Monday, September 30, 2002

[12:16 PM] “The U.S. war against Iraq -- when it comes -- will trigger instability throughout the Middle East and will be especially unsettling for Baghdad's Arab neighbors. Jordan, for one, will come under pressure from many corners.” You can read this Stratfor report (subscription required for the full version) here. Here is an excerpt from the full version

Finally, there is the possibility that Baghdad or other groups like al Qaeda may try to instigate political upheaval in Jordan as a way to undercut the U.S. military operations there. There is a small Iraqi expatriate population (about 100,000 people) living in the kingdom, and there is concern among both the Jordanian and Western governments that Iraqi government agents may be mixed in with the community. Also, militants linked to al Qaeda have been arrested in Jordan in the past, and though no evidence in recent days has pointed to the existence of cells there, it's a possibility that Amman will need to consider.

# posted 12:21 PM

Thursday, September 26, 2002

[3:11 PM] The headline reads “In Policy Shift, U.S. Will Talk to North Korea.” It should read, “The Latest Flip-Flop in the Ongoing Search for a Coherent North Korea Policy.”

“I don't think the Clinton team was as close to a deal as they might lead you to think," one of Mr. Bush's senior national security advisers said last month. "We have a lot of work to do to expand the agenda — and that means talking about all their conventional weapons within reach of Seoul.”

Note to senior national security adviser: How did not talking for the past year and a half help expand the agenda?

# posted 3:16 PM

[2:26 PM] I’ve followed a few stories of late that note increasing cooperation between Hizballah and al-Qaida. And I just noticed this exchange in testimony to the House-Senate Intelligence Committees Joint Hearing On Iraq:

Rep DOUG BEREUTER: I would ask both of you, are there any groups capable of -- any groups other than Al Qaida -- capable of or seriously considering attacking the United States today, and I'm talking about the homeland?

Richard Armitage: I think in terms of capability and virulence, Hezbollah certainly is capable. They have thus far confined themselves in the main to central South America and, of course, the Middle East. But capability, they could do it.

Paul Wolfowitz: That's absolutely right. And intentions are one of those things that if you want any precision on, you'll almost never get it. If you reject the evidence that comes from overt expressions of hostility, then you'll be taken by surprise every time.

Iran — soon to possibly be the lone axis of evil member — is a primary sponsor of Hizballah (along with Syria). And while the administration still can’t come up with any plausible connection between al-Qaida and Iraq. Here are two administration officials saying, we should be very worried about Hizballah as well. So again, why doesn’t Iran get the same attention as Iraq? By the way, that’s a rhetorical question.

# posted 2:28 PM

Wednesday, September 25, 2002

[2:34 PM] Carlos Castaño, leader (although he claims to have resigned on June 6th of this year) of the coalition of brutal, murderous, right-wing paramilitary groups in Colombia says he plans to turn himself over to U.S. authorities to face drug charges (of which he says he is innocent). His right wing AUC (United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia) are on the State Department's list of terrorist organizations. The U.S. accuses him of "smuggling 17 tons of cocaine to the United States and Europe over the past five years." However, he is wanted on a couple dozen murder charges in Colombia. So will he be considered an enemy combatant? Does he get access to his Miami-based lawyer if he arrives in the U.S.? How (in)consistent will the justice department's policy be toward Castaño, who surely is directly or indirectly responsible for as many deaths as Usama Bin Laden.

# posted 2:45 PM

[11:33 AM] It strikes me that President Bush’s new preemptive strike policy vis-à-vis Iraq has probably been influenced considerably by Israel's preemptive strike on the Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981. Bush’s logic would seem to be: “Just as the Israelis endured international scorn, we’re willing to as well, because in the end, they were right. Saddam was on the road to nuclear weapons. Just think where he would have been when the Gulf War rolled around if Israel hadn’t acted.”

But the difference now is we have better intelligence on Iraq than we did then, precisely because the U.S. realizes that it got caught out and Israel had better intelligence back then. Now the only WMD that Iraq has are chemical and biological, not nuclear. So this doctrine of preemptive action, at least against Iraq is a bit of a house of cards that ignores or exaggerates the threat to the United States. Israel saw the threat in 1981 and had the intelligence to back it up. The U.S. doesn’t seem to have the same intelligence now prompting it to be vague and make moralistic arguments for regime change.

The preemptive parallel exists to some extent, but the U.S. doesn’t seem to have facts on the ground that will vindicate it in the end.

# posted 11:48 AM

Tuesday, September 24, 2002

[4:05 PM] TOMPAINE.COM offers a compendium of articles on why we shouldn't invade Iraq.

# posted 4:07 PM

Monday, September 23, 2002

[12:51 PM] I didn’t read much about the release last week of this report by the U.S. Advisory Commission on Public Diplomacy. Building America's Public Diplomacy through a Reformed Structure and Additional Resources begins saying

In the decade since the Cold War, elected officials of both parties — through neglect and misplaced priorities — have permitted the nation’s public diplomacy instrument to rust. Now, as we face a complex emergency, we expect this instrument to be razor sharp. It is not. That is why we need to invest in people, programs, training, recruitment, international exchanges, opinion research, information technologies, and the right kind of broadcasting. There has been much talk about redirecting U.S. military strategy. It is now time to rethink and redirect America’s public diplomacy strategies as well.


The panel's recommendatioins:
1. Issue a Presidential mandate
2. Fully implement the White House Office of Global Communications
3. Review the consolidation of USIA into the State department
4. Integrate Congress into public diplomacy
5. Involve the private sector
6. Stop with all the bellicose unilateral rhetoric (okay I added this one).

# posted 1:01 PM

[10:10 AM] Reading this article about U.S. forces getting ready for possible action in Iraq got me thinking. What do you do with Saddam Hussein if he's toppled and captured alive by coalition forces? Certainly not turn him over to much-reviled ICC.

# posted 10:13 AM

Friday, September 20, 2002

[12:55 PM] "We will take the actions necessary to ensure that our efforts to meet our global security commitments and protect Americans are not impaired by the potential for investigations, inquiry, or prosecution by the International Criminal Court (ICC), whose jurisdiction does not extend to Americans and which we do not accept.We will work together with other nations to avoid complications in our military operations and cooperation, through such mechanisms as multilateral and bilateral agreements that will protect U.S. nationals from the ICC.We will implement fully the American Servicemembers Protection Act, whose provisions are intended to ensure and enhance the protection of U.S. personnel and officials."

From section IX, "Transform America's National Security Institutions to Meet the Challenges and Opportunities of the Twenty-First Century."

# posted 12:59 PM

[10:43 AM] “Why you should let me blow into Iraq and take this sucker out and more generally do whatever the hell I want with American foreign policy,” was probably rejected as too long a final title for “The National Security Strategy of the United States of America.” Available now in “Plain English” so “the boys in Lubbock [are] able to read it.”

# posted 10:47 AM

Wednesday, September 18, 2002

[3:47 PM] Are we locked into Iraq? According to Middle East Newsline (subscription required)

Iran has launched the first export project of its Shihab-3 intermediate-range missile. U.S. officials said Iran has signed a multi-year deal with Libya for the export of technology, know-how and training in the Shihab-3. The officials said North Korea will participate in the project. Iran signed the contract with Tripoli in June after a Libyan delegation toured Shihab-3 facilities nearly a year earlier, officials said. They said the deal calls for Libya to pay Iran $13.5 million a year for the next five years for training, technology and expertise in the Shihab-3.

# posted 3:52 PM

[3:13 PM] The Carnegie Endowment has put together 13 papers under the title "Iraq: a new approach." Among other issues, the collection offers some different proposal for making inspections work. Check out panel discussion of the options outlined in the papers here.

# posted 3:19 PM

[11:53 AM] Got a question for a former U.N. weapons inspector in Iraq? The BBC has your chance to ask it in an interactive forum, Friday at 1530 BST (whenever that is).

# posted 11:57 AM

[11:37 AM] "The parties to one of the world’s most destructive wars are at an historic crossroads," say the International Crisis Group about Sudan's peace process. Read their latest report "Sudan’s Best Chance for Peace: How Not to Lose It."

# posted 11:42 AM

Monday, September 16, 2002

[1:11PM] Colombia’s new president has authorized security forces to make arrests without warrants as he turns up the heat in that country’s battle against left-wing insurgents. Some Colombian human rights groups say that the hardliner has gone too far. But interestingly enough even with the increased powers of detention, detainees must be brought before a court within 24 hours and charged within an additional 36 hours.

# posted 1:09 PM

[12:49 PM] In his speech to the U.N. concerning Iraq last Thursday, President Bush mentioned U.N. Security Council resolutions 686, 687, 688, and 1373 specifically. It remains to be seen if his newfound respect for U.N. resolutions will encourage him to read the resolution he’d rather forget – 242, which calls for the “Withdrawal of Israeli forces from the territories occupied in the recent [1967] conflict.”

# posted 12:49 PM

Friday, September 13, 2002

[3:23 PM] A great exchange between Scott Ritter and Richard Butler on Newsnight with Aaron Brown last night:

BUTLER: Aaron, I must ask this question. Look, I distinctly remember the intelligence information that Scott is referring to. It was good information.

And I believed it, and he believed it. I distinctly remember Scott sitting across from me and some of my senior colleagues one day, and literally thumping his fists on the conference table, and saying, these people have these weapons, they are liars. We must go and get those weapons, and so on. I remember that distinctly.

BROWN: You never said that?

RITTER: No, the conversation he is talking about, is that when I pounded on table, and Richard Butler was threatening to shut down the concealment mechanism investigations, and I said, you can't do that, what about the intelligence we have about this, that -- and he said, we can't talk about that here, and I said, Richard you're shutting the program down, so I am going to bring it up in front of everybody, so you can explain why you're terminating...

BROWN: He's not telling the truth.

RITTER: He's a liar.

BROWN: He's a liar.

RITTER: He's a liar.

BROWN: Mr. Butler?

BUTLER: Sorry, who is he calling a liar?

BROWN: You.

RITTER: You.

BUTLER: Oh, I just find that deeply sad. That is so silly. That is so silly…

# posted 3:26 PM

[12:30 PM] The Fields Report technical team has noticed a slight glitch in accessing the August archives. We are hard at work pinpointing the problem and hope to have it resolved soon.

# posted 12:34 PM

[10:03 AM] Madeleine Albright hits the nail on the head.

I hope, however, that the president will not be pushed by his hard-line advisers into an unwise timetable for military action. We should pick this fight at a moment that best suits our interests. And right now, our primary interest remains the thorough destruction and disruption of Al Qaeda and related terrorist networks...

Although the president's speech yesterday was persuasive in many respects, he was neither specific nor compelling in his effort to link Saddam Hussein to other, more urgent threats. As evil as Mr. Hussein is, he is not the reason antiaircraft guns ring the capital, civil liberties are being compromised, a Department of Homeland Defense is being created and the Gettysburg Address again seems directly relevant to our lives.

In the aftermath of tragedy a year ago, the chief executive told our nation that fighting terrorism would be "the focus of my presidency." That — not Iraq — remains the right focus.

She probably was inspired by this Fields Report posting.


# posted 10:06 AM

Wednesday, September 11, 2002

[12:15 PM] “America's greatest opportunity is to create a balance of world power that favors human freedom. We will use our position of unparalleled strength and influence to build an atmosphere of international order and openness in which progress and liberty can flourish in many nations. A peaceful world of growing freedom serves American long-term interests, reflects enduring American ideals and unites America's allies. We defend this peace by opposing and preventing violence by terrorists and outlaw regimes. We preserve this peace by building good relations among the world's great powers and we extend this peace by encouraging free and open societies on every continent.”

This is from George W. Bush’s op-ed in the New York Times today. If only he were sincere. If only the administration favored human freedom and respect for human rights when abusers didn’t threaten U.S. interests. Even on September 11th, “outlaw regimes” still managed to creep into the president’s verbiage, only a day after the administration finally backed away from its unsuccessful efforts to link Iraq with the September 11th attacks.

If the president were sincere about “progress and liberty” after his speech to U.N. on Thursday, he would reconfirm America’s commitment to Afghanistan and commit to sending peacekeeping troops into areas outside Kabul. He would re-engage (if he ever was) in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He would develop a solid plan to engage North Korea (the actual biggest threat in the axis of evil). Indeed if President Bush were truly sincere he would do a number of things which he has no intention to actually do. Sadly, even on this day for reflection and remembrance, his writing and surely his speech later today are meant to speak to the nation on this day of mourning, but are certainly also meant to subtly beat the drum for war with Iraq – a matter unrelated to September 11th.

# posted 12:18 PM

Monday, September 09, 2002

[2:29 PM] It’s good to see some more nuance and technical debate about the Iraq issue. The media is touting a new study put out today by the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. The study among other things reports that Iraq is years away from producing a nuclear device unless it receives fissile material from an outside source. This is part of the focus of stories about the report – and this is a good thing. However, this is nothing new. Other analysts and the U.S. intelligence community have been saying this for some time now. But overall this is a good development. The Iraq question is one that requires an argument more than the simplistic “Saddam is an evil man.” A lot of that debate requires some hands-dirtying discussion of issues that defy such simple pronouncements. Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons; he gassed his own people. And? How does this threaten the U.S.? Even if Iraq had a nuclear device today, how would they deliver it? Fields Report knows the “correct” answers, but he studies these things for a living. The media, and better still the president has to begin asking and discussing these more difficult topics – the ones that don’t fit into 15 seconds on Hardball. But it looks like the tide is turning toward that direction.

# posted 2:32 PM

[10:20 AM] Top seven reasons not to invade Iraq. Five of the seven are pretty solid.

# posted 10:22 AM

Sunday, September 08, 2002

[3:29 PM] In the previous post, I criticized the NYT for its erroneous and hysterical story alleging that U.N. "spy satellite" photos showed Iraq reconstituting some of its nuclear facilities. Here you can read that at least some of the "spy photos" come from Colorado-based Space Imaging, a commerical satellite imagery provider. Check out some of their free images here.

# posted 3:43 PM

Friday, September 06, 2002

[9:55 AM] New Iraqi Nuclear Weapons Site. That’s what this headline (U.N. Spy Photos Show New Building at Iraqi Nuclear Sites) in the New York Times implies. “A team of weapons inspectors, studying satellite photography, have identified several nuclear-related sites in Iraq where new construction or other unexplained changes have occurred since the last international inspections nearly four years ago, a United Nations official said today,” reads the first sentence of the article.

So according to the Times, the Iraqis have augmented for nefarious purposes a former nuclear facility that was previously inspected by UNSCOM – it's nuclear-related after all. Right?

Not necessarily. “We are very curious to see what is under the roof...There are some activities that could be part of prohibited activities, but we have nothing now that allows us to draw a conclusion,” says Jacques Baute a French physicist and team leader of the nuclear inspectors.

In fact, at the top of this story on the Times website (above the article headline), it reads “Atomic Anxiety.” This is the Times creating that anxiety in a poorly written, tabloidesque article. The headline may be the most egregious part -- "U.N. Spy Photos Show New Building at Iraqi Nuclear Sites." The article goes on to say that the photos the U.N. inspectors were examining were from a commercial satellite. Editors asleep over at the Times?

# posted 10:12 AM

[9:31 AM] Again I ask: Remember the war on terror? Now it’s Iraq, Iraq, Iraq. Despite the administration’s protestations that the media is churning up this issue, they are the ones beating the drum the loudest. Here’s a question: How will regime change in Iraq help in the war on terror? It is a safe bet that on day 1 of post-Saddam Iraq, Usama Bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri will still be alive, and they’ll still wish bad things upon the U.S. By the administration’s calculation though, there will be no chance that they will receive any chemical weapons from Saddam Hussein. We’ll all sleep easier knowing that.

# posted 9:41 AM

Thursday, September 05, 2002

[10:17 PM] Colombia, when it ratified the ICC on August 5, also secretly invoked an article allowing it to reject for seven years the court’s jurisdiction over war crimes. The thinking apparently was that insurgents are more likely to disarm if they know they will not face charges of war crimes. Outgoing president, Andres Pastrana made the decision in consultation with new president Alvaro Uribe. This provision only applies to war crimes and not genocide or crimes against humanity.

At least the Colombian government seems to have to put some rational thought behind this decision, ever mindful of how it will end its 35 year-long civil conflict. The decision, which Human Rights Watch called “A Prelude to Impunity” still stands in contrast to the Bush administration’s irrational fear of international agreements. But Colombia’s decision does not preclude its own prosecution of individuals for war crimes — which given the Colombian government’s corrupt democracy and ties to brutal right-wing paramilitaries seems dubious, fueling HRW’s argument.

José Miguel Vivanco, executive director of Human Rights Watch's Americas Division said “At the moment, peace has never seemed further off, and this dispensation will only encourage more horrific abuses against civilians to occur.” But this seems a bit hysterical. It’s not likely that paramilitaries or guerrillas let the tides of international justice agreements alter the way they wage war. Thousands of civilians die horrific deaths or are kidnapped every year in Colombia. It’s doubtful that this revelation will somehow spur on the paramilitaries to “increase” their brutality.

# posted 10:39 AM

Wednesday, September 04, 2002

[4:30 PM] Libya may be the first Arab state to acquire weapons of mass destruction. So says Ariel Sharon in this really puzzling Ha'aretz article. The article sort of clarifies that by WMD Sharon meant nuclear weapons. But then it goes on to say that “Asked what kind of weapons of mass destruction Libya was seeking, Sharon replied 'Probably the bad kind.'”

The article makes no mention of where this allegation comes from. Nor does it enlighten on how Libya would develop a nuclear weapon before Iraq. Isn't that what all the fuss is about Iraq in the first place?

# posted 4:38 PM

Tuesday, September 03, 2002

[10:58 AM] The new issue of Foreign Policy has a series of essays addressing the question: What Is the International Community? Kofi Annan, Noam Chomsky, and Andrew Gowers, editor of the Financial Times  are among the nine people who weigh in with their thoughts (only three essays are available online).

Some excerpts:

Arjun Appadurai, Yale professor of international studies:

The International community is neither international nor a community. It is not international because, as a moral idea, it does not exist in any reconizable form. It is not a community because it has little to do with social relations, spatial intimacy, or long-term moral amity. Yet there is something compellingly real about this misnamed object. That reality lies in its moral promise.


Chomsky predictably misunderstood the assignment. He interpreted “What is the International Community?” to mean please write a 2,000 word indictment of U.S. foreign policy:

One does not read that for 25 years the United States has barred the efforts of the international community to achieve a diplomatic settlement of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict along the lines repeated, in essence, in the Saudi proposal adopted by the Arab League in March 2002. That initiative has been widely acclaimed as a historic opportunity that can only be realized if Arab states agree at last to accept the existence of Israel. In fact, Arab states (along with the Palestine Liberation Organization) have repeatedly done so since January 1976, when they joined the rest of the world in backing a U.N. Security Council resolution calling for a political settlement based on Israeli withdrawal from the occupied territories with “appropriate arrangements ... to guarantee ... the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and political independence of all states in the area and their right to live in peace within secure and recognized borders”—in effect, U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 expanded to include a Palestinian state. The United States vetoed the resolution. Since then, Washington has regularly blocked similar initiatives. A majority of Americans support the political settlement reiterated in the Saudi plan.

# posted 11:19 AM