Killing The UN

By Cernig

I wrote yesterday that McCain's proposed League of Democracies was a way of doing an end run around the UN by creating a new US-led body to provide a facade of international approval to new interventions and "preventative" wars.

Today, Krauthammer confirmed that this part of McCain's foreign policy plan is right out of the neocon playbook.

Well, I like the idea of the league of democracies, and only in part because I and others had proposed it about six years ago. What I like about it, it’s got a hidden agenda. It looks as if it’s all about listening and joining with allies, all the kind of stuff you’d hear a John Kerry say, except that the idea here, which McCain can’t say, but I can, is to essentially kill the U.N.

Think Progress has the video - and also notes that Krauthammer first proposed this League six years ago, so he would know its true purpose.

The UN comes in for a lot of criticism from Americans, but other than the lost 20-something percenters I think they'd mostly agree that it perhaps needs some reform but should still be kept around as the primary international forum. If voting for McCain was clearly labelled as a vote for disbanding the UN, a lot of people would balk. That's why McCain has to pretend that he'd just be adding another body to international diplomacy.

And if McCain dares to invoke Churchill, the greatest defender of a strong UN, anytime in the future I may just puke.

Update Kevin Sullivan, the most right-leaning "liberal" in the blogosphere, wouldn't attend the UN's funeral and James Joyner seems to think a different, democratic, alternative would be better for U.S. interests than the UN is, writing that "Attempting to get that business done through a smaller coalition of more like-minded states only makes sense, and it’s a far sight better than either going it alone or waiting on the UN to achieve consensus."

But here's the rub - what happens when the League of Democracies tries to impose its authority on a non-democracy and the latter says it doesn’t recognise the authority of a body it hasn’t been invited to send representatives to and has no voice at?

We bomb them?

Iran to Offer Enrichment Halt In Return For Cash?

By Cernig

Iran appears to be signalling that it is ready to offer a "halt for compensation" deal to Western nations worried about its uranium enrichment activities.

Today, Foreign Ministry spokesman, Mohammad-Ali Hosseini said (again) that Iran now considered the Modality Plan agreed with the IAEA successfully completed - but also said that Tehran was ready to hold talks with the Group 5+1 members states about specific issues.

And yesterday the Secretary of Iran's Supreme National Security Council Saeed Jalili also offered further talks on co-operation in "fields like security, energy, and economy" with the international community and also said that Iran will ask for compensation in return for the halt of its nuclear activities for at least two years. At a conference on the topic of "Iran's peaceful Nuclear Activities", he said:

"those who made us stop uranium enrichment based on false accusations will have to pay for compensations as a result."

He added that he would not recieve Condi Rice for negotiations.

Both together might indicate a willingness by Iran to finally do a real deal - or it might indicate a plan by Iran to split off Europe from the U.S. on the issue by pointing out the Bush administration's belligerent rhetoric and roadblock manouvering in terms of international diplomacy.

But, oddly enough in the face of new sanctions and a America's determination to isolate Iran financially, the World Bank has just approved a new $250 million loan to Iran for water and sewage works. This under the presidency of Bush-appointee Robert Zoellick, who was previously Condi's deputy at State.

Signs of a break-through, maybe?

Update Then again, maybe not. Andy, in comments, offers his own translation of a Fars report and suggests that Kuna mistranslated the tense - which would mean Iran was demanding compensation for it's past enrichment halt from 2004-2006 rather than offering a new deal. Pity. A new deal of some kind really is what's needed.

So Much For That NIE Fearmongering

By Cernig

The UN Security Council voted 14-0 to extend and increase sanctions on Iran over it's nuclear program, based largely on emerging tidbits from the Laptop Of Doom provided to U.S. intelligence by the MeK terror group.

But as Eric Martin points out, no matter how one may feel about that UN decision, it's worth noting that the last NIE on Iran, the one that deflated the warhype to the point where an attack seemed out of the question and therefore according to the neocons was going to make it impossible to get the UNSC to back further sanctions...well...seems to have had the opposite effect.

Score one for the rapier instead of the sabre. And the neocons were wrong again.

Experts - IAEA Successfully Disarming Iran

By Cernig

Nuclear non-proliferation experts Ray Takeyh and Joseph Cirincione have penned an op-ed for Britain's Financial Times which says that the recent IAEA report shows that the Agency has been successful in ensuring that iran doesn't have a nuclear weapons program going forward.

The investigation and inspections – even the limited ones the IAEA is currently able to conduct – have, in effect, shut down direct weapons work and resolved many of the outstanding historical questions.

...the IAEA investigations have produced enough circumstantial evidence to support the view that Iran probably conducted nuclear weapons research in the past. But the evidence to date also indicates, as the US National Intelligence Estimate on Iran concluded last November, that Iran stopped this direct weapons work. The path now is to recognise this success, deepen it, find a way for Iran to come clean safely on its past work and to prevent Iran from developing capabilities that could allow it to produce weapon material in the next decade.

Mr ElBaradei has disproved the notion that Iran’s nuclear strategy is immutable. Despite its apparent solidarity, there are divisions within the theocratic regime on the urgency of the nuclear programme. It is true that President Mahmoud Ahmadi-nejad and his militant allies’ calculations are susceptible to neither offers of incentives nor threats of force. However, for the more tempered members of the ruling elite, the nuclear issue is considered within the context of international relations. Indeed, the fact that Iran has suspended the weapon design component of its programme since 2003 and is largely complying with the IAEA “work plan” reflects the propensity of the state to adhere to certain limits.

The best means of diminishing the hardliners is for the US and its European allies to offer Iran a chance for a resumed relationship...the west should appreciate that a nuanced diplomacy of reconciliation could both regulate Iran’s nuclear programme and help stabilise the Middle East. It is the much maligned Mr ElBaradei that has paved the way for success.

Others, including Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, had already come to the same conclusions about what is actually in the "smoking laptop" - that the data therein relate to that earlier and now cancelled phase of experimentation that never actually got as far as using nuclear materials and was, in many ways, deeply flawed in any case. That is, the Iranian designs as contained in the laptop wouldn't have worked. But this view stands in stark contrast to the opinions from the neocon mothership, the American Enterprise Institute, where they called the IAEA report a "whitewash"...mainly, it must be said, for not insisting on war with Iran right now.

However, Russia is now indicating that it may support further sanctions on Iran because it is worried about Iran's heavy water plant. Heavy water reactors can be used to breed plutonium (from uranium-238) or uranium-233 (from thorium-232) and actually make it easier to extract weapons-grade material than conventional uranium enrichment techniques, so they are seen as major non-proliferation risks. But they also enable natural, un-enriched, uranium to be used in reactors - making them ideal for a small nation with limited resources to spend which is worried about being forced into dependency on other states for fuel. It may be that Iran's heavy water plant is a worrying risk - or it may just be that Russia is keen to see Iran locked in to a very profitable dependency on the larger nation for nuclear purposes. As usual with Iran's nuclear plans, there's a best-case and a worst-case scenario and which one you believe will depend on your own opinion of Iran's motivations.

Is Zeal For Interventionism Right Or Wrong?

By Cernig

Simon Jenkins in the Guardian today argues that "This zeal for intervention is imperialism in new clothes" championed by those, like UK Foreign Secretary David Milliband, who are "part of a political generation with no experience of war and little sense of history". He argues that democracy, while a superior method of governance, can only be shown and not imposed and his comments are at least as relevant to the current American political debate as they are to Britain's foreign policy.

David Miliband loves democracy. We all love democracy. We also love capitalism, social welfare, child health, book learning and leatherback turtles. We would like the whole world to love them too, and we stand ready to persuade it so. But do we shoot anyone who refuses?

It is hardly credible that two centuries since Immanuel Kant wrestled with this oldest of ethical conundrums, a British government still cannot tell the difference between espousing a moral imperative and enforcing one.

Yesterday in Oxford the foreign secretary decided to update the 1998 Chicago speech of his then mentor, Tony Blair, in which Blair tore up the UN's sovereignty provisions in favour of the new "liberal interventionism". He proposed a doctrine of international community, which he claimed, like St Teresa, to have "witnessed". This required Britain to attack sovereign states unprovoked if this would end a violation of human rights.

...Miliband brushes aside the blundering into Iraq and Afghanistan as errors of implementation rather than principle and takes the Blair doctrine into new territory. He wants his pan-democratic world to be achieved by peaceful means, by trade, multilateral action and - his new soundbite - a "civilian surge".

Should soft power fail, Miliband wants to use sanctions and send in troops, for instance through offering security guarantees to regimes that "abide by democratic rules". Such measures would need to embrace internal and external security, and be of universal application if, as Kant warned, they are to go beyond opportunism and carry moral force. They would have guaranteed Dubcek's Czechoslovakia against the Soviet Union, and Allende's Chile against America. The regimes in Baghdad and Kabul would need guarantees indefinitely, as would an elected regime in Pakistan - guaranteeing it against insurgent Taliban and lurking generals.

...There is no text in international law that justifies ramming a system of government down the throats of others. Self-determination, warts and all, has been the defining essence of the nation-state throughout history, which is why the UN charter qualified it only in cases of cross-border aggression and humanitarian relief. The robustness of this doctrine is shown in half a century of relative peace worldwide. Collapsing it has been disastrous.

Democracy everywhere has emerged when individuals give or withhold consent and rulers are confident enough to accept their verdict. Besides western Europe in 1945 (when democracy was not created but restored), there is almost no example of democracy imposed by external force. Russia, with no experience of it, appears to be rejecting it. The concept of consent in countries such as Egypt, Pakistan and Iran is hesitant, but western pressure, soft or hard, aids the reactionaries.

...The west can invite the world to witness the virtues of democracy. It can deploy the soft power of education, exchange, publicity and aid. But a true democrat cannot abandon Voltaire's respect for the autonomy of disagreement, let alone seek to crush it. Britain can shine its beacon abroad but it cannot impose its values on the world. It has tried too often, and has failed. This is not isolationism. It is fact.

Milliband would call Jenkin's argument a "retreat into realpolitik", and perhaps it is. There's certainly a powerful body of argument to say that standing by and watching a crime makes one a complicit accessory to that crime, and guilty of a crime thereby. Much of Western law is built on that precept.

Yet over the past seven years we've seen where a lack of real-world connection and an ideologically driven interventionist policy can turn what appears moral into a worse crime. If someone tries to fight fire with fire, they better know exactly what they are doing or the conflagration will blow up out of their control. Surely, those who lose their loved ones or livelihoods in that wider fire would have only the misguided or incompetent interventionist to blame for their woes.

In a purely utilitarian sense, the question is a variant of "who watches the watchers". Who checks the interventionists if their intervention is already doing or will do more harm than good? Unfortunately, if international law and international bodies are sidestepped and sidelined then in the case of powerful Western nations the answer is "no-one". That's why the UN and international agreements which set out the limits of interventionist policy were drawn up in the first place. It is itself a flawed system plagued by competing national interests and maybe would have been better if Churchill's ideas hadn't been watered down by American and Soviet leaders intent on preserving their own power, but it's the best system we have.

So what do Newshoggers readers think? Is interventionism always right, always wrong or a bit of both? And if the latter, what's the best way to ensure we select for the good but leave out the bad?

UN Says Waterboarding Is Torture

By Cernig

It doesn't get clearer than this:

The controversial interrogation technique known as waterboarding and used by the United States qualifies as torture, the U.N. human rights chief said on Friday.

"I would have no problems with describing this practice as falling under the prohibition of torture," the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Louise Arbour, told a news conference in Mexico City.

Arbour made her comment in response to a question about whether U.S. officials could be tried for the use of waterboarding that referred to CIA director Michael Hayden telling Congress on Tuesday his agency had used waterboarding on three detainees captured after the September 11 attacks.

Violators of the U.N. Convention against Torture should be prosecuted under the principle of 'universal jurisdiction' which allows countries to try accused war criminals from other nations, Arbour said.

"There are several precedents worldwide of states exercising their universal jurisdiction ... to enforce the torture convention and we can only hope that we will see more and more of these avenues of redress," Arbour said.

The U.S. Congress is considering banning the practice, in which prisoners are immobilized and water is poured into their breathing passages to simulate drowning.

Arbour referred to an arrest warrant issued in 1998 by a Spanish judge for former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who died in 2006, on charges of torture, murder and kidnapping in the years that followed his 1973 coup.

Latin American dictatorships in the 1970s and 1980s were known to use waterboarding on political prisoners.

The U.S. is a signatory to the U.N. Convention against Torture. That, under the terms of the U.S. Constitution, makes the Treaty provisions for waterboarding as torture enforceable as U.S. law as well, unless and until the Supreme Court rules waterboarding is legal. Go read it. If you wonder why Bush, Cheney and every single person involved in waterboarding have not yet been indicted preliminary to trail in a criminal court, the simplest answer is that no-one in Congress or federal law enforcement has the cojones to do so - and so the U.S. continues to belong to that elite club of nations who condone and enable torturers escaping justice.

Khalilzad Goes Off The Reservation

By Cernig

I'm deriving a lot of amusement this morning from rightwinger outrage on US ambassador to the UN Zalmay Khalilzad's entering into a dialogue with Iranian officials at the Davos forum.

An appearance by America's U.N. ambassador, Zalmay Khalilzad, on a World Economic Forum discussion panel — alongside two Iranian officials, Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, and a close aide to President Ahmadinejad, Samare Hashemi — was unauthorized by the State Department and angered Secretary of State Rice, Washington sources said yesterday.
The panel, titled "Understanding Iran's Foreign Policy," took place in Davos, Switzerland, and dealt mostly with Iran's nuclear policy, just as Security Council diplomats — including America's U.N. mission headed by Mr. Khalilzad — began to forge a new resolution that would impose new punitive measures on Iran for its refusal to suspend its uranium enrichment program, as demanded by the council. ...

The Bush administration policy, however, calls on all American officials to seek an authorization from the State Department before conducting dialogue with Iranian officials. The only person exempted from that restriction is the American ambassador to Iraq, Ryan Crocker, who can discuss Iraq-related issues with Iranian officials on a regular basis, according to a State Department official in Washington who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Mr. Khalilzad's participation on the Davos panel was "not authorized," the official told The New York Sun yesterday, after a videotaping of the event was posted on the Web site YouTube and made the rounds among diplomats at the United Nations.

Just maybe, Khalilzad thought that being sent to the Davos meet in the first place, where panels like this are what's supposed to occur, was authorisation enough. If so, he misjudged the Bush adminsitration's fetish for micromanagement. You'd think he knew better after all these years.

But what's really hilarious is that the wingnuts have practically declared Zalmay a traitor to his adopted nation (he's Afghani born) not for disobeying Rice but for letting a jibe at Old Walrus Face slide. Over to Captain Ed.

Khalilzad not only defied American policy, but let slide an opening comment that insulted his predecessor, John Bolton. The moderator noted in his effusive introduction of Khalilzad that among his outstanding qualities was "the further, really formidable advantage of having a name that is not John Bolton." Regardless of whether Khalilzad had prior authorization, allowing the insult to Bolton to stand unchallenged represents an insult to the United States and a lack of testicular fortitude on the part of his replacement.

I dunno, I think the moderator got that bang on. In fact, wasn't that the main reason Kalilzad got confirmation in the first place? But Ed thinks pointing out the obvious is an insult to the "American government" despite Bolton no longer being part of said government.

Poor Zalmay. He's been a loyal neocon for years and they lauded him for his work in Afghanistan and Iraq when he was up for the UN post. Back in 2006, Captain Ed himself described him as a "tough-minded fighter" just like Bolton. But let a slur on the Almighty Moustache slide and he's neocon toast. Ed now writes that Zalmay can forget ever being SecState in a future Republican administration and may not deserve his UN post. And he didn't even say the words!

Russia - No New Iran Sanctions

By Cernig

Recall how Bush administration officials have been saying that the Iran NIE back in December hadn't dampened international unity and resolve regarding Iran's nuclear program?

Umm, not so much.

Russia said Wednesday a draft U.N. resolution on Iran's disputed nuclear program does not call for any harsh sanctions...Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the draft encourages countries to be vigilant in their dealings with Iran to prevent the illegal transfer of nuclear material, but it ``does not foresee any harsh sanctions.''

``It calls for countries to be vigilant while maintaining trade and economic and transport and other ties with Iran so that they are not used for the transfer of forbidden nuclear material,'' he said at a news conference a day after the draft was approved by the five permanent Security Council members and Germany.

These terms ``will be enforced until the International Atomic Energy Agency's concerns are resolved,'' Lavrov said, referring to the U.N.'s nuclear monitoring agency.

Rather than a signal that the US and its closest allies have to make a stronger argument using actual evidence before they can even justify sanctions, the "bomb Iran" crowd will, doubtless, take this as a new clarion call for unilateral aggression. Unfortunately, hardline Iranian bombast to the effect that they don't care what the UNSC says anyway won't help convince them otherwise. Two sets of radical hotheads, on a collision course and taking their nations and the world with them.

Iran To Aim For UN Security Council Seat

By Cernig

Iran says it wants a UNSC spot.

A spokesman for the foreign minister in Iran said his country applied for a position as a non-permanent member of the U.N. Security Council.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Seyed Mohammad Ali Hosseini told reporters at his weekly news conference Sunday that Iran applied for a seat on the Security Council for the years 2009 and 2010, the Fars news agency reported Monday.

The spokesman also said "Iran is not opposed" to talks with the United States over security concerns in Iraq, adding Tehran was awaiting U.S. response to their views. The spokesman said, however, the talks were not a sign of the normalization of diplomatic relations with the United States.

Watch the US Right's outrage if this one gets even close to happening. Yet, on a practical level, such a move would come at a time when there could be a thawing in US/Iran relations in the wake of a new US presidency and probably also a new Iranian president. And there's no denying that a detente with Iran would help defuse a whole bunch of issues, from Iraq and Afghanistan to nuclear proliferation and tensions in the wider Mid East. Being forced together in the UNSC chamber wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing for either nation or for the world.

UN Rights Envoy Suspects Gitmo Torture Cover-Up

By Cernig

Today, House Democrats voted to ban torture by U.S. interrogators and House Republicans voted to retain it.

Defying a White House veto threat, the U.S. House of Representatives voted on Thursday to outlaw harsh interrogation methods, such as simulated drowning, that the CIA has used against suspected terrorists.

On a largely party line vote of 222-199, the Democratic-led House approved a measure to require intelligence agents to comply with the Army Field Manual, which bans torture in compliance with the Geneva Conventions on the treatment of prisoners of war.

The measure, part of a sweeping intelligence bill, passed amid a congressional probe into the recent disclosure that the CIA destroyed videotapes of al Qaeda suspects undergoing waterboarding, a simulated drowning.

Many countries, U.S. lawmakers and human rights groups have accused the United States of torturing terror suspects since the September 11 attacks.

President George W. Bush says the United States does not torture, but the administration will not disclose what interrogation methods it has approved for the CIA.

In threatening to veto the House-passed measure, which now awaits Senate action, the White House argued it would prevent the United States from conducting "lawful interrogations of senior al Qaeda terrorists."

However, the UN's special envoy has a diferent opinion about whether these interrogations were lawful ,and said that he suspects the Bush administration knows it too.

A United Nations investigator said on Thursday he strongly suspected the CIA of using torture on terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, suggesting many were not being prosecuted to keep the abuse from emerging at trial.

On a visit to the U.S. detention centre in Cuba last week, Martin Scheinin, U.N. special rapporteur on protecting human rights while countering terrorism, attended a pre-trial hearing of Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's former driver.

Scheinin said U.S. officials had told him that of the roughly 300 detainees currently held at Guantanamo, 80 were expected to face military trials for suspected crimes. Another 80 inmates had been cleared for release, he said.

No decision had been made to either prosecute or release the remaining 150, including many so-called "high value" detainees, he said. Some have been held six years without trial.

"There is not enough evidence that could be presented, even to a military commission chaired by a military judge. Partly there may not be evidence and partly the risk of issues of torture being raised is too high," Sheinin told a news briefing.

"Bringing them to court would bring to the court's attention the method through which the evidence, including the confessions, were obtained. So this is one further affirmation of the conclusion that the CIA or others have been involved in methods of interrogation that are incompatible with international law," he said.

Eighty out of over 800 detainees who have been held at Gitmo over the years are currently expected to come to trial. Over 500 have been released without charge by the U.S. So much for rightwing assumptions that everyone in Gitmo was a dangerous terrorist.

Scheinin, who is Professor of Constitutional and International Law at Åbo Akademi University and Director of the Institute for Human Rights also:

voiced concern at the recent revelation that the CIA had destroyed videotapes in 2005 that recorded al Qaeda suspects undergoing waterboarding, a simulated drowning technique, which he said amounted to torture.

"The destruction of video tapes on CIA interrogations is one more argument that supports the contention that the CIA has been involved and continues to be involved in the use of interrogation techniques that violate the absolute prohibition against torture," he said.

Well, That's Iran Sanctions Dead

By Cernig

The Financial Times reports that China has signed a new $2 billion oil deal with Iran.

Iran signed a $2bn oil contract with Sinopec of China on Sunday, sending a signal to western companies that they might miss out on potentially lucrative contracts with one of the world’s biggest energy exporters if they continued to heed US-inspired sanctions against Tehran.

“If other countries who like to invest in oil and gas hesitate, they will lose opportunities,” said Gholam-Hossein Nozari, Iran’s oil minister.

Mr Nozari also said Iran had signed multi-billion dollar contracts with some other non-western companies to develop two major upstream oil fields a few months ago. He refused to give more details because the companies feared facing international pressure.

...France’s Total, Royal Dutch Shell and Spain’s Repsol have been negotiating to develop some parts of South Pars, the world’s biggest gas field. Iran has given them an ultimatum that it could wait only until June 2008.

I have to say that, opposed as I am to the Bush administration's cack-handed non-negotiating method with Iran, I would like to see the international community line up behind sanctions with reasoning based upon Iran's sponsorship of terrorist groups in Lebanon and Palestine (and in Iraq, if that can actually be made a justifiable NIE consensus) as well as the Iranian regime's myriad human rights abuses at home. The notion of continuing to base the rationale for sanctions on an illegal call to prevent Iran exercising it's rights under the NPT, particularly after the recent NIE and IAEA report, was always foolish however. The UNSC should consider applying sanctions - for the right reasons.

Russia Refuses New Iran Sanctions

By Cernig

The fallout from the new Iran NIE continues. First the credibility of the War Party's pundits disappeared, mostly due to their own pouty-lipped paranoid conspiracy theories as they demanded a do-over. Then Israel realised America wouldn't let the tail wag the dog. Now Bush's insistence on staying the course even when the course is the wrong one has been thrown into the trashcan.

Despite strong support from NATO allies in the wake of a new U.S. intelligence report that concludes Iran actually stopped atomic weapons development in 2003, the top U.S. diplomat was unable to persuade Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on the urgency of fresh sanctions.

Rice said her talks with Lavrov were ``an extension of other conversations we have had,'' suggesting the two didn't see eye to eye.

``So it was a continuation of that discussion and a recommitment to our two-track approach,'' Rice said at a news conference, referring to sanctions and diplomacy.

...After seeing Rice at NATO, Lavrov told reporters: ``It fully confirms the information that we have: that there is no military element in their nuclear program. We hope very much that these negotiations with Iran will continue.''

You have to imagine that if both Russian and U.S. intelligence agree on something that had already been indicated by the IAEA, that constitutes a considerable preponderance of knowledgeable opinion. The Chinese seem to think so. last week they were all for new sanctions, now it looks like they will refuse to back any bid for a third U.N. Security Council resolution.

"Staying The Course" Again

By Cernig

Bush has said that there will be no immediate change in the United States’ approach to Iran in the wake of the new NIE that says it doesn't have a nuclear weapons program. His position is that the Bush administration had already offered to talk to Iran, though on the condition that Iran suspend its current enrichment program first, and he is citing the two United Nations Security Council resolutions calling for that suspension to bolster his argument.

But here's the thing: the UNSC voted for those resolutions based on U.S. assertions - in turn based on the 2005 NIE which we now know was wrong - which said Iran did have an active weapons program.

So the resolution votes were a mistake based on incorrect claims and keeping the demand for a suspension of enrichment as a precondition of talks which would have as their aim a suspension of enrichment is likewise a mistake.

Nuke expert David Albright hits the nail on the head when he tells the NYT today that:

“Bush has made a big mistake, and he’s not responding in a way that gives confidence that he’s on top of this,” ... “He isn’t able to respond because he’s not able to say he’s wrong.”

But we shouldn't be surprised by this. An inability to admit mistakes and a bullheaded stubborness in "staying the course" even when the course is obviously badly off course are two of the defining characteristics of the Bush presidency. Unfortunately, that means his administration will keep making unforced mistakes and sailing into avoidable policy disasters.

Oops, US Ambassador To UN Upsets Israel

By Cernig

Apparently there's something about being US ambassador to the UN that makes even the staunchest Bush loyalist into a loose cannon.

In an about face, the United States on Friday withdrew a U.N. resolution endorsing this week's agreement by Israeli and Palestinian leaders to try to reach a Mideast peace settlement by the end of 2008, apparently after Israel objected.

Deputy Ambassador Alejandro Wolff informed the Security Council that the United States was pulling the resolution from consideration less than 24 hours after Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad introduced it and welcomed the ``very positive'' response from council members.

Khalilzad had said he needed to consult with the Israelis and Palestinians on the text of the resolution to ensure that it was what they wanted following the decisions by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert at the Mideast peace conference in Annapolis, Md.

Wolff said the U.S. had held intensive consultations in the past few days ``and the upshot was that there were some unease with the idea'' of a resolution.

Well-informed diplomats said Israel, a close U.S. ally, did not want a resolution, which would bring the Security Council into the fledgling negotiations with the Palestinians. The diplomats, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said Khalilzad introduced the draft resolution without getting broad support from the Israelis, Palestinians and the Bush administration.

``It's not the proper venue,'' Israel's deputy ambassador Daniel Carmon said after Friday's council meeting. ``We feel that the appreciation of Annapolis has other means of being expressed than in a resolution.

The State Department said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had decided such a resolution was unnecessary...

Collective Punishment

By Cernig

Yet again, the double standard that says the US and its allies can get away with thumbing their noses at international law will be applied:

Israel's defence minister has approved sanctions against Gaza, including cuts in the supply of electricity and fuel to try to halt rocket attacks.
Ehud Barak authorised the cuts, which are expected to follow immediately after rocket attacks are launched.

Palestinian leaders say the measure amounts to collective punishment.

Israel supplies 60% of the electricity for Gaza's 1.5 million inhabitants - but last month Israel declared Gaza a "hostile entity".

By formally declaring Gaza "hostile", Israel argues it is no longer bound by international law governing the administration of occupied territory to supply utilities to the civilian population.

But the position accepted by the international community is that Israel remains legally responsible for the coastal strip, despite withdrawing two years ago, because it still controls Gaza's borders, airspace and territorial waters.

I'm betting there will be no condemnation from the Bush administration of this contravention of laws concerning the actions of occupying powers and collective punishment - a clear war crime. Just as there was no condemnation of a unilateral attack on Syria which at the very best was years ahead of being justifiable and at the worst was aggresive warfare without cause - another war crime.

US Designates, Sanctions, Iran Guards Force & Banks

By Cernig

Well, we knew this one was coming:

The Bush administration imposed sweeping new sanctions against Iran Thursday - the harshest in nearly three decades - cutting off key Iranian military and banking institutions from the American financial system for Tehran's alleged support for terrorism and nuclear weapons ambitions.

In the broadest U.S. unilateral penalties on Iran since the takeover of the U.S. Embassy in 1979, the administration slapped sanctions on Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps, a main unit of its defense ministry, three of its largest banks and eight people that it said are engaged in missile trade and back extremist groups throughout the Middle East.

The Counterterrorism blog fills in the exact details:

Today, the State Department designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Ministry of Defense and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL) for their proliferation activities. The Treasury Department also designated numerous Iranian parties for proliferation concerns: nine IRGC-affiliated entities and five IRGC-affiliated individuals; two state-owned banks, Bank Melli (its biggest) and Bank Mellat; and three individuals affiliated with Iran's Aerospace Industries Organization (AIO). The Treasury Department also designated the IRGC-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) under for providing material support to the Taliban in Afghanistan and other terrorist organizations, and also designated Iran's state-owned Bank Saderat as a terrorist financier. Moreover, elements of the IRGC and MODAFL were listed in the Annexes to U.N. Security Council Resolutions 1737 and 1747, which leads to a freeze on their assets by all member nations.

Now, back to the AP for some ridiculous Bushie spin:

At the same time, they stressed that offers for negotiations with Iran over its nuclear program remain on the table and that the sanctions are not a sign of imminent military action. The U.S. officials insist - over Iranian denials - that the nuclear program is a cover for atomic weapons development.

"Unfortunately, the Iranian government continues to spurn our offer of open negotiations, instead threatening peace and security," through its nuclear program, production and export of ballistic missiles and backing for Shia insurgents in Iraq, the Taliban in Afghanistan, Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza, Rice said.

That's one seriously brass neck you have there, Condi. The US position is that it won't enter face-to-face open negotiations unless Iran suspends enrichment - which is demanding the end-point of negotiations as a start point, hardly good faith, as well as denying Iran its right under the NPT.

The IAEA continues to say it has no evidence that Iran has a nuclear weapons program. Iran is a supporter of groups designated as terrorists by much of the Western world - which is a legitimate grievance against Iran - but then again so does Pakistan, and more so, and Pakistan already is a nuclear state. But we don't see sanctions against Pakistan - we see military aide. For much of the rest of the world, this only serves to illustrate American exceptionalism - the rules don't apply when the US doesn't want them to.

We don't see Mitt Romney proposing "bombardment" of Pakistan:

``If for some reasons they continue down their course of folly toward nuclear ambition, then I would take military action if that's available to us,'' Romney told a crowd of doctors and nurses during a question period that followed a health care speech.

He added: ``That's an option that's on the table. And it's is not something which we'll spell out specifically. I really can't lay out exactly how that would be done, but we have a number of options from blockade to bombardment of some kind. And that's something we very much have to keep on the table, and we will ready ourselves to be able to take, because, frankly, I think it's unacceptable for Iran to have nuclear weapons.''

But other than the sociopathic right, most have reacted negatively to this new example of Bush administration willingness to abandon rhetoric about international co-operation as soon as things don't go the White House's way.

Said former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards: ``I learned a clear lesson from the lead-up to the Iraq War in 2002: If you give this president an inch, he will take a mile and launch a war. Senator Clinton apparently learned a different lesson.''

...In a statement Thursday, presidential rival Chris Dodd echoed Edwards' argument.

``The aggressive actions taken today by the administration absent any corresponding diplomatic action is exactly what we all should have known was coming when we considered our vote on the Kyl-Lieberman Amendment, and smacks, frankly, of a dangerous step toward armed confrontation with Iran,'' Dodd said.

Even some Republicans are unhappy:

Nebraska Senator Chuck Hagel says the new, unilateral U.S. sanctions against Iran will not work and will only drive the Iranians closer together.

The Republican says unilateral sanctions rarely succeed and that direct engagement is the way to deal with Iran.

Putin sees a maniac push for violence:

"Why worsen the situation and bring it to a dead end by threatening sanctions or military action," Putin said in a veiled reference to the U.S. push for harsher international sanctions against Tehran.

"Running around like a madman with a razor blade, waving it around, is not the best way to resolve the situation," the Russian leader said.

Which statement comes ominously close to rumors that Putin told Iran that Russia will involve itself should the US unilaterally attack.

Maybe Putin is just suffering from BDS, but somehow I peg him as a more calculating type than that. It's just possible that he is worried about America's belligerent attitude, realising along with Kevin Hayden that "sanctions are not diplomacy and assertions aren't evidence." Like Kevin, he may just see today's action as state-sponsored unilateral hijacking of assets that sets a dangerous precedent for future US action against other states - including his own. It isn't as if the Cheneyites have been circumspect about their intentions to shift the blame from one target to another - and Moscow has certainly been on their radar as one of their targets.

That's all speculation, of course, if a reasonable reading of pasts statements. Those of us outwith the innermost administration circle would all do well to harbour some sceptical uncertainty about the Bush administrations long-term aims for Iran. At the very least because the experience of the lead up to invading Iraq demands it.

But as usual, there are some folks, not too far distant from a big white building in Washington D.C., who will make out like bandits from all the uncertainty.

Crude oil for December delivery rose $1.88, or 2.2 percent, to $88.98 a barrel at 12:11 p.m. on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Futures climbed to $89.10, the highest since reaching a record $90.07 on Oct. 19. Oil is up 45 percent from a year ago.

Brent crude oil for December settlement rose $1.75, or 2.1 percent, to $86.12 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange. Brent reached $86.32, the highest since trading began in 1988.

``The U.S. has had sanctions against Iran since 1979 and it's not like we are just hearing for the first time about Turkey's intention to rout the Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq,'' said Tim Evans, an analyst with Citigroup Global Markets Inc. in New York. ``What the headlines do is keep these issues front and center for anyone trading in this market.''

Give The Experts A Chance

By Cernig

When the Bush administration were exorting everyone to listen to the experts on the ground and give them just another Friedman Unit of time in Iraq as part of their "surge for the surge", I wonder if it occured to them what the most obvious blowback would be?

The U.N. Security Council probably will delay a move to impose new sanctions against Iran until December, when U.N. weapons inspectors conclude a review of Iran's past nuclear activities, French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner said Thursday.

Kouchner, speaking at a breakfast with reporters, said Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made it clear in talks last week in Moscow that he would not consider Security Council sanctions over the next three months.

Kouchner's remarks came a day before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is scheduled to discuss a diplomatic reaction to Iran's nuclear activity with the council's four other permanent members -- Britain, China, France and Russia -- plus Germany. The United States hopes to use the meeting to build support for tougher action against Iran, which has repeatedly ignored demands from the council to halt its enrichment of uranium.

The administration and the Senate seem willing to ignore their own logic. It's a hell of a thing when Russia, of all nations, must remind America that what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Update The Bush administration and its allies have agreed to delay their push for further sanctions against Iran.

Six key nations agreed Friday to delay until November a new U.N. resolution that would toughen sanctions against Iran, waiting to see if Tehran answers questions about its disputed nuclear program.

A joint statement from the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany said they would finalize the new resolution and bring it to a vote unless reports in November from the chief U.N. nuclear official and the European Union's foreign policy chief ``show a positive outcome of their efforts.''

The United States, Britain and France had been pushing for new sanctions now to pressure Iran to suspend uranium enrichment, but Russia and China wanted to give Tehran more time to comply with U.N. inspectors.

Asked whether the agreement was tantamount to a cave-in by the United States, Nicholas Burns, the State Department's No. 3 diplomat, said ``the alchemy of this group is such that anything is going to be a compromise.''

He said the statement sent ``a very tough and strict message to Iran.''

....nuclear chief Mohamed ElBaradei and Iranian officials agreed in July that Tehran would answer questions from agency experts by December on more than two decades of nuclear activity - most of it secret until revealed more than four years ago. Technical officials from the International Atomic Energy Agency returned to Tehran this week to start probing outstanding questions, some with possible weapons applications.

In the statement, the six countries welcomed the IAEA agreement with Iran.

``We call upon Iran, however, to produce tangible results rapidly and effectively by clarifying all outstanding issues and concerns on Iran's nuclear program including topics which could have the military nuclear dimension,'' the statement said.

``Full transparency and cooperation by Iran with the IAEA is essential in order to address outstanding concerns,'' it said.

I say let the experts do their jobs. If the full measure of time was good enough for Petreaus then it is good enough for the IAEA. If Iran doesn't co-operate fully, then the IAEA will say so.

And if the Agency comes back and says Iran answered all its questions in a satisfactory manner, then the U.S. should drop its demand that Iran stop uranium enrichment before face-to-face negotiations can take place. Enrichment when it is not aimed at weapons production is allowable under the NPT and demanding that Iran give up that right as a starting point on negotiations on whether it should permanently halt such enrichment is simply a deliberate attempt to back it into a diplomatic corner in pursuit of a pretext for war.

Bush, The UN Speech, And Relative Hypocrisy

By Cernig

McClatchy Newspapers William Douglas has a report today, under the headline "Bush astounds activists, supports human rights," which is causing the Right to spin into all-out moral relativist mode.

UNITED NATIONS — President Bush implored the United Nations on Tuesday to recommit itself to restoring human decency by liberating oppressed people and ending famine and disease.

Speaking before the United Nations General Assembly, the president called for renewed efforts to enforce the U.N.'s Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a striking point of emphasis for a leader who's widely accused of violating human rights in waging war against terrorism.

Bush didn't mention the U.S. prisons in Afghanistan or at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, the U.S. practice of holding detainees for years without legal charges or access to lawyers, or the CIA's "rendition" kidnappings of suspects abroad, all issues of concern to human rights activists around the world.

"At first read, it's little more than an exercise in hypocrisy. His words about human rights ring hollow because his credibility is nonexistent," said Curt Goering, the deputy executive director of Amnesty International USA. "The gap between the rhetoric and the actual record is stunning. I can't help but believe many people in the audience were thinking, 'What was this man thinking?' "

...“I believe the president should be championing human rights at the U.N., but he’s lost his authority and credibility as a world leader because of his policies on rendition and Guantanamo,” said Tom Malinowski, the advocacy director for Human Rights Watch. “His remarks would be more effective if the U.S. was practicing what it’s preaching.”

That was all it needed for Jules Cretinhead and others to get their outrage on. Jules opines:

Without doubt, the Iranian, Cuban, Venezuelan, Syrian, Libyan, Zimbabwean, Myanmaran, Belarussian, Sudanese, Chinese and Russian delegates in the audience were thinking exactly that...I’ve thought groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have lost their credibility due to their policies re, lack of perspective on and gross distortion of same.

Thus proving that, while the Right often castigates the "moral relativism" of the Left as being dishonest and immoral, it's OK to be relativist in defense of a conservative President and his abusive policies.

James Joyner, usually a thinking conservative, falls into the same logic trap.

I’ve long argued against the use of torture for terrorist suspects and for affording at least minimal due process rights for detainees at Gitmo and elsewhere. Some of these policies are morally and legally dubious and all of them are, in my view, counterproductive.

...But, my word, what kind of hack news organization can’t see the distinction between those things and the mass genocide of Darfur? Can a leader not simultaneously believe that extraordinary measures are necessary to protect his people from a very real enemy and yet oppose slaughter, oppression, and famine?

A man who robs corner stores clearly isn't in the same league as someone who commits serial murders - but then again, if the first man says he supports the rule of law then he should be exposed as a hypocrite. Even if he says it's the only way to feed his family.

U.S. allies, the UN and top international Geneva Conventions law experts have said that the interrogation techniques and detention methods the U.S. has used in the War on Terror are illegal under international law and the Conventions. It's not a Holocaust, but it's still a crime because it is a violation of internationally agreed human rights. In practise, only the power (diplomatic, military, economic) of the U.S. protects the U.S. from sanctions and the Bush administration from international legal measures of recourse.

For the Decider of those policies to claim to support human rights - and be defended because he hasn't committed larger atrocities - is hypocrisy.

However, there's at least some pushback againt Bush's pariah policies. His nominee for the position of the CIA's general counsel, John Rizzo, has withdrawn his nomination in the face of opposition to his oft-stated preference for ignoring the rule of law.

Rizzo, a career CIA lawyer, had drawn fire from Democrats and human rights groups because of his support for Bush administration legal doctrines permitting "enhanced interrogation" of terrorism detainees in CIA custody.

...The chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the panel's senior Republican both said Rizzo did not have enough support and was unlikely to be confirmed.

"The president and Mr. Rizzo made the correct decision in withdrawing this nomination," committee chairman Jay Rockefeller said in a statement. "The confirmation process highlighted Mr. Rizzo's 31 years of dedicated service, but it also raised serious questions about whether he was the right person for this job."

During his confirmation hearing in June, Rizzo told the Senate committee he issued a legal opinion in 2002 stipulating that CIA detainee practices were lawful under international treaties against torture, including the Geneva Conventions.

But Rizzo also said he did not oppose an August 2002 Justice Department memo that said torture would not occur unless the detainee experienced pain serious enough to accompany organ failure or death.

"I did not certainly object to the memo," Rizzo said at the hearing. "My reaction was that it was an aggressive, expansive reading." [Emphasis Mine - C]

According to the White House, Rizzo will remain the senior lawyer at the CIA. That's just wrong, but it's indicative of the level of hypocrisy and doubletalk the Bush administration indulges in if ever it has the nerve to talk about human rights.

Prez-EE-Dent LAZ-ee

By Cernig

You'd think the most powerful man on earth would take the time and trouble to learn how to pronounce the names of countries and leaders he must deal with. Nope.

George Bush gave a rare insight into his struggle with pronunciation yesterday when the White House mistakenly released an unedited script of his speech to the UN General Assembly.

The President, famous for mangling the pronunciation of “nuclear”, coining words such as “misunderestimate” and once forgetting the name of President Musharraf of Pakistan, gets a phonetic guide to key foreign names, the text reveals.

Mr Bush is coached not only on far-flung foreign places such as “KEYR-geez-stan” but also the name of his new French ally, President “sar-KO-zee”. He received no aid with the pronunciation of the Burmese opposition leader, and duly stumbled when he tried to pronounce “Aung San Suu Kyi”.

David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter, told The Times that all presidential speeches contained phonetic guides, but passing the unedited version to the press was an “oversight”.

Other pronunciation guides in Bush's speech (on which, more shortly) were Mugabe (moo-GAH-bee), Harare (hah-RAR-ray) and Mauritania (moor-EH-tain-ee-a).

Fer Chrissakes - he's met Sarkozy! People keep saying Bush isn't a total moron - which can only indicate a lazy arrogance in not bothering to learn or remember how to pronounce a major Western ally's name properly.

Update The White House spin is that the phoenetic spellings were there as an aide to UN interpreters - professional language experts. Yeah, right.

Sadr Pledges To Help UN In Iraq

By Cernig

Hey, I thought Mookie was meant to be in Iran, according to the US military's "assessments". Well, the UK's Independent newspaper found him in his HQ in the Iraqi town of Kufa. He told them he will ""support the UN if it comes and replaces the American and British occupiers."

"If the UN comes here to truly help the Iraqi people, they will receive our help in their work. I would ask my followers to support the UN as long as it is here to help us rebuild our country.

"They must not just be another face of the American occupation."

Sadr also said that he saw the British withdrawal from Basra as a defeat for the occupiers and denied he was accepting arms from Iran. Then he had this to say about his fellow Shiite, prime minister Nour al-Maliki:

"Al-Maliki's government will not survive because he has proven that he will not work with important elements of the Iraqi people ... The prime minister is a tool for the Americans and people see that clearly."

"It will probably be the Americans who decide to change him when they realise he has failed. We don't have a democracy here, we have a foreign occupation."

The political situation in Iraq is more rife with factionalism than ever, with the British loss of control in Basra as soon as the various opposing Shiite factions there saw good reasons to fight each other instead of play possum just being one of many examples. But the broad lines of the various battles are settling into a new pattern where anti-occupation/nationalist vs pro-occupation/separatist feuds are nearly as important to the overall picture as sectarian feuds. I have to say I think most U.S. observers are missing the first in their calculations - especially the Bush administration and the military. In Anbar, in particular, I've a feeling that will become an unpleasant surprise to them soon.

(H/T Kirkrrt)