My friends in the U.S., you should be very proud to have this man:

Former President Jimmy Carter accused the
U.S., Israel and the European Union on Tuesday of seeking to divide the
Palestinian people by reopening aid to President Mahmoud Abbas’ new
government in the West Bank while denying the same to the
Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.

Cont. reading: Jimmy Carter – Telling The Truth

There is a new detailed analysis out on the "War and Operation in Iraq" written by the Global Policy Forum and some thirty non-governmental-organizations. It is impeccable sourced on mainstream news accounts and official reports.

The currently ongoing "pacification" of Baqubah, a city with 300,000 inhabitants, by some 10,000 U.S.
troops is using the same methods as documented in the NGO report with regard to Fallujah and a dozen other Iraqi cities. From the executive summary (pdf):

US Coalition forces have attacked and destroyed a number of important Iraqi cities, on grounds that they were “insurgent strongholds.” The attacks have resulted in the massive displacement of people, large civilian casualties, and colossal destruction of the urban physical infrastructure. In addition to Falluja, there have been assaults on a dozen other cities including al-Qaim, Tal Afar, Samarra, Haditha, and Ramadi. The attacks include intensive air and ground bombardment and cutting-off electricity, water, food and medicines. The attacks have left hundreds of thousands of people homeless and in displacement camps.

This tactic is "urbicide." The destruction of the urban fabric of a city as a cultural and social entity. The deeper intend of urbicide is to split the population into fractions. The original definition, first used in relation to Bosnia:

Cont. reading: Urbicide in Baqubah

Go listen to Digby and come back here to give and take news & views.

This evening I found some time to reread Seymour Hersh latest piece. A report on his interviews with General Taguba who investigated parts of the torture going on at Abu Ghraib.

The article recieved a small echo in the blogsphere but the general media seems to be uninterested.

At TPM Spencer Ackerman asks about Separate Interrogation Rules For Special Forces?. Of course there are special rules allowing special forces to torture out of sight of congress and any law. That’s old news.

Emptywheel detects Rummy’s Plausible Deniability as he never acknowledged to have seen the Taguba report or any picture in it. Steve Clemons is demanding a new Congress hearing of Rumsfeld.

But the Hersh’s piece on Taguba has more than the obvious culpability of Rumsfeld.

Could you tell us what happened?” Wolfowitz asked. Someone else asked, “Is it abuse or torture?” At that point, Taguba recalled, “I described a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum, and said, ‘That’s not abuse. That’s torture.’ There was quiet.”
…

Taguba explains, though not up to jury standards yet, how the complete chain of command, from the privates doing what they have been told to do, up to the president, did know what was happening.

There were not a few bad apples at the bottom plus one bad apple at the top. There was a whole basket of bad apples inbetween that did know and covered up what happened. I’d suggest to ask these people within the chain of command. The lower generals, the colonels, majors, captains and master sergeants. What did they order? What did they know? What does the CID, the military’s criminal investigation division, has at its hand? What does it hide? Some hints from Hersh:

I learned from Taguba that the first wave of materials included descriptions of the sexual humiliation of a father with his son, who were both detainees. Several of these images, including one of an Iraqi woman detainee baring her breasts, have since surfaced; others have not. (Taguba’s report noted that photographs and videos were being held by the C.I.D. because of ongoing criminal investigations and their “extremely sensitive nature.”) Taguba said that he saw “a video of a male American soldier in uniform sodomizing a female detainee.” The video was not made public in any of the subsequent court proceedings, nor has there been any public government mention of it.

The torture and crimes that happened have not been made public. They have not been independently investigated. The criminals who did this have not been prosecuted. Are some of them in your town? Your neighborhood? Would you like to know?

And the victims? Do they have help to cope? Did they see some satisfaction? Did they receive any care?

The job is interesting, well-paid and comes with lots of responsibility. Downsides are the location and the high probability of a sudden lay-off.

A new police chief would replace Maj. Gen. Mohammed Hamadi al-Moussawi on Monday, a Basra police officer said on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.
Iraq: Basra Police Chief Replaced, June 18, 2007

More than 1,000 British troops backed up by tanks carried out a dawn raid on Friday to seize an Iraqi police chief accused of leading a death squad that slaughtered 17 police trainers.
British troops seize Iraqi police chief in Basra, Dec. 22, 2006

The governor of the southern Iraqi province of Basra has suspended the city’s police chief, accusing him of links to groups involved in terrorism.
Basra security chiefs accused of terrorism, May 14, 2006

DEFENCE Secretary John Reid is planning to scrap the 25,000-strong police force in southern Iraq and replace it with a new military-style unit capable of maintaining law and order.
Scrap Basra police and start again orders MoD, Sep 25, 2005

When evaluating the health of a company, the turnover rate in management positions is indicative. Basra is sick, very sick.

It is gangland. There is a lot of money made through oil smuggling, regional interests competing with national interests, Fadhilla against al-Sadr party fights and various feuding tribes. Inbetween a few Brits who have no idea what’s going on around them.

A lot of blood will be lost before some normality may return there.

Israel wants to talk peace

History professor Andrew J. Bacevich questions why every major politician wants to add some 100,000 troops and increase defense spending. "What is the use?" he asks.

At the Agonist Ian Welsh has a related question. How does the most expensive military in the world manages to lose two small wars against rag-tag insurgencies?

There are two answers to this.

The first by McDonalds’ Boeing’s CEO talking about the danger of diets imminent threats:

US
defence spending needs to be kept at record levels to cope with the
threat of global terrorism and the emergence of China as a military
rival, the head of Boeing’s defence business has warned.

More sales like this one would certainly help his personal retirement plan.

The second answer comes via an Agonist commentator:

The US military has 1,426,713 active service personal [and 165 golf courses] giving a golf course ratio of: 8647 soldiers to protect each golf course
…

The city of Philadelphia has a much better protection rate with a ratio of 243,880 citizens per golf course.

As the commentator further explains, there are only 34 active duty field bands, some 20 reserve field bands and 52 National Guard bands. Not nearly enough to have one band play at each military golf course to deter the enemy.

In an emergency Air Force and Navy bands could probably help out a bit, thanks to Boeing, but still only some 85% of the battle space could be covered with sufficient musical deterrence. Even Philadelphia is much better off with bands than that.

The current resources are certainly not enough to deter China from playing a serious tee shot.

Therefore in my judgement, Clinton, Obama, Edwards as well as every Republican candidate are certainly right to see a need of an immediate rise in U.S. military capacities.

The internal Palestinian struggle between the Hamas, the elected government party, and the U.S. supported gangs of Mohammed Dahlan was won by Hamas. Hamas now controls the Gaza strip with 1.5 million inhabitants. Dahlan’s mercenary fighters were simply not motivated to risk anything for the few dollars they were offered. Their leaders fled.

The corrupt Fatah of Mahmoud Abbas, which lost the 2006 election, used the opportunity to throw out the legal Hamas led unity government and installed a "technocrat" government under the new Prime Minister and western darling Salam Fayyad.  Fayyad is a U.S. educated former World Bank and IMF functionary. In the 2006 election he led the Third Way party and won 2.4% of the votes. That is certainly a mark of his popularity level with the Palestinian people.

Now the "West", i.e. the U.S., Israel and the EU are promissing to prop up the Pétain like Abbas and his administration in the West Bank. At the same time Israel blocks all shipment from and to the Gaza strip except some water, food and energy.

The western press frames the West Bank as Fatah territory and the Gaza strip as Hamas territory. This obfuscates the fact that Hamas had won the election in all metropolitan centers in Gaza and in the West Bank. There certainly is majority support for Hamas in the West Bank too. Most of Hamas voters were secular. Hamas will therefore abstain from implementing any non-secular measures. Unlike written in the portraits in the major western press, Hamas is a political movement, not a religious one.

Giving "aid" to the West Bank and Abbas while further isolating Gaza is now supposed to "teach" the Palestinians that subjecting to the western will can result in something "positive", while objecting to it is punished by life in an isolated Ghetto. The "West" seems to think that after having received and resisted such lessons for 60 years, the Palestinians will have to "understand" it this time.

The U.S. and the EU are urging Israel to give additional support to Abbas by removing some of the 240 road blocks in the West Bank and by releasing withheld tax money owned by the Palestinians. Having watched Israeli politics for a while, I doubt that any of this will happen in more than symbolic doses.

Instead the pressure on Gaza will intensify even more with water and energy deliveries to be stopped every once a while at will and for trumped up doubtable reasons. Pressure on the Palestinians in the West Bank may get lifted a tiny, tiny bit, only to be reapplied as soon as another pretext can be found.

If this was not understood before, it is now more than evident that Abbas is just a puppet controlled by the "West" and working against the interest of his people. He will fail to gain anything relevant to them. The Palestinians are certainly not dumb. They can see everyday that Abbas does not deliver for them. Even if he now will get some money, his Fatah government will only return to its usual incompetence and corruption and little will reach the people.

The "West" seems top believe the Palestinians are dumb. They are not. Within a month or a year the Abbas government will fall.

If by then Hamas still exists, it will replace him. If Hamas, through Israeli "targeted killings", is headless by then, new upcoming salafist Islamic movements will take over and the West Bank and Gaza will turn into an anarchic hell. This would give a pretext for Israel to further colonize and ethically clense the West Bank and reoccupy Gaza.

This is in the Israeli interest. Israel will continue to suppress the Palestinians. It will take more land. It will not negotiate for any peace treaty or lift of the occupation. It will talk nice about looking for a "serious partner for peace" while bribing or killing any likely partner that may come up.

Israel has no reason to change this policy. It has worked remarkably well for 40 years and is very profitable. As long as there is no outer pressure on Israel to change its "national interest", a serious economic boycott or the like, there will be no change in that policy.

If the continued pressure will radicalize the Palestinian people, what measures to change the Israeli interest, directly or indirectly, might they take?

So who is behind the resistance in Iraq and Afghanistan?

"Iran" would the neocons say, because that’s the next item on their target list. But these little chimps are thinking too small.

Anyone can bomb Tehran, real men bomb Bejing!

Bill Gertz is a real man. He writes in the MoonieTimes:

New intelligence reveals China is covertly supplying large quantities of small arms and weapons to insurgents in Iraq and the Taliban militia in Afghanistan, through Iran.
…

Cont. reading: Gertz: Bomb Tehran, Bejing, Washington!

Please comment …  news & views

M.J. Rosenberg, a Jewish liberal writer, has a decent piece at TPM Café. He is one of few in the U.S. who rightly tracks the creation of Hamas back to rightwing Israeli powers:

It was in 1978 when the government of then-Prime Minister Menachem Begin indirectly assisted the start-up of a "humanitarian" organization known as the Islamic Association, or Mujama. The roots of this Islamist group were in the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood, of which Hamas is an offshoot, and it soon was flush with funding and political support. The right-wing strategists devised the theory of creating Hamas as an alternative to Fatah because they believed that Muslim Brotherhood types would devote themselves to charity and religious study and passively accept the occupation. They certainly would never put Israel on the spot by offering to negotiate.

…

Cont. reading: Talks With Hamas

Libby has to go to jail for some 30 month soon. Unless he manages an unlikely immediate stay or appeal, he will have to frogmarch.

FDL live blogged the Libby sentencing. There is one issue in the liveblogging not mentioned in emptywheel’s immediate analysis.

Cont. reading: Strange Libby Argument

The Guardian has unearthed an important document. It writes:

The highest ranking UN official in Israel has warned that American pressure has "pummelled into submission" the UN’s role as an impartial Middle East negotiator in a damning confidential report.

The 53-page "End of Mission Report" by Alvaro de Soto, the UN’s Middle East envoy, obtained by the Guardian, presents a devastating account of failed diplomacy and condemns the sweeping boycott of the Palestinian government. It is dated May 5 this year, just before Mr de Soto stepped down.

The details in the confidential report (pdf) are quite eye opening. As it is a long read, I have excerpted what I found the most remarkable passages. (The pdf contains just scans so I had to retype the excerpts. Any errors are thereby mine. The paragraphs are numbered within the original.)

On Gaza disengagement:

[21] .. Since, as I recall, the test of occupation in international law is effective control of the population, few international lawyers contest the assessment that Gaza remains occupied, with its connection to the outside world by land, sea and air remaining in the hands of Israel. The only thing that has really changed is that there are no settlers and no more Israeli boots on the ground – at least not based there.

After Hamas won free and fair elections:

Cont. reading: de Soto’s Report

Certainly this blog should also cover other issues than my current fixation on Iranq.

Please send me your piece/links and/or add them here.

If some Iranians are now really providing weapons to the Taliban, five years after the U.S. joined the Iranian government in fighting them, who did provide the Taliban with weapons between late 2001 and early 2007?

Thousands of RPGs, millions of AK47 rounds and tons of explosives have been used against the U.S. military in Afghanistan in the last years. Nobody claims that Iran provided these. So what country did? Why isn’t it threatened?

Oh – nevermind – the U.S. media will not ask these questions.

At least not while there is some "irrefutable evidence" that the blame for the U.S. defeat in Iraq and Afghanistan can be used to "wack", i.e. kill, Iranians and to grab their oil:

The United States has "irrefutable evidence" that Tehran is transferring arms to Taliban fighters in Afghanistan, a top U.S. diplomat told CNN Wednesday, noting that NATO forces have intercepted some of the arms shipments.

Cont. reading: Irrefutable Evidence

Larry Johnson confirms my short analysis of the systematic bridge attacks by the resistance in Iraq.

The ongoing attacks on bridges in and around Baghdad creates significant risks and logistical obstacles for U.S. forces in Iraq.  In my opinion these attacks are part of deliberate strategy to create ambush chokepoints, degrade the capability of U.S. Quick Reaction Forces, and enhance the ability of insurgent forces to cut the U.S. lines of communication.
…
It is incumbent on U.S. commanders to boost security around the bridges.  But that is a manpower issue.

The resistance blew up overpasses, closing four lane highways below, and blew up bridges over major rivers.
To protect one overpass/river bridge a checkpoint on both sides of it on the overpassing road and on both sides of it on the lower road is needed. Four checkpoints require four squads of soldiers – a platoon – at any time. To keep that coverage up 24/7 three platoons, a company, is needed.

Cont. reading: Iraq and the WWII Yugoslavia Campaign

Michael Gordon, co-writer of Judith Miller’s famous nuclear Iraq scare pieces, writes about a meeting between CentCom commander Admiral Fallon, U.-S: Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker and the Iraqi president al-Maliki.

This reporter, who is accompanying Admiral Fallon on his trip to Iraq, was allowed into the meeting. It was only at the end of the meeting that American officials agreed that it could be on the record.

Three questions:

Cont. reading: Iraq – Conspiracy and Mistrust

Contributer anna missed relates an Alternet piece about the media stories on the "Korea model" – the idea of U.S. troops staying in Iraq for another 50 years. As the authors point out, none of these stories included any Iraqi voice or comment.

When I read Thomas E. Ricks’ A01 WaPo story yesterday, a similar thought occurred to me. Writing from Baghdad(!) Ricks reports how the U.S. military "envisions" a long stay in Iraq, albeit with a reduced force of some 50,000 troops.

This goal, drawn from recent interviews with more than 20 U.S. military officers and other officials here, including senior commanders, strategists and analysts, remains in the early planning stages.

Cont. reading: Stay or Leave – Options in Iraq are Binary

News & views … your comments are welcome.

Saudis reportedly funding Iraqi Sunni insurgents, USA Today, Dec 8, 2006

Private Saudi citizens are giving millions of dollars to Sunni insurgents in Iraq and much of the money is used to buy weapons, including shoulder fired anti-aircraft missiles, according to key Iraqi officials and others familiar with the flow of cash.

US says Iran arming Sunni groups, BBC, April 7, 2007

Sunni militants are being armed with Iranian-made munitions, US military spokesman Maj Gen William Caldwell told reporters in Baghdad.
…
Gen Caldwell said the Iranians were not only supplying weapons to unspecified groups fighting the coalition and Iraqi government forces but training them too.

U.S. Arming Sunnis in Iraq to Battle Old Qaeda Allies, IHT, June 11, 2007

American commanders say they have successfully tested the strategy in Anbar Province west of Baghdad and have held talks with Sunni groups in at least four areas of central and north-central Iraq where the insurgency has been strong. In some cases, the American commanders say, the Sunni groups are suspected of involvement in past attacks on American troops or of having links to such groups. Some of these groups, they say, have been provided, usually through Iraqi military units allied with the Americans, with arms, ammunition, cash, fuel and supplies.

After the Sunnis, now armed by the U.S., have ousted those few "Qaeda" fighters, the weapons will be used to eliminate the occupier next. The same happened in Algeria, Malaysia and Vietnam.

Again proof that the U.S. military is inclined to retry every trick that failed against past insurgencies.