Monday, November 24, 2003

[8:14 PM] The Fields Report is going to try a new strategy. I’ve been contemplating ways to change up the now ubiquitous web log of commentary with embedded links and quite frankly didn’t come up with anything earth shattering. In any case, having diminishing time to make up-to-the-minute comments on news these days, I’ve decided to try out this new format: twice weekly op-ed length posts that will focus on a general topic with some links embedded and general commentary interlaced. If it I like it, I’ll change the overall look of the site with among other features, a sidebar with some links to longer new stories and essays I think are worth checking out and need greater circulation. Right now I’m leaning toward Sundays and Thursdays for these features so look for the first on December 4.

# posted 8:15 PM

Sunday, November 23, 2003

[8:04 PM] If you spin it, they will believe

Iraqi teenagers dragged the bloody bodies of two American soldiers from a wrecked vehicle and pummeled them with concrete blocks Sunday, witnesses said, describing a burst of savagery in a city once safe for Americans. Another soldier was killed by a bomb and a U.S.-allied police chief was assassinated.
The U.S.-led coalition also said it grounded commercial flights after the military confirmed that a missile struck a DHL cargo plane that landed Saturday at Baghdad International Airport with its wing aflame.

Nevertheless, American officers insisted they were making progress in bringing stability to Iraq…

# posted 8:04 PM

Thursday, November 20, 2003

[7:35 PM] After the U.S. seemingly gave up on making a concerted effort to capture Usama Bin Laden, I sometimes wondered what would have happened if an attack on the scale of September 11 had been carried out in Israel. I suspect that Bin Laden would have been captured or killed in short order. That is only to say that Israel’s security services are notoriously ruthless, efficient, and at time brutal and the U.S. would only go so far in its efforts in Afghanistan to find Bin Laden. So one wonders after the second major bombing in Istanbul in as many weeks (the first which targeted two synagogues), if Mossad is on the case. It would certainly shame U.S. efforts if Bin Laden wound up in U.S. custody courtesy of “a foreign security service.” But after the targeting of Jews in Istanbul, don’t rule it out.

# posted 7:39 PM

Monday, November 17, 2003

[9:40 PM] Priorities. Before the war in Iraq, I pondered here if the U.S. was pursuing the right priorities in the war on terrorism and its nonproliferation efforts. Al-Qaida was certainly a concern, but the U.S. didn’t seem to have much stomach for really getting its hands dirty in Afghanistan to find Usama Bin Laden. So I as well as many people in the current and former administration thought, what about Hizballah? Take away one atrocious day, and Hizballah has done considerably more damage globally than al-Qaida. Daniel Byman, formerly of RAND and now at Brookings asks takes a look at this issue in the current Foreign Affairs. Check it out here.

# posted 9:40 PM

Friday, November 07, 2003

[11:35 AM] The NYT editorial page weighs in today on the Times own story about the Iraqi back channel

With crucial details unexplored, there is no way of knowing whether war could or should have been avoided, or indeed whether the offer was genuine or what kind of inspections would have been allowed. Any last-minute offer might have been unacceptable, particularly if it meant leaving Saddam Hussein's Baathist torturers in power. Yet surely Washington should have made the effort to learn more.
Administration supporters were fond of saying at the time that there were things Bush officials knew but could not share with the public. Little did we imagine that among those things was an offer that might have provided a way to avoid the war.

# posted 11:35 AM

Thursday, November 06, 2003

[8:50 AM] You can generally count on CNN’s Aaron Brown to do and say the right thing. He led off tonight’s Newsnight addressing the NYT article on the Saddam pre-war back channel. And to his credit he asked all the right questions. Ken Pollack was there to pooh pooh any notions that the Iraqis were serious, and for all I know he’s right. But all his arguments came down to basically Saddam wasn’t serious because Saddam isn’t trustworth. Maybe he has more nuanced reasons for his thinking, but he wasn’t sharing on this program.

POLLACK: Yes, look, first I don't dispute any of Mr. Risen's reporting. I'm perfectly willing to believe that Imad Hage believed that what he had was the genuine offer. I'm even willing to believe, although here I start to get skeptical, but I'm even willing to believe that Saddam was aware of what was being offered. I also have no doubt that it was not a serious deal. In fact, everything that I hear leads me to believe that this was yet another Iraqi intelligence operation like we had seen countless Iraqi intelligence operations in the past. In truth, the Iraqis offered nothing that they hadn't offered before and there was no expectation that they would actually deliver on anything that they actually did offer.

BROWN: Well, but they did. I mean I'm not sure I disagree with you but they did offer, one of the things they offered, as I read it, was thousands, perhaps several thousand American soldiers or FBI agents or scientists or some combination of all of them to come into Iraq and do a weapons search if that's what the Americans wanted.

POLLACK: Well, look, how many times did the Iraqis publicly accept the proposition that they had to allow U.N. inspectors and, of course, the U.N. inspectors were determined solely by the U.N., free and unfettered access to all of Iraq and how many times did they renege on it, every time.

Pollack doesn't tell us what "everything he hear[s]" is or from whom he's hearing it. I don't doubt him, I'm just curious. According to the article and the Newsnight story, the CIA was in contact with the Iraqis through various other back channels. But Pollack didn’t say, and maybe he didn’t know if the things those channels heard were similar or at what levels on the Iraqi side were the people involved.

Risen, the author of the article offers his own speculation on the matter

RISEN: Well, I think the one, I mean I'm no expert on the Arab world but I do think that it's quite possible that third world countries and leaders of third world countries don't understand how bureaucratic Washington has become, that they don't understand that informal channels here are viewed in a much more suspect way than they are in many other parts of the world.

The idea I’m most interested in – and it would seem to be a similar dynamic at work for North Korea – is that Saddam went this route to capitulate quietly and not look defeated before the entire world. Pollack said that Saddam had plenty of chances to give it up before and because he didn’t we can’t take these overtures seriously (Pollack glosses over UNMOVIC inspectors by saying that because Saddam played games with unfettered access, he wasn’t serious; so where are the weapons that unfettered access would have discovered?). In a nutshell, my question is could this have been a face-saving effort on the part of Saddam? We shall see if anyone asks the questions or if this issue dies a quick death.

# posted 8:50 PM

[2:44 PM] I can’t believe how little attention this NYT front page story is getting. Apparently Saddam Hussein allegedly was so desperate to stave off a U.S.-led invasion that he was willing to make numerous concessions. The problem was he made the overtures through a back channel employing a Lebanese-American businessman and end the end the offer was rebuffed by the U.S. A fascinating story with enormous implications if true. So how about some other news sources examining if it is true. So far there seems to be no interest. Wolf Blitzer today had time for Rosie O’Donnell though. Good to know where CNN’s priorities are.

# posted 2:45 PM

Tuesday, November 04, 2003

[9:24] The LA Times has an article on State Department loudmouth and serial exaggerator John Bolton. Here are some tidbits

The Bush administration's point man on nonproliferation has exaggerated the threat posed by Syria, Libya and Cuba in an effort to build the case that strong action is needed to prevent them from developing weapons of mass destruction, former intelligence officials and independent experts say.

“Very often, the points he makes have some truth to them, but he simply goes beyond where the facts tell intelligent people they should go,” said Carl W. Ford Jr., who retired in October as head of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research.

Bolton provokes such controversy that several of his critics — flouting Washington convention — agreed to be quoted by name.

# posted 9:24 PM

[9:15 PM] The International Crisis Group has a nice new bulletin covering global conflict. Here’s there description

CrisisWatch is a 12-page monthly bulletin designed to provide busy readers in the policy community, media, business and interested general public with a succinct regular update on the state of play in all the most significant situations of conflict or potential conflict around the world.

Here’s a link to the page and to the bulletin in pdf format.

# posted 9:15 PM

Sunday, November 02, 2003

[3:00 PM] Many sources, including this Washington Post article haveKing Leopold’s Ghost characterized the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo as the deadliest since World War II. It is a tragic situation that has at its roots the brutal colonization by Belgium. The strife that this country has gone through since independence is appalling. Being an African country, it will certainly always fall below the radar screen of American policymakers (not entirely unjustifiably so) and the U.S. media. Superficially, to me, the DRC will always be the location of Muhammad Ali and George Foreman’s “Rumble in the Jungle.” But to learn more about the legacy of Belgian colonial rule, I suggest the wonderful, if at times disturbing book, King Leopold’s Ghost as an introduction to the tragic origins of what would become Zaire and then the DRC. Be sure to check out the WP’sinteractive guide to the conflict. A link to it is found on the web page of the article mentioned above.

# posted 2:59 PM