In The Midst Of His Army, Maliki Guarded By US Soldiers

By Cernig

This will do for a metaphor of all that's gone wrong with Bush's Iraqi project:

The U.S. military raised its profile in Basra still further, providing protection for installations including the palace where al-Maliki is housed, Iraqi Interior Ministry officials said.

This, mind you, in the middle of his most trusted and battle-ready division of troops.

The paragraphs of this McClatchy report that go before this remarkable admission about a puppet ruler and his unreliable army are hardly less troublesome.

After failing to break the resistance of Shiite militias in the five-day siege of oil-rich Basra, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki sent a top general to hold talks with his Shiite rival, Muqtada al-Sadr, on Saturday night only to be rebuffed by the anti-American cleric, an Iraqi official close to the negotiations said.

Al-Maliki denounced Shiite militants in Basra as the equivalent of al-Qaida, and al-Sadr told his supporters not to hand over their arms to a puppet state of the United States.

The diplomatic initiative and the harsh rebuff further eroded expectations for a successful outcome to the offensive, which al-Maliki is personally directing from the presidential palace in Basra. It was not the only sign of problems.

Al-Maliki issued orders Friday to enlist volunteers for the battle against the Shiite militias, and his Dawa party sought to enlist fighters.

The Dawa party has never had a major militia of its own, relying instead upon the Badr Brigades of its SCIRI ally, who make up the bulk of recruits to the 14th Army Division Maliki led into Basra. That it has apparently decided it now needs one says as little about Maliki's stability in power as his sending a negotiating emmisary to the Sadrists at the same time as he's publicly claiming there will be no negotiation and no backing down.

The circumstances in which the negotiations with al-Sadr took place suggested the government is no longer able to dictate the terms of an agreement with al-Sadr but now must seek a deal. Gen. Hussein al-Assadi, a Baghdad-based commander, traveled to Najaf to call on the head of al-Sadr's political bureau there, Lewaa Smaisam.

From his office, the two men telephoned al-Sadr, who is believed to be in Iran. But they could not reach agreement, an official close to the negotiations said. He would not give his name due to the sensitivity of the subject.

Shortly after the talks broke down, the Iraqi government extended its curfew in Baghdad indefinitely. Earlier Saturday, al-Sadr directed his followers not to lay down their weapons, a snub of al-Maliki's offer to militias Friday to pay for arms if they would hand them over within 10 days.

So much for the Surge. Baghdad's curfew is extended until further notice. Much of Basra - where US special forces are also now involved directly in the fighting - remains in the hands of Sadr's Mahdi militiamen.

The United States confirmed on Sunday that US special forces units were operating alongside Iraqi government troops in Basra, where the government is battling militants loyal to Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.

A US military statement described a joint raid by Iraqi and US special forces units which killed 22 suspected militants, including "16 criminal fighters" strafed in an air strike on three houses.

The raid showed US forces are being drawn deeper into the Iraqi-led crackdown, launched on Tuesday by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki in Basra, Iraq's second-biggest city.

The Iraqi special forces team killed four suspected militants in a house and two on a roof before calling in the air strike, the statement said.

Local Sadrist and Basra police (also likely Sadrist) sources are saying many of the casualties in this and other air strikes are civilians, of course. The US has played this game before, always claiming every dead body as a confirmed insurgent and every arrested one as a suspected insurgent. But the description for not having sufficient boots on the ground to take on a couple of hundred militiamen in a city of over two million, and thus relying on air power and artillery, is always going to be "collateral damage". Iraqi TV stations are describing dead civilians in this and other strikes as "martyrs".

Meanwhile, the British have confined themselves to a checkpoint outside the city and one artillery strike in supprt of Maliki's forces.

"We've had ground forces outside the wire assisting Iraqi forces. There are no British ground forces inside the city of Basra," spokesman Major Tom Holloway said by telephone. "As yet there is no intent to push British armour into the city."

The British military have worked out faster than the US that Maliki's politically-motivated offensive is designed to drag the occupying powers into providing continuing bodyguarding for his government and his own ass.

The Scary World of John Hindraker

By Cernig

Someone set of a tiny explosive device outside the Times Square Armed Forces Recruiting Station in New York in the early hours of this morning. Despite the fact that the bomb was more bang than blast, not even shredding the old army-surplus ammo box it appears to have come in, the NY Police described it as an IED (Improvised Explosive Device) - which while technically true evokes parallels with IED's in Iraq and this device bore the same relationship to those things as a Times Square pigeon has to a T-Rex.

Predictably, the wingnuts are pissing themselves with fear over the possibilities.

John Hindraker at Powerline headlines his post "ISLAMIC EXTREMISTS OR CODE PINKERS?" (Yes, all in caps. I'm just amazed there weren't twenty exclamation points too.)

A.J. Strata doesn't even stop to seriously consider the Islamists - he knows who the real enemy is. "Who Would Bomb Recruiters In NY City? Lunatic Liberals Of Course".

And Ed Morrisey proves his rationality has sailed into the sunset with his move from the Captain's Quarters into the boiler room at Hot Air.

Given the escalating protests over military recruitment, it seems inevitable that people would bomb those who seek to protect the nation and fight our enemies.

I have to agree with John Cole - the logical gap in that sentence, that anti-war protests must inevitably turn to violence, is a veritable yawning chasm. Mind the step.

At least Confederate Yankee, who has his own impromptu analysis which shows just how much of a squib the bomb was, mentions the only evidence of any connection whatsoever to anyone at all and says clearly that he thinks it's unlikely any anti-war group was responsible. That evidence is the only evidence anyone has right now.

Law enforcement officials are looking into whether the suspect is the same man who threw explosive devices at the British and Mexican Consulates in the early morning hours in the past couple of years.

In October, witnesses told police they saw a man on a bicycle throwing a small black powdered device at the Mexican Consulate in Midtown. In May, 2005, a similar incident also occurred at the British Consulate building. No one was hurt in either of those two incidents.

Law enforcement officials said a preliminary review shows Thursday's explosion was caused by a can filled with some sort of explosive powder.

"In 2005, 2007, dummy hand grenades were used and the explosive, black powder, was put into those grenades and that caused the explosion," Kelly said. "Here, it may be similar powder -- we still have to determine that. But it was placed in an ammunition box. That was the carrier for the explosive. There was no grenade."

Mexico isn't even involved in Iraq or Afghanistan. James Joyner feels the evidence just points to "a thrillseeker with no real political agenda."

Lets see now - the evidence tying this to a lone wacko on a bike is circumstantial ("the size of the blast, the time of day, and a bicycle"), but the evidence tying it to an anti-war movement or Islamist group is...um...nil.

Must be Code Pink or AQI then.

Welcome to the Scary World of John Hindraker.

The Laptop Of Doom

By Cernig

For the first time, Iran has openly said it believes the infamous "smoking laptop" to be full of MeK terror group propaganda. Gareth Porter does sterling work tracking the laptop's provenance - which is to say US intel just about got it from a guy in a bar.

those documents have long been regarded with great suspicion by U.S. and foreign analysts. German officials have identified the source of the laptop documents in November 2004 as the Mujahideen e Khalq (MEK), which along with its political arm, the National Council of Resistance in Iran (NCRI), is listed by the U.S. State Department as a terrorist organisation.

There are some indications, moreover, that the MEK obtained the documents not from an Iranian source but from Israel's Mossad.

In its latest report on Iran, circulated Feb. 22, the IAEA, under strong pressure from the Bush administration, included descriptions of plans for a facility to produce "green salt", technical specifications for high explosives testing and the schematic layout of a missile reentry vehicle that appears capable of holding a nuclear weapon. Iran has been asked to provide full explanations for these alleged activities.

Tehran has denounced the documents on which the charges are based as fabrications provided by the MEK, and has demanded copies of the documents to analyse, but the United States had refused to do so.

The Iranian assertion is supported by statements by German officials. A few days after then Secretary of State Colin Powell announced the laptop documents, Karsten Voight, the coordinator for German-American relations in the German Foreign Ministry, was reported by the Wall Street Journal Nov. 22, 2004 as saying that the information had been provided by "an Iranian dissident group".

A German official familiar with the issue confirmed to this writer that the NCRI had been the source of the laptop documents. "I can assure you that the documents came from the Iranian resistance organisation," the source said.

The Germans have been deeply involved in intelligence collection and analysis regarding the Iranian nuclear programme. According to a story by Washington Post reporter Dafna Linzer soon after the laptop documents were first mentioned publicly by Powell in late 2004, U.S. officials said they had been stolen from an Iranian whom German intelligence had been trying to recruit, and had been given to intelligence officials of an unnamed country in Turkey.

The German account of the origins of the laptop documents contradicts the insistence by unnamed U.S. intelligence officials who insisted to journalists William J. Broad and David Sanger in November 2005 that the laptop documents did not come from any Iranian resistance groups.

Despite the fact that it was listed as a terrorist organisation, the MEK was a favourite of neoconservatives in the Pentagon, who were proposing in 2003-2004 to use it as part of a policy to destabilise Iran.

You're going to be hearing a lot more about this laptop's alleged revelations, as it's the single biggest remaining item of "evidence" in the neocon war-hyper's arsenal. But it looks very like any real information contained on it relates to iran's now-defunct pre-2003 weapons program and that data has been spiced up by the inclusion of propaganda planted by one of the links in the provenance chain.

India's Big Arms Deal Bonanza

By Cernig

India has increased its defense budget by 10% and plans to spend $30 billion on arms imports in the next four years. That includes increasing it's deisel sub collection by six more on top of the half dozen it bought in Europe last year, building a nuclear sub, buying an aircraft carrier and a $12 billion purchase of 126 new fighter jets.

Now you know why Gates was in India this week.

Turks - "No Timetable"

By Cernig

U.S SecDef Gates has joined the Iraqi government in calling for Turkey to keep its incursion into Iraq short.

"It's very important that the Turks make this operation as short as possible and then leave," Gates said before departing India. "They have to be mindful of Iraqi sovereignty. I measure quick in terms of days, a week or two, something like that, not months."

However, the Turkish military seems to have no intention of letting either American or Iraqi pressure dictate its operations in Kurdish Iraq. There are reports of more troops being sent to the area of fighting and the Turks have bluntly said:

"Our objective is clear, our mission is clear and there is no timetable until ... those terrorist bases are eliminated," senior Turkish envoy Ahmet Davutoglu said after talks with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari.

It must really put a bug up the Bush administration's ass to hear its own "War On Terror" rhetoric used against it in this way, but it really only has itself to blame. Washington has turned a mostly blind eye to PKK attacks from Iraqi safe havens for years, in return for a mostly quiet North as the primary long-term bright spot of the Iraqi misadventure. They sat on the fence between a Kurdish ally that enabled terrorist groups (which co-incidentally also carry out attacks inside Iran) and their NATO ally - and now they have splinters.

But the current incursion is both a warning and a preamble. Turkey is sending a very unsubtle message. "Get off the fence and reign in these Kurdish groups before the Spring thaw in late-March or April or we'll be over the border in real force and you can kiss goodbye to peace in Northern Iraq. We've proven we can and we've proven you can't do anything about it short of breaking up NATO and starting up an actual war with the most moderate Islamic-majority nation in the region." The unrest which will come from the US and Iraq cracking down on the PKK and PJK will be nothing compared to what would hit the fan then.

At present, as far as I can see, Turkey holds all the cards.

Update Via Tim F at Balloon Juice, Ken Silverstein reports that the Iraqi Kurdish regional government may be planning to mount a resistance to the Turkish incursion:

A former U.S. official who works in northern Iraq emailed me to say:

"The United States is being skillfully handled by the Turks, who are dragging the U.S. into a policy disaster in Kurdistan. The Kurds have moved a lot of fighters and equipment quietly into the area, and are prepared to strike the Turks. Massoud [Barzani, the Iraqi Kurdish leader] has issued all the press comments he can to publicly warn that Kurdish patience is gone. The United States is either ignoring the signals or missing them…The Kurds can and will bloody the Turks badly in a fight."

This former official is close to Kurdish officials and hence an interested party, but his previous reports from the ground have been well-informed.

The Kurds couldn't possibly hope to defeat the Turkish military - they're utterly outclassed in terms of both manpower and equipment. But that's not to say they couldn't mount a very effective Hezboullah-style defense that could make the Turks pay a price. If Silverstein's source is correct then the entire Iraqi issue is about to explode. I think it's highly unlikely that the Kurdish regional authorities and their peshmerga could get involved in fighting Turkey while the Iraqi government sat on the sidelines. And if the Iraqi central government gets involved then the US occupation will have to get off the fence or be pushed off.

Let me reiterate here - these upcoming "interesting times" in Iraq are not the kind of mess that, in White House speak, "couldn't have been anticipated". Way back in August 2006 there were reports that diplomats were saying that it was a case of when, not if, Turkey would cross the border unless the US forced Iraq to deal with the PKK. Since then, the signs haven't been difficult to miss.

Ex Gitmo Chief Prosecutor - Witness For Hamdan Defense

By Cernig

Wow - this says volumes.

In a stunning turnaround, the former chief military prosecutor at Guantanamo Bay said Thursday he would be a defense witness for the driver of Osama bin Laden.

Air Force Col. Morris Davis, who resigned in October over alleged political interference in the U.S. military tribunals, told The Associated Press he will appear at a hearing for Salim Ahmed Hamdan.

"I expect to be called as a witness ... I'm more than happy to testify," Davis said in a telephone interview from Washington. He called it "an opportunity to tell the truth."

At the April pretrial hearing inside the U.S. military base in southeast Cuba, Hamdan's defense team plans to argue that alleged political interference cited by Davis violates the Military Commissions Act, said Hamdan's military lawyer, Navy Lt. Brian Mizer.

Davis alleges, among other things, that Pentagon general counsel William Haynes said in August 2005 that any acquittals of terrorism suspects at Guantanamo would make the United States look bad, calling into question the fairness of the proceedings.

"He said, 'We can't have acquittals, we've got to have convictions,'" Davis recalled.

A Pentagon spokesman, Navy Cmdr. Jeffrey Gordon, denied that Haynes made such a comment. Gordon also denied the former prosecutor's allegations of political interference, which he has repeated in newspaper opinion columns and in interviews in recent months.

Reports say it's unclear whether Davis will be allowed to testify by the Pentagon. He's still head of the Air Force judiciary and the Defense Department ordered him not to appear before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee back in December. If he is not alowed to appear for Hamdan's defesne, many will see that as a tacit admission of his allegations and that the commission cases are fixed before they begin.

Nor is Davis the only one speaking out. As Scott Horton noted today:

Three others–Maj. Robert Preston, Capt. John Carr and Capt. Carrie Wolf–asked to be relieved of duties after saying they were concerned that the process was rigged. One said he had been assured he didn’t need to worry about building a proper case; convictions were assured.

Those convictions have been assured, in part, by evidence obtained by torture at Gitmo and elsewhere - for which detainees were subjected to illegal rendition. They are illegal because it is against both international and US law to transport a prisoner to a place where he will be tortured. The US government has long denied such flights took place at all, in the face of a large body of evidence including pictures of aircraft , flight numbers and detainee testimonies - but today had to admit to two which touched down at a British airbase.

Also today, the Daily Telegraph, not at all a bastion of liberal thought, has a report from its crime correspondent on the case of Bisher al-Rawi:

Mr al-Rawi was detained first in Gambia, along with his Jordanian business partner Jamil al-Banna, at Banjul airport on a business trip in November 2002. The pair said they were in Gambia to set up a factory processing peanut oil.

Mr al-Rawi was rendered into detention in "the dark prison" in Kabul, Afghanistan. He claims he was denied food, water and light.

He was then taken to Bagram airbase, where he said he was beaten up and then on to Guantanamo Bay in early 2003, where he was interrogated for four years before finally being released in March 2006.

The authorities claimed they were planning to set up a terrorist training camp and were going to funnel profits from the peanut oil plant to fund al-Qaeda.

Lawyer Rabinder Singh has said the arrests were "far from any theatre of war".

He was interrogated about his links to the controversial cleric Abu Qatada.

But the British government apparently now accepts that he was helping MI5 to keep watch on Abu Qatada.

Imagine, illegally flown to prisons where he would be tortured by Americans and their allies, for potentially endangering his own life by helping British intelligence.

(h/t Kat)

New Pakistan Coalition To Reinstate Chief Justice

By Cernig

To the surprise of very few, the two winners of Pakistan's elections have agreed to a coalition government - and are saying one of the new government's first acts will be to reinstate sacked Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry.

Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said he had agreed "a common agenda" with the party of assassinated opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.

He had been in talks with Ms Bhutto's widower, Asif Zardari, the new leader of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP).

Such a government could put renewed pressure on President Pervez Musharraf.

"We will work together to form the government in the centre and in the provinces," Mr Sharif, head of the Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz (PML-N), said at a joint news conference with Mr Zardari.

He said the two parties had agreed that the country's chief justice, sacked by President Musharraf in November, should be immediately reinstated.

What a way to shake Musharraf from his podium. Chaudry is on record as saying he thinks Musharraf's re-election was illegal, and the prospect of his court ruling thus was the real reason behind his dismissal in the first case. Such a move not only shows up Musharraf's clampdown in the wake of that dismissal for what it was - an entirely selfish move to hold power. It also paves the way for parliament and judiciary to act with common purpose in unseating Musharraf once and for all.

Shortly before the coalition press conference, Chaudry had spoken to lawyer supporters on a smuggled mobile phone - he's still under house arrest.

He told lawyers in Karachi that the recent election result showed that the Pakistani people had "repudiated" President Musharraf and that "unconstitutional measures" taken by him under emergency rule should be reversed.

"Victory is not far off now," he said.

"There are occasions when a nation passes through defining moments and the Pakistani nation is passing through this defining moment now.

"If we lose this opportunity no one can then change the affairs of this nation ever."

Supporters responded to his speech by chanting "go, Musharraf, go!"

Shortly after he spoke, police used tear gas on protesting lawyers in Karachi and there were other demonstrations in Quetta and Lahore.

Both the UK and the US administrations have been backing Musharraf in the wake of the elections, and asking the new coalition government to drop their demands for his resignation and Chaudry's reinstatement. Both have painted themselves into a corner by insisting Musharraf was a staunch ally in the "war on terror", a proposition which has dubious validity at best. McClatchy reported yesterday that there's considerable division inside the Bush administration, however, with the split predictably being along Bush ideologue/career State diplomat lines:

The Bush administration is pressing the opposition leaders who defeated Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf to allow the former general to retain his position, a move that Western diplomats and U.S. officials say could trigger the very turmoil the United States seeks to avoid.

U.S. officials, from President Bush on down, said this week that they think Musharraf, a longtime U.S. ally, should continue to play a role, despite his party's rout in parliamentary elections Monday and his unpopularity in the volatile, nuclear-armed nation.

The U.S. is urging the Pakistani political leaders who won the elections to form a new government quickly and not press to reinstate the judges whom Musharraf ousted last year, Western diplomats and U.S. officials said Wednesday. If reinstated, the jurists likely would try to remove Musharraf from office.

Bush's policy of hanging on to Musharraf has caused friction between the White House and the State Department, with some career diplomats and other specialists arguing that the administration is trying to buck the political tides in Pakistan, U.S. officials said.

Officials in the White House and the intelligence community fear that the longer Pakistan remains without a new government, the deeper the gridlock, threatening the progress made in the elections toward greater stability and helping the country's Islamic extremists.

One Western diplomat said, however, that the strategy could backfire if Pakistanis feel betrayed after voting to kick Musharraf from office.

"This is dangerous," said the diplomat.

Shariff and the lawyers, however, have made it clear they aren't going to be dissuaded despite intense US and UK pressure.

an aide to Mr Sharif, who is due to meet today (THURS) with PPP leader, Asif Ali Zardari, confirmed there had been pressure to drop its demand for Mr Chaudhry’s return. “The suggestion has been there from Western countries for some time. In fact it was raised by [a senior British official] when he met Mr Sharif in London. [But] we are not willing to compromise on our stance. We feel it would be against the interest of the Pakistani people.”

This week senior US officials have already met with Mr Sharif and the other leading players in Pakistan’s unfolding political drama, urging an inclusive transition towards democracy. Yesterday morning, a US diplomat based in Lahore spent two hours with Aitzaz Ahsan, leader of the lawyers movement, laying out the US position.

Mr Ahsan, who has been under house arrest for three months, declined to detail the contents of his conversation with the diplomat, but he said: “There is no way other than to reinstate the judges. We are not going to let this pass. We will not let it be accepted as a norm.”

And its highly unlikely that the PPP, which has loudly accused Musharraf of having a hand in Bhutto's death, could survive an about-face on the issue.

Musharraf is, to borrow a cricket term, on a "very sticky wicket". By backing his soft-dictatorship against the democratic will of the Pakistani people, the US and UK tarnish themselves visibly as nations which only give lip service to their ideals - until democracy doesn't suit them.

Update China Hand at American Footprints, a must-read for anyone following Pakistan's continuing political turmoil, has this to say:

The Bush administration is pushing Pakistan into a corner.

It’s not a happy place.

It’s called Musharraf = Shah of Iran territory.

And it really doesn’t have to be that way.

After all, the opposition to Musharraf comes from respectable, clean-shaven democratic, dollar-worshiping moderates, not the bearded religious fanatics of our dark fantasies.

Ineed, the Bush administration and conservative pundits were just as pleased as everyone else when Islamist parties nosedived in the Pakistani elections - but now that it's time to support their favorite local general-in-a-suit, they're rolling out the "ZOMG!! Islamofascists With Nukes!" fearmongering again. As China Hand points out, thereby they create the danger of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

(My thanks to Kat for research, as always)

So The U.S. Has An ASAT Weapon

By Cernig

So, the U.S. has an anti-satellite weapon. It's a modification of the well-tried SM3 naval missile rather than one of the fancier and far more expensive per unit specially-developed anti-missile interceptors the military are keeping up in Alaska and plan to install in Europe. It might work under all weather conditions - but the military erred on the side of caution.

The neocons are jubilant - Michael Goldfarb calling it the "greatest PR boost the program could have gotten short of actually striking down a North Korean missile inbound to Hollywood". That's a bit hyperbolic - but then again he also headlines his piece "Missile Defense Works" when hitting a satellite the size of a bus in a predictable orbit doesn't actually say a damn thing about ability to hit a dodging, far smaller re-entry vehicle which might have onboard jammers or decoys deployed.

The rest of us? Well, there isn't a single expert in the field who believes the "hydrazine threat" story. The consensus is that the Bush administration just rattled a sabre the U.S. already proved it had the capability for back in 1985 to no good outcome other than heightened international arms control tensions, at a time when the neocon lobby is calling for a walkback by the U.S. on various arms treaties to allow missile defense systems which will include the permanent stationing of weapons in space. The shootdown was a short-sighted act of marginal utility but incalculable diplomatic/foreign policy effects. Welcome to the new arms race with both China and Russia - and India, Japan, Israel...

Worse, if the neocons are successful in riding this PR victory into a Brilliant Pebbles deployment, the next time an SM3 is launched into orbit it may be targeted at a rogue satellite containing a half-dozen interceptor missiles of its own (or even a nuke-pumped X-Ray laser if one of the more nightamrish plans from Ronnie's old Star Wars comix makes a re-appearance). Wouldn't that make a nice firework video for the nightime news?

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?

Shooting Stars

By Cernig

The Bush administration's public statements about their decision to shoot down a satellite that's already falling down anyway are so ridiculous that everyone's looking for the real motive.

There are many significant political ramifications that would happen as a result of this. The US has been berating the Chinese on their ASAT test but now demonstrate that it is okay as long as it occurs at a low enough altitude to prevent long-lasting debris and can "save lives". This is close to an implied "ok" for the US and other nations to conduct more ASAT tests, which could open another arms race. I am also certain that Russian and China would also see this as a slap in the face as they are trying to revive the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space treaty discussion and ban on space weapons. It would further negatively affect the relations between them and the US. Which could lead to increased tensions, arms buildup, etc etc etc. Nothing good for anyone outside of arms manufacturers and politicians that need a bogeyman to scare people into voting for them.

The Arms Control Wonk, Jeffrey Lewis, has a great post and comments section analyzing the dangers of satellite debris creating more of a menace than the falling artificial star itself.

For myself, I think anyone looking for the real motive should be looking to the writings of the neocon think tanks that have always been the biggest proponents of anti-missile, anti-satellite and space-based weapons. They are calling upon the Bush administration and conservatives to twist and parse like a crowd of Clenises denying a new indecent liason in order to claim that "space was weaponized when the first ballistic missile was deployed, because ballistic missiles travel through space on their way to their targets." Any treaties against space-based weaponry would stop them realising Reagan's dream of Brilliant Pebbles interceptors permanently hanging over everyone's heads.

If this shot fails, it will be used as an argument for space-based interceptors instead. If it suceeds, it will be used as an argument for space-based interceptors as well.

Update The Russians aren't fooled.

Russia has accused the US of using a plan to shoot down a broken spy satellite as a cover for testing an anti-satellite weapon.
The US said last week that it would use a missile to destroy the satellite, to stop it from crash landing.

Officials say the satellite contains hazardous fuel which could kill humans.

But Russia's defence ministry said the US planned to test its "anti-missile defence system's capability to destroy other countries' satellites".

..."Speculations about the danger of the satellite hide preparations for the classical testing of an anti-satellite weapon," a statement reported by Itar-Tass news agency said.

...Such testing essentially means the creation of a new type of strategic weapons," it added.

"The decision to destroy the American satellite does not look harmless as they try to claim, especially at a time when the US has been evading negotiations on the limitation of an arms race in outer space," the statement continued.

The Russian defence ministry argued that various countries' spacecraft had crashed to Earth in the past, and many countries used toxic fuel in spacecraft, but this had never before merited such "extraordinary measures".

The Spooks And Media Stenography

By Cernig

The UK's Independent newspaper has an excerpt today from Nick Davies new book "Flat Earth News", in which he "argues that shadowy intelligence agencies are pumping out black propaganda to manipulate public opinion – and that the media simply swallow it wholesale". It's well worth a read.

Davies points to the way in which one minor terror figure - Abu Musab al Zarqawi - was hyped by propaganda which suceeded in turning him into the very thing they said he was, increasing Al Qaeda's influence in Iraq and endangering US troops in the process. Powell mentioned him in his 2003 address to the UN and every statement about Zarqawi turned out to be false. Letters from him appeared and were widely pushed by the Pentagon and media stenographers - even though those letters were fakes. And then:

the US campaign on Zarqawi eventually succeeded in creating its own reality. By elevating him from his position as one fighter among a mass of conflicting groups, the US campaign to "villainise Zarqawi" glamorised him with its enemy audience, making it easier for him to raise funds, to attract "unsponsored" foreign fighters, to make alliances with Sunni Iraqis and to score huge impact with his own media manoeuvres. Finally, in December 2004, Osama bin Laden gave in to this constructed reality, buried his differences with the Jordanian and declared him the leader of al-Q'aida's resistance to the American occupation.

But he also writes about the wider black propaganda war:

For the first time in human history, there is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it.

...This material is being generated, in part, by intelligence agencies who continue to work without effective oversight; and also by a new and essentially benign structure of "strategic communications" which was originally designed by doves in the Pentagon and Nato who wanted to use subtle and non-violent tactics to deal with Islamist terrorism but whose efforts are poorly regulated and badly supervised with the result that some of its practitioners are breaking loose and engaging in the black arts of propaganda.

...So, who exactly is producing fiction for the media? Who wrote the Zarqawi letters? Who created the fantasy story about Osama bin Laden using a network of subterranean bases in Afghanistan, complete with offices, dormitories, arms depots, electricity and ventilation systems? Who fed the media with tales of the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar, suffering brain seizures and sitting in stationery cars turning the wheel and making a noise like an engine? Who came up with the idea that Iranian ayatollahs have been encouraging sex with animals and girls of only nine?

Some of this comes from freelance political agitators. It was an Iranian opposition group [the MeK - C], for example, which was behind the story that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was jailing people for texting each other jokes about him. And notoriously it was Iraqi exiles who supplied the global media with a dirty stream of disinformation about Saddam Hussein.

But clearly a great deal of this carries the fingerprints of officialdom. The Pentagon has now designated "information operations" as its fifth "core competency" alongside land, sea, air and special forces. Since October 2006, every brigade, division and corps in the US military has had its own "psyop" element producing output for local media. This military activity is linked to the State Department's campaign of "public diplomacy" which includes funding radio stations and news websites. In Britain, the Directorate of Targeting and Information Operations in the Ministry of Defence works with specialists from 15 UK psyops, based at the Defence Intelligence and Security School at Chicksands in Bedfordshire.

There's no actual law to prevent British intelligence producing such propaganda. And in the U.S., the Pentagon and CIA have made it clear that they follow the Bush administration's claim that Constitutional rights stop at the border. If the Pentagon produces black propaganda in Iraq or gives it to a UK newspaper, then that isn't illegal. If US media stenographers then pick up on those reports and import them wholesale and unexamined back to the U.S., then that's the media's lookout as far as they are concerned. But despite the Bush administration and its intelligence producers saying this clearly, the mainstream media continues to churn and repeat their overseas press releases as gospel.

Sadr Looks To Extend Ceasefire

By Cernig

Will he or won't he? Shiite cleric/politician/militia leader Muqtada al-Sadr is reported to be ready to extend his Mahdi Army's six month ceasefire - and possibly even begin transforming the militia into a humanitarian organisation.

Significantly, Gen Petraeus is saying he's already been told the extension will go ahead, before there's been any official announcement. Here at Newshoggers, we've pointed recently to signs of deals between the US military and the radical cleric once described by the Pentagon as the single biggest threat to peace in Iraq. Petraeus is now giving Sadr credit for his part in the drop in violence which many in the US want to atribute solely to the Surge:

"For the good of Iraq and to enable us to continue pursuing al Qaeda without watching our back, to enable Iraq to continue momentum in the areas of rebuilding and reconstruction ... all of that argues for a continuation of the ceasefire," he said.

"The ceasefire has been ... a factor that has resulted in a reduction of violence in Iraq."

...Petraeus said that if Sadr wanted to see U.S. forces leave, it made sense to renew the ceasefire.

"Frankly, if the overall objective is to get a timetable for the removal of coalition forces or something like along those lines, quit shooting at us because over time we are going to go," Petraeus said.

There are also reports, however, that a continuation of the ceasefire would mean a split in the organisation as many within Sadr's bloc believe their rivals in the Iraqi government - primarily the Badr Brigade's sponsors SCIRI, will continue to use the iraqi and US militaries to attack Sadr's men. To get a ceasefire extension, Petraeus is going to have to have promised to get both his own troops and Iraqi ones to quit shooting at mainstream Mahdi Army groups too.

Awakening Members On Strike

By Cernig

Oh, the reconciliation!

U.S.-backed Sunni tribesmen shut their offices and rallied in Baqouba's streets Saturday, calling for the provincial police chief's resignation and accusing him of sectarian bias.

Hundreds of members of Sunni awakening councils in Diyala province held at least three demonstrations Saturday. At one rally in downtown Baqouba, a banner was hoisted above the crowd reading "al-Qureyshi targets Sunnis and kidnaps women" — referring to Gen. Ghanim al-Qureyshi, director general of Diyala police.

...the men — who patrol their neighborhoods on temporary security contracts paid by the U.S. — have grown frustrated with the province's Shiite-dominated government in recent months, and have threatened to halt cooperation.

Some have been denied jobs in the Iraqi security forces, and the blame al-Qureyshi, a Shiite. They accuse him of trying to maintain a Shiite majority in the police department in Diyala, a once-mixed province that now has a slight Sunni majority.

Back in September, Chief al-Qureyshi himself said he would love to hire 1,000 Awakening members right away, but the central government wouldn't let him. The US military is trying to downplay the strike, saying Awakening members have done the same thing before and then gone back to their posts. But surely the point is that they keep striking because their greivances aren't being met despite the US military's promises - over five or six months now.

Stand Up Christian Pretend-Terrorists

By Cernig

The New York Times has an article today alleging that three speakers to an Air Force Academy conference on terrorism to tell cadets about how they used to be Islamist terrorists have turned out to be evangelist Christians lying about their pasts.

Nicole Bell at Crooks and Liars writes:

This story just reeks of propaganda and a sneaky agenda. The article mentions that these consultants were paid in part from private donations, and it would be interesting to know just who that is, because I have a feeling that would make clear the agenda working here.

Meanwhile, Steve Emerson, head of The Investigative Project on Terrorism and self-proclaimed expert, has a long and rambling diatribe about the allegations at National Review today, in which he repeatedly calls CAIR out for alleged ties to funders and supporters of terrorism but doesn't say dick about the truth or falsity of the NYT's allegations themselves. Methinks he doth protest too much.

Sharia Fearmongering

By Cernig

There's been a lot of Islamophobic mouthbreathing over the Archbishop of Canterbury's comment yesterday that Sharia Law in the UK is "unavoidable". British politicians and pundits on both sides of the pond have picked up on the bare bones of the story and fallen over each other to demand the Archbishop's resignation or to complain that this would be the "thin edge of the wedge".

But all he actually said (see the BBC's original story) was that Muslims should have the same option to choose a private court (using Sharia Law) for civil disputes as Jewish Brits do. Indeed, Williams said he was fully aware of how draconian full Sharia Law can be:

He stresses that "nobody in their right mind would want to see in this country the kind of inhumanity that's sometimes been associated with the practice of the law in some Islamic states; the extreme punishments, the attitudes to women as well".

...Dr Williams noted that Orthodox Jewish courts already operated, and that the law accommodated the anti-abortion views of some Christians.

"The whole idea that there are perfectly proper ways the law of the land pays respect to custom and community, that's already there," he said.

People may legally devise their own way to settle a dispute in front of an agreed third party as long as both sides agree to the process.

Muslim Sharia courts and the Jewish Beth Din which already exist in the UK come into this category.

The country's main Beth Din at Finchley in north London oversees a wide range of cases including divorce settlements, contractual rows between traders and tenancy disputes.

So why the outcry over a reasonable call for parity? Well, mostly it seems to me because Islamophobia is the new anti-Semitism and politicians are appeasing such "Protocols of the Elders of Islam" rightwing conspiracy theorists as long as their Blimpoid bigotry goosesteps to a nationalistic beat.

Meanwhile, over at Pajamas Media, Roger Kimball is using King Henry II's words which were interpreted as a command to assassinate a previous Archbishop of Canterbury as a headline, then with weasel words hidden in the article takes them back - sort off:

I certainly would not wish to have the question “Who will rid us of this troublesome priest?” answered as Henry’s question was answered. But where Becket faithfully served his church and was savagely punished for it, Rowan Williams loses no opportunity to besmirch his Church and is lavishly praised for his perfidy.

There will continue to be more outrage directed at Archbishop Williams for suggesting parity of rights for Jews and Muslims than there will be at the US art critic and ideologue for sailing so close to a call for the assassination of the clerical head of the Church of England. That's your appeasement right there.

African Command Can't Find African Home

By Cernig

The US military's African command cannot find an African nation willing to host it, and will stay in Germany for the forseeable future. This story is flying under everyone's radar and yet I think it's one of the most clearcut examples yet of the damage the Bush presidency has done to America on the world stage.

A year after President George W. Bush approved its creation, the new U.S. military command for Africa is finding its feet but has quietly dropped talk of basing itself on the African continent.

Largely carved out of U.S. European Command, based in Stuttgart, Germany, the new Africa Command (Africom) will stay there for now as its leaders try to switch the debate away from the controversial headquarters issue and on to the "added value" it aims to bring to Africa.

"In the near to mid-term, and for the foreseeable future, we're going to be here and from here we can do all the activities that we need to do with our African partners," Africom's deputy commander, Vice Admiral Robert Moeller, said in an interview on Monday in Stuttgart.

Where U.S. officials once spoke confidently of plans to base the command in Africa, shared between several countries, they now stress the multiple conditions that would need to be fulfilled.

"If it's in the desire and the interests of our African partners in that regard then we'll look for an opportunity to do that where it makes sense to do so, but only obviously where we're invited," Moeller said.

The caution stems from the unwelcoming reaction of several African nations, including regional powers South Africa and Nigeria, to the notion of Africom setting up on their patch.

Africom found itself having to justify its ambitious mission -- in Bush's words, to promote peace, security and "our common goals of development, health, education, democracy and economic growth in Africa" -- in the face of widespread opposition and scepticism.

Critics have suggested its real motives are thirst for oil -- West African producers are expected to supply a quarter of U.S. consumption by 2015 -- and the desire to counter growing Chinese influence on the continent.

African nations have more reason than most to be sceptical of major powers' intentions, to be sure, but what does it say that they're more afraid of American hegemony than of the terrorist menace?

Sarko's Multipolar World

By Cernig

Just a quick mention of a story that seems to give weight to my feeling that France's president Sarkozy sees an opportunity to enhance his nation's prestige and power in a world looking to multi-polar options. After seven years of Sarko's good pal Bush exploding the idea that the US as sole superpower could be a good policeman, the Frenchman has an easy sales pitch:

France is counting on India’s traditional non-alignment to sell New Delhi fighter aircraft and nuclear reactors amid stiff competition from Moscow and in particular Washington, officials say.

President Nicolas Sarkozy left India on Saturday night after sending a “clear message to the Indians,” a presidential adviser said.

“He told them, “choose French civilian nuclear equipment to be independent of the Americans’.”

But not independent of France, obviously. Is there a conservative alive who isn't a colonialist at heart?

What's Going On In Mosul?

By Cernig

I'm only asking because the US media's reporting on Iraq seems to have devolved to the level of reporting on hit-and-run accidents. What's going on in Mosul?

Not more than a few weeks back we were being told that Mosul was one of the Surge's great successes, enabling a drawdown of US forces to only one battalion from a high of over two dozen. Suddenly, Al Qaeda, we are told, has regrouped in the city. There was a massive explosion that killed as many as 50 and has been blamed on AQ (although insurgency-loyal websites have a different story). A suicide bomber killed provincial police chief Brigadier General Salah al-Juburi and two other officers the next day when they went to inspect the carnage. There were five US soldiers killed today in another explosion. There are rumors that Gadhafi's son is helping AQ there. The Iraqi Army has moved its tiny supply of tanks and helicopters into the city along with major reinforcements. The latter alone tells you there's a crisis of sorts, and if it doesn't then the Defense Minister's saying that "The situation in Mosul is worse than imagined by far" will.

And all of this popped up out of nowhere and escalated into the current security crisis just after reports of an Iraqi soldier who shot and killed two US servicemen just after Christmas. He was called an Al Qaeda member but local reports claimed he had become angry when US soldiers beat a pregnant woman and opened fire after arguing with them. Lefalets distributed in Mosul exhorted locals to emulate the soldier, known as Caesar. Could there be a connection? If so, then it is in the interests of both the Iraqi authorities and US military to downplay it and the mainstream media isn't looking to see if there is one. They're content with their stenography of the story of the last stand of a mysteriously and suddenly resurgent Al Qaeda. Yet an AQI that has such a regenerative ability to regroup and resupply would be just as problemmatic in its own way as a Sunni backlash following the Caesar incident, which should be garnering more attention than it is.

German Conservatives' Immigration Card May Backfire With Voters

By Cernig

The BBC is reporting that Bush ally Angela Merkel may have problems coming, with state elections showing how nest year's federal race may be run.

German voters are voting in two state elections, in Lower Saxony and Hesse.

Opinion polls suggest Angela Merkel's party, the conservative CDU, may lose its majority in Hesse - a politically and economically important state.

The current governor of Hesse, the CDU's Roland Koch, is running for a third term in office.

Mr Koch has provoked a storm of protest with calls for tougher sentences and the deportation of what he called "young criminal foreigners."

Mr Koch is known as the "crown prince" by conservatives.

But his campaign, which has focused on crime and immigration, has recently alienated many voters.

According to the latest opinion polls, support for the ruling conservatives has dropped, paving the way for a victory by the Social Democrats (SPD).

Professor Hajo Funke, a political scientist, says the conservatives' anti-foreigner campaign may have backfired.

"If Roland Koch wins, it will have effects not only for this election, but for the next state elections and the next federal elections," he told the BBC.

"Because then you will have a different CDU, with more foreign hatred, with more national conservative elements - in the party, and in the strategy."

Parallels with the US are obvious, where hardline conservatives are absolutely determined that the Democratic nomination contest be framed as race-based and that the coming presidential fight be framed as who will best keep the brown people from America's door.

Let's all remember one thing that's been proven time and again over decades. It doesn't matter what party sign they hang around their neck - if they're banging on about race wars and fear of foreigners, they're conservatives.

Pentagon Forced To Reveal Human Cost Of War

By Cernig

The Pentagon has been forced to reveal the cost in wrecked lives of the War on Terror, after a FOI request by Veterans for Common Sense.

The US has suffered more than 72,000 battlefield casualties since the start of the war on terror in 2001, a Freedom of Information request has revealed.

The query by the campaigning Veterans for Common Sense organisation shows that 4372 American soldiers have died and another 67,671 have been wounded in action, injured in accidents or succumbed to illness in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The veterans' group had to force the US Defence Department to release the figures by persuading judges to uphold their FoI rights.

A second request to the Veterans' Administration, the government-funded body responsible for taking care of ex-servicemen and women, showed 263,909 soldiers with experience of the two 21st-century wars have so far received treatment for everything from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to the aftermath of amputated limbs.

It also showed 52,375 veterans had been diagnosed with PTSD and 34,138 have received approval for disability claims for the psychological disorder. As of October 31 last year, 1.6 million Americans have been deployed overseas since 2001.

Harvard University estimates the cost of caring for Iraq and Afghan veterans over the next 40 years will amount to between £125bn and £350bn, depending on the long-term effects of trauma.

Those are really big numbers. Over quarter of a million servicemen, women and their families negatively impacted by medical issues alone. Somewhere between $250 and $700 billion in long term medical costs. [Ed note - Libby pointed out that in my original text here I hadn't converted pounds to dollars. The exchange rate is roughly $2 to the pound.] More than 72,000 dead and physically imjured. McCain and others are saying 10 years more of this, 100 years more of this...

And as is often the case, it's the foreign media rather than US outlets who are taking notice. This report is from Scotland's Herald newspaper.

(Hat Tip - Ken)