relationship with a Republican President as he had enjoyed with Clinton.

With that in mind, he simply never questioned whether or not invading Iraq was a good idea or a bad one. Bush was going in and Blair was always going to follow.

It was a catastrophic misjudgement that will haunt his entire time in office, overshadowing the wealth redistribution he carried out and the fact that, under his leadership, Labour was re-elected for the first time in the party's history.

All leaders are allowed to make mistakes, but the size of the Iraqi blunder really is off the scale. It says it all that he will announce his departure leaving the cleaning up of this particular mess to his successor.

None of us could possibly have foreseen that ten years ago on that bright, bright spring morning.

That is the tragedy of Blair's premiership. And he can't even bring himself to apologise for it. Tragic. Simply bloody tragic.

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Tags: Blair, legacy, tragedy, Iraq war, Saddam, Bush, WMD, ten year anniversary

Perle did make Saddam-bin Laden link.

Bill Kristol has made much of Tenet getting the date wrong about a conversation he says he had with Richard Perle in which Perle claimed that Saddam had links to 9-11. Kristol has asked: "How many other facts has George Tenet invented?"

However, this clip clearly shows Perle making the Saddam/bin Laden link a mere five days after 9-11. Already, less than a week after 9-11, Perle is pedalling the lies that this administration used to wage war.



Hat tip to Crooks and Liars.

Tags: William Kristol, Richard Perle, George Tenet, 9-11, Saddam, bin Laden

Olmert will attempt to cling to office

The report simply couldn't be any more damning. Sure, it doesn't outright call for Olmert's resignation, but it doesn't fall far short of doing so.

"The decision to respond with an immediate, intensive military strike was not based on a detailed, comprehensive and authorized military plan, based on careful study of the complex characteristics of the Lebanon arena....

In making the decision to go to war, the government did not consider the whole range of options, including that of continuing the policy of 'containment', or combining political and diplomatic moves with military strikes below the 'escalation level', or military preparations without immediate military action - so as to maintain for Israel the full range of responses to the abduction. This failure reflects weakness in strategic thinking....

The primary responsibility for these serious failings rests with the prime minister, the minister of defence and the [outgoing] chief of staff".

And yet, despite a report that damning, Olmert has the gall to think he can brazen this one out.

Mr Olmert admitted it was "a grave and a harsh report", but said: "Resignation would not be the right thing to do."

I wonder what he considers would be "the right thing to do". I know honourable resignations are a thing of the past but surely, when your popularity has gone through the floor as Olmert's has, a modicum of shame must kick in and tell you it's time to grab your coat.

"Mistakes were made and failures committed by the key decision-makers, most notably myself," he said in a television address.

He pledged to learn the lessons of the report and take action where necessary.

However, the cavalry appeared on the horizon in the form of Shrub, the man who aided and encouraged Olmert as he led Israel to her worst ever defeat. Indeed, the man who wanted to encourage Israel to expand her war to include Syria and Iran. He even went as far as to label the war a great opportunity.

But he got support from the White House, whose spokesman said President Bush viewed the Israeli leader as "essential" to Middle East peace efforts.

Olmert is essential to the what? Middle East peace efforts? What Middle East peace efforts? The one thing Shrub has made no effort to have over the past six years is Middle Eastern peace. He has shamefully sided with Israel every time there has been any dispute and put Israel under no pressure whatsoever to engage with the Palestinians.

Indeed, the last time Rice flew into the region she was making arrangements to meet with Abbas and Olmert separately, she wasn't even insisting that they meet face to face. It was quite simply the worst piece of statesmanship that the region has seen for a long time. Indeed, it was so hopeless that it encouraged Saudi Arabia to break away from years of towing the American line and attempt to kick start the peace process on it's own.

Under Bush's presidency the Middle East has withered on the vine, his war with Iraq - which we were all told would lead to a deal between the Israelis and the Palestinians - has destabilised the entire region and his promise of this war kick starting a new Middle Eastern peace process has been revealed as simply another lie in a long list of lies.

And now we are told that President Bush thinks Olmert must stay as he's vital to a process that has appeared to be moribund for the past six years.

David Horowitz, editor of the Jerusalem Post newspaper, told the BBC the report might be the beginning of the end for Mr Olmert.

"As a critique of the prime minister it is extremely harsh," he said. "He made hasty decisions, he didn't consult, he didn't set clear goals, the goals weren't feasible, he didn't adjust - and overall it was a very grave failure."

"The chances of him making it through the summer are very, very, very weak indeed," he added.

I said at the time of the failure that Olmert could save himself if he actively engaged in the peace process. However, Olmert's reaction was the opposite. He suddenly declared that his Kadima Party could no longer go ahead with the evacuation of the West Bank, which was the very platform on which he was elected. I wondered at the time what his Premiership was any longer for, as he appeared to have rejected the reason that the Israelis elected him and was appearing to wish to cling to power for power's sake.

And now we have Shrub telling us that Olmert must remain in order to facilitate the non existent peace process.

The writing is surely on the wall, and even Shrub's pathetic attempts at support should prove futile.

Yossi Klein Halevi, a senior fellow at the Shalem Center, a conservative research institute here, said that “given historical precedent, no government has been able to survive the disillusionment of the Israeli people.

“Whatever option he chooses short of resignation is futile,” he said.

The use of the word “severe” by the commission, he said, will be taken by the Israeli public as “an implicit call for Olmert to resign.”

Even if he were now to actively engage in the peace process to which Shrub says Olmert is so vital, can a man with a popularity rating as low as Olmert's possibly claim to represent the Israeli people?

The irony is that he was elected to do just that, his party were supposed to take the historic step of evacuating the West Bank; but by reacting in the way that he did to the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers - by launching an unwinnable war against Hizbullah - he has damned his reputation and made the reason that he was elected impossible for him to realise.

The only thing Olmert has going in his favour is that the only obvious replacement for him is Tzipi Livni. Personally, I have less faith in her conducting peace negotiations than I do in Olmert, which ironically might be the very thing that saves him.

He wouldn't be the first leader saved because there is no obvious replacement on the horizon. However, that's hardly a ringing endorsement. Nor does it bode well for any Middle Eastern peace process. A process towards which the present American administration has been spectacularly uncommitted.

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Tags: Olmert, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Israel-Lebanon war, Hizbullah