Category Archives: Washington

It’s Saturday, do you know where your military is?

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John Pra­dos over at Tom​Paine​.com makes an inter­est­ing argu­ment that Team Bush will start a war sooner rather than later in order to sim­ply shuck off the diplo­matic restraints the U.N. Secu­rity Coun­cil has begun to draw tighter around the United States. And while Hans Blix’s mixed report to the Secu­rity Coun­cil today ral­lies mar­kets as the threat of war sup­pos­edly recedes, the White House must surely be gnash­ing its col­lec­tive teeth.
Let’s see about con­nect­ing the dots, as they like to say in the White House:

  1. Spe­cial forces are already oper­at­ing in Iraq and have been for some time.

  2. With the esca­la­tion of Threat­Con to “orange,” the pub­lic is “ready” for a retal­ia­tory attacks from ter­ror groups.
  3. With that in mind, it’s a long week­end, and many peo­ple have left cities for vaca­tion. (I know sev­eral of my friends have done so.) It’s also a slow news cycle on Sat­ur­day, so the White House might be able to get some trac­tion before CNN et al. get their game on.
  4. The Hajj, the Mus­lim pil­grim­age ended yesterday.
  5. Gen. Tommy Franks, the the­ater com­man­der, is en route to Qatar.

Do these add up to war?
I’m inclined to say no. While there are a lot of forces in the region, they are not yet at full strength, despite the full deploy­ment the 3rd Infantry Divi­sion. The 101st is not yet there, with heli­copters and gun­ships still being loaded in Jack­sonville, Fla. (Granted, the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion pre-positioned a lot of equip­ment in the region through­out the 1990s to avoid a Desert Shield-style buildup, but there still remains a lot of heavy-lifting to do. An irony of this war is that for all the scorn heaped upon the Clin­ton admin­is­tra­tion by the Bushies, they will fight this war and win it with Clinton’s mil­i­tary, the one that was appar­ently neglected for 8 years.)
Also, the U.N. is still talk­ing. While Bush said he would not be bound by “unpro­duc­tive debate” (“The United States has agreed to dis­cuss any mate­r­ial breach with the Secu­rity Coun­cil, but with­out jeop­ar­diz­ing our free­dom of action to defend our coun­try,” Bush said in his Rose Gar­den com­ments on Nov. 8, 2002), I’m bet­ting this was more blus­ter than pol­icy. The United States, through its ham-fisted han­dling of the Secu­rity Coun­cil and NATO, has iso­lated itself in the world, with the excep­tion of Britain and the new NATO coun­tries. Per­haps my naïvité is show­ing, but I don’t think even the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld-Wolfowitz Axis of Incom­pe­tence is so mad as to launch a war while the Secu­rity Coun­cil hasn’t even begun debate on Blix’s report yet.
Will they?

Split in NATO, U.S. anger and Franco-German proposals

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The United Nations Secu­rity Coun­cil faces some tough choices

Ger­many has con­firmed it would work with France to intro­duce a new Secu­rity Coun­cil res­o­lu­tion aimed at dis­arm­ing Iraq with­out war by strength­en­ing the inspec­tions regime and back­ing it up with United Nations peace­keep­ers. While Rus­sia expressed cau­tious sup­port for the Franco-German ini­tia­tive, the United States, pre­dictably, threw a hissy fit. Mean­while, Bel­gium and pos­si­bly France will block the United States’ request to NATO to shore up Turkey’s defenses when war breaks out with Iraq.
“Damn those Eurow­imps!” Rums­feld was heard to exclaim when Ger­many admit­ted to work­ing on the res­o­lu­tion. (Ok, he didn’t really say that.) The plan calls for France and Ger­many to put its euro where its mouth is by tripling the num­ber of inspec­tors, declar­ing all of Iraq a no-fly zone and back­ing it all up with thou­sands of U.N. peace­keep­ers. Ger­man Defense Min­is­ter Peter Struck said Ger­man “could well take part” in the peace­keep­ing force if the pro­posal is adopted.
But let’s be hon­est. The United States, which reacted angrily to France and Ger­many act­ing like sov­er­eign nations with national inter­ests of their own, will veto any such res­o­lu­tion. Which brings us to an inter­est­ing game of chicken on the Secu­rity Coun­cil. Britain is set to intro­duce a res­o­lu­tion autho­riz­ing force against Iraq in the next week or so. Ger­many is set to intro­duce the peace­keep­ing ini­tia­tive Feb. 14, the day of U.N. weapons inspec­tor Hans Blix’s likely final report. France and Rus­sia could veto the British res­o­lu­tion while the United States could veto the Franco-German one. What’s a super­power to do?
The snit is get­ting increas­ingly per­sonal, too, with the French and Ger­man offi­cials clash­ing with their Amer­i­can coun­ter­parts. As the Guardian reported:

Mr. Rums­feld, a lead­ing US hawk, said it was not sur­pris­ing if pub­lic opin­ion in Ger­many and France was opposed to war in Iraq if their gov­ern­ments were.
[Ger­man Defense Min­is­ter Joschka] Fis­cher lashed back: “You have to make the case in a democ­racy. Excuse me, I’m not convinced.”

The United States will be under enor­mous pres­sure to go along with the strength­ened inspec­tions, since world opin­ion is firmly on the side of giv­ing inspec­tors more time. (Plus, it allows the lil­liputians of the world to throw at least a few sym­bolic ties around the Amer­i­can Gul­liver.) This lat­est pro­posal by the French and Ger­mans is a gam­ble, a gaunt­let tossed at the feet of the United States by mul­ti­lat­er­al­ists who say, “If you walk out that door alone, don’t expect to come back.” If the United States per­sists in warn­ing the United Nations that it is threat­ened with irrel­e­vancy if it doesn’t enforce its res­o­lu­tions, then France and Ger­many are chal­leng­ing Amer­ica to walk out on the U.N., as it did the League of Nations, bet­ting, of course, the Bush White House is unwill­ing to take that dras­tic a step to get its way on Iraq.
(By the way, Kos has a lively debate on this in the com­ments sec­tion of his site, Daily Kos.)
At the same time, Bel­gium is plan­ning to block a U.S. request for war materiel for Turkey to defend itself for when the war breaks out in early March. Turkey responded by say­ing it was “strongly likely” to invoke Arti­cle 4 of the NATO treaty for the first time in his­tory. The arti­cle, which says, “The Par­ties will con­sult together when­ever, in the opin­ion of any of them, the ter­ri­to­r­ial integrity, polit­i­cal inde­pen­dence or secu­rity of any of the Par­ties is threat­ened,” allows a mem­ber coun­try to claim the alliance’s atten­tion if it is threat­ened. Belgium’s for­eign min­is­ter, Louis Michel, said deploy­ment under a NATO umbrella would be tan­ta­mount to endors­ing a war with Iraq. (How­ever, Ger­many and the Nether­lands have gone ahead and dis­patched Patriot mis­sile sys­tems to Turkey by the end of next week, with or with­out NATO’s help. Strat­for muses that the bold­ness of the Dutch was a sig­nal that it stands with the United States, after declin­ing to sign on that open let­ter cir­cu­lated last week, itself a fur­ther sign of the deep divi­sions within Europe.)
In my opin­ion, Bel­gium has stepped over the line on this one. Regard­less of why Turkey is threat­ened, NATO mem­bers have a treaty oblig­a­tion and should step up to the plate. Lend­ing aid in defense of a ally is not the same as pro­vid­ing assis­tance in an aggres­sive war. What prin­ci­ple is served if an Iraqi gas attack kills thou­sands of inno­cent Turk­ish civil­ians and the Turks were unable to defend against it because they didn’t have the proper equip­ment? Michel and oth­ers may argue that such attacks won’t hap­pen if Amer­ica would quiet its war drums, but the fact of the mat­ter is those peo­ple will still be dead — and they likely would have been opposed to the war, if Turk­ish opin­ion polls are to be believed.
All of this points to the shape of the world after war with Iraq. The Atlantic Alliance could be shat­tered, the Mid­dle East trans­formed in ways unforseen, the Euro­pean Union revealed as a deeply fis­sured beast and a reor­ga­ni­za­tion of Amer­i­can mil­i­tary power in Europe. Sure seems like a lot of change to dis­arm Iraq, no? Espe­cially when you con­sider that Libya and Iran — the lat­ter admit­ted today to hav­ing ura­nium — both have sim­i­lar weapons of mass destruc­tion pro­grams and a longer and more vio­lent his­tory of ter­ror­ism and sup­port of trans-national ter­ror groups. But, as I’ve stated before, WMD are only the pub­lic rea­son the Bush White House is call­ing for Saddam’s head. The real rea­sons, which I’ll detail later Mon­day, are based in hard-nosed geostrate­gic inia­tives that are breath­tak­ing in scope.

Qatar’s links to al Qa’ida, and back to the coup…

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06qaed.jpgCare­ful read­ers will remem­ber I wrote about the alleged Qatar coup attempt back in Octo­ber, here, here and here. The story was that mem­bers of the mil­i­tary aligned with Islamic fun­da­men­tal­ists attempted a coup in the vital Per­sian Gulf coun­try on Oct. 12. It was put down with the help of U.S. troops there, and the State Depart­ment and the Qataris denied any­thing hap­pened. In my last entry on this, I said I couldn’t con­firm any­thing and that I — reluc­tantly — must con­cede that they were rumors.
Now, pos­si­bly not so! Hes­iod, over at Coun­ter­spin Cen­tral, picked up on an inter­est­ing nugget in the New York Times’ cov­er­age of Colin Powell’s speech before the U.N. on Wednes­day. In his speech, Pow­ell made a lot of noise in tying al Qa’ida to Bagh­dad through the per­son of Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi (right), the one-legged man believed respon­si­ble for mas­ter­mind­ing the assas­si­na­tion of Amer­i­can diplo­mat Lau­rence Foley last Octo­ber. But, as Hes­iod points out, the Times buried the real story:

Mr. Pow­ell with­held some crit­i­cal details today, like the dis­cov­ery by the intel­li­gence agen­cies that a mem­ber of the royal fam­ily in Qatar, an impor­tant ally pro­vid­ing air bases and a com­mand head­quar­ters for the Amer­i­can mil­i­tary, oper­ated a safe house for Mr. Zar­qawi when he tran­sited the coun­try going in and out of Afghanistan.
The Qatari royal fam­ily mem­ber was Abdul Karim al-Thani, the coali­tion offi­cial said. The offi­cial added that Mr. al-Thani pro­vided Qatari pass­ports and more than $1 mil­lion in a spe­cial bank account to finance the net­work.
Mr. al-Thani, who has no gov­ern­ment posi­tion, is, accord­ing to offi­cials in the gulf, a deeply reli­gious mem­ber of the royal fam­ily who has pro­vided char­i­ta­ble sup­port for mil­i­tant causes for years and has denied know­ing that his con­tri­bu­tions went toward ter­ror­ist oper­a­tions.
Pri­vate sup­port from promi­nent Qataris to Al Qaeda is a sen­si­tive issue that is said to infu­ri­ate George J. Tenet, the direc­tor of cen­tral intel­li­gence. After the Sept. 11 attacks, another senior Qaeda oper­a­tive, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, who may have been the prin­ci­pal plan­ner of the assault on the World Trade Cen­ter and the Pen­ta­gon, was said by Saudi intel­li­gence offi­cials to have spent two weeks in late 2001 hid­ing in Qatar, with the help of promi­nent patrons, after he escaped from Kuwait.
But with Qatar pro­vid­ing the United States mil­i­tary with its most sig­nif­i­cant air oper­a­tions cen­ter for action against Iraq [the al Udeid Air Base — Ed.], the Pen­ta­gon has cau­tioned against a strong diplo­matic response from Wash­ing­ton, Amer­i­can and coali­tion offi­cials say.

Sure makes those coup reports a lot more inter­est­ing, now doesn’t it? And it makes a lot more sense that Qatar and the United States would both deny that any­thing hap­pened. But this is part of Washington’s game. Pak­istan, Saudi Ara­bia, Kuwait and now Qatar have known ties to Islamic extrem­ists that have had a direct hand in attack­ing United States inter­ests and noth­ing is done because we need these coun­tries to attack Iraq. (Or Afghanistan, in the case of Pak­istan. I have less prob­lem with going easy on Gen. Mushar­raf since he’s in a del­i­cate spot and we don’t want Pakistan’s nukes falling into the hands of Islamo-Fascists.) It’s almost as if the War on Ter­ror is an irri­tat­ing dis­trac­tion from the War on Iraq. And that’s exactly back­ward, as far as the Amer­i­can peo­ple are con­cerned.
(As an aside, the Times arti­cle notes that by reveal­ing that Zar­qawi is a walk­ing dead man now, as Bagh­dad has con­stantly denied links to al Qa’ida. “A half hour after Pow­ell men­tioned his name, I’ll wager he dis­ap­pears or is killed,” said a coali­tion offi­cial, recall­ing the death in Bagh­dad in 2001 of the Pales­tin­ian ter­ror­ist Abu Nidal, after intel­li­gence reports sug­gested than he might be acti­vat­ing his own ter­ror­ist net­work.” As Hes­iod asks, if the United States could have had Zar­qawi killed ear­lier by men­tion­ing him, why didn’t it? As with Ansar al-Islam, it’s con­ve­nient for the White House to let threats linger as long as they serve the goal of invad­ing Iraq.)
George over at War­blog­ging has an excel­lent entry on why Iraq is the wrong war at the wrong time. With the the national threat level about to go to “orange” later today amid fears of a mid-February attack by al Qa’ida that could rival Sept. 11, 2001, why is Wash­ing­ton ignor­ing real links between sup­posed allies and ter­ror groups and instead focus­ing on ten­u­ous ties between our ene­mies? This is why.

No nukes is good nukes

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nuke1.jpgThe Daily Tele­graph is report­ing that United Nations weapons inspec­tors have uncov­ered evi­dence that Iraq is con­tin­u­ing its attempts to build nuclear weapons in defi­ance of UNSCR 1441. The paper reports that “The dis­cov­ery was made fol­low­ing spot checks last week on the homes of two Iraqi nuclear physi­cists in Bagh­dad.“
U.N. offi­cials had no com­ment on the doc­u­ments, the paper said, but “a West­ern diplo­mat closely involved with the inves­ti­ga­tion into Saddam’s nuclear capa­bil­ity” was quoted as con­firm­ing that the doc­u­ments were gen­uine.
“These are not old doc­u­ments,” the diplo­mat was quoted as say­ing. “They are new and they relate to on-going work tak­ing place in Iraq to develop nuclear weapons. They had been hid­den at the … homes [of physi­cists Faleh Has­san and Shaker al Jibouri] on Saddam’s per­sonal orders. Fur­ther­more, no men­tion of this work is made in the Iraqi dossier that was sub­mit­ted to the UN last Decem­ber.“
Con­fus­ingly, Voice of Amer­ica said that yes, doc­u­ments out­lin­ing research on ura­nium enrich­ment had been dis­cov­ered at the sci­en­tists’ home, but that they dated from the 1980s, accord­ing to nuclear con­trol chief Dr. Mohamed El Baradei, who, along with chief weapons inspec­tor Dr. Hans Blix, holds Iraq’s fate in their hands.
[Update: The Asso­ci­ated Press, via a story on Salon​.com, is report­ing that the doc­u­ments date back to a project can­celled in 1988. Has­san said the pro­gram was declared in 1991 and that he kept the doc­u­ments for “his stu­dents.”]
So who’s right? Is it El Baradei? Or the unnamed “West­ern diplo­mat”? I have to ques­tion the verac­ity of sources who go unnamed but are said to be “closely involved with the inves­ti­ga­tion into Saddam’s nuclear capa­bil­ity.” Could that be West­ern diplo­mat be an Amer­i­can try­ing to make the case to a jit­tery British pub­lic that they should lay off Tony Blair and get with the pro­gram? Isn’t the tim­ing of this rev­e­la­tion curi­ous, con­sid­er­ing that the White House’s res­i­dent dove — and loyal trooper — Sec­re­tary of State Colin Pow­ell told the Ger­man news­pa­per Sued­deutsche Zeitung that the United States would make a “per­sua­sive case” that Iraq hasn’t coop­er­ated and has weapons of mass destruc­tion by month’s end?
It’s a curi­ous dis­crep­ancy with huge impli­ca­tions. How­ever, with the Jan. 27 dead­line bear­ing down — the date on which Blix will deliver an interim report on the progress of the weapons inspec­tors — the United Nations has made clear that it does not see Blix’s dossier as a trig­ger for war, no doubt fur­ther frus­trat­ing the United States. Amer­ica wants the Jan. 27 report to be final and com­plete and has said it will try to foil any exten­sion of the inspec­tion regime into March.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I believe that, yeah, Saddam’s prob­a­bly got chem­i­cal and/or bio­log­i­cal weapons. But with even Britain get­ting bull­ish on inspec­tions — mainly because Down­ing Street believes there will be a “large nuclear find” in the near future — I think the United States needs to calm down and let the inspec­tors do their jobs. I think there’s a good chance that Sad­dam can be defanged with­out a lot of peo­ple dying, but then defang­ing Sad­dam has never been the real rea­son to attack Iraq now, has it?

George W. Bush is a goddamn liar

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George W. Bush is a god­damn liar. On the one hand, he con­stantly says he hasn’t made up his mind about attack­ing Iraq, but the troop buildup and his lat­est utter­ances that “time is run­ning out” for Sad­dam Hus­sein give the lie to his “states­man­ship.” Bush is deter­mined to go to war, and there doesn’t seem to be any way to stop him.

“So far I haven’t seen any evi­dence that he has dis­armed,” said Bush. “I’m sick and tired of games and deception.”

Con­tinue read­ing →