Good News in Somalia..

From Captainsquarters blog.com: "In a lightning-fast collapse, the Islamists in Somalia have apparently disappeared. The largest city in the nation has erupted in gang warfare as tribal chiefs retracted their support for the radical Islamist forces that just days ago issued a call for jihadis around the world to attack Ethiopia: The Islamist forces who have controlled much of Somalia in recent months suddenly vanished from the streets of the capital, Mogadishu, residents said Wednesday night, just as thousands of rival troops massed 15 miles away. In the past few days, Ethiopian-backed forces, with tacit approval from the United States, have unleashed tanks, helicopter gunships and jet fighters on the Islamists, decimating their military and paving the way for the internationally recognized transitional government of Somalia to assert control.Even so, the Islamists, who have been regarded as a regional menace by Ethiopia and the United States, had repeatedly vowed to fight to the death for their religion and their land, making their disappearance that much more unexpected.Fortified checkpoints across the city — in front of the radio station, at the airport, at the main roads leading into Mogadishu and outside police stations — were abruptly abandoned Wednesday night, residents said. This shows the result of a full military response to Islamist provocations. After watching half of their comrades torn to pieces by combat helicopters, one deserter told the Times that the Islamists assumed that the war would be fought like the others in their experience, which meant hardly fought at all. Ethiopia had no intent to allow the Islamists to give tit-for-tat terrorist responses to measured military action, and the Islamists quit when they started dying in droves. In fact, they quit so fast, they literally left their last holdout completely undefended. By late last night, the former leaders of the UIC had to ask them to return to their posts just so the new internationally-recognized government could take over without any power vacuum. They were too late; their Shebab (youth) armies had already stripped off their makeshit uniforms and blended back into the civilian population. The UIC collapsed, prosaically enough, when clan leaders demanded the return of the trucks they lent to the Islamists for military operations. Clan leaders took note of spontaneous demonstrations erupting all over the capital against the Islamists and in support of the new government. The loss of the equipment meant that their forces could offer no real resistance to a determined military effort to crush them -- and they threw in the towel.This loss crushes the reputation of the Islamists as dedicated to fighting to the death. They will if they see an advantage in it, and that advantage has been gained by Western reluctance to fight an all-out war against them. Ethiopia, after having been threatened by both a traditional attack from Somalia and a guerilla/terrorist war, responded with overwhelming force, and they crumbled. Somewhere there is a lesson for the West. UPDATE: The Baidoa government now claims that it has captured Mogadishu: A Somali lawmaker said the government had captured the capital Mogadishu on Thursday after Islamist rivals abandoned it, but a government spokesman could not immediately confirm the report. "The government has taken over Mogadishu. We are now in charge," MP Mohamed Jama Fuuruh told Reuters by telephone from Mogadishu port.But government spokesman Abdirahman Dinari was more cautious. "We are taking control of the city and I will confirm when we have established complete control," he said.Earlier he said Ethiopian and Somali government troops held the main routes into the capital and were poised to capture it.Either way, their first item of business has to be gaining control of the streets and imposing order on the capital. Ethiopian troops will have to assist in that if the Somali government is to succeed.

American Patriots: The next McCain to serve..

Troop Push Is Personal For McCain Senator Calls for Iraq Boost as Son Becomes a Marine By Elizabeth Williamson Washington Post Staff Writer Tuesday, December 26, 2006; A01 As the Iraq Study Group issued its long-awaited report on the war, declaring that the United States should not dispatch more troops, Sen. John McCain reacted with his long-held and contrary view: It will take more boots on the ground, or the nation faces "sooner or later, our defeat in Iraq."Then the Arizona Republican discreetly flew to San Diego, where the next day, Dec. 8, he sat under a hot sun to watch a skinny 18-year-old in military-issue glasses graduate from boot camp and become a Marine. His son Jimmy.John McCain's public certainty about Iraq masks a more private and potentially wrenching connection. If more troops go there, as McCain hopes they will, his youngest son could be one of them, taking his place in a line of family warriors that is one of the longest in U.S. history. Sen.-elect James Webb (D-Va.) also has a son in the Marine Corps named Jimmy. On the campaign trail, Webb declined to talk about his son, who is in Iraq, but he wore Jimmy's boots as he called for American forces to come home.McCain has not drawn any attention to his son and declined to be interviewed for this article.A leading contender for the GOP presidential nomination, McCain has been one of the few and among the most vocal politicians pressing for more troops in Iraq. "We left Vietnam, it was over, we just had to heal the wounds of war. We leave this place . . . and they'll follow us home," he said on a news show recently. "So there's a great deal more at stake."McCain's own father faced the anguish of sending a son to war. Adm. John McCain Jr., who commanded Pacific forces during the Vietnam War, ordered airstrikes on Hanoi even while his son, a Navy pilot, was imprisoned there after being shot down.McCain was held captive for more than five years, repeatedly beaten and tortured. On more than one occasion, the North Vietnamese offered to release him as a propaganda move to shame his father. McCain, citing a prisoners' code of conduct requiring that POWs be released in order of capture, refused. During McCain's imprisonment, his father, while privately collecting every scrap of information about his son that he could, "made an ironclad rule that no one would talk about his son around him," said Torie Clark, who was a staffer for the younger McCain and a Pentagon spokeswoman. "He wanted to make sure he made decisions based on what was right for U.S. forces . . . not what would be good or bad for his son. "I'm not surprised that the current John McCain separates the private from the public."In "Faith of My Fathers," the family memoir McCain wrote in 1999 with Mark Salter, his chief of staff, he recalls the prisoners' jubilation at the 1972 bombing of Hanoi, ordered by his father, that helped end the war. His thoughts foreshadowed his position on Iraq:"The misery we had endured . . . was made all the worse by our fear that the United States was unprepared to do what was necessary to bring the war to a reasonably swift conclusion," the authors wrote."No one who goes to war believes once he is there that it is worth the terrible cost of war to fight it by half measures," they wrote. "War is too horrible a thing to drag out unnecessarily. It was a shameful waste to ask men to suffer and die, to persevere through awful afflictions and heartaches, for a cause that half the country didn't believe in and our leaders weren't committed to winning."Those who know McCain say they are not surprised that his children would feel a call to duty -- his son Jack is a Naval Academy midshipmen -- and that the senator would not allow his paternal concerns to influence his thinking about how the war should be conducted."I get a feeling that he sometimes must think he's seeing an old movie being played back," said George "Bud" Day, who was McCain's cellmate in Hanoi and remains close to him now. "There's no doubt his kids have the McCain genes. That means they're going to war." McCain's view of the war and his family history is born of "his sense of duty, that is so deeply ingrained . . . there were probably times that he felt a prisoner of it," said Robert Timberg, who has written a book about McCain and who, the senator has said, "knows more about me than I do."McCain has spoken publicly about Jimmy only once. In response to questions from Time magazine in June, as his son prepared for boot camp, he said, "I'm obviously very proud of my son, but also understandably a little nervous." After the interview, the magazine reported, McCain tried to get the story killed.His reluctance to publicly discuss his thoughts about his son going to Iraq is a sign of decency, said Timberg, a fellow Annapolis graduate and Vietnam veteran. But there is another reason, common to fathers with sons in war. "The last thing in the world he'd want to do," Timberg said, "is to anger the gods." Jimmy McCain is an outgoing young man who told his fellow recruits that he had no ambition for politics, recalled Lance Cpl. Dominic Stam, 17, who served in a platoon with him for a time."On the very first day, I felt sorry for him because all the drill instructors already knew who he was," Stam said. Over three months of rigorous training, 80 of the 500 recruits quit. McCain "did really well" and "was a squad leader for a while," he said. "He started out as John McCain's son . . . and became Private McCain, just another Marine."Stam said McCain signed up for the infantry. He reports to Camp Pendleton for more training in early January and could deploy by mid-2007. "He decided to choose one of the most dangerous jobs in the Marine Corps, and I respected him for it," Stam said. "He could have chosen something where he would be safe."On graduation day, Stam scanned the military officers and family on the reviewing stand. There was John McCain, in suit and sunglasses. "He sat there like a normal parent," Stam said. "He looked proud to me. I can't imagine a parent not being proud."

CIA exercise reveals consequences of defeat

By Rowan Scarborough- THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published December 21, 2006 The CIA this month conducted a simulation of how the Iraq war affects the global jihadist movement, and one conclusion was that a U.S. loss would embolden al Qaeda to expand its ranks of terrorists as well as pick new strategic targets, according to sources familiar with the two-day exercise. CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield confirmed to The Washington Times yesterday that the simulation took place in Northern Virginia. He declined to discuss its findings, saying that a final report is not finished and that the report will not be the intelligence community's official view. It will, however, be circulated within the community and possibly to U.S. policy-makers. The exercise involved 75 CIA analysts and outside specialists. It was conducted by the CIA's Office of Terrorism Analysis, within the agency's Counterterrorism Center. A source familiar with the simulation said it was a "red team" exercise in which participants played the role of global jihadists and war-gamed how the U.S. involvement in Iraq will influence their terror movement. Although it takes no policy positions, the simulation's key finding appears to bolster Mr. Bush's contention that a U.S. loss in Iraq will have far-reaching ramifications. At a press conference yesterday, Mr. Bush said, "A lot of Americans understand the consequences of retreat. Retreat would embolden radicals. It would hurt the credibility of the United States. Retreat from Iraq would dash the hopes of millions who want to be free. Retreat from Iraq would enable the extremists and radicals to more likely be able to have safe haven from which to plot and plan further attacks." Al Qaeda has made stopping democracy in Iraq a top priority, according to U.S. military officials. It has recruited hundreds of suicide bombers to come to Iraq and inflict mass casualties to spur a Sunni-Shi'ite Muslim civil war. The group wants to wear down U.S. troops to the point where they will retreat. Al Qaeda's ultimate goal is to turn Iraq and other Middle East countries into hard-line Islamic states, U.S. military officials say. One key finding from the "red team" exercise is that al Qaeda will follow past practices. Jihadists perceived the victory over the Soviet Union in Afghanistan in 1988 as a seminal event that spawned the creation of al Qaeda under the direction of Osama bin Laden. Al Qaeda leaders thought that if jihadists could defeat a global power in one theater, it could bring down governments in other nations. Six years later, when U.S. troops left Somalia after taking casualties at the hands of al Qaeda-trained Muslim fighters, it reaffirmed its feeling of invincibility and its belief that Western powers have a low threshold for casualties. After Somalia, al Qaeda -- and like-minded jihadists -- began attacking U.S. targets in the Persian Gulf region and ultimately struck America on September 11, 2001. The CIA-sponsored simulation predicts that al Qaeda will view a U.S. defeat in Iraq as another jihadist victory over a superpower and one that will bring it even more terrorist recruits. "When we did the simulation, the ramifications were enormous," said the source, who asked not to be named. The source said al Qaeda will proclaim, "God has given us a second victory over a superpower. "Imagine what defeat in Iraq would do," said the source. "Al Qaeda picks new targets after it thinks it's won." This person expressed unhappiness that the Iraq Study Group, a bipartisan panel led by former Secretary of State James A. Baker III and former Rep. Lee H. Hamilton, devoted less than a page to what a loss in Iraq would mean for global terrorism. The source said he hopes the CIA report is circulated within the administration to drive home the point that the stakes are high in Iraq. Mr. Bush is set to announce early next year new strategies and tactics for winning in Iraq. He previously has dismissed proposals from Democrats to pull out all 135,000 U.S. troops now or withdraw them on a set timetable regardless of events on the ground. Mr. Mansfield said the Counterterrorism Center this year has sponsored 20 internal simulations, seminars and conferences using outside experts to examine issues related to the war on terror. He added, "We frequently reach out to experts outside of government and solicit their views on a range of matters. It is done routinely, and it is a very important aspect of our work. The simulation consisted of officers from around the intelligence community as well as outside experts." Such events are held, he said, "to better understand emerging threats to the United States."

GETTING COUNTERINSURGENCY RIGHT

By RALPH PETERS New York Post December 20, 2006 -- IF a prize were awarded for the most-improved government publication of the decade, we could choose the winner now: "Army Field Manual 3-24, Counterinsurgency" (MCWP 3-33.5 for the Marine Corps). Rising above abysmal earlier drafts, the Army and Marines have come through with doctrine that will truly help our troops. Doctrine matters. It doesn't provide leaders with a detailed blueprint, but offers a common foundation on which to build strategies and refine tactics. Start with a weak foundation, and the wartime house can easily collapse. This new field manual is a solid base. Earlier drafts were dominated by theorists locked into 20th-century thinking - approaches that failed us so dismally in Iraq. But the final document offers a far greater sense of an insurgency's reality. It doesn't have all the answers. No doctrine does. But it provides our battlefield leaders with a genuinely useful tool to help them understand insurgencies. Yes, there's still a little too much "peace, love and understanding" silliness, but it's counterbalanced with blunt honesty that acknowledges that not all of our enemies can be persuaded to adore us. While non-lethal techniques and non-military means certainly have roles to play, the manual now states clearly that there are some foes - primarily religious or ethnic fanatics - who need to be killed. This is a huge step forward for the Army, whose senior leadership has suffered from a Clinton-era hangover in the political-correctness department (many of the manual's tough-minded changes were made to satisfy the Marines - the Corps never lost its grip on warfare's fundamentals). This embrace of unpleasant realities is a step that the rest of our government needs to take. Our politicians need to read "Counterinsurgency." Earlier drafts cautiously ignored faith-fueled insurgencies and even the phenomenon of the suicide bomber; now both topics get intelligent treatment. The academic theorists continue to fight a rear-guard action (there's still too much emphasis on Maoist models), but the acceptance that there's more to many insurgencies than political ideology was a great leap forward (if not a cultural revolution). The absolutes of the draft versions are tempered in the final product, leaving room for the complexity of conflict. There's a genuine acceptance that counterinsurgency warfare has no silver bullets - such conflicts are just plain tough and attempts to simplify them lead to failure. We owe a debt of thanks to the officers (most of them Iraq or Afghanistan veterans) involved in the revision of this manual - which involved a lot of long hours, exasperation and soul-searching. Coming up fast from behind (as one hopes we'll be able to do in Iraq), the doctrine writers shook off much of the spell of the last century's bogus theorizing and began to come to grips with the real enemies we face today and will continue to face in various guises for decades to come. I wrote "began" because, while this document reflects valuable progress in our thinking about the dominant form of conflict in our time, it's nonetheless an interim manual for a military in transition between the failed "wisdom" of the past and the tactics and techniques demanded by a new century. As "Counterinsurgency" is revised based on our experience of conflict, the next set of drafters will need to face critical issues neither the Army nor the Marines have gotten to yet. In the spirit of constructive criticism, here are a few of the gaps remaining: While the sometimes-you-just-have-to-fight realists are in the ascendant at last, the military's academic side still has too much influence. You see it plainly in the illustrative vignettes chosen to accompany the text: They emphasize soft power (doesn't work - sorry) over the need to kill implacable murderers to provide security for the innocent. The bias in the case-study selection still favors the hand-holding efforts that helped create the current mess in Iraq (military academics, like all academics, won't give up on their theses just because mere facts contradict them). The drafters cite the anomalous example of Malaya (while downplaying that campaign's violence), but ignore the same-decade example of the Mau-Mau revolt, in which the British won a complete victory - thanks to concentration camps, hanging courts and aggressive military operations. The vignettes concentrate on ideological insurgencies (the easy stuff), neglecting 3,000 years of ferocious religious and ethnic revolts. On the first page of the introduction, we get the solemn statement that "The tactics used to successfully defeat [insurgencies] are likewise similar in most cases." That's true, but not in the way the drafters intended. They were referring to the hearts-and-minds efforts that defused a minuscule number of insurgencies over the past six decades - while the "similar tactics" that historically worked with remarkable consistency were uncompromising military responses. A huge gap remaining in the doctrine is that, except for a few careful mentions, it ignores the role of the media. Generals have told me frankly that it was just too loaded an issue - any suggestion that the media are complicit in shaping outcomes excites punitive media outrage. To be fair, the generals are right. Had the manual described the media's irresponsible, partisan and too-often-destructive roles, it would have ignited a firestorm. Yet, in an age when media lies and partisan spin can overturn the verdict of the battlefield, embolden our enemies and decide the outcome of an entire war, pretending the media aren't active participants in a conflict cripples any efforts that we make. The media are now combatants - even if we're not allowed to shoot back. Our enemies are explicit in describing the importance of winning through the media. Without factoring in media effects, any counterinsurgency plan will go forward at a limp. Finally, the new manual fails to ask a question that no one in our military or government has yet had the common sense to ask about insurgencies: What if they just don't want what we want? That, indeed, has become the crucial question in Iraq. Despite these criticisms, our latest cut at shaping a counterinsurgency doctrine looks like a noteworthy success. It's overwhelmingly honest, honorable and useful. Now we need to put that doctrine to use. Ralph Peters' latest book is "Never Quit The Fight."

U.S. plans naval buildup in Gulf

CENTCOM plans to use 'gunboat diplomacy,' officials tell NBC News NBC News and news services Updated: 10:29 a.m. ET Dec 19, 2006 WASHINGTON - The U.S. Central Command is aggressively planning a naval buildup in the Persian Gulf, including the addition of a second aircraft carrier, in response to a series of aggressive actions by Iran, U.S. military officials told NBC News on Tuesday.The officials pointed to Iran's interference in Iraq — including its support for Shiite militants and shipments of improvised explosive devices into the country — recent military naval exercises in the Gulf, and its pursuit of nuclear weapons. The attempt at "gunboat diplomacy" is in its final planning stages. Although it has not been approved yet, it appears likely the increase in U.S. warships into the Gulf could come as early as January, the officials said. U.S.: Iran making headway on weapons On Monday, the Bush administration said Iran was making headway in building nuclear weapons as Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice tried to iron out differences with Russia over a U.N. resolution designed to stop the program with economic sanctions.While not predicting when Iran would join the nuclear club, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the Iranians were trying to perfect technology to enrich uranium. Iran has denied an effort to build nuclear weapons and says its work is for energy development.“It’s a very tricky matter of perfecting centrifuge technology so you can actually enrich all the uranium,” McCormack said. “So, yes, they are going along their way in trying to go down the various pathways.”The spokesman provided no details of Rice’s telephone conversation with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. “They went over some of the outstanding issues,” McCormack said. 'Time for a vote' Russia, which has close economic ties with Iran, has favored diplomacy over punitive sanctions, but the Bush administration is hoping Moscow may be prepared to approve a watered-down resolution at the U.N. Security Council.“We are hopeful that we can get a vote in the very near future. It is time for a vote,” McCormack said. “I think we need to see a vote on this in a matter of days.”The United States and its European allies have proposed offering Iran economic concessions in exchange for halting its enrichment of uranium, a key part of the process of building nuclear weapons.

Gathering Storm: Al Qaeda's Western Recruits

Along the ungoverned border of Pakistan and Afghanistan, Al Qaeda is training would-be jihadists from the West to attack their home countries. By Sami Yousafzai, Ron Moreau And Mark Hosenball Newsweek Dec. 25, 2006 - Jan. 1, 2007 issue - For the past year, a secret has been slowly spreading among Taliban commanders in Afghanistan: a 12-man team of Westerners was being trained by Al Qaeda in Pakistan for a special mission. Most of the Afghan fighters could rely only on hearsay, but some told of seeing the "English brothers" (as the foreign recruits were nicknamed for their shared language) in person. One eyewitness, a former Guantánamo detainee with close Taliban and Qaeda ties, spoke to NEWSWEEK recently in southern Afghanistan, demanding anonymity because he doesn't want the Americans looking for him. He says he met the 12 recruits in November 2005, at a mud-brick compound near the North Waziristan town of Mir Ali. That was as much as the tight-lipped former detainee would divulge, except to mention that Adam Yahiye Gadahn, the notorious fugitive "American Al Qaeda," was with the brothers, presumably as an interpreter. Another Afghan had more to say on the subject. Omar Farooqi is the nom de guerre of a former provincial intelligence chief for the Taliban; he now serves as the Taliban's chief Qaeda liaison for Ghazni province, in eastern Afghanistan. He says he spent roughly five weeks this past year helping to indoctrinate and train a class of foreign recruits near the Afghan border in tribal Waziristan, and among his students were the English brothers. The 12 included two Norwegian Muslims and an Australian, along with nine British subjects, says Farooqi. Their mission, Farooqi told NEWSWEEK, will be to act as underground organizers and operatives for Al Qaeda in their home countries—and their yearlong training course is just about finished. U.S. and British security agencies have known this threat would come sooner or later. While saying he could not confirm the English brothers' case specifically, a spokesman for Britain's Foreign Office (unnamed as a matter of standard policy) calls it "common knowledge" that jihadist recruits have been traveling from Britain to Pakistan for indoctrination and training. The existence of a Qaeda pipeline between those two countries has grown harder to deny with every new terrorism story that has broken since the suicide bombings in London that killed 52 subway and bus passengers on July 7, 2005. Each new case that emerges features at least one or two suspects with ties to Pakistan—such as an alleged plot that began before 9/11 to bomb financial buildings in New York, Newark, N.J., and Washington, and this past summer's alleged plot to blow up airline flights from Britain to the United States. A few weeks ago Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, director-general of the British security service M.I.5, publicly disclosed that British authorities are monitoring 200 networks and 1,600 individuals "actively engaged in plotting or facilitating terrorist acts here and overseas." A "substantial" fraction of those 1,600 people have connections to Pakistan, says a British official, declining to be named because the subject is sensitive. The M.I.5 chief added that her investigators had identified nearly 30 separate plots "that often have links back to Al Qaeda in Pakistan, and through those links Al Qaeda gives guidance and training to its largely British foot soldiers here." Indeed, while often thought to have become mostly an inspiration to jihadists around the world, Al Qaeda appears to be gaining strength along the unruly Afghan-Pakistani border. Within the past year, M.I.5 has produced detailed reports about a group of British men, ethnic Pakistanis, who traveled to jihadist training camps in Pakistan by way of Saudi Arabia, Syria and Afghanistan, according to a counterterrorism official in London who requested anonymity because of the sensitive subject. And the scariest part is not what M.I.5 knows but what it doesn't know: there's no way the authorities can watch more than a tiny percentage of the 400,000 British residents who visit Pakistan every year. U.S. security agencies are no less worried. American intelligence officials tell NEWSWEEK that their people are definitely concerned about terror suspects and operatives shuttling back and forth between Britain and Pakistan. One particular worry is that under current practice, British visitors to the States are not required to apply in advance for temporary visas, which are routinely granted to any British passport holder who is not on a watch list. In other words, the door is wide open for Britain's growing ranks of young jihadists, even those who have attended Qaeda training camps, if they are unknown to intelligence agencies. U.S. officials are discussing how the visa system could be tightened. "For the most effective background checks on passengers, the United States needs information and assistance from the country where the traveler resides," says Homeland Security Department spokesman Russ Knocke, adding that such help should be "routine." While the Americans talk, Al Qaeda is pressing on with its training plans, Farooqi says. He confidently described those plans to a NEWSWEEK correspondent at a mud-brick house in Paktia province, not far from the Pakistan border, mentioning the English brothers almost in passing as an example of the jihad's recent successes. The specifics of his story could not be independently corroborated. But one gunman among the dozen or so guarding the house, with most of his face hidden by a black-and-white kaffiyeh, appeared to be a European with light-colored eyes; Farooqi later confirmed that the guard was one of the brothers. An open notebook lay on the carpet where Farooqi sat, and the NEWSWEEK correspondent caught a fleeting glimpse of scrawled names and phone numbers, including several that were preceded by the United Kingdom's country code: 44. Farooqi says he first met the brothers, all of them in their 20s, soon after they reached Waziristan in October 2005. He recalls one of them, known as Musa, telling him that the 7/7 bombings in London "were just a rehearsal of bigger acts to come." A few, he couldn't say how many, had arrived in Pakistan by air, but most had taken a clandestine overland route across Turkey, Iran and Afghanistan, escorted by a network of professional smugglers. As NEWSWEEK has reported previously, Al Qaeda uses the same underground railroad to transport Iraqi bombmakers and insurgent trainers to share their skills with Taliban fighters in Afghanistan and Pakistan. According to Farooqi, the brothers' travel arrangements were made by Abdul Hadi al-Iraqi, one of Al Qaeda's top operations men and a liaison with insurgents in Iraq. (His name has also cropped up in an ongoing British criminal trial in which seven London-area defendants of Pakistani descent are accused of conspiring to bomb British targets with homemade explosives. Prosecutors have alleged that Abdul Hadi's deputy even visited Britain and prayed at a mosque near London with one of the suspects.) The transcontinental journey took a month to complete, but Farooqi claims the brothers left no official traces of their passage, slipping past every border-control post without showing any travel documents. Once they get home, there may be no record that they ever visited Pakistan. That's something a British Qaeda operative would certainly want to keep secret. A newly issued International Crisis Group report on the tribal areas says the militants have been able to "establish a virtual mini-Taliban-style state there" where they can "provide safe haven to the Taliban and its foreign allies." In the words of a senior Western diplomat in Islamabad, who asks to remain nameless to avoid offending his hosts: "The Pakistanis simply don't control the territory in any meaningful way, and that means a common enemy has a place [to operate]. You have to assume Al Qaeda will make the most of it." Before September 11, Al Qaeda had no network inside Pakistan and only limited contact with Pakistani militants. Now the group has close support on both sides of the border. Inside Afghanistan, Taliban field commanders depend on regular visits from their Qaeda paymasters. Guerrillas in eastern Ghazni province say the Arab money teams ride in from the direction of the Pakistan border astride motorcycles driven by Taliban fighters. The Qaeda men ask each local commander what weapons, money and technical assistance he needs—and then deliver the aid that is required. According to Zabibullah, a senior Taliban official who has been a reliable source in the past, Al Qaeda has more than 100 specialists, mostly Arabs, helping support Taliban forces in Afghanistan. Still, Al Qaeda took no chances with the English brothers' safety. They received much of their training behind mud-brick walls in the sprawling compounds that are typical of Pakistan's tribal areas. The idea was to keep the men hidden from U.S. and Pakistani reconnaissance planes. Farooqi says the recruits were taught a wide variety of subjects, from religious and ideological doctrine to the art of molding, assembling and detonating state-of-the-art Iraqi-style shaped-charge IEDs. They learned how to make and use suicide-bomb vests, how to rig car bombs, how to motivate other men to sacrifice their lives for the jihad and how to maintain communications with Al Qaeda on the Afghan-Pakistani frontier. They're not meant to be suicide bombers themselves, Farooqi says; they are far too valuable to waste. The recruits that M.I.5 was tracking also seemed bound for bigger things than cannon fodder. Some counterterrorism experts argue that Al Qaeda has become only a figurehead, with no real control over the local terrorist cells it has spawned around the world. The English brothers—and the Pakistan pipeline—are signs that the organization is still in action. Farooqi says he believes, based on overhead conversations, that Al Qaeda is planning for the very long term, a decade into the future. He says the terrorist group is talking about gradually fielding more than 1,000 operatives in Europe over the next 10 years. From what he has heard, only 10 percent of those jihadists are in place so far. Based on information from M.I.5, the British Home secretary, John Reid, recently warned that a terrorist attack in the United Kingdom could be highly likely during the holidays. The English brothers completed their Waziristan stay in October, Farooqi says, but before going home, they had one final assignment. Their Arab handlers separated them into several smaller groups and sent them into Afghanistan to see the jihad firsthand, embedded with Taliban units in Khowst and Paktia provinces. The unit commanders were warned to avoid putting them in any danger. After that, the brothers were supposed to return to Britain the same way they got to Pakistan. That means most of them could be getting home any day now—if they aren't there already.

Getting Serious About Iran: Military Options

By Arthur Herman/ Commentary Magazine: November 2006 As the impasse over Iran’s nuclear-weapons program grows inexorably into a crisis, a kind of consensus has taken root in the minds of America’s foreign-policy elite. This is that military action against Iran is a sure formula for disaster. The essence of the position was expressed in a cover story in Time magazine this past September. Entitled “What War with Iran Would Look Like (And How to Avoid It),” the essay focused on what the editors saw as the certain consequences of armed American intervention in that country: wildly spiking oil prices, increased terrorist attacks, economic panic around the world, and the end to any dream of pro-American democratic governments emerging in the Middle East. And that would be in the case of successful action. In fact, Time predicted, given our overstretched resources and an indubitably fierce Iranian resistance, we would almost certainly lose.Thus, in the eyes of Time’s experts as of many other observers, military action against Iran is “unthinkable.” What then can be done in the face of the mullahs’ implacable drive to acquire nuclear weapons? Here a variety of responses can be discerned. At one end are those who assure us, in the soothing title of a New York Times op-ed by Barry Posen of MIT, that “We Can Live with a Nuclear Iran.” (Newsweek’s Fareed Zakaria is similarly sanguine.) Others, like Senator Joseph Biden, insist that we have at least ten years before we have to worry about Iran’s getting a working bomb. According to Ashton Carter, who served as an assistant secretary of defense in the Clinton administration, we at least have enough time to explore every possible diplomatic avenue before contemplating any direct military response. Taking a more openly appeasing line, critics of the Bush administration like Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations and Chatham House’s Ali Ansari urge us to enter into extended engagement or “dialogue” with Iran, with an eye toward persuading the mullahs to end or at least to modify their nuclear program. This is essentially the tack that has been followed by European and European Union diplomats for the past three years, with notably little success. Finally there is the tougher solution preferred by the Bush administration: economic sanctions imposed by the UN. The problem here is that the more effective such sanctions are designed to be—proposed measures include freezing Iranian assets abroad and suspending all business and financial ties—the more reluctant have been France, Russia, and China (our partners on the Security Council) to go along. Sanctions that do pass muster with these governments, whose aggregate business dealings with Iran far outstrip those of the United States, are precisely the ones with little or no bite. And even watered-down sanctions, as U.S. Ambassador John Bolton admitted in a recent interview, are “by no means a done deal.” To a greater or lesser extent, all of these recommendations fly in the face of reality. Despite Iran’s richly developed repertoire of denials, deceptions, and dissimulations, there is ample evidence that it has no intention whatsoever of relinquishing its aim of becoming a nuclear power. Moreover, this aim may be achievable not within a decade (as Senator Biden fancies) but within the next two to three years. In September, the House Intelligence Committee reported that Iran may have already succeeded in enriching uranium; some intelligence analysts believe that it may already have access to fissionable nuclear material, courtesy of North Korea. If that is so, no diplomacy in the world is going to prevent it from acquiring a bomb. But neither are nuclear weapons the only threat posed by the Islamic Republic. While the international community has been preoccupied with this issue, the regime in Tehran has been taking steady steps to achieve hegemony over one of the world’s most sensitive and economically critical regions, and control over the world’s most precious resource. It is doing so, moreover, entirely through conventional means. To put it briefly, the Islamic Republic has its hand on the throttle of the world’s economic engine: the stretch of ocean at the mouth of the Persian Gulf known as the Straits of Hormuz, which are only 21 miles wide at their narrowest point. Through this waterway, every day, pass roughly 40 percent of the world’s crude oil, including two-thirds of the oil from Saudi Arabia. By 2025, according to Energy Department estimates, fully 60 percent of the world’s oil exports will be moved through this vital chokepoint. The Straits border on Iran and Oman, with the two lanes of traffic that are used specifically by oil tankers being theoretically protected by international agreement. Since 9/11, a multinational force comprising ships from the U.S., Japan, six European countries, and Pakistan have patrolled outside the Straits, in Omani waters, to make sure they stay open. But this is largely a token force. Meanwhile, the world’s access to Saudi, Qatari, Kuwaiti, and Iraqi oil and gas, as well as other petroleum products from the United Arab Emirates, depends on free passage through the Hormuz Straits. The Tehran regime has made no secret of its desire to gain control of the Straits as part of its larger strategy of turning the Gulf into an Iranian lake. Indeed, in a preemptive move, it has begun to threaten a cut-off of tanker traffic if the UN should be foolish enough to impose sanctions in connection with the Islamic Republic’s nuclear program. “We have the power to halt oil supply,” a senior Iranian official warned the European Union last January, “down to the last drop.” In April of this year, as if to drive the point home, Iranian armed forces staged elaborate war games in the Gulf, test-firing a series of new anti-ship missiles capable of devastating any tanker or unwary warship. In the boast of one Iranian admiral, April’s “Holy Prophet war games” showed what could be expected by anyone daring to violate Iran’s interests in the Gulf. A further demonstration of resolve occurred in August, when Iran fired on and then occupied a Rumanian-owned oil platform ostensibly in a dispute over ownership rights; in truth, the action was intended to show Western companies—including Halliburton, which had won a contract for constructing facilities in the Gulf—exactly which power is in charge there. A 30-page document said to issue from the Strategic Studies Center of the Iranian Navy (NDAJA), and drawn up in September or October of last year, features a contingency plan for closing the Hormuz Straits through a combination of anti-ship missiles, coastal artillery, and submarine attacks. The plan calls for the use of Chinese-made mines, Chinese-built missile boats, and more than 1,000 explosive-packed suicide motor boats to decimate any U.S. invasion force before it can so much as enter the Gulf. Iran’s missile units, manned by the regime’s Revolutionary Guards, would be under instruction to take out more than 100 targets around the Gulf rim, including Saudi production and export centers. The authenticity of the NDAJA document has been vouched for by at least two defectors from Iranian intelligence. Of course, it may not be authentic at all. And military contingency plans are just that—contingency plans; the file cabinets of defense ministries around the world are full of them. Nor do all analysts agree that the Straits of Hormuz can be effectively mined in the first place. Nevertheless, even the threat of mines or suicide boats would likely be enough to induce Lloyds of London to suspend insurance of ships passing through the Straits, causing tanker traffic to cease, oil markets to rise precipitously, and Asian and European economies to reel. Something like this very nearly happened in 1987 during the Iran-Iraq war, when only direct U.S. intervention kept the Straits open and the world’s oil flowing. For the United States is hardly the only country with a stake in keeping the Gulf and Straits free of Iranian control. Every country in Western Europe and Asia, including those that complain most bitterly about American policy in the Middle East, depends on the steady maintenance of the global economic order that runs on Middle Eastern oil. But—and herein lies a fruitful irony—so does Iran itself. Almost 90 percent of the mullahs’ oil assets are located either in or near the Gulf. So is the nuclear reactor that Russia is building for Iran at Bushehr. Virtually every Iranian well or production platform depends on access to the Gulf if Iran’s oil is to reach buyers. Hence, the same Straits by means of which Iran intends to lever itself into a position of global power present the West with its own point of leverage to reduce Iran’s power—and to keep it reduced for at least as long as the country’s political institutions remain unprepared to enter the modern world. Which brings us back to the military option. That there is plentiful warrant for the exercise of this option—in Iran’s serial defiance of UN resolutions, in its declared genocidal intentions toward Israel, another member of the United Nations, and in the fact of its harboring, supporting, and training of international terrorists—could not be clearer. Unfortunately, though, current debate has become stuck on the issue of possible air strikes against Iran’s nuclear program, and whether such strikes can or cannot halt that program’s further development. Optimists argue they can; pessimists, including those highlighted in Time’s cover story, throw up a myriad of objections. The most common such objection is that the ayatollahs, having learned the lesson of 25 years ago when Israel took out Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor at Osirak, have dispersed the most vital elements of their uranium-enrichment project among perhaps 30 hardened and well-protected sites. According to Time’s military sources, air sorties would thus have to reach roughly 1,500 “aim points,” contending with sophisticated air-defense systems along the way. As against this, others, including the strategic analyst Edward Luttwak in Commentary (“Three Reasons Not to Bomb Iran—Yet,” May 2006), argue convincingly that it is hardly necessary to hit all or even the majority of Iran’s sites in order to set back its nuclear program by several years. But, as I have tried to show, the most immediate menace Iran poses is not nuclear but conventional in nature. How might it be dealt with militarily, and is it conceivable that both perils could be dealt with at once? What follows is one possible scenario for military action. The first step would be to make it clear that the United States will tolerate no action by any state that endangers the international flow of commerce in the Straits of Hormuz. Signaling our determination to back up this statement with force would be a deployment in the Gulf of Oman of minesweepers, a carrier strike group’s guided-missile destroyers, an Aegis-class cruiser, and anti-submarine assets, with the rest of the carrier group remaining in the Indian Ocean. The U.S. Navy could also deploy UAV’s (unmanned air vehicles) and submarines to keep watch above and below against any Iranian missile threat to our flotilla. Our next step would be to declare a halt to all shipments of Iranian oil while guaranteeing the safety of tankers carrying non-Iranian oil and the platforms of other Gulf states. We would then guarantee this guarantee by launching a comprehensive air campaign aimed at destroying Iran’s air-defense system, its air-force bases and communications systems, and finally its missile sites along the Gulf coast. At that point the attack could move to include Iran’s nuclear facilities—not only the “hard” sites but also infrastructure like bridges and tunnels in order to prevent the shifting of critical materials from one to site to another. Above all, the air attack would concentrate on Iran’s gasoline refineries. It is still insufficiently appreciated that Iran, a huge oil exporter, imports nearly 40 percent of its gasoline from foreign sources, including the Gulf states. With its refineries gone and its storage facilities destroyed, Iran’s cars, trucks, buses, planes, tanks, and other military hardware would run dry in a matter of weeks or even days. This alone would render impossible any major countermoves by the Iranian army. (For its part, the Iranian navy is aging and decrepit, and its biggest asset, three Russian-made Kilo-class submarines, should and could be destroyed before leaving port.) The scenario would not end here. With the systematic reduction of Iran’s capacity to respond, an amphibious force of Marines and special-operations forces could seize key Iranian oil assets in the Gulf, the most important of which is a series of 100 offshore wells and platforms built on Iran’s continental shelf. North and South Pars offshore fields, which represent the future of Iran’s oil and natural-gas industry, could also be seized, while Kargh Island at the far western edge of the Persian Gulf, whose terminus pumps the oil from Iran’s most mature and copiously producing fields (Ahwaz, Marun, and Gachsaran, among others), could be rendered virtually useless. By the time the campaign was over, the United States military would be in a position to control the flow of Iranian oil at the flick of a switch. An operational fantasy? Not in the least. The United States did all this once before, in the incident I have already alluded to. In 1986-88, as the Iran-Iraq war threatened to spill over into the Gulf and interrupt vital oil traffic, the United States Navy stepped in, organizing convoys and re-flagging ships to protect them against vengeful Iranian attacks. When the Iranians tried to seize the offensive, U.S. vessels sank one Iranian frigate, crippled another, and destroyed several patrol boats. Teams of SEALS also shelled and seized Iranian oil platforms. The entire operation, the largest naval engagement since World War II, not only secured the Gulf; it also compelled Iraq and Iran to wind down their almost decade-long war. Although we made mistakes, including most grievously the accidental shooting-down of a civilian Iranian airliner, killing everyone on board, the world economic order was saved—the most important international obligation the United States faced then and faces today. But the so-called “tanker war” did not go far enough. In the ensuing decades, the regime in Tehran has single-mindedly pursued its goal of achieving great-power status through the acquisition of nuclear weapons, control of the Persian Gulf, and the spread of its ideology of global jihad. Any effective counter-strategy today must therefore be predicated not only on seizing the state’s oil assets but on refusing to relinquish them unless and until there is credible evidence of regime change in Tehran or—what is all but inconceivable—a major change of direction by the reigning theocracy. In the meantime, and as punishment for its serial violations of UN resolutions and of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran’s oil resources would be impounded and revenues from their production would be placed in escrow. Obviously, no plan is foolproof. The tactical risks associated with a comprehensive war strategy of this sort are numerous. But they are outweighed by its key advantages. First, it would accomplish much more than air strikes alone on Iran’s elusive nuclear sites. Whereas such action might retard the uranium-enrichment program by some years, this one in effect would put Iran’s theocracy out of business by depriving it of the very weapon that the critics of air strikes most fear. It would do so, moreover, with minimal means. This would be a naval and air war, not a land campaign. Requiring no draw-down of U.S. forces in Iraq, it would involve one or two carrier strike groups, an airborne brigade, and a Marine brigade. Since the entire operation would take place offshore, there would be no need to engage the Iranian army. It and the Revolutionary Guards would be left stranded, out of action and out of gas. In fact, there is little Iran could do in the face of relentless military pressure at its most vulnerable point. Today, not only are key elements of the Iranian military in worse shape than in the 1980’s, but even the oil weapon is less formidable than imagined. Currently Iran exports an estimated 2.5 million barrels of oil a day. Yet according to a recent report in Forbes, quoting the oil-industry analyst Michael Lynch, new sources of oil around the world will have boosted total production by 2 million barrels a day in this year alone, and next year by three million barrels a day. In short, other producers (including Iranian platforms in American hands) can take up some if not all of the slack. The real loser would be Iran itself. Pumping crude oil is its only industry, making up 85 percent of its exports and providing 65 percent of the state budget. With its wells held hostage, the country’s economy could enter free fall. To be sure, none of these considerations is likely to impress those who object in principle to any decisive action against Iran’s mullahs. To some, the scenario I have proposed will seem just another instance of rampant American imperialism or “gunboat diplomacy.” To others, a war of this kind will surely appear calculated further to inflame anti-Americanism in the Middle East, arousing the fury of the dreaded “Arab street.” Still others will point with alarm to the predictably angry reaction of Iran’s two great patrons, Russia and China. And many will worry that decisive U.S. action will boomerang politically, by alienating Iran’s democrats and dissidents and thus jeopardizing the hoped-for eventuality of a pro-Western government emerging in Tehran. Let me address these concerns in turn. In the colonial era, gunboats were used to intimidate helpless peoples, not countries bent on intimidation themselves and actively underwriting global terrorism. Nor does America’s immediate self-interest, “imperial” or otherwise, enter the picture; it is Europeans and Asians, not Americans, who rely on Iranian oil and natural gas. By safeguarding that supply, and keeping the Hormuz Straits open to other shippers, we can prevent a world-wide crisis of the sort that might well be triggered by Tehran itself in the face of economic sanctions or air strikes against its nuclear sites. Predictably, those complaining the loudest about American “imperialism” would be its most direct beneficiaries. As for anti-Americanism in general, the specter of the Arab street has proved itself to be a chimera. If the forcible removal of an Arab dictator (Saddam Hussein) failed to produce the incendiary reaction predicted by many experts, war on a non-Arab regime is hardly likely to do so. To the contrary, it is by dragging out the crisis, and by appearing weak in the face of Tehran’s blustering and deception, that we help to consolidate the formation of a radical Shiite Crescent in the heart of the Middle East. By finally removing the head of the radical Islamic monster, the military campaign contemplated here would perform a service both for neighboring Sunni regimes and for moderate Shiites in search of political breathing room, even as groups like Hizballah in Lebanon and Moqtada al-Sadr’s militia in Iraq would begin to find themselves politically and militarily orphaned and incapable of concerted action. Then there are Moscow and Beijing. What these two regimes want out of Iran is a return on their investments there—and, in China’s case, oil. No doubt their first choice would be to have everything stay the way it is; but clearly their second choice is to prevent Iran itself from becoming the dominant player in the region. By ensuring a continuous flow of oil from the Gulf, and leaving untouched Russian and Chinese investments in the development of Iran’s Caspian Sea fields, an aggressive military strategy could actually work to those countries’ advantage. Would U.S. action permanently traumatize Iranian national pride and alienate its democrats for generations to come? This is the worry of analysts like Michael Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, who on these same grounds also opposes air strikes on Iran’s nuclear installations. If anything, however, the current American policy—namely, pursuing economic sanctions—would seem likelier to produce that long-term damaging effect than would a short, sharp war to neutralize and perhaps even to topple a hated regime.That the regime in Tehran is indeed hated, and also radically unstable, is a point on which both advocates and opponents of American action can agree. In this connection, it is important to bear in mind that Iran is rent by ethnic divisions and rivalries almost as fierce as those that divide Iraq or such former Soviet republics as Georgia and Russia itself. Almost half of Iran’s population is made up of Kurds, Baluchis, Azeris, Arabs, and Turkomans. Unlike the Persians, who are Shiites, most of these minorities are Sunni. Thus, Iran is a country ripe for constitutional overhaul, if not re-federation. Unless the current regime and its backers are willing to change course, decisive military action could open the way for an entirely new Iran. The key word is “decisive.” What has cost us prestige in the Middle East and around the world is not our 2003 invasion of Iraq but our lack of a clear record of success in its aftermath. Governments in and around the Persian Gulf region are waiting for someone to deal effectively and summarily with the Iranian menace. Saudis, Jordanians, Egyptians, and others—all feel the pinch of an encroaching power. The longer we wait, the harder it will be to stop the Iranian advance. In 1936, the French army could have halted Hitler’s reoccupation of the Rhineland with a single division of troops, but chose to do nothing. In 1938, Britain and France could have joined forces with the well-armed and highly motivated Czech army to administer a crushing defeat to the German Wehrmacht and probably topple Hitler in the bargain. Instead they handed him the Sudetenland, setting in motion the process that in 1939 led to the most destructive war in world history. Do we intend to dither until suicide bombers blow up a supertanker off the Omani coast, or a mushroom cloud appears over Tel Aviv, before we decide it is finally time to get serious about Iran?

Egypt cracks down on Muslim Brotherhood

Police Arrest No. 3 of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood, More Than 100 Others By MAGGIE MICHAEL The Associated Press CAIRO, Egypt - Police arrested the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood's chief strategist and at least 140 others Thursday in a crackdown after a protest by uniformed students raised fears the Islamist political group is creating a military wing. The Interior Ministry announced the arrests, accusing the Brotherhood of recruiting students at Al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt's foremost Islamic institute, and providing them with combat training, knives and chains.The Brotherhood confirmed the arrest of Mohammed Khayrat el-Shater, the group's main financier and third highest ranking member. It also said police had arrested 180 students and 13 other members including el-Shater's son-in-law.The detentions came four days after about 50 student members of the Brotherhood, clad in black, staged a militia-style demonstration outside Al-Azhar, spurring an official investigation into whether the group had established a military wing. The demonstrators wore masks resembling those of the military wing of the Palestinian Hamas organization. The Brotherhood denies it is setting up a military wing.The Interior Ministry said the detention of el-Shater and "140 leading members" had been ordered by the state security prosecutor's office."The arrests were carried out according to information received about the dangerous path adopted by students affiliated to the Brotherhood at Al-Azhar University by instigating riots on Sunday," the Interior Ministry said. The ministry accused the Brotherhood of exploiting the students and "pushing them to demonstrate outside the university in the main street in an attempt to create gross disorder and break the law."The dean of Al-Azhar, Ahmed al-Tayeb, was quoted by the pro-government newspaper Al-Gomhuria in its early Friday edition as saying that 16 students had been dismissed for "activities incompatible with the university's rules and traditions."Abdel Gelil el-Sharnoubi, editor of the Brotherhood's Web site, said hundreds of security forces stormed part of a university dormitory where the Brotherhood students were living and arrested everyone there."This round of arrests is a government reaction to a year of strong performance by the group in parliament, in advocating for reforms and in their opposition to the succession of power," el-Sharnoubi told The Associated Press.El-Shater, 55, the Brotherhood's second deputy, joined the Brotherhood in 1974 and has been imprisoned four times for a total of seven years on charges relating to his membership.Following the arrests, hundreds of Al-Azhar students, mostly sympathizers with the Brotherhood, held an angry demonstration inside the campus and called for the release of their colleagues.The Brotherhood has stressed that the students acted on their own without coordination with top leaders. The students issued a statement apologizing for the parade, saying it was "misinterpreted." "We just wanted to attract attention to our issues, but we made a mistake in our move," according to the statement posted on the group's Web site.The arrests also came five days after release of two key Brotherhood figures, Essam el-Erian and Mohammed Morsi. They were arrested six months ago in a wave of pro-reform demonstrations. The Brotherhood is outlawed in Egypt and hundreds of its members have been arrested in the past year.But the banned organization is also Egypt's largest political opposition group. The Brotherhood won 88 of parliament's 454 seats in elections a year ago, with its candidates running as independents.The group, founded in 1928, established a military wing during the 1948 Middle East war to fight against Jewish forces setting up the state of Israel.The militia also fought the British army, which stayed in Egypt until its withdrawal in 1956, and was accused of attempting to assassinate former President Gamal Abdel-Nasser.Egypt officially banned it in 1954 and has accused it of aiming to set up an Islamic government.The Brotherhood renounced violence in the 1970s and in recent months has been increasing its influence in powerful trade unions and challenging President Hosni Mubarak's administration in parliament.

Space Warfare takes center stage

By Bill Gertz THE WASHINGTON TIMES Published December 14, 2006 The United States will use military force in space to protect satellites and other space systems from attack by hostile states or terrorists, the Bush administration's senior arms-control official said yesterday. Robert Joseph, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, said in a speech outlining a new White House space policy that free access to space is a "vital" U.S. interest and that the Bush administration opposes new agreements that would limit U.S. space defenses. "To ensure free access to space ... we must continue to develop a full range of options to deter and defend against threats to our space infrastructure," Mr. Joseph said in a speech to the George C. Marshall Institute, a private think tank. The United States will "oppose others who wish to use their military capabilities to impede or deny our access to and use of space," he said. "We will seek the best capabilities to protect our space assets by active or passive means." "No nation, no non-state actor, should be under the illusion that the United States will tolerate a denial of our right to the use of space for peaceful purposes," he said. "We reserve the right to defend ourselves against hostile attacks and interference with our space assets," he said. U.S. officials said the comments are an indirect warning to China, which has fired a ground-based laser gun at a U.S. satellite that passed over its territory -- an event viewed as one sign of Beijing's efforts to develop space arms that can blind or destroy systems. Mr. Joseph said yesterday that a number of nations are developing weapons to "counter, attack and defeat U.S. space systems." He did not name the countries. Asked after the speech about the Chinese laser incident, he declined to comment. "In view of these growing threats, our space policy requires us to increase our ability to protect our critical space capabilities and to continue to protect our interests from being harmed through the hostile use of space," he said. The United States has become very reliant on the use of satellites for civilian communications as well as military command and control, with a large portion of government communications transiting space. The White House announced in October that President Bush authorized a new national space policy, the first since 1996, that states that the United States is committed to the peaceful use of space and rejects any nation's attempts to claim sovereignty over it. The policy also views any attempt to interfere with space systems as an infringement on the right of free passage in space, and describes space capabilities as "vital" to national interests. Mr. Joseph said yesterday that space should be regarded similarly to open seas where free navigation is a right. "If these rights are not respected, the United States has the same full range of options -- from diplomatic to military -- to protect its space assets as it has to protect its other critical assets," he said. "There is also a broad range of means, both passive and active, by which space assets may be protected or the effects of the loss of their services minimized," he said. Alternatives include non-space backup systems, satellites with onboard subcomponent replacement parts, satellite maneuvering systems to avoid threats, electronic and other system security, data encryption, and communications frequency shifts. Mr. Joseph said the United States needs to use space systems as part of a strategy to manage crises, deter conflict or "if deterrence fails, prevail in conflict." Both Russia and China have sought to introduce arms-control agreements at the United Nations designed to limit U.S. space weapons or defenses, and the Bush administration opposes the proposed agreements and talks. Mr. Joseph said the Outer Space Treaty has been a long-standing and effective tool to guide international cooperation in space. New international agreements are "unnecessary and counterproductive," he said. "We do not need to enter into new agreements; rather we should be seeking to gain universal adherence to existing agreements, including the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, and we should concentrate our efforts on real threats, such as those to the nuclear nonproliferation regime which, as a consequence of actions by Iran and North Korea, are under great strain," Mr. Joseph said.

Terrorist propaganda TV out of Syria..

The Iraqi insurgency has a satellite TV station, called al-Zawraa. Insurgent propaganda, 24/7, believed to be broadcast from Syria. www.fourthrail.com FALLUJAH, IRAQ: The information front in the Long War is perhaps the war's most vital. And it is one front where the West is perceived as losing. While Coalition forces and Middle Eastern allies face shadowy transnational terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda and its affiliates on the battlefields of Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere, the battle for hearts and minds is being fought on the Internet, print, cable and satellite television, and other forms of media. In Iraq, the al-Zawraa satellite television network is broadcasting insurgent propaganda 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.Al-Zawraa television was set up by Mishan al-Jabouri, a former member of the Iraqi parliament and leader of the Sunni Arab Front for Reconciliation and Liberation. Al-Jabouri fled to Syria after being charged with corruption for embezzling government funds and purportedly for supporting al-Qaeda. There is an ongoing controversy over the network's sponsorship. Is al-Zawraa supported by the Islamic Army in Iraq, a Baathist dominated insurgent group, or al-Qaeda in Iraq's Mujahideen Shura Council? The distinction may be meaningless, as the two organizations have worked together in the past to conduct terrorist attacks throughout the country against Iraqi and Coalition security forces. The Islamic Army in Iraq claims to be a nationalist group that only attacks military and police organizations, while al-Qaeda has no qualms about killing civilians while pursuing its violent jihad. Many senior Baathists have rolled into al-Qaeda in Iraq. Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri, an avowed Baathist and the most wanted man in Iraq after Saddam was captured, swore Bayat (an oath of allegiance) to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, al-Qaeda in Iraq's former commander.The broadcast source of the al-Zawraa network is said to be unknown, but the Egyptian owned Nielsat satellite network currently broadcasts the mujahideen propaganda on channel 106. Nielsat's coverage area includes the whole of the Middle East and Northern Africa. While spending time with the Military Transition Team at the Fallujah Government Center, I watched al-Zawraa with two soldiers from the Iraqi Army, sergeants Riad and Abul Zuhrih, and two Iraqi translators, 'Nick' and 'Wilson.' The interpreters (or terps) must use assumed names as they are under persistent death threats. Wilson, who is from Baghdad, has had three attempts on his life. They gave their view on the propaganda in the al-Zawraa broadcast, and the effects on the the Iraqi people.The soldiers and terps described the meaning of the images, music and voice overs. There were songs about the Iraqi “victims” of the “U.S. occupiers.” The violence in Iraq is squarely placed on the shoulders of the Americans. The images include destroyed mosques, dead women and children, women weeping of the death of their family, bloodstained floors, the destruction of U.S. humvees and armored vehicles, and insurgents firing mortars, RPGs, rockets and AK-47s. Juba, the mythical Iraqi sniper, was featured prominently (the Iraqi soldiers believe he is a composite of multiple snipers.) The “mujahideen” are portrayed as “freedom fighters,” and are seen going through “ boot camp training.” Attacks from across the country were shown, including in Abu Ghraib, Ramadi, Fallujah, Baiji, Baghdad and elsewhere. The soldiers are seasoned veterans from the 1st Iraqi Army Division, and have served throughout Iraq. Most of the footage was popular, rehashed videos widely distributed on the Internet and in jihadi forums. I recognized many of the videos.The soldiers were angry at the images before them. “They destroyed my country,” said Staff Sergeant Riad, “The muj are ruthless, brutal, but I'm not scared of them.”They believed the “channel exists because of weak Iraqi government” but “no-one can or will shut it down.” The soldiers and terps were certain of where the broadcast originated. “This starts from Syria, we want it shut down,” said Nick.Al-Zawraa has a strong anti-Shia message. The channel portrays “Sunnis fighting the occupation while Shiites do nothing.” Al-Zawra “promotes a civil war” between the Iraqi people, and “makes the Shia look like Iranian stooges, betrayers of the Iraqi people,” according to Sergeant Abul Zuhrih. Iranian backed Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the Mahdi Army, is a focus of attacks from al-Zawraa. “The station calls Sadr and [his] militia gangsters,” said Wilson. According both the interpreters, “the news scroll promotes the Islamic Army of Iraq.” The music is nationalist and Baathist in origin, with verses from the Koran, and does not contain traditional al-Qaeda or other jihadi music, messages or themes. When asked about the impact of al-Zawraa on the Iraqi people, Iraqi soldiers and interpreters agreed al-Zawraa dispenses “effective [anti-government] propaganda.” “Before the insurgency was mysterious to the Sunnis, now it has a real face,” said Nick.While the Iraqi soldiers and interpreters want al-Zawraa shut down, members of the U.S. intelligence community disagree. According to a military intelligence officer serving in Iraq, U.S. intelligence doesn't want to shut al-Zawraa down as it provides intelligence on the insurgents activities. When I asked senior American military and intelligence sources about shutting down pro-jihadi websites in the past, they expressed the same sentiment.This is major dilemma in the modern age of information warfare. On one hand, programs like al-Zawraa provide ready and effective propaganda and recruiting material for the insurgency and al-Qaeda, while demoralizing both Western and Middle Eastern allies. On the other, the intelligence gleaned from these operations is deemed too valuable to turn off the tap.

Holocaust Denial Conference in Teheran...

By NASSER KARIMI/TEHRAN, Iran (AP) - Iran hosted Holocaust deniers from around the world Monday at a conference examining whether the Nazi genocide took place, a meeting Israel's prime minister condemned as a "sick phenomenon."The 67 participants from 30 countries included former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and Holocaust skeptics who have been prosecuted in Europe for questioning whether 6 million Jews were killed by the Nazis or whether gas chambers were ever used."The number of victims at the Auschwitz concentration camp could be about 2,007," Australian Frederick Toben told the conference, according to a Farsi translation of his remarks. "The railroad to the camp did not have enough capacity to transfer large numbers of Jews," said Toben, who was jailed in 1999 in Germany for casting doubt on the Holocaust. The two-day conference was initiated by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in an apparent attempt to burnish his status as a tough opponent of Israel. The hard-line president has described the Holocaust as a "myth" and called for Israel to be wiped off the map. Earlier this year, his government backed an exhibition of anti-Israel cartoons in a show of defiance after Danish cartoons caricaturing Islam's Prophet Muhammad were published in Europe, raising an outcry among Muslims.Organizers and participants touted the conference as a scholarly gathering aimed at discussing the Holocaust away from Western taboos and the restrictions imposed on scholars in Europe. In Germany, Austria and France, it is illegal to deny aspects of the Holocaust.Duke, a former Louisiana state representative, praised Ahmadinejad for his "courage" in holding a conference "to offer free speech for the world's most repressed idea: Holocaust revisionism." "In Europe, you can freely question, ridicule and deny Jesus Christ. The same is true for the Prophet Muhammad, and nothing will happen to you," Duke said. "But offer a single question of the smallest part of the Holocaust and you face prison." Also among participants were two rabbis and four other members of the group Jews United Against Zionism, who were dressed in the traditional long black coats and black hats of ultra-Orthodox Jews. The group rejects the creation of Israel on the grounds that it violates Jewish law.Rabbi Ahron Kohen urged participants not to deny the Holocaust. "If we say that this crime did not happen, it is a humiliation and insult to the victims," he said, according to a translation of his remarks.But he added that Zionists have used the Holocaust to "give legitimacy to their illegitimate project," the creation of Israel.Another participant, Robert Faurisson, has been convicted five times in France for denying crimes against humanity - most recently last month, when he was fined for denying in an interview with Iranian TV that the Nazis meant to exterminate Jews.Faurisson, a retired university professor, has regularly caused outrage in France, claiming that no gas chambers were used in Nazi concentration camps. The gathering brought quick condemnation from Israel and Germany. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called on the world to protest, terming the conference "a sick phenomenon."German Parliament President Norbert Lammert protested the conference in a letter to Ahmadinejad, calling it anti-Semitic propaganda "under the pretext of scientific freedom."Israel's official Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, said the Tehran conference was "an effort to mainstream Holocaust denial" and "paint (an) extremist agenda with a scholarly brush."Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki dismissed the criticism as "predictable," telling delegates there was "no logical reason for opposing this conference.""If the official version of the Holocaust is thrown into doubt, then the identity and nature of Israel will be thrown into doubt," said Mottaki, whose ministry put together the conference. "And if, during this review, it is proved that the Holocaust was a historical reality, then what is the reason for the Muslim people of the region and the Palestinians having to pay the cost of the Nazis' crimes?"A statement from Ahmadinejad was expected to be read to delegates Tuesday.The conference fit in with Ahmadinejad's policy of seeking to cast Iran as an alternative power to the West - in politics, science and academics. His anti-Israeli and anti-U.S. stances have brought out crowds of supporters during visits to Asia and Africa in recent years, and he has used those themes to rally support at home.Ahmadinejad has said the Nazi genocide during World War II was a "myth" and "exaggerated." He has also repeatedly said Palestinians had to pay the price for European guilt over the Holocaust. The Tehran gathering coincided with an independently convened academic conference on the Holocaust in Berlin, where historians affirmed the accuracy of the Nazi genocide data and questioned the motives of those behind the Tehran forum.Wolfgang Benz, head of the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism at Berlin's Technical University, said people who deny the Holocaust "know perfectly well what happened.""They want to use what happened - through denying it - to effect something else, to articulate the crude old anti-Semitism against Israel," he said. "It's about politics ... not about scholarship."

Whose War Crimes?

Evidence from Lebanon about how terrorists use civilians. Monday, December 11, 2006 12:01 a.m. Wall Street Journal A few scenes from modern warfare: Mohammad Abd al-Hamid Srour moved missiles across southern Lebanon under cover of a white flag. Hussein Ali Mahmoud Suleiman used the porch of a private home to fire rockets. Maher Hassan Mahmoud Kourani dressed in civilian clothes, hid his Kalashnikov in a tote bag and stored anti-aircraft missiles in the back of a green unmarked Volvo. The three men, all members of Hezbollah, were captured by Israel during last summer's war.Now their videotaped interviews form part of a remarkable report by retired Lieutenant Colonel Reuven Erlich of Israel's Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center. Relying heavily on captured Hezbollah documents, onsite and aerial photography and other first-hand evidence, the report shows how the Shiite group put innocent civilians at risk by deliberately deploying its forces in cities, towns and often private homes. Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, has accused Israel's military of "indiscriminate warfare" and "a disturbing disregard for the lives of Lebanese civilians." Mr. Erlich demolishes that claim, and in the process shows the asymmetric strategy of Islamist radicals. The most persuasive evidence here is photographic, so we urge readers to access the report itself on the Web site of the American Jewish Congress (ajcongress.org). Hezbollah's headquarters in Aita al-Shaab, for instance, sits in the heart of the village. Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah's office and home are in a densely built neighborhood of Beirut. In the town of Qana--site of an Israeli bombing on July 30 that killed 28 and that Hezbollah's apologists were quick to label a "massacre"--an arms warehouse can be seen adjacent to a mosque. There are photographs of rockets in the back seats of cars, missile launchers adjacent to farm houses, storage bunkers hidden beneath homes. There is also a trove of before-and-after photography demonstrating the precision of most Israeli bombing.The report also shows how the use of civilian cover was explicitly part of Hezbollah's strategy. "[The organization's operatives] live in their houses, in their schools, in their churches, in their fields, in their farms and in their factories," said Mr. Nasrallah in a TV interview on May 27, several weeks before the war. "You can't destroy them in the same way you would destroy an army." Exactly what Mr. Nasrallah means is illustrated in the testimonials of the captured fighters. Asked why Hezbollah would risk the destruction of civilian areas by firing from them, Mr. Suleiman replied that while in theory private homes belonged to "the residents of the village . . . in essence they belong to Hezbollah."Perhaps that's true; if so, then Human Rights Watch has no grounds to accuse Israel of atrocities when Mr. Nasrallah has effectively declared everyone and everything in southern Lebanon to be his fief. Our sense, however, is that not all southern Lebanese were delighted to have their livelihoods appropriated for Hezbollah's political purposes, even if they were too intimidated to register a protest. Either way, it is Hezbollah, not Israel, that is guilty of war crimes here.Beyond the war in Lebanon, these images suggest how Islamists seek to use the restraint of Western powers against them. They shoot at our civilians from the safety of their own civilian enclaves that they know we are reluctant to attack. Then if by chance their civilians are killed, they call in CNN and al-Jazeera cameras and wait for the likes of Mr. Roth to denounce America or Israel for war crimes. None of this means the U.S. shouldn't continue to fight with discrimination and avoid civilian casualties. But it means our political leadership needs to speak as candidly as Israelis now are speaking about this enemy strategy, so the American people can understand and be steeled against this new civilian battleground.

Palestinian leader in Iran: "we will liberate Jerusalem"

Palestinians rally in favor of Hamas By AP AND JPOST STAFF Tens of thousands of Palestinians demonstrated on Friday afternoon in favor of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority government, and demanded that PA Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh remain in power even if a unity government were established. Earlier Friday, Haniyeh vowed that the Hamas government would never recognize Israel and would continue to fight for the liberation of Jerusalem. "The world's arrogance (US) and Zionists ... want us to recognize the usurpation of the Palestinian lands and stop jihad and resistance and accept the agreements reached with the Zionist enemies in the past," Haniyeh told thousands of Friday prayer worshippers at Teheran University. The United States is pressing the Hamas-led Palestinian government to recognize Israel, renounce violence and form a national unity government with Fatah in a bid to revive the peace process with Israel. "I'm insisting from this podium that these issues won't materialize. We will never recognize the usurper Zionist government and will continue our jihad-like movement until the liberation of Jerusalem," he said. Haniyeh arrived in the Iranian capital on Thursday for a four-day visit for talks with Iranian leaders including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who has called for Israel to be "wiped off the map." The PA prime minister is on his first tour abroad since his Hamas-led government took office in March. Haniyeh called Iran, a longtime ally of Hamas, the Palestinians' "strategic depth" because they were together in their fight against Israel. "They (Israelis) assume the Palestinian nation is alone. This is an illusion. ... We have a strategic depth in the Islamic Republic of Iran. This country (Iran) is our powerful, dynamic and stable depth," he said. Iran has provided the Hamas-led Palestinian government with US$120 million (€90.25 million) this year despite a US-led international financial boycott of the Palestinian government. The financial aid has boosted Iran's influence among Palestinians. Along with his meeting with Ahmadinejad, Haniyeh is scheduled to hold talks with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and former president Hashemi Rafsanjani during his visit.

Remember Pearl Harbor: 65 years ago..

Attack At Pearl Harbor, 1941 The surprise was complete. The attacking planes came in two waves; the first hit its target at 7:53 AM, the second at 8:55. By 9:55 it was all over. By 1:00 PM the carriers that launched the planes from 274 miles off the coast of Oahu were heading back to Japan. Behind them they left chaos, 2,403 dead, 188 destroyed planes and a crippled Pacific Fleet that included 8 damaged or destroyed battleships. In one stroke the Japanese action silenced the debate that had divided Americans ever since the German defeat of France left England alone in the fight against the Nazi terror. Approximately three hours later, Japanese planes began a day-long attack on American facilities in the Philippines. (Because the islands are located across the International Dateline, the local Philippine time was just after 5 AM on December 8.) Farther to the west, the Japanese struck at Hong Kong, Malaysia and Thailand in a coordinated attempt to use surprise in order inflict as much damage as quickly as possible to strategic targets. Although stunned by the attack at Pearl Harbor, the Pacific Fleet's aircraft carriers, submarines and, most importantly, its fuel oil storage facilities emerged unscathed. These assets formed the foundation for the American response that led to victory at the Battle of Midway the following June and ultimately to the total destruction of the Japanese Empire four years later. Aboard the USS Arizona The battleships moored along "Battleship Row" are the primary target of the attack's first wave. Ten minutes after the beginning of the attack a bomb crashes through the Arizona's two armored decks igniting its magazine. The explosion rips the ship's sides open like a tin can starting a fire that engulfs the entire ship. Within minutes she sinks to the bottom taking 1,300 lives with her. The sunken ship remains as a memorial to those who sacrificed their lives during the attack. Marine Corporal E.C. Nightingale was aboard the Arizona that fateful Sunday morning: "At approximately eight o'clock on the morning of December 7, 1941, I was leaving the breakfast table when the ship's siren for air defense sounded. Having no anti-aircraft battle station, I paid little attention to it. Suddenly I heard an explosion. I ran to the port door leading to the quarterdeck and saw a bomb strike a barge of some sort alongside the NEVADA, or in that vicinity. The marine color guard came in at this point saying we were being attacked. I could distinctly hear machine gun fire. I believe at this point our anti-aircraft battery opened up. "We stood around awaiting orders of some kind. General Quarters sounded and I started for my battle station in secondary aft. As I passed through casement nine I noted the gun was manned and being trained out. The men seemed extremely calm and collected. I reached the boat deck and our anti-aircraft guns were in full action, firing very rapidly. I was about three quarters of the way to the first platform on the mast when it seemed as though a bomb struck our quarterdeck. I could hear shrapnel or fragments whistling past me. As soon as I reached the first platform, I saw Second Lieutenant Simonson lying on his back with blood on his shirt front. I bent over him and taking him by the shoulders asked if there was anything I could do. He was dead, or so nearly so that speech was impossible. Seeing there was nothing I could do for the Lieutenant, I continued to my battle station. "When I arrived in secondary aft I reported to Major Shapley that Mr. Simonson had been hit and there was nothing to be done for him. There was a lot of talking going on and I shouted for silence which came immediately. I had only been there a short time when a terrible explosion caused the ship to shake violently. I looked at the boat deck and everything seemed aflame forward of the mainmast. I reported to the Major that the ship was aflame,which was rather needless, and after looking about, the Major ordered us to leave. "I was the last man to leave secondary aft because I looked around and there was no one left. I followed the Major down the port side of the tripod mast. The railings, as we ascended, were very hot and as we reached the boat deck I noted that it was torn up and burned. The bodies of the dead were thick, and badly burned men were heading for the quarterdeck, only to fall apparently dead or badly wounded. The Major and I went between No. 3 and No. 4 turret to the starboard side and found Lieutenant Commander Fuqua ordering the men over the side and assisting the wounded. He seemed exceptionally calm and the Major stopped and they talked for a moment. Charred bodies were everywhere. "I suddenly found myselfin the water." "I made my way to the quay and started to remove my shoes when I suddenly found myself in the water. I think the concussion of a bomb threw me in. I started swimming for the pipe line which was about one hundred and fifty feet away. I was about half way when my strength gave out entirely. My clothes and shocked condition sapped my strength, and I was about to go under when Major Shapley started to swim by, and seeing my distress, grasped my shirt and told me to hang to his shoulders while he swam in. "We were perhaps twenty-five feet from the pipe line when the Major's strength gave out and I saw he was floundering, so I loosened my grip on him and told him to make it alone. He stopped and grabbed me by the shirt and refused to let go. I would have drowned but for the Major. We finally reached the beach where a marine directed us to a bomb shelter, where I was given dry clothes and a place to rest."

"Baker-Hamilton" Iraqi Study Group Report...

From the wonderful Jeff Emanuel at Redstate.com: "We need to change course in Iraq". That statement is agreed to virtually across the board; however, opinions about just what the new direction needs to be – and what steps must be taken to implement it and to succeed – are extremely diverse. One blue ribbon, bipartisan governmental panel is about to make its own recommendations. The Iraq Study Group, co-chaired by former Secretary of State James Baker and former Democratic Congressman (and 9/11 Commission vice chair) Lee Hamilton, and including Secretary of Defense nominee Robert Gates and former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor among others, was appointed by Congress in March of this year, and has been working since then to come up with policy suggestions for dealing with America’s current situation in the middle east.However, what was ostensibly endorsed by the administration in hopes that a bipartisan endorsement of existing policy could be achieved has instead returned the exact opposite. As one panel member told the Los Angeles Times, “It's not going to be 'stay the course. The bottom line is, [current U.S. policy] isn't working. ...There's got to be another way.” With violence by Islamic extremists on the rise in Iraq, many in Congress — as well in the administration — have become more receptive to alternative suggestions, such as those offered by the highly anticipated commission report, which is expected to be presented early next week.In their investigation, the Baker-Hamilton commission consulted with the President and other administration officials, with hundreds of foreign policy and Middle Eastern affairs experts, as well as with representatives of Iran and Syria. Its members also spent several days in Iraq earlier this year. The reality on the ground in Iraq dictates that a new direction be taken. However, early reports of the Baker-Hamilton commission’s recommendations are not encouraging.The commission reportedly focused on three key courses of action going forward in Iraq, with two seriously being considered as viable.The first proposal, entitled “Stability First,” called for continuing to try to stabilize Baghdad, both through increased security and by encouraging violent extremists to enter the political arena as a means of stemming the increasing tide of bloodshed. The plan also calls for working with the neighboring countries of Iran and Syria to end the fighting.The second, “Redeploy and Contain” - the recommendation most likely to be implemented - includes the negotiation and engagement proposals from the "Stability" plan, while also calling for a phased withdrawal of American troops to bases outside Iraq, from which they would ostensibly be able to deploy once again into the region in the event of reescalating violence or emerging terrorist threat. This recommendation has apparently been decided upon by the commission, complete with a supposedly untimed withdrawal plan for 15 US combat brigades.The third option, called “Stay the Course, Redefine the Mission,” was proposed as an alternative to a quick U.S. withdrawal, but, according to reports, the panel appeared to be uninterested in those plans (unsurprisingly). Though undoubtedly ascertained in good faith, the commision's recommendations are dangerously unworkable. The idea of engaging violent extremists by offering a voice in government is one which can only be taken seriously by people who do not understand in the least that there are some people – not defined by demographic, race, or religion, but by their own individual nature – who are not able to be tamed by civilized discourse, or by constructive appeal to their rational side. For those who are indiscriminately slaughtering men, women and children, who are abducting, torturing – and the latest sick fad has been to do so with power drills (links here, here, here, and here. Warning: Extremely disturbing) – and beheading innocent, peaceful civilians, for those who have it in them to douse worshipers at a mosque with kerosene and set them aflame, there is no rational side, no innate civility, to be appealed to. For these people, the only bargaining chip is strength, and the only tool in the tool chest overwhelming violence. The offer of a part in any political process will be wasted at best on those we are fighting.The suggestion to bring Iran and Syria into the Iraq conflict via invitation – an idea supported by Secretary of Defense nominee Gates – is similarly dangerous. “Neither the Syrians nor the Iranians want a chaotic Iraq,” Baker said recently, “so maybe there is some potential for getting something other than opposition from those countries." The perception that both nations have a vested interest in the region is entirely accurate. However, the Iraq which they have an interest in seeing – and which they have been working toward through their increasing funding and arming of the violent insurgency – would be a nation diametrically opposed to anything in the interest of the West. Iranian leaders are very willing to assist us in exiting the region – and are chomping at the bit to become more publicly involved – but are interested in doing so in a way that would enhance Iran's regional power, rather than increase the sovereignty of the newly free Iraq. Moshen Rezai, secretary of the Iranian government’s Expediency Council, said, “The kind of service that the Americans…have done us, no superpower has ever done anything similar. America destroyed all our enemies in the region. It destroyed the Taliban. It destroyed Saddam Hussein. ...But the American teeth got so stuck in the soil of Iraq and Afghanistan that if they manage to drag themselves back to Washington in one piece, they should thank Allah.” Reaching out to Iran and Syria would mean significant changes in America’s current foreign policy, as well. "To bring them in, we need to stop emphasizing things like democracy and start emphasizing things like stability and territorial integrity," said James Dobbins, a former U.S. envoy to Afghanistan and a contributor to the commission. “We need to stop talking about regime change. It's unreasonable to think you can stabilize Iraq and destabilize Iran and Syria at the same time.”The requisite abandonment of our current policy of regime change and promotion of democracy in both Iran and Syria would make this an enormous reversal of direction, but would be a necessary one if we decided to request help from Syria and Iran as allies to our Iraq effort. Following this potential suggestion would be folly. It is beyond unreasonable to think that Iran and Syria, two countries who have done all they can to work against us and our allies – particularly Israel – both in the region and in the United Nations, will want anything close to what we are seeking in the Middle East. The idea that a regime which has repeatedly called for the utter annihilation of Israel and of the United States, and which has been funding and supplying arms to insurgents and sectarians since the immediate aftermath of major combat operations, would want to work for an end which is positive to us is laughable at best, and is deadly at worst. Similarly, Syria has been providing training to bloodthirsty cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, which has been responsible for a great deal of the upheaval and violence in Iraq; the idea of a convergence between our interests in Iraq, and Syria's, is dismally unrealistic. Naturally, former President Jimmy Carter thinks direct U.S. talks with Iran and Syria over Iraq are a peachy idea. "This is one of the most counterproductive policies that I've ever known, not to talk to the people who disagree with you unless they agree in advance to everything you demand," he said in a Monday appearance on Good Morning America. With regard to the suggestion of engaging the insurgents and sectarians in the political process, it is just not realistic to expect that those who choose to brutally kill their countrymen will simply drop their weapons, purge the bloodthirstiness from their hearts, and join civilized society if offered a voice in government. After meeting with the ISG, President Bush said that he was "not going to prejudge" the panel's recommendations, which are expected next month. However, he did warn against a sudden, major shift in strategy."I believe that it's important for us to succeed in Iraq, not only for our security but for the security of the Middle East," he said, adding, "I'm looking forward to interesting ideas." A new direction in Iraq is needed; that is not in question. However, the Iraq Study Group appears poised to offer recommendations which are no more palatable – or workable – than the status quo itself. Appointed by Congress and endorsed by the administration or not, a panel which recommends a course of action which is tantamount not only to surrender in the region, but to foreign policy suicide, clearly hasn’t done sufficient homework to have its suggestions adopted into policy. Unfortunately, the nomination of former commission member Robert Gates as Donald Rumsfeld's successor to the SecDef position strongly suggests that the panel's recommendations, workable (or sensible) or not, will be adopted - or, at the very least, will have a proponent very high up in the administration. Part of the problem with the commission - besides the fact that they have appeared to be falling all over themselves to reach a consensus that Iraq cannot be won, regardless of policy - is the lack of military representation among its members. In response to that, General Peter Pace, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, has put together his own panel of military leaders, and has resolved to work toward policy and action recommendations which do include a definition of - and an option for - victory. “Winning is having security in the countries we're trying to help that allows for those governments to function and for their people to function,” said Pace. He continued:I think we have to maintain our focus on what objectives we want for the United States, and then we need to give ourselves a good, honest scrub about what is working and what is not working, what are the impediments to progress, and what should we change about the way we're doing it to ensure that we get to the objective that we've set for ourselves.Sensible - and a definition of the mission's goal which has been sorely lacking of late. President Bush has reportedly said that he will decide within weeks, rather than months, on Iraq policy going forward. The rest of us can only hope that he will consider the practicality - and the advisability - of the Iraq Study Group's proposals, consult his military leaders, and then make a sound decision.

Analysis: Iran's growing array of missiles

By JOSHUA BRILLIANT UPI Correspondent TEL AVIV, Israel, Nov. 30 (UPI) -- With missiles that can reach every corner of the Middle East and survive preemptive strikes, Iran is already "the major missile power of the region, at least in theory," said a former head of Israel's missile defense program. "No other country in the world ... comes close to Iran in the number and variety of ballistic missiles in development or already deployed," Uzi Rubin wrote in a study published by the Institute for National Security Studies. And yet, some of those missiles' effectiveness is questionable, he noted. Rubin based his study on published materials but his background -- from 1991 to 1999 he was the Arrow anti-ballistic missile program manager -- enables him to better analyze those reports. He wrote that most of the missiles designed to control the sea, land, and air near Iran show Chinese and Russian pedigree. The Raad, apparently an advanced version of the Chinese Silkworm, is a shore based anti-ship missile whose range should be sufficient to bloc the Persian Gulf at its widest point. The Zelzal, which originally hails from China, is intended to hit hostile troops concentrated some 125 miles away. Other programs are externally similar to the old Soviet Strela, and anti-tank missiles. During naval exercises, in April 2006, Iran unveiled a rocket propelled underwater projectile and a flying boat. However, "A cursory examination of the video images revealed them to be 1960s vintage Soviet technologies" that Russian companies are marketing, "Apparently with no great success." Iran's Shahab family of ballistic missiles shares the heritage, propulsion technology and general layout of the Soviet R11 missiles of the 1950s, also known as the Scuds. Gradually it has been increasing its missiles' ranges and they are, "an indispensable complement to its nuclear ambitions," according to Rubin. Iran bought Scud B and Scud C missiles with their launchers and production lines, dubbed them Shahab 1 and 2, and manufactured them "in considerable quantities," Rubin noted. That program was initially designed to counter the Iraqi threat. Eventually Iran amended its threat perception. It sought to dissuade Saudi Arabia from hosting U.S. forces, and -- if the U.S. attacked -- planned to strike at Israel. Hence the Shahab 3. It is, "a very close relative, if not a full fledged clone of the North Korean mysterious No Dong," wrote Rubin. In 2004, Iran tested an extended version of the Shahab 3. It is a longer missile, its internal design seems to have been significantly modified, and it "carries the telltale signs of Soviet-style missile engineering." After that test the Iranians said their missiles have a range of about 1,250 miles. With them, "Every major city and military installation between the western shores of Turkey and the eastern border of Pakistan and between the Black Sea in the north and the southern narrows of the Red Sea are within range," Rubin noted. Moreover, it can hit any point in the Middle East from fixed sites deep inside Iran. It can deploy the missiles from well-protected silos "survivable against preemption." Only 10 Shahab 3 flight tests were conducted between July 1998, when it was first tried, and May 2006. "This is a remarkably low number for what is surely a strategic weapon for Iran." About half those tests ended in total or partial failure, Rubin said. By Western standards the Shahab 3 would not yet be considered operational. It would not be mass-produced. However, Iranians seem to think that if the design works once or twice, they are ready to take the chance that it will work in the battlefield too. "There should be no doubt that in case of conflict, Iran will launch Shahab 3 missiles regardless of their flight test record, and that some of them will reach their destinations," Rubin stressed. Last year Iran's then-Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani elaborately extolled solid propellant rocketry and alluded to a twin-engine missile; Rubin inferred that Iran is engaged in developing a multi-stage strategic range ballistic missile. He told United Press International he believes Iran's intelligence was behind the theft of KH55 (Kent) cruise missiles in the Ukraine. The plane that flew them out belonged to a company whose address was a Tehran mailbox. "The theft ... will serve for the development of an indigenous version of a strategic cruise missile," he maintained. According to Israeli intelligence, and a German account, a BM 25 missile, with a range of roughly 1,500 to 2,200 miles, was transferred from North Korea to Iran. But the Iranians do not need such a missile to hit targets in the Middle East. The Shahab 3's range is sufficient for that. It should, however, concern the Europeans since it could reach central Europe. Iran is also developing satellites. Its achievements have been "relatively meager," according to Rubin, but its statements and disclosures about that program suggest it is picking up speed. "Any suitably modified SLV (Space Launch Vehicle) can serve as an ICBM (Inter-Continental Ballistic Missile), Rubin noted. All indications are that Iran's missile and space programs "have suffered from deficiencies in leadership and resources ... The disparate programs are making headway, but in a somewhat chaotic manner," he wrote. Nevertheless, Iran's missile and space programs "are no paper tigers." At the rate they are going, "Iranian missiles will dominate the entire continent of Europe by the end of this decade. Once they perfect their workhorse SLV, their reach will become truly global," Rubin added.