Intelligence

December 31, 2005

Is Washington Planning a Military Strike?

The US and Iran: Is Washington Planning a Military Strike? - International - SPIEGEL ONLINE - News

Recent reports in the German media suggest that the United States may be preparing its allies for an imminent military strike against facilities that are part of Iran's suspected clandestine nuclear weapons program.

It's hardly news that US President George Bush refuses to rule out possible military action against Iran if Tehran continues to pursue its controversial nuclear ambitions. But in Germany, speculation is mounting that Washington is preparing to carry out air strikes against suspected Iranian nuclear sites perhaps even as soon as early 2006.

German diplomats began speaking of the prospect two years ago -- long before the Bush administration decided to give the European Union more time to convince Iran to abandon its ambitions, or at the very least put its civilian nuclear program under international controls. But the growing likelihood of the military option is back in the headlines in Germany thanks to a slew of stories that have run in the national media here over the holidays.

The most talked about story is a Dec. 23 piece by the German news agency DDP from journalist and intelligence expert Udo Ulfkotte. The story has generated controversy not only because of its material, but also because of the reporter's past. Critics allege that Ulfkotte in his previous reporting got too close to sources at Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the BND. But Ulfkotte has himself noted that he has been under investigation by the government in the past (indeed, his home and offices have been searched multiple times) for allegations that he published state secrets -- a charge that he claims would underscore rather than undermine the veracity of his work.

According to Ulfkotte's report, "western security sources" claim that during CIA Director Porter Goss' Dec. 12 visit to Ankara, he asked Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to provide support for a possibile 2006 air strike against Iranian nuclear and military facilities. More specifically, Goss is said to have asked Turkey to provide unfettered exchange of intelligence that could help with a mission.

DDP also reported that the governments of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Oman and Pakistan have been informed in recent weeks of Washington's military plans. The countries, apparently, were told that air strikes were a "possible option," but they were given no specific timeframe for the operations.

In a report published on Wednesday, the Berlin daily Der Tagesspiegel also cited NATO intelligence sources claiming that Washington's western allies had been informed that the United States is currently investigating all possibilities of bringing the mullah-led regime into line, including military options. Of course, Bush has publicly stated for months that he would not take the possibility of a military strike off the table. What's new here, however, is that Washington appears to be dispatching high-level officials to prepare its allies for a possible attack rather than merely implying the possibility as it has repeatedly done during the past year.

Links to al-Qaida?
According to DDP, during his trip to Turkey, CIA chief Goss reportedly handed over three dossiers to Turkish security officials that purportedly contained evidence that Tehran is cooperating with Islamic terror network al-Qaida. A further dossier is said to contain information about the current status of Iran's alleged nuclear weapons program. Sources in German security circles told the DDP reporter that Goss had ensured Ankara that the Turkish government would be informed of any possible air strikes against Iran a few hours before they happened. The Turkish government has also been given the "green light" to strike camps of the separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) in Iran on the day in question.

The DDP report attributes the possible escalation to the recent anti-Semitic rants by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose belligerent verbal attacks on Israel (he described the Holocaust as a "myth" and called for Israel to be "wiped off the map") have strengthened the view of the American government that, in the case of the nuclear dispute, there's little likelihood Tehran will back down and that the mullahs are just attempting to buy time by continuing talks with the Europeans.

The German wire service also quotes a high-ranking German military official saying: "I would be very surprised if the Americans, in the mid-term, didn't take advantage of the opportunity delivered by Tehran. The Americans have to attack Iran before the country can develop nuclear weapons. After that would be too late."

Despite the wave of recent reports, it's naturally difficult to assess whether the United States has any concrete plans to attack Iranian nuclear facilities. In a January 2005 report in the New Yorker, US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh claimed that clandestine American commando groups had already infiltrated Iran in order to mark potential military targets.

At the time, the Bush administration did not dispute Hersh's reporting -- it merely sought to minimize its impact. In Washington, word circulated that the article was filled with "inaccurate statements." But no one rejected the core reporting behind the article. Bush himself explicitly stated he would not rule out the "option of war."

How great is the threat?

So is the region now on the verge of a military strike or even a war? In Berlin, the issue is largely being played down. During his inaugural visit with US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in Washington last week, the possibility of a US air strike against Iran "hadn't been an issue," for new German Defense Minister Franz Josef Jung, a Defense Ministry spokesman told SPIEGEL ONLINE.
CIA Director Porter Goss.
AP
CIA Director Porter Goss.

But the string of visits by high-profile US politicians to Turkey and surrounding reports are drawing new attention to the issue. In recent weeks, the number of American and NATO security officials heading to Ankara has increased dramatically. Within a matter of only days, the FBI chief, then the CIA chief and, most recently, NATO General Secretary Jaap De Hoop Scheffer visited the Turkish capital. During her visit to Europe earlier this month, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice also traveled to Turkey after a stopover in Berlin.

Leading the chorus of speculation are Turkish newspapers, which have also sought to connect these visits to plans for an attack on Iran. But so far none of the speculation has been based on hard facts. Writing about the meeting between Porter Goss and Tayyip Erdogan, the left-nationalist newspaper Cumhuriyet wrote: "Now It's Iran's Turn." But the paper didn't offer any evidence to corroborate the claims.

Instead, the paper noted that the meeting between the CIA chief and Erdogan lasted longer than an hour -- an unusual amount of time, especially considering Goss had previously met with the head of Turkey's intelligence service, the MIT. The Turkish media concluded that the meetings must have dealt with a very serious matter -- but they failed to uncover exactly what it was. Most media speculated that Erdogan and Goss might have discussed a common initiative against the PKK in northern Iraq. It's possible that Goss demanded secret Turkish intelligence on Iran in exchange. Regardless what the prospects are for a strike, there's little chance a US air strike against Iran would be launched from its military base in the Turkish city of Incirlik, but it is conceivable that the United States would inform Turkey prior to any strike.

Skepticism in Ankara
US Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld talks to the media during his visit to the Incirlik Air Base, southern Turkey, on Monday, 04 June 2001.
EPA/DPA
US Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld talks to the media during his visit to the Incirlik Air Base, southern Turkey, on Monday, 04 June 2001.

Until now the government in Ankara has viewed US military activities in the region at best with skepticism and at worst with open condemnation. At the beginning of 2003, Ankara even attempted to prevent an American ground offensive in northern Iraq against the Saddam regime. A still-irritated Donald Rumsfeld has repeatedly blamed military problems in Iraq on the fact that this second front was missing.

Two weeks ago, Yasar Buyukanit, the commander of the Turkish army and probable future chief of staff of the country's armed forces, flew to Washington. After the visit he made a statement that relations between the Turkish army and the American army were once again on an excellent footing. Buyukanit's warm and fuzzy words, contrasted greatly with his past statements that if the United States and the Kurds in northern Iraq proved incapable of containing the PKK in the Kurd-dominated northern part of the country and preventing it from attacking Turkey, Buyukanit would march into northern Iraq himself.

At the same time, Ankara has little incentive to show a friendly face to Tehran -- Turkish-Iranian relations have long been icy. For years now, Tehran has criticized Turkey for maintaining good relations with Israel and even cooperating with the Israeli army. Yet despite those ties to Israel, Ahmadinejad's recent anti-Israeli outbursts were reported far less extensively in Turkey than in Europe.

Still, Erdogan has been demonstrably friendly towards Israel recently -- as evidenced by Erdogan's recent phone call to Ariel Sharon, congratulating the prime minister on his recent recovery from heart surgery. In the past, relations between Erdogan and Sharon have been reserved, but recently the two have grown closer. Nevertheless, Turkey's government has distanced itself from Sharon's threats to stop Iran from developing a nuclear weapon on his own if nobody else steps up to the task.

The Turkish government has also repeatedly stated that it opposes military action against both Iran and Syria. The key political motivation here is that -- at least when it comes to the Kurdish question -- Turkey, Syria and Iran all agree on one thing: they are opposed to the creation of an independent Kurdistan in northern Iraq. But if the United States moves forward with an attack against Iran, Turkey will have no choice but to jump on board -- either as an active or passive partner.

It's a scenario that has Erdogan and his military in a state of deep unease. After all, even experts in the West are skeptical of whether a military intervention against nuclear installations in Iran could succeed. The more likely scenario is that an attack aiming to stop Iran's nuclear program could instead simply bolster support for Ahmadinejad in the region.

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December 31, 2005 at 10:43 AM in Iran | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

December 30, 2005

Ill Will Rising Between China and Japan

Ill Will Rising Between China and Japan - www.ezboard.com

By NORIMITSU ONISHI
and HOWARD W. FRENCH
Published: August 3, 2005

TOKYO, Aug. 2 - Japanese lawmakers on Tuesday overwhelmingly passed a resolution that plays down this country's militarist policies in World War II, less than two weeks before ceremonies take place across Asia marking the 60th anniversary of the war's end on Aug. 15.

Asia's GiantsThough expressing "regret" for the wartime past, the resolution omitted the references to "invasion" and "colonial rule" that were in the version passed on the 50th anniversary.

The action will most likely be seen by China and Japan's other Asian neighbors as further proof of growing nationalism here. A right-wing vandal seemed to capture a growing sentiment last week when he tried to scrape off the word "mistake" from a peace memorial in Hiroshima that said of Japan's war efforts: "Let all the souls here rest in peace, as we will never repeat this mistake."

But in the weeks leading to Aug. 15, the leaders of China have been making sure that their view of the war, simply called the Anti-Japanese War there, gets across. China is spending $50 million to renovate a memorial hall for the victims of the Rape of Nanjing in 1937, when Japanese soldiers killed 100,000 to 300,000 civilians, at a time when details of it are disappearing from Japanese school textbooks. Chinese state television is broadcasting hundreds of programs on China's resistance against Imperial Japan.

The two countries find themselves playing out old grievances in a new era of direct rivalry for power and influence. Never before in modern times has East Asia had to contend with a strong China and a strong Japan at the same time, and the prospect feeds suspicion and hostility in both countries.

China has experienced 25 years of extraordinary economic growth, deeply extending its influence throughout Asia. But just when China's moment in the sun seems to be dawning, Japan is asserting itself: seeking a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, transforming its Self-Defense Forces into a real military and revising its war-renouncing Constitution.

Both governments are encouraging nationalism for their own political purposes: China to shore up loyalty as Marxist ideology fades, Japan to overcome long-held taboos against expanding its military. With the impending 60th anniversary, both are trying to forge a future on their version of the past.

In Japan, major newspapers have published articles defending the Class A war criminals convicted by the postwar Tokyo Trials, and a growing number of textbooks whitewash Japan's wartime conduct. Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi makes annual visits to Yasukuni Shrine, where war dead including Class A war criminals are enshrined.

In China, a new television series called "Hero City" tells of how cities across China "fought bravely against Japan under the leadership of the Communist Party." In Beijing on Aug. 13, six former Chinese airmen from the Flying Tigers squadron are to recreate an air duel with Japanese fighters.

"On the one hand we have a victim's mentality, and on the other we don't see this much smaller country as being worthy of comparison with us," said Pang Zhongying, a professor of international relations at Nankai University in the northeastern Chinese city of Tianjin. "The reality is that they must accept the idea of China as a rising military power, and we must accept the idea of Japan becoming a normal nation, whether we like it or not."

To Japanese conservatives, becoming a normal nation amounts to a revision of the American-imposed peace Constitution that they feel castrated - a term they use deliberately and frequently - their country.

Arguing that Japan must draw closer to the United States, Mr. Koizumi's government has reinterpreted the Constitution to allow Japanese troops in Iraq and has reversed a longtime ban on the export of arms to join the American missile defense shield. Recent polls show an increasing percentage of Japanese favoring a revision of the Constitution.

The conservative news media have helped demonize China, as well as North Korea, to soften popular resistance to remilitarization. Sankei Shimbun, the country's most conservative daily, recently ran a series about China called "The Threatening Superpower."

One of the most emotional issues has been the dozen or so Japanese who were abducted by North Korea, mostly in the 1970's. The whereabouts of one woman, Megumi Yokota, remains a particularly sore point.

North Korea said she had died, and late last year gave Japan what it said were her remains. After DNA tests were done, the Japanese government accused North Korea of deliberately handing over someone else's remains, though most independent experts called the tests inconclusive.

Shinzo Abe, 50, the acting secretary general of the governing Liberal Democratic Party and the leading member of a young generation of hawks, immediately called for economic sanctions.

Hiromu Nonaka, 79, who retired as secretary general about a year ago, said the present situation reminded him of prewar Japan, when politicians manipulated public opinion to rouse nationalism through slogans like "Destroy the brute Americans and British."

"Mr. Abe, who has been in the forefront of the abductee issue, turned toward making all of North Korea into the enemy," Mr. Nonaka said.

Mr. Abe is also one of several conservative politicians who defend textbooks that have outraged Chinese and South Korean demonstrators by sanitizing Japan's wartime atrocities. References to the women forced into sexual servitude by Japan's wartime authorities, called comfort women, all but disappeared this year from governmentendorsed junior high school textbooks.

At a recent news conference, Mr. Abe was asked whether politicians had exaggerated the threat from North Korea and China to influence public opinion and ease Japan toward revising its peace Constitution. "Well, there may be such opinions, but I think it's rubbish," he said.

In China and Japan alike, hatred and suspicion of the other are being deliberately fostered, in many cases by the governments themselves.

In Tokyo, 291 teachers have been reprimanded in the last year and many may face dismissal for refusing to stand before the rising-sun flag at school enrollment and graduation ceremonies and sing Japan's national anthem, "Kimigayo," or "His Majesty's Reign," considered symbols of Japanese imperialism by most Asians and some Japanese. Those signals of respect used to be optional, or shunned because of their associations with Japan's past militarism.

Efforts to control how the Japanese, especially the young, view Japan and China have even reached the comics. Late last year, 47 local Japanese politicians from all over the country protested that a comic series called "The Country Is Burning," published in "Young Jump Weekly," had distorted the Rape of Nanjing.

The drawings did not actually depict Japanese soldiers committing atrocities, but showed ditches filled with Chinese cadavers. The magazine's publisher quickly backed down and announced that it would delete or modify the offending passages when the series was reprinted in book form.

Hidekazu Inubushi, a politician and leader of the protest, added that forcing respect of the Japanese national anthem and flag was necessary because postwar Japanese education had focused too much on wartime misdeeds and produced graduates who were not proud of their country.

"To correct the big mistake in our education in the postwar 60 years, we've got to introduce forceful methods," he said.

Today's Chinese have been shaped by an anti-Japanese patriotic education, overseen by a government that is aware that its own domestic credentials depend, in part, on a hard line toward Japan. Having a hated neighbor shores up national solidarity and helps distract people from the failings of the Chinese Communist Party. Besides the party's monopoly on power, few orthodoxies are as untouchable today as hostility toward Japan.

Yu Jie, a Chinese author who spent time in Japan researching a book on the two countries' relations, "Iron and Plough," and went on to write another book about his experiences in Japan, discovered that at his own expense.

The books are nuanced works, built around lengthy conversations with pacifists, right-wing activists, scholars of every stripe and ordinary Japanese. One chapter, "Looking for Japan's Conscience," warned against speaking of Japanese in blanket terms.

"In the 60 years since the war, numerous Chinese and Japanese people have worked for the difficult Sino-Japanese friendship, selflessly emitting a dim yet precious light," he wrote.

The books appeared briefly in stores and then disappeared. In a country where censorship is routine, that is a sure sign, the author said, that officials had put pressure on the publisher or the stores to withdraw them.

Mr. Yu said China's policy toward Japan was unlikely to become more balanced as long as an authoritarian government remained in place, because Japan offered an unrivaled distraction from China's own problems.

"We criticize Yasukuni Shrine, but we have Mao Zedong's shrine in the middle of Beijing, which is our own Yasukuni," he said. "This is a shame to me, because Mao Zedong killed more Chinese than the Japanese did. Until we are able to recognize our own problems, the Japanese won't take us seriously."

Norimitsu Onishi reported from Tokyo for this article, and Howard W. French from Shanghai.

December 30, 2005 at 09:39 PM in Japan | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Mideast still key to a more peaceful world

TheStar.com - Mideast still key to a more peaceful world

But U.S. pact with India fuelling fears of a new `cold war' with China, warns Gwynne Dyer
Dec. 30, 2005. 01:00 AM

First, the good news. In October, a comprehensive, three-year study led by Andrew Mack, former director of the Strategic Planning Unit in the office of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, concluded there have been major declines in armed conflicts, genocides, human rights abuses, military coups and international crises worldwide.

The survey, commissioned by Canada, Britain, Norway, Sweden and Switzerland and conducted by the Liu Institute for Global Issues at the University of British Columbia, revealed a drop of more than 40 per cent in the number of armed conflicts since 1992 — and for the biggest conflicts, involving more than 1,000 battle-deaths per year, the drop was 80 per cent.

The international media, by their very nature, will always offer us an image of global chaos. But, in fact, the Americas, Europe and Asia were almost entirely at peace during 2005 with Colombia, Chechnya, Afghanistan, Nepal and the southern Philippines being the major exceptions.

The Middle East was also at peace, except for the American war in Iraq. Even sub-Saharan Africa, home to over half the world's remaining wars, saw some major improvements during the year.

The peace agreement in Sudan in February ended the continent's longest and worst civil war, and the death of southern leader John Garang in a helicopter crash only weeks afterwards did not upset the deal. By the end of the year, millions of southern refugees were making their way home, and even the separate and more recent conflict in Darfur in western Sudan, which has killed some 200,000 people and made up to 2 million homeless, was abating in intensity.

Africa

Africa is still the poorest continent, and the most turbulent one. Ethiopia's first free election ended in violence in May, the threat of another border war between Ethiopia and Eritrea grew throughout the year, and the attempt to recreate some sort of central government in Somalia after 14 years of anarchy was falling apart at year's end. Ivory Coast, cut in half in 2002 after a failed coup led to a civil war, made only halting progress towards reconciliation, and sporadic outbreaks of violence continued to interrupt the peace-building process in eastern Congo.

But southern Africa was entirely at peace. Almost every southern African country was not only democratic but also making significant economic progress, Zimbabwe under aging dictator Robert Mugabe being the horrible exception.

Middle East

The only other region of the world that rivalled Africa in political turbulence was the Middle East. But almost all the killing was confined to the cauldron of Iraq; elsewhere, the upheavals were mainly political.

The biggest changes by far were in Israel and Palestine, where a series of radical shifts altered the whole political landscape.

The death of Yasser Arafat in late 2004 brought Mahmoud Abbas, a much cannier and more presentable leader, to the presidency of the Palestinian Authority last January. But a new Palestinian parliamentary election was repeatedly postponed (it is now scheduled for Jan. 9) because of fears that Hamas, which rejects territorial compromise with Israel in return for peace, would win a majority in the new parliament. This did not much matter so long as Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government was determined to impose a unilateral peace on the Palestinians, but now the balance of forces has become much more fluid and unpredictable. Right down to August, when Sharon forced the evacuation of Jewish settlements in the Gaza Strip against strong opposition from within his own Likud party, his strategy seemed to be working.

The Gaza withdrawal guaranteed that he would face no serious pressure from the United States for further concessions for at least a year or two, and, meanwhile, the "security fence" that would define the new de facto border between Israel and the occupied territories continued to snake its way across the West Bank. But then his own Likud party hard-liners mounted a serious assault on his leadership, pushing his long-standing rival Benjamin Netanyahu as his replacement, and his Labour party ally, Shimon Peres, was overthrown as leader of his own party by Amir Peretz.

Peres quit Labour and, faced, with the prospect of being pushed out by Netanyahu, Sharon also quit Likud. Together he and Peres founded the new Kadima ("Forward") party.

Israel will now go to the polls shortly after the Palestinians and the possibility exists that it could elect a Labour government led by Peretz that is ready to open genuine peace talks with Abbas. But the possibility also exists that Hamas and other Islamist radicals will launch another suicide bombing campaign in Israel designed to drive Israelis into the arms of Likud and/or Kadima, and thus avert the threat of a durable compromise peace.

The other potentially epochal event in the region was the opening of talks for Turkey's membership in the European Union on Oct. 3. It may be a decade or more before these talks conclude, but if they are successful, they will begin to heal a wound that has divided the old classical world around the Mediterranean ever since half of it fell under Muslim rule a millennium ago.

Developments elsewhere in the region were less dramatic.

In Iran's presidential election in June, more than half the population refused to vote for the heavily vetted list of candidates presented to it by the conservative religious authorities, and a simplistic nationalist and religious radical, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, managed to win the presidency.

The assassination of Lebanon's former prime minister Rafik al-Hariri in February (probably by Syrian intelligence operatives) triggered a non-violent democratic movement in Lebanon and forced a Syrian military withdrawal from the country. And then there was Iraq.

The "turning points" in Iraq came thick and fast, from elections in January to a new government in May (after four months of negotiations), a new constitution in August, a referendum on the constitution in October, and new elections in December, but no corners were actually turned.

At the end of the year, the resistance was as strong or stronger than it had been at the start, American military dead had passed the 2,000 mark, the U.S.-backed Iraqi army and police were still largely unable or unwilling to fight on their own, and the possibility that the Iraqi state might actually break up had ceased to be mere fantasy. But the impact of the Iraq conflict on the rest of the region has so far been surprisingly limited: heightened anti-American sentiment, some terrorist bombs in Jordan and Saudi Arabia, and an upsurge in recruiting for Islamist extremist organizations.

The impact in the U.S. has been considerably greater.

"We will never give in, and we will never accept anything less than complete victory," said President George W. Bush in a speech last month, and he will doubtless continue to tough it out, because admitting that invading Iraq was a ghastly mistake would have huge political consequences for him and his party.

However, American public opinion, long insulated from the reality of failure in Iraq by uncritical media coverage of the war, began to lose faith in the administration when confronted with its arrogant and incompetent response to the disaster of Hurricane Katrina in September.

By December, Bush's rating in opinion polls had reached an all-time low.

With three years of his second mandate still to run, the president does not yet face overwhelming political or popular pressure to change course on Iraq — but he is at risk of becoming a premature "lame duck," seen as an electoral handicap by his own party and therefore unable to command obedience in Congress.

Latin America

The most remarkable result of the Bush administration's obsession with remaking the Middle East has been Washington's astonishing failure to pay attention to Latin America. The Free Trade Area of the Americas, once a pet Republican project, has withered as more and more Latin American countries elect left-wing parties that are profoundly hostile to it. But, apart from half-hearted support for a coup that tried to overthrow Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez two years ago, Washington has not once acted to block or remove these governments.

Well over half the population of Latin America is already ruled by leftist governments whose relations with official Washington are very cool — up from only 10 per cent when Bush first took office — and the proportion might reach two-thirds during this coming year if the Mexican election also swings that country to the left.

Europe

Europe had a relatively uneventful year, apart from the rejection of the new EU constitution in the spring referendums. There were bombs on London underground trains and buses in July, but apart from that Europe remained almost as free from the alleged terrorist threat as the United States itself.

The poorest parts of Paris, and subsequently of other French cities, erupted in riots in November that were widely misrepresented as an uprising by the country's disadvantaged Muslim minority, but were actually an incoherent, apolitical revolt by all the country's neglected and discarded minorities, including the bottom end of the old white working class.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair scrambled back into office in a spring election with a majority cut in half because of popular discontent with Britain's involvement in the Iraq war, but the Irish Republican Army's decision to destroy its entire arsenal in September, putting a definitive end to the armed campaign in Northern Ireland that it suspended 11 years ago, was a success for Blair's patient diplomacy.

The premier media event of the year was undoubtedly the death of Pope John Paul II in March and the selection of Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI in April, but it is unlikely that there will be any substantial changes of Catholic doctrine or policy as a result.

And the great new global anxiety, driven by growing numbers of cases of bird-to-human transmission of avian influenza viruses in south-east Asia, was the possibility of an influenza pandemic as lethal as the one that killed 50 million-100 million people in 1918-19. It may not strike in 2006 or even 2007, but most experts are convinced that something very nasty is on the way.

Asia

Bhutan became a world leader by becoming the first nation to ban smoking everywhere outside private homes, the ruling Burmese generals abruptly moved the country's capital from Rangoon to a sleepy up-country town called Pyinmana, and China revalued the yuan — by a very small amount.

But the most shocking event was the devastating earthquake that struck northern Pakistan. The shock was not that it killed more people than last December's Indian Ocean tsunami (though it did), but that the international aid was so much less and so much slower to arrive. Now many of the roads are blocked by snow, and unknown numbers of quake survivors are dying of exposure and malnutrition every day in cut-off mountain villages where few buildings remain standing.

Afghanistan held an election of sorts in September, but it mainly served to confirm the power of the regional warlords who took over from the Taliban in most places after the U.S.-led invasion in 2001.

Sri Lanka's long civil war seemed likely to reignite after an election in that same month in which Mahinda Rajapakse, a candidate who vows never to recognize the Tamil minority's demand for an autonomous region, won the presidency by the narrowest of margins.

On the positive side, the long-running crisis over North Korea's alleged nuclear weapons came to an apparently satisfactory conclusion in November, when Kim Jong-Il's regime finally got what it had been after all along: a U.S. commitment not to invade the Stalinist dictatorship, and some foreign aid. But it had always been a fairly implausible crisis anyway, as North Korea had no conceivable use for nuclear weapons except to deter an American attack, which had never been part of the Bush administration's plans despite all the heated rhetoric.

April saw anti-Japanese riots all over China, in state-encouraged protests against new Japanese textbooks that minimize the crimes committed by Japan when it invaded China in 1937-45.

Junichiro Koizumi's centre-right government in Tokyo, undaunted by this demonstration of Chinese displeasure, went right ahead with strengthening its military alliance with the United States.

None of this did Koizumi any harm with the voters, and he won a national election in September by a landslide.

The one truly worrisome development of the year, not just for Asia but for the whole world, was the 10-year military agreement between the U.S. and India that was signed in Washington in July.

While not a formal military alliance that commits the two countries to fight together against any foe, it has all the hallmarks of an alliance intended to "contain" China.

Indeed, it looks like the capstone in a series of such alliances and agreements between the U.S. and Asian countries that now virtually encircle China to the east, south and west.

That is certainly how it will be viewed in Beijing, and the concern is that the Chinese will respond to this perception of being surrounded and threatened by racing to build up their own military forces, thereby confirming their neighbours' anxieties and setting up a positive feedback loop.

This is, in fact, the way most arms races get started, and the last thing Asia and the world need in the early 21st century is a Cold War between China on one side, and the U.S., India and Japan on the other.

But don't despair. This is just a possibility so far, not a reality.

Gwynne Dyer is a Canadian journalist based in London whose articles are published in 45 countries.

December 30, 2005 at 02:10 PM in Middle East | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Raiding the Icebox

Raiding the Icebox

Behind Its Warm Front, the United States Made Cold Calculations to Subdue Canada

By Peter Carlson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, December 30, 2005; Page C01

Invading Canada won't be like invading Iraq: When we invade Canada, nobody will be able to grumble that we didn't have a plan.

The United States government does have a plan to invade Canada. It's a 94-page document called "Joint Army and Navy Basic War Plan -- Red," with the word SECRET stamped on the cover. It's a bold plan, a bodacious plan, a step-by-step plan to invade, seize and annex our neighbor to the north. It goes like this:

First, we send a joint Army-Navy overseas force to capture the port city of Halifax, cutting the Canadians off from their British allies.

Then we seize Canadian power plants near Niagara Falls, so they freeze in the dark.

Then the U.S. Army invades on three fronts -- marching from Vermont to take Montreal and Quebec, charging out of North Dakota to grab the railroad center at Winnipeg, and storming out of the Midwest to capture the strategic nickel mines of Ontario.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Navy seizes the Great Lakes and blockades Canada's Atlantic and Pacific ports.

At that point, it's only a matter of time before we bring these Molson-swigging, maple-mongering Zamboni drivers to their knees! Or, as the official planners wrote, stating their objective in bold capital letters: "ULTIMATELY TO GAIN COMPLETE CONTROL."

* * *

It sounds like a joke but it's not. War Plan Red is real. It was drawn up and approved by the War Department in 1930, then updated in 1934 and 1935. It was declassified in 1974 and the word "SECRET" crossed out with a heavy pencil. Now it sits in a little gray box in the National Archives in College Park, available to anybody, even Canadian spies. They can photocopy it for 15 cents a page.

War Plan Red was actually designed for a war with England. In the late 1920s, American military strategists developed plans for a war with Japan (code name Orange), Germany (Black), Mexico (Green) and England (Red). The Americans imagined a conflict between the United States (Blue) and England over international trade: "The war aim of RED in a war with BLUE is conceived to be the definite elimination of BLUE as an important economic and commercial rival."

In the event of war, the American planners figured that England would use Canada (Crimson) -- then a quasi-pseudo-semi-independent British dominion -- as a launching pad for "a direct invasion of BLUE territory." That invasion might come overland, with British and Canadian troops attacking Buffalo, Detroit and Albany. Or it might come by sea, with amphibious landings on various American beaches -- including Rehoboth and Ocean City, both of which were identified by the planners as "excellent" sites for a Brit beachhead.

The planners anticipated a war "of long duration" because "the RED race" is "more or less phlegmatic" but "noted for its ability to fight to a finish." Also, the Brits could be reinforced by "colored" troops from their colonies: "Some of the colored races however come of good fighting stock, and, under white leadership, can be made into very efficient troops."

The stakes were high: If the British and Canadians won the war, the planners predicted, "CRIMSON will demand that Alaska be awarded to her."

Imagine that! Canada demanding a huge chunk of U.S. territory! Them's fightin' words! And so the American strategists planned to fight England by seizing Canada. (Also Jamaica, Barbados and Bermuda.) And they didn't plan to give them back.

"Blue intentions are to hold in perpetuity all CRIMSON and RED territory gained," Army planners wrote in an appendix to the war plan. "The policy will be to prepare the provinces and territories of CRIMSON and RED to become states and territories of the BLUE union upon the declaration of peace."
The Sudbury Offensive

None of this information is new. After the plan was declassified in 1974, several historians and journalists wrote about War Plan Red. But still it remains virtually unknown on both sides of the world's largest undefended border.

"I've never heard of it," said David Biette, director of the Canada Institute in Washington, which thinks about Canada.

"I remember sort of hearing about this," said Bernard Etzinger, spokesman for the Canadian Embassy in Washington.

"It's the first I've heard of it," said David Courtemanche, mayor of Sudbury, Ontario, whose nickel mines were targeted in the war plan.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said he'd never heard of the plan. He also said he wouldn't admit to knowing about such a plan if he did.

"We don't talk about any of our contingency plans," he said.

Has the Pentagon updated War Plan Red since the '30s?

"The Defense Department never talks about its contingency plans for any countries," Whitman said. "We don't acknowledge which countries we have contingency plans for."

Out in Winnipeg -- the Manitoba capital, whose rail yards were slated to be seized in the plan -- Brad Salyn, the city's director of communications, said he didn't think Winnipeg Mayor Sam Katz knew anything about War Plan Red: "You know he would have no clue about what you're talking about, eh?"

"I'm sure Winnipeggers will stand up tall in defense of our country," Mayor Katz said later. "We have many, many weapons."

What kind of weapons?

"We have peashooters, slingshots and snowballs," he said, laughing.

But the Canadians' best weapon, Katz added, is their weather. "It gets to about minus-50 Celsius with a wind chill," he said. "It will be like Napoleon's invasion of Russia. I'm quite convinced that you'll meet your Waterloo on the banks of the Assiniboine River."
Gas Station Strategy

As it turns out, Katz isn't the first Canadian to speculate on how to fight the U.S.A. In fact, Canadian military strategists developed a plan to invade the United States in 1921 -- nine years before their American counterparts created War Plan Red.

The Canadian plan was developed by the country's director of military operations and intelligence, a World War I hero named James Sutherland "Buster" Brown. Apparently Buster believed that the best defense was a good offense: His "Defence Scheme No. 1" called for Canadian soldiers to invade the United States, charging toward Albany, Minneapolis, Seattle and Great Falls, Mont., at the first signs of a possible U.S. invasion.

"His plan was to start sending people south quickly because surprise would be more important than preparation," said Floyd Rudmin, a Canadian psychology professor and author of "Bordering on Aggression: Evidence of U.S. Military Preparations Against Canada," a 1993 book about both nations' war plans. "At a certain point, he figured they'd be stopped and then retreat, blowing up bridges and tearing up railroad tracks to slow the Americans down."

Brown's idea was to buy time for the British to come to Canada's rescue. Buster even entered the United States in civilian clothing to do some reconnaissance.

"He had a total annual budget of $1,200," said Rudmin, "so he himself would drive to the areas where they were going to invade and take pictures and pick up free maps at gas stations."

Rudmin got interested in these war plans in the 1980s when he was living in Kingston, Ontario, just across the St. Lawrence River from Fort Drum, the huge Army base in Upstate New York. Why would the Americans put an Army base in such a wretched, frigid wilderness? he wondered. Could it be there to . . . fight Canada?

He did some digging. He found "War Plan Red" and "Defence Scheme No. 1." At the Army War College in Carlisle, Pa., he found a 1935 update of War Plan Red, which specified which roads to use in the invasion ("The best practicable route to Vancouver is via Route 99").

Rudmin also learned about an American plan from 1935 to build three military airfields near the Canadian border and disguise them as civilian airports. The secret scheme was revealed after the testimony of two generals in a closed-door session of the House Military Affairs Committee was published by mistake. When the Canadian government protested the plan, President Franklin Roosevelt reassured it that he wasn't contemplating war. The whole brouhaha made the front page of the New York Times on May 1, 1935.

That summer, however, the Army held what were the biggest war games in American history on the site of what is now Fort Drum, Rudmin said.

Is he worried that the Yanks will invade his country from Fort Drum?

"Not now ," he said. "Now the U.S. is kind of busy in Iraq. But I wouldn't put it past them."

He's not paranoid, he hastened to add, and he doesn't think the States will simply invade Canada the way Hitler invaded Russia.

But if some kind of crisis -- perhaps something involving the perennially grumpy French Canadians -- destabilized Canada, then . . . well, Fort Drum is just across the river.

"We most certainly are not preparing to invade Canada," said Ben Abel, the official spokesman for Fort Drum.

The fort, he added, is home to the legendary 10th Mountain Division, which is training for its third deployment in Afghanistan. There are also 1,200 Canadian troops in Afghanistan.

"I find it very hard to believe that we'd be planning to invade Canada," Abel said. "We have a lot of Canadian soldiers training here. I bumped into a Canadian officer in the bathroom the other day."
Going North, Heading South

Invading Canada is an old American tradition. Invading Canada successfully is not.

During the American Revolution, Benedict Arnold -- then in his pre-traitor days -- led an invasion of Canada from Maine. It failed.

During the War of 1812, American troops invaded Canada several times. They were driven back.

In 1839, Americans from Maine confronted Canadians in a border dispute known as the Aroostook War.

"There were never any shots fired," said Etzinger, the Canadian Embassy spokesman, "but I think an American cow was injured -- and a Canadian pig."

In 1866, about 800 Irish Americans in the Fenian Brotherhood decided to strike a blow for Irish independence by invading Canada. They crossed the Niagara River into Ontario, where they defeated a Canadian militia. But when British troops approached, the Fenians fled back to the United States, where many were arrested.

After that, Americans stopped invading Canada and took up other hobbies, such as invading Mexico, Haiti, Nicaragua, Grenada and, of course, Iraq.

But the dream of invading Canada lives on in the American psyche, occasionally manifesting itself in bizarre ways. Movies, for instance.

In the 1995 movie "Canadian Bacon," the U.S. president, played by Alan Alda, decides to jump-start the economy by picking a fight with Canada. His battle cry: "Surrender pronto or we'll level Toronto."

In the 1999 movie "South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut," Americans, angered that their kids have been corrupted by a pair of foulmouthed, flatulent Canadian comedians, go to war. Canada responds by sending its air force to bomb the Hollywood home of the Baldwin brothers -- a far more popular defensive strategy than anything Buster Brown devised. Moviegoers left theaters humming the film's theme:

Blame Canada! Blame Canada!

With all their hockey hullabaloo

And that bitch Anne Murray too!

Blame Canada! Shame on Canada!

But it's not just movies. The urge to invade Canada comes in myriad forms.

In 2002, the conservative magazine National Review published an essay called "Bomb Canada: The Case for War." The author, Jonah Goldberg, suggested that the United States "launch a quick raid into Canada" and blow something up -- "perhaps an empty hockey stadium." That would cause Canada to stop wasting its money on universal health insurance and instead fund a military worthy of the name, so that "Canada's neurotic anti-Americanism would be transformed into manly resolve."

And let's not forget the Web site http://invadecanada.us/ , which lists many compelling reasons for doing do: "let's make Alaska actually connected to the U.S. again!" and "they're just a little too proud" and "the surrender will come quickly, they're French after all."

The site also sells T-shirts, buttons, teddy bears and thong underwear, all of them decorated with the classic picture of Uncle Sam atop the slogan "I WANT YOU to Invade Canada."

What's going on here? Why do Americans love to joke about invading Canada?

Because Americans see Canadians as goody-goodies, said Biette, the Canada Institute director. Canadians didn't rebel against the British, remaining loyal colonial subjects. They didn't have a Wild West, settling their land without the kind of theatrical gunfights that make for good movies. And they like to hector us about our misbehavior.

"We're 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness' and they're 'peace, order and good government,' " Biette said. "So if you're a wild American, you look at them and say, 'They're just a bunch of Boy Scouts.' "
The C-Bomb

Canadians are well aware of our invasion talk. Not surprisingly, they take it a bit more seriously than we do.

When "The West Wing" had a subplot last winter about a U.S.-Canada border incident, Canadian newspapers took note.

When Jon Stewart joked about invading Canada on "The Daily Show" last March, Canadian newspapers covered the story.

When the Toronto Star interviewed comedian Jimmy Kimmel last year, the reporter asked him: "Is it only a matter of time before America invades Canada?"

"I'm not sure," Kimmel replied.

In 2003, the Canadian army set up an Internet chat room where soldiers and civilians could discuss defense issues. "One of the hottest topics on the site discusses whether the U.S. will invade Canada to seize its natural resources," the Ottawa Citizen reported. "If the attack did come, Canada could rely on a scorched-earth policy similar to what Russia did when invaded by Nazi Germany, one participant recommends. 'With such emmense [sic] land, and with our cold climates, we may be able to hold them off, even though we have the much weaker military,' the individual concludes."

Etzinger, the Canadian Embassy spokesman, isn't worried about an American invasion because Canada has a secret weapon -- actually thousands of secret weapons.

"We've got thousands of Canadians in the U.S. right now, in place secretly," he said. "They could be on your street. We've sent people like Celine Dion and Mike Myers to secretly infiltrate American society."

Pretty funny, Mr. Etzinger. But the strategists who wrote War Plan Red were prepared for that problem. They noted that "it would be necessary to deal internally" with the "large number" of Brits and Canadians living in the United States -- and also with "a small number of professional pacifists and communists."

The planners did not specify exactly what would be done with those undesirables. But it would be kinda fun to see Celine Dion and Mike Myers wearing orange jumpsuits down in Guantanamo.

Eh?

December 30, 2005 at 12:23 PM in US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Spy Agency Removes Illegal Tracking Files

Spy Agency Removes Illegal Tracking Files - New York Times

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: December 29, 2005

By The Associated Press The National Security Agency's Internet site has been placing files on visitors' computers that can track their Web surfing activity despite strict federal rules banning most files of that type.

The files, known as cookies, disappeared after a privacy activist complained and The Associated Press made inquiries this week. Agency officials acknowledged yesterday that they had made a mistake.

Nonetheless, the issue raised questions about privacy at the agency, which is on the defensive over reports of an eavesdropping program.

"Considering the surveillance power the N.S.A. has, cookies are not exactly a major concern," said Ari Schwartz, associate director at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a privacy advocacy group in Washington. "But it does show a general lack of understanding about privacy rules when they are not even following the government's very basic rules for Web privacy."

Until Tuesday, the N.S.A. site created two cookie files that do not expire until 2035.

Don Weber, an agency spokesman, said in a statement yesterday that the use of the so-called persistent cookies resulted from a recent software upgrade.

Normally, Mr. Weber said, the site uses temporary cookies that are automatically deleted when users close their Web browsers, which is legally permissible. But he said the software in use was shipped with the persistent cookies turned on.

"After being tipped to the issue, we immediately disabled the cookies," Mr. Weber said.

Cookies are widely used at commercial Web sites and can make Internet browsing more convenient by letting sites remember user preferences. For example, visitors would not have to repeatedly enter passwords at sites that require them.

Privacy advocates point out that cookies can also track Web surfing, even if no personal information is collected.

In a 2003 memorandum, the Office of Management and Budget at the White House prohibited federal agencies from using persistent cookies - those that are not automatically deleted right away - unless there is a "compelling need."

A senior official must sign off on any such use, and an agency that uses them must disclose and detail their use in its privacy policy.

Peter Swire, a Clinton administration official who had drafted an earlier version of the cookie guidelines, said that clear notice was a must, and that "vague assertions of national security, such as exist in the N.S.A. policy, are not sufficient."

Daniel Brandt, a privacy activist who discovered the N.S.A. cookies, said mistakes happen, "but in any case, it's illegal."

Richard M. Smith, a security consultant in Cambridge, Mass., questioned whether persistent cookies would even be of much use to the security agency. They are great for news sites and others with repeat visitors, Mr. Smith said, but the agency's site does not appear to have enough fresh content to warrant more than occasional visits.

The government first issued strict rules on cookies in 2000 after disclosures that the White House drug policy office had used them to track computer users viewing its online antidrug advertising. Even a year later, a Congressional study found 300 cookies still on the Web sites of 23 agencies.

In 2002, the C.I.A. removed cookies it had inadvertently placed at one of its sites after Mr. Brandt called it to the agency's attention.

December 30, 2005 at 02:25 AM in NSA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

December 29, 2005

Nuking Iran With the UN's Blessing (posted with tongue firmly in cheek!)

Nuking Iran With the UN's Blessing - by Jorge Hirsch

Only the American people can stop it
by Jorge Hirsch

In the "global war on terror," Iran is the next target, having been designated by the U.S. State Department [.pdf] as "the most active state sponsor of terrorism" in the world. The United Nations has given its blessing, and the U.S. will fill in the blanks.

Before we analyze this, however, let us ask ourselves: why not Florida instead? In fact, Florida should be way ahead on the list. Family considerations should not play a role in U.S. policy decisions.

Let's compare the cases. For Florida:

* At least 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers had Florida connections.
* Thirteen of the 19 were in Florida before Sept.11.
* Eight of the hijackers took flying lessons in Venice, Fla.
* Five of the hijackers trained in Florida gyms.
* Two of the hijackers got drunk in a Hollywood, Fla. bar a few days before the attack.

Instead, the connections between 9/11 and Iran are much more tenuous, according to the 9/11 Commission:

* "Senior al-Qaeda operatives and trainers traveled to Iran to receive training in explosives" in 1993.
* "Iran facilitated the transit of al-Qaeda members into and out of Afghanistan before 9/11, and some of these were future 9/11 hijackers."
* "We have found no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 attack."

The 9/11 hijackers used planes, not explosives. So I very much hope that the Pentagon is revising its Nuclear Strike Plan. A precision-guided missile with a nuclear warhead – or a low-yield nuclear gravity bomb – should be effective in vaporizing both aboveground and underground facilities of Huffman Aviation School in Venice, Fla., with minimal collateral damage.

The fact is, terrorists do not need "state sponsors" to do their job. The 9/11 hijackers lived in the U.S., rented apartments, opened bank accounts, got drivers licenses, rented cars, took English lessons, had jobs, joined gyms, learned the needed flying skills, bought their box-cutter knives, and blew themselves up in the good old United States. And so will the next terrorists who strike us.

Furthermore, some of the 9/11 hijackers lived and studied in Hamburg, Germany. And they met in Madrid. So are Hamburg and Madrid next on the strike list?

Does anybody really believe that the "training camps" in Afghanistan played any significant role in 9/11? Can somebody please explain what exactly the 9/11 hijackers learned at those training camps that they couldn't learn elsewhere?

Does anybody really believe that the purported meeting, which in fact never took place, of Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague would have played a significant role even if it had taken place?

Yet we are embarked in a "global war of terror" in response to the 9/11 attacks that has led to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. invasion of Iraq, and is about to lead to a U.S. nuclear attack against Iran.

Because make no mistake, an aerial attack on Iran that will include low-yield nuclear bombs is the next step in the "global war on terror," unless something extraordinary happens to derail it.

The "Legal" Framework

The United States invaded Iraq under the pretext of enforcing UN Security Council resolution (UNSCR) 1441. Bush stated in his address to the nation on March 17, 2003,

"On November 8th, the Security Council unanimously passed Resolution 1441, finding Iraq in material breach of its obligations, and vowing serious consequences if Iraq did not fully and immediately disarm."

Given that the U.S. was unable, despite strenuous efforts, to obtain a new resolution explicitly authorizing the use of force, Bush continued:

"These governments share our assessment of the danger, but not our resolve to meet it. … The United Nations Security Council has not lived up to its responsibilities, so we will rise to ours."

The role of UNSCR 1441 for Iraq will be played by UNSCR 1540 for Iran.

UNSCR 1540

In preparation for the Iran strike, the U.S. in April 2004 proposed and the Security Council unanimously adopted this resolution against "the proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and their means of delivery." The resolution was adopted under Chapter VII of the UN charter, which envisages the use of force to enforce resolutions (unlike resolutions adopted under Chapter VI, which deals with "pacific resolution of disputes"). "Affirming [the Security Council's] resolve to take appropriate and effective actions against any threat to international peace and security caused by the proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons and their means of delivery," the resolution "decides that all States shall refrain from providing any form of support to non-State actors that attempt to develop, acquire, manufacture, possess, transport, transfer, or use nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons and their means of delivery."

The United States accuses Iran of having a covert program to develop nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction. It states,

* "Iran has an offensive biological weapons program in violation of the BWC."
* "Iran is acting to retain and modernize key elements of its CW infrastructure to include an offensive CW R&D capability."

And

* "Iran continues its extensive efforts to develop the means to deliver weapons of mass destruction."

The U.S. further accuses Iran of being the principal sponsor of terrorism in the world, of harboring al-Qaeda members, and of possible links to 9/11. The United States claims for itself the right to act preemptively ("[T]he United States cannot remain idle while danger gathers") and did so in invading Iraq. Well then?

You got it. The U.S. will claim the right under Chapter VII of the UN to enforce UNSCR 1540 by aerial bombing of Iran's nuclear and missile facilities ("means of delivery"), once negotiations between Iran and the European Union on Iran's nuclear program reach a stalemate.

This time, the U.S. will not even try to obtain explicit UN authorization to act, since it knows it is not in the cards. It didn't matter last time, so why bother now?

A supporting role will be provided by UNSC "anti-terrorism" resolution 1373, adopted after Sept. 11, also under UN Chapter VII. According to UNSCR 1373, "all States should prevent those who finance, plan, facilitate or commit terrorist acts from using their respective territories for those purposes against other countries and their citizens." It also decides that all states shall "[r]efrain from providing any form of support, active or passive, to entities or persons involved in terrorist acts, including by suppressing recruitment of members of terrorist groups and eliminating the supply of weapons to terrorists."

The United States and Israel accuse Iran of supporting and supplying weapons to terrorist groups such as Hezbollah.

There is, of course, a minor point to observe. Iran denies all these accusations, and the U.S. has not supplied proof for any of them. In a full-page ad published in the New York Times, Iran explains rather convincingly why it wants to enrich uranium and why it is not interested in pursuing nuclear weapons. In its report to the United Nations pursuant to UN resolution 1373 it details its efforts and laws to combat terrorism, and in its report for UN resolution 1455 (on al-Qaeda) it denies any connection with al-Qaeda. In its report to the UN pursuant to resolution 1540, it describes in detail its efforts for nonproliferation and reminds that it is a signatory to all international nonproliferation treaties and party to all international instruments banning WMD. Iran denies that it supports any terrorist activities anywhere and says that it only gives "moral support" to Hezbollah. While the United States and the European Union have labeled Hezbollah a terrorist organization, the United Nations has not, and it is certainly not regarded as such in the Muslim word. All of Iran's statements to the UN are ignored by the U.S., which states (without proof), that "Iran's pursuit of these deadly weapons, despite its adherence to treaties that ban them marks it as a rogue state, and it will remain so until it completely, verifiably, and irreversibly dismantles its WMD-related programs." Remember Iraq?

The fact is, resolutions 1540 and 1373 together with baseless accusations do not give the U.S. a right to attack Iran. However, bombing Iran under these resolutions is no different from invading Iraq under resolution 1441. Since the UN did not condemn the Iraq invasion after it happened (and even "blessed it" with resolutions 1483, 1500, 1511, and 1546), the U.S. can safely assume that it will do the same in this case.

Concerning the use of nuclear weapons against Iran, as discussed in an earlier column, it is technically "legal" for the United States to do so. As stressed in U.S. documents [.pdf], "no customary or conventional international law prohibits nations from employing nuclear weapons in armed conflict." (This of course ignores an "Advisory Opinion" from the International Court of Justice). Since Iran was declared in "noncompliance" with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty on Sept. 24, 2005, the "negative security assurance" issued by the U.S. to the UN in 1995 (UNSCR 984) promising to refrain from using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states no longer applies to Iran.

The Practical Framework

Even if it is not "more illegal" to nuke Iran than it was to invade Iraq, we may still ask: (a) can it happen?, (b) will it happen?, and (c) how will it all get started?

As discussed in previous columns, all the elements are in place so that it can happen. The main points:

1. The president alone (without consulting Congress) has authority to initiate an aerial attack against Iran's facilities under the War Powers Resolution and Senate Joint Resolution 23 of 2001.
2. The president has sole authority to initiate the use of nuclear weapons in a conflict, or to delegate that authority to others. This has always been U.S. policy.
3. There appears to be no one in the upper echelons of the Bush administration who would have any qualms about a preemptive aerial attack against Iran. In addition, among these top officials there are several who have a history of advocating the offensive use of nuclear weapons, and there is not a single one known to hold the opposing point of view.

So it is clear that it can happen. The answer to "will it happen?" is equally clear. There is a reason Iran was included in the "axis of evil" speech of 2001, and why there is so much administration rhetoric against Iran. Such talk has prepared the public for an attack. Very recent developments in relation with Turkey suggest that the time is drawing near. Turkey played an important role in the preparations for war against Iraq, and it appears to be playing a role again in the preparations for an Iran offensive.

Furthermore, the United States' stance with respect to Iran's nuclear ambitions is clearly designed to bring about a diplomatic impasse. The U.S. is not negotiating with Iran directly, and it emphasizes that it is not part of any possible compromise. Once a diplomatic stalemate is reached, does anybody believe that the U.S. will just sit back and watch Iran start to enrich uranium, or even continue reprocessing, after all the statements it has made that this is unacceptable? Can't you already hear the future words of our fearless leader on announcing the attack on Iran?

"I believe a president must confront problems and not pass them on to future presidents and future generations. I believe the most solemn duty of the American president is to protect the American people. If America shows uncertainty and weakness in this decade, the world will drift toward tragedy. This will not happen on my watch."

As for how it will all get started, there is room for speculation. One possibility is that Israel will pull the trigger, with a surprise (conventional) bombing of Bushehr and other facilities, which could "force" the U.S. to join in to protect Israel and U.S. forces in Iraq from Iranian retaliation. Recent statements by Israeli officials hint at this possibility, but it could be a smokescreen. Alternatively, Israel and the U.S. could attack jointly, or the U.S. could attack alone. This could be triggered by Iran resuming enrichment activities, or just by a Russian veto on measures against Iran at the Security Council. It is likely to be accompanied with some new U.S. "revelation" about Iran's alleged chemical/biological weapons programs and its alleged connections to terrorists. If the U.S. participates in the initial attack, it is likely to first give some kind of ultimatum to Iran, just as it gave an unacceptable ultimatum to Iraq. Unlike Israel, the U.S. still pretends to abide by some international norms of conduct and would not launch a surprise attack.

The ultimatum could be that Iran not only stop all uranium reprocessing and enrichment activities, but that it also destroy all its nuclear installations and missiles under U.S. and international supervision or face the possibility of an attack "at a time of our choosing." And even if Iran were to accept, the attack would not be averted, because disarmament is not the issue any more than it was in the case of Iraq. Recall that Iraq was not spared even after agreeing to destroy its missiles and doing so. It didn't help one bit.

Other possible scenarios that could get the process going include a terrorist act against Americans that the U.S. can blame on Iran; some major unrest in Iraq that the U.S. can blame on Iran; some new revelation of "classified information" that Iran is "threatening" the U.S.; or a Tonkin-Gulf-like incident.

Why Nukes Will Be Used

As discussed in previous columns, over the past several years the Bush administration has laid out a new Nuclear Posture for the United States that essentially guarantees that low-yield nuclear weapons will be used in the upcoming conflict with Iran. The essence can be summarized in the following statement in the Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations [.pdf]:

"Integrating conventional and nuclear attacks will ensure the most efficient use of force and provide U.S. leaders with a broader range of strike options to address immediate contingencies. Integration of conventional and nuclear forces is therefore crucial to the success of any comprehensive strategy. This integration will ensure optimal targeting, minimal collateral damage, and reduce the probability of escalation."

In other words, the new Nuclear Posture has completely erased the distinction between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are now "integrated" with conventional weapons and will be used if they are militarily expedient. Given that there are a large number of underground targets in Iran to be destroyed, and that using nuclear bombs will be expected to deter Iran from responding with missiles and conventional forces to the U.S. attack, it is almost inconceivable that nuclear bombs would not be used.

Why isn't America worried sick about this possibility? There are three reasons.

1. People think that if the U.S. planned to do something as drastic as using nuclear bombs, there would be some advance warning. In fact, there has been, but it is subtle enough that it will only become clear after the fact. The code words are all our options. They have been used by the administration in connection with resolving the Iran situation, in connection with using nuclear weapons in response to WMD, and in connection with predicting future attacks on a state suspected of having WMD.
2. Most people associate nuclear bombs with enormous destruction, on the scale of Hiroshima or larger. Hence they find it inconceivable that the U.S. would use nuclear bombs against Iran or other non-nuclear nations. They don't realize that there are low-yield nuclear weapons (with yields as small as 1/1,000 of Hiroshima) and that the "nuclear hitmen" in the administration expect to use such "small" nuclear bombs against Iranian underground installations, causing little "collateral damage."
3. The few people who do realize that this may happen are not worried because they consider it to be in the best interests of the United States, as the nuclear hitmen do.

Why the Nuclear Hitmen Are Doing This

Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the other nuclear hitmen are not completely irrational nuts, nor are they completely stupid nor even completely evil. They sincerely believe that nuking Iran is in the best long-term interests of the United States and of the world, for the following reasons:

The New American Century

This vision of American's preeminent role in the world holds that "we cannot safely avoid the responsibilities of global leadership or the costs that are associated with its exercise." They realize there will be some "costs" in nuking Iran, but regard those costs as worth paying as part of achieving "America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles."

No Nuclear Threshold

In the minds of the nuclear hitmen, there seems to be no "threshold" for the use of nuclear weapons. This is evident from various documents and speeches. If a nuclear bomb will kill the same or a smaller number of people than a conventional bomb, it is equally usable or even preferable "[f]or rapid and favorable war termination on U.S. terms." There is absolutely no consideration given to the fact that nukes are a qualitatively different kind of weapon. "Use of nuclear weapons within a theater requires that nuclear and conventional plans be integrated to the greatest extent possible."

Nuclear Deterrent

On the other hand, the nuclear hitmen do realize that for much of the rest of the world there is a qualitative difference between nuclear and non-nuclear weapons. Much of the world regards nuclear weapons as unusable except in the most extreme circumstances. This, however, presents a contradiction to the stated main goal of nuclear weapons in the U.S. arsenal: to influence an adversary's actions. As the Nuclear Posture Review states:

"U.S. nuclear forces will now be used to dissuade adversaries from undertaking military programs or operations that could threaten U.S. interests or those of allies and friends. …Desired capabilities for nuclear weapons systems in flexible, adaptable strike plans include options for variable and reduced yields, high accuracy, and timely employment. These capabilities would help deter enemy use of WMD or limit collateral damage, should the United States have to defeat enemy WMD capabilities."

However, to "dissuade" and "deter," the nuclear option has to be credible, and if most people believe there is a sharp nuclear threshold and nuclear weapons are unusable, it follows that nuclear weapons are useless to dissuade and deter. The value of the U.S. nuclear arsenal to dissuade and deter adversary actions that do not involve an existential threat to the United States needs to be established, since it has no credibility. That is what nuking Iran will achieve, and that is why the nuclear hitmen believe it is a worthy goal.

The Bush Legacy

Every president naturally longs to leave a worthy and lasting legacy. None of Bush's actions so far is likely to be regarded as worthwhile in the future: quite the opposite. History is likely to judge his performance harshly and in particular significantly worse than his father's, especially if the situation in Iraq continues to deteriorate. However, there is no question that crossing the nuclear threshold for the first time in 60 years will change the world and overshadow all the other actions of this administration. To the extent that Bush believes such an action to be in the long-term interests of the United States, for the reasons outlined above, it is unlikely he would want to defer this "honor" to a future president, and particularly not to his kid brother.

The Consequences of Nuking Iran

It is arguably possible that the nuclear hitmen's most optimistic expectations will be realized: the U.S. will succeed in crossing the nuclear threshold by using a few low-yield nuclear bombs against Iranian installations, without resulting in significant escalation, and achieve its goals of destroying Iran's military capabilities and establishing the value of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. It is also certainly possible, and in my view much more likely, that the results will be disastrous, as follows:

(1) A very large number of people will die.
For most of the world, the use of nuclear weapons is a major qualitative step, even if the yield and destruction of the nuclear weapons used is the same or less than that of conventional weapons. As a consequence, this action is likely to bring about an "irrational" reaction from Iran. No U.S. threat will deter Iran from retaliating any way it can – by firing all its missiles and launching a massive invasion of Iraq with millions of poorly armed but determined Basij militia. The U.S. will "have to" respond with large-scale bombing, including with nuclear bombs, causing potentially hundreds of thousands of Iranian casualties. This is likely to cause an immediate, large upheaval in the Middle East, with unforeseeable consequences. These events are not likely to be forgotten by the 1 billion-large worldwide Muslim community.

(2) America will be a pariah state.
The administration hopes that the use of nuclear bombs in this conflict will be viewed as "unavoidable" to save lives, ours and theirs. The world will not buy that interpretation. A cursory search on the Internet today makes it clear that it is already widely believed that the upcoming nuking of Iran is an event planned by the Bush administration (e.g., the Philip Giraldi story). Disclosures that will surely come after the fact will make this premeditation even more evident (like the Downing Street memos in the case of Iraq). The planned use of nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state in the name of nuclear nonproliferation, based on false accusations and concocted scenarios, will not be condoned by the world.

In the case of Iraq, the realization that the invasion had been planned in advance and Americans had been lied to has led to public disenchantment with the Bush administration, yet it has not led to universal condemnation. Attacking Iran will be different, because the use of nukes will affect every man, woman, and child in the world. The world will regard the Bush administration as criminal. Because Americans elected Bush for a second term and did nothing to impede his actions, all Americans will share responsibility in the eyes of the world. Each of us could have done more to prevent this from happening.

This is likely to result in a worldwide shunning of everything American. A tidal wave of boycott America fervor is likely to result, and no matter how powerful America is today, the rest of the world acting together can bring America to its knees and spell the end of all dreams of a "New American Century."
(3) Anti-Semitism will surge worldwide.
Israel will be regarded as having played a key role in these events, whether or not it participates in the military action. Israeli politicians have made it abundantly clear that Iran's nuclear ambitions represent an "existential threat" to Israel, so Israel will be regarded as instigator, given the strength of the Israeli lobby in America. Jewish organizations around the world have been supportive of the Israeli stance and will be regarded as complicit.

As a consequence, a resurgence of worldwide anti-Semitism will occur, even in America. The old charges that Jews have a divided allegiance to their home country and to Israel will resurface, and Jewish communities in every country will face hostility and aggression.

Just like Bush's invasion of Iraq erased the world's feelings of sympathy to America after the 9/11 attacks, so will the nuking of Iran erase any remaining feelings of sympathy for the state of Israel.
(4) Nuclear terrorism against America will become more likely.
The incentive for terrorist groups to use a nuclear weapon against America will be enormous after America uses nuclear weapons, even if only "small" ones, against Iran. No matter how much "counterproliferation" America undertakes, eventually a terrorist group will obtain or manufacture a nuclear bomb. And no matter how large a "deterrent" the American nuclear arsenal is, a single nuclear bombing in an American city will have devastating consequences.

Those who argue that nuclear terrorism will happen regardless of whether the U.S. nukes Iran or not should consider the fact that there has never been a chemical terrorist attack against America, despite the fact that chemical weapons have existed for a long time and shouldn't be too hard for terrorist groups to obtain. Could it be related to the fact that America does not use chemical weapons against others?
(5) Nuclear proliferation and global nuclear war may ensue.
The main reason why nuking Iran will affect every human being is that it will spell the end of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and lead to widespread nuclear proliferation. It will not matter how many eloquent speeches Bush gives afterwards explaining why it was "necessary." It will not matter if the next American president is a pacifist who vows never to do it again. It will not matter if think tanks and scientists and politicians and arms-control organizations and NGOs deplore it as a unique aberration of the Bush administration. The fact is, the entire American system will be seen as having conspired to let this happen.

After America has used a nuclear weapon against a non-nuclear country, all the speeches and studies and documents and excuses and promises will not change the facts. All countries will strive to acquire nuclear weapons as quickly as possible. America will prevent some from doing so by military force, but many others will succeed. With no remaining nuclear taboo, and many more countries with nuclear weapons (with a total power of 1 million Hiroshima bombs, hence the potential to destroy humanity many times over), does anybody doubt the outcome?

December 29, 2005 at 12:35 AM in Iran | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

December 28, 2005

Walls - lands divided

Courtesy of The Times

December 28, 2005 at 02:17 PM in Berlin | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Blair's 12-point plan to tackle terror fails to get full marks

London bombs terror attack The Times and Sunday Times Times Online

By Richard Ford and Daniel McGrory
OPPOSITION parties have claimed that Tony Blair has climbed down on many of the pledges in the 12-point plan to tackle terrorism that he announced after the 7/7 bombings in London.

The Prime Minister promised that “the rules were changing” to expel preachers of hate. But none has been thrown out of the country. In comparison Germany has expelled more than 20 imams, Italy has deported four, as have France and Spain, and Holland three. Only one prominent figure has been banned from Britain: sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, the leader of the radical group al-Muhajiroun, who went to Beirut to visit his mother and was prevented from returning as “a threat to national security”.

The Government also lost its fight to detain terror suspects for up to 90 days after MPs voted to allow police a maximum of 28 days.

Ministers have dropped plans to close mosques after opposition from Muslim community leaders and police, and a “British test” for foreign imams in the UK has been scrapped. Diplomats have also failed to secure deals with ten countries over taking militants thrown out of the UK.

However, Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary, told MPs this month that very significant progress had been made.

THE PLEDGES

1 New grounds for deporting undesirables, closing bookshops; negotiating a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with countries to take deportees from the UK, and the introduction of non-suspensive appeals.

ACTION: work is still under way on putting together a list of extremists in the UK. Police and immigration officials have compiled a list of more than 120 undesirables, including half a dozen prominent militants and up to 20 foreign born clerics.

So far none has been expelled. Several planned raids were cancelled at the last minute because of legal disputes in Whitehall over the named suspects.

Only three countries — Lebanon, Jordan and Libya — have signed MOUs. Talks continue with seven other countries, including Algeria. The majority of those being held pending deportation are Algerian.

A change in appeals is included in the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill, which has received its second reading but has still to be approved.

2 To create offence of condoning or glorifying terrorism, here and abroad.

ACTION: ministers accept Parliament will not approve this.

3 To refuse asylum automatically to anyone who has participated in terrorism anywhere.

ACTION: a provision has been included in the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill.

4 To consult on powers to strip citizenship, applying them to UK citizens and making procedures simpler and more effective.

ACTION: again, included in provisions for Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill.

5 Maximum time limit of future extradition cases involving terror suspects.

ACTION: ministers appear to have abandoned plans to set a time limit in favour of speeding up the process short of “compromising fairness”.

6 New court procedures to allow sensitive intelligence to be presented.

ACTION: still being examined.

7 To extend the use of control orders for those who are British nationals and cannot be deported.

ACTION: up to now 17 control orders issued, of which nine have been revoked because the individuals are now detained under immigration powers pending deportation. Eight orders are now in force, one of which is in respect of a British national.

8 To expand the court capacity necessary to deal with control orders and other related issues. The Lord Chancellor will increase the number of special judges hearing such cases.

ACTION: the Department for Constitutional Affairs is reviewing the capacity of courts, specialist tribunals and the judiciary to deal with existing and anticipated caseload relating to terrorism, to meet the demands of counter-terrorism.

9 To proscribe Hizb-ut-Tahrir and the successor organisation of al-Mujahiroun, and to examine the grounds for proscription to widen them and put forward proposals in new legislation.

ACTION: Hizb-ut Tahrir is still operating. Criteria for banning groups in the Terrorism Bill.

10 Set new threshold for British citizenship.

ACTION: provisions included in the Immigration, Asylum and Nationality Bill.

11 New powers to close mosques.

ACTION: dropped after objections from religious leaders and police.

12 Securing borders, new visa controls, and biometric visas.

ACTION: embarkation controls imposed after 7/7. New technology for immigration controls to be introduced over next five years.

December 28, 2005 at 01:58 AM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Police 'betrayed' over cash to fight terrorism

London bombs terror attack The Times and Sunday Times Times Online

By Daniel McGrory, Alice Miles and Sean O’Neill
POLICE are warning that without a huge increase in manpower and money they will struggle to combat the threat of suicide bombings.

A senior figure at the centre of the fight against terrorism has told The Times that the Prime Minister and the Government are felt to have reneged on assurances to give police forces everything they need to fight the “war on terrorism”. Scotland Yard chiefs fear that the majority of extra resources for national security, to be allocated next month, will be awarded to the intelligence services, whose failings were exposed by the July London bombings.

Of the £135 million pledged to the war on terrorism at least £85 million will go to MI5 and MI6. The remaining £50 million has to be split between various agencies including the police and GCHQ.

Scotland Yard insists that it needs all that money to recruit more officers by the time new anti-terrorist measures are in place on the streets by April. However, senior police sources told The Times that they expect to be disappointed even though they believe that the nation is entering the most perilous 12 months since the upsurge in Islamist terrorism.

Sir Ian Blair, the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has already indicated that his force is fully stretched but has foiled three credible terrorist plots since the July attacks which killed 52 people in London.

They are understood to be a plan to set off car bombs, a missile attack and an attempt to obtain a cache of weapons. Sir Ian has revealed that the security services now send daily alerts to the police all of which have to be investigated. Before the 7/7 bombing the alerts were issued monthly. Resources will be further stretched when senior anti-terrorist officers leave frontline duties to take part in four major terrorist trials scheduled for 2006.

No arrests have been made in connection with the July 7 bombings and the suspected mastermind behind the plot has never been identified. The inquiry has, however, forced Scotland Yard to throw away the existing intelligence profile of a terrorist because none of the bombers fitted the model.

Senior officers are engaged in trying to draw up “a new topology” of the radicalisation of a young Muslim to attempt to stem the influence of extremists and prevent further attacks.

Scotland Yard also wants an initial £60 million to establish a new Counter Terrorist Command with 2,000 officers — an increase of 33 per cent on the current combined strength of the anti-terrorist branch and Special Branch. However, its case is unlikely to have been helped by the intervention yesterday of Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London, who said the terrorist threat came from “fairly disorganised and small groups of disaffected people”.

He added: “This is not a great organised international conspiracy with orders flowing down the chain.”

Overall spending on domestic security will have risen from £1.5 billion in 2004-05 to £2.1 billion by 2007. The security budget has more than doubled since the September 11 attacks in the US.

December 28, 2005 at 01:57 AM in MI5 | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

December 27, 2005

Rice authorized National Security Agency to spy on UN Security Council in run-up to war, former officials say

The Raw Story | Rice authorized National Security Agency to spy on UN Security Council in run-up to war, former officials say

Jason Leopold

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President Bush and other top officials in his administration used the National Security Agency to secretly wiretap the home and office telephones and monitor private email accounts of members of the United Nations Security Council in early 2003 to determine how foreign delegates would vote on a U.N. resolution that paved the way for the U.S.-led war in Iraq, NSA documents show.

Two former NSA officials familiar with the agency's campaign to spy on U.N. members say then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice authorized the plan at the request of President Bush, who wanted to know how delegates were going to vote. Rice did not immediately return a call for comment.

The former officials said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also participated in discussions about the plan, which involved "stepping up" efforts to eavesdrop on diplomats.

A spokeswoman at the White House who refused to give her name also would not comment, and pointed to a March 3, 2003 press briefing by former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer when questions about U.N. spying were first raised.

"As a matter of long-standing policy, the administration never comments on anything involving any people involved in intelligence," Fleischer said. "So I'm not saying yes and I'm not saying no."

Disclosure of the wiretaps and the monitoring of U.N. members' email came on the eve of the Iraq war in the British-based Observer. The leak -- which the paper acquired in the form of an email via a British translator -- came amid a U.S. push urging U.N. members to vote in favor of a resolution that said Iraq was in violation of U.N. resolution 1441, asserting that it had failed to rid the country of weapons of mass destruction.

News of the NSA spying on the U.N. received scant coverage in U.S. newspapers at the time. But with the explosive domestic spying report published in the New York Times last week, a closer examination of pre-war spying may shed light on whether the Bush administration has used the NSA for its own political purposes, as opposed to tracking down communications regarding potential terrorist threats against the U.S.

The leaked NSA email detailing the agency's spy tactics against the U.N. was written Jan. 31, 2003 by Chief of Staff for Regional Targets Frank Koza. In the email, Koza asked an undisclosed number of NSA and British intelligence officials to "pay attention to existing non-UN Security Council Member UN-related and domestic comms (home and office telephones) for anything useful related to Security Council deliberations."

One intelligence source who spoke to RAW STORY said top White House officials and some Republican members of Congress had debated in December 2002 whether to step up the surveillance of U.N. officials to include eavesdropping on home telephone and personal email accounts. Some feared that in the event it was discovered, it would further erode relations between the U.S. and the U.N.

The source added that U.S. spying on the U.N. isn't new.

"It's part of the job," the intelligence source said. "Everyone knows it's being done."

Eavesdropping on U.N. diplomats is authorized under the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Services Act. However, it's still considered a violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, which says that "The receiving state shall permit and protect free communication on the part of the mission for all official purposes... The official correspondence of the mission shall be inviolable."

According to one former official, "The administration pushed the envelope by tapping their home phones."

Koza's email, a copy of which is included at the end of this report, says the "Agency is mounting a surge particularly directed at the UN Security Council (UNSC) members (minus US and GBR of course) for insights as to how to membership is reacting to the on-going debate RE: Iraq, plans to vote on any related resolutions, what related policies/ negotiating positions they may be considering, alliances/ dependencies, etc."

"The whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to U.S. goals or to head off surprises. In RT, that means a QRC surge effort to revive/ create efforts against UNSC members Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria and Guinea, as well as extra focus on Pakistan UN matters."

Koza's email was sent out to NSA and British intelligence officials through a top secret surveillance network set up by the NSA, the British Government Communication Headquarters and similar intelligence agencies based in Australia, New Zealand and Canada known as Echelon.

Moreover, the email was distributed just four days after Hans Blix filed his Iraq weapons report with the U.N.

It was leaked to a handful of media outlets in the U.S. and U.K. by Katharine Tersea Gun, a former translator for British intelligence. Gun was arrested in November 2003 and charged with violating her country's Official Secrets Act. She said she felt compelled to leak the memo because she believed the U.S. and Britain were about to launch an illegal war.

"Any disclosures that may have been made were justified on the following grounds: because they exposed serious illegality and wrongdoing on the part of the U.S. Government who attempted to subvert our own security services and, to prevent wide-scale death and casualties among ordinary Iraqi people and UK forces in the course of an illegal war," she said in a statement at the time.

In his book "Plan of Attack," Bob Woodward, deputy managing editor of the Washington Post, said the administration was also spying on Hans Blix, the U.N. weapons inspector sent to Iraq to look for WMDs.

"One of the things that's gone unnoticed is national intelligence assets spying on Hans Blix," Woodward told the Council on Foreign Relations on June 9, 2004 "And Bush was getting these reports and felt that there was incongruity between what Blix was saying publicly and what he was actually doing. It makes it very clear we were wiretapping Hans Blix."

In an article for Counterpunch, media critic Norman Solomon noted that the U.S. media barely covered the U.N. spying.

"Nearly 96 hours after the Observer had reported it, I called Times deputy foreign editor Alison Smale and asked why not," Solomon writes. "'We would normally expect to do our own intelligence reporting,' Smale replied. She added that 'we could get no confirmation or comment.' In other words, U.S. intelligence officials refused to confirm or discuss the memo -- so the Times did not see fit to report on it."

The Washington Post printed a 514-word article on a back page with the headline "Spying Report No Shock to U.N," while the Los Angeles Times emphasized from the outset that U.S. spy activities at the United Nations are "long-standing," Solomon wrote.

Solomon says his research turned up only one story which took the spying seriously -- a Mar. 4, 2003 piece in the Baltimore Sun.

The leaked NSA email which revealed the spying follows.
#

To: [Recipients withheld] From: FRANK KOZA, Def Chief of Staff (Regional Targets) CIV/NSA Sent on Jan 31 2003 0:16 Subject: Reflections of Iraq Debate/Votes at UN-RT Actions + Potential for Related Contributions Importance: HIGH Top Secret//COMINT//X1 All, As you've likely heard by now, the Agency is mounting a surge particularly directed at the UN Security Council (UNSC) members (minus US and GBR of course) for insights as to how to membership is reacting to the on-going debate RE: Iraq, plans to vote on any related resolutions, what related policies/ negotiating positions they may be considering, alliances/ dependencies, etc - the whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favorable to US goals or to head off surprises. In RT, that means a QRC surge effort to revive/ create efforts against UNSC members Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Bulgaria and Guinea, as well as extra focus on Pakistan UN matters. We've also asked ALL RT topi's to emphasize and make sure they pay attention to existing non-UNSC member UN-related and domestic comms for anything useful related to the UNSC deliberations/ debates/ votes. We have a lot of special UN-related diplomatic coverage (various UN delegations) from countries not sitting on the UNSC right now that could contribute related perspectives/ insights/ whatever. We recognize that we can't afford to ignore this possible source. We'd appreciate your support in getting the word to your analysts who might have similar, more in-direct access to valuable information from accesses in your product lines. I suspect that you'll be hearing more along these lines in formal channels - especially as this effort will probably peak (at least for this specific focus) in the middle of next week, following the SecState's presentation to the UNSC. Thanks for your help
#

(Note: Slight edit made for clarification purposes.)

December 27, 2005 at 11:10 PM in NSA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Greeks name MI6 chief over 'torture of terror suspects'

London bombs terror attack The Times and Sunday Times Times Online

From John Carr in Athens and Daniel McGrory
THE Government tried last night to block the naming of an MI6 officer alleged to have orchestrated the torture of terrorist suspects in Greece.

It issued a warning to media organisations after a leading Athens newspaper identified the British intelligence officer and 15 Greek agents, alleging that they took part in the arrest and abuse of 28 Pakistan-born detainees who were held in connection with the July 7 bombings in London.

The disclosures sparked a row in Athens, with opposition leaders and human rights groups demanding to know why British agents were allowed to operate in Greece.

There are mounting calls for a parliamentary investigation, and George Voulgarakis, the Public Order Minister, faced demands last night to appear before the parliament.

Proto Thema named the British official as the MI6 station chief in Athens. It said that he and a second, unnamed, British agent took part in the interrogation of some suspects, who said that they were hooded and held in secret. One of the migrant workers claims to have had a gun forced into his mouth.

The Foreign and Commonwealth Office last night refused to confirm or deny whether the person named in the Greek press works at the British Embassy in Athens.

British ministers have until now denied that British officials played any part in this counter-terror operation, which allegedly took place days after the July attacks on three Tube trains and a bus in which 52 passengers died. Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, told MPs last week that the reports were “complete nonsense”.

Last night Mr Voulgarakis condemned the naming of Greek intelligence officers as “illegal and endangering the safety of our agents in the field”. He said that two of the named agents had been withdrawn from postings in Kosovo. When the allegations emerged a fortnight ago, Mr Voulgarakis also denied that the arrests had taken place.

The migrant workers said that they were questioned by British investigators about mobile telephone calls linked to the four suicide bombers. They said they were also asked about calls made to a suspect in Pakistan whom the British officials apparently wanted to question about the London attacks.

If the Greek Government bows to demands for an investigation, British ministers may have to defend the behaviour of MI6 agents abroad.

Makis Triantafyllopoulos, publisher of Proto Thema, said last night: “The Greek and British governments have been lying from the start.”

Some of the detainees have now given evidence to a magistrate about their treatment. One, Muhammad Munir, claims he was held incommunicado for six days and “hit very hard on the head”. He and others said that they were sure the figures questioning them were British, yet all of them spoke fluent Greek. They described “a black British case officer” as taking part in their interrogation.

Most of the 28 men are too frightened to complain about their treatment, saying that they were threatened by the British officers that their families in Pakistan and Britain would suffer if they spoke about the interrogation.

Those who have been persuaded by Pakistani community leaders to give evidence claim they were seized at the homes at night, hooded and driven to secret locations. Some are alleged to have been held at EYP, the headquarters of Greek intelligence.

Gul Nawaz, who has lived in Athens for three years, said in his deposition: “Twice a policeman hit me while I was on the floor. I asked him for some water and he punched me in the face. They took my mobile phone. They wanted to know about my friends in London and relatives and phone calls.”

He was asked if he had any links to al-Qaeda. “I said I didn’t know. I said I’m just a Muslim and I work to send money to my wife and three children in Pakistan. I never called anybody in London.”

The Greek newspaper claims that Costas Karamanlis, the Prime Minister, sanctioned the British-led operation. It names two officials working in his office as taking part in negotiations over this incident. Anastasis Papaligouras, the Greek Justice Minister, has ordered an investigation into the affair.

# The US Embassy in London has clarified remarks by Robert Tuttle, the Ambassador, after he told the Radio 4 Today programme that there was no evidence that terrorist suspects were taken to Syria under the process of “special rendition”. The embassy acknowledged that there had been reports of a rendition to Syria, but refused to comment further.

December 27, 2005 at 10:00 AM in MI6 | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Powell Speaks Out on Domestic Spy Program

Powell Speaks Out on Domestic Spy Program - New York Times

By STEVEN R. WEISMAN
Published: December 26, 2005

WASHINGTON, Dec. 25 - Former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said on Sunday that it would not have been "that hard" for President Bush to obtain warrants for eavesdropping on domestic telephone and Internet activity, but that he saw "nothing wrong" with the decision not to do so.

"My own judgment is that it didn't seem to me, anyway, that it would have been that hard to go get the warrants," Mr. Powell said. "And even in the case of an emergency, you go and do it. The law provides for that."

But Mr. Powell added that "for reasons that the president has discussed and the attorney general has spoken to, they chose not to do it that way."

"I see absolutely nothing wrong with the president authorizing these kinds of actions," he said.

Asked if such eavesdropping should continue, Mr. Powell said, "Yes, of course it should continue."

Mr. Powell said he had not been told about the eavesdropping activity when he served as secretary of state.

He spoke on the ABC News program "This Week" about the disclosure, first reported in The New York Times, that Mr. Bush had authorized the National Security Agency to intercept communications by Americans without approval from a special foreign intelligence court.

Though Mr. Powell stopped short of criticizing Mr. Bush, his suggestion that there was "another way to handle it" was another example of his parting company on a critical issue with the president he served for four years.

This fall, Mr. Powell broke with the administration on the issue of torture, endorsing a move by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, to pass a measure in Congress banning cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment of detainees by all American authorities, including intelligence personnel. The White House at first opposed the measure but later accepted it.

Since leaving office at the end of Mr. Bush's first term, Mr. Powell has been involved in several business and public service ventures, including the establishment of the Colin Powell Center for Policy Studies at City College of New York, his alma mater.

On Iraq, Mr. Powell repeated earlier statements that differed somewhat from those of Mr. Bush, saying he did not know whether he would have advocated going to war with Iraq if he had known that the country had no stockpiles of illicit weapons.

Referring to the case for going to war if there were no such weapons, Mr. Powell said he would have told the president, "You have a far more difficult case, and I'm not sure you can make the case in the absence of those stockpiles."

Mr. Powell said he expected American troop levels to continue to go down in the coming year out of necessity, because it will become difficult to sustain the current high levels and because the effort to train Iraqis should be successful.

The main worry in Iraq, he said, is the growth of semi-independent militias with allegiance to sectarian groups within the Iraqi military.

Asked if the ethnic divisions in Iraq that were reinforced by the recent elections posed a threat of civil war, Mr. Powell said, "I think it is something we all have to be worried about."

December 27, 2005 at 02:27 AM in US | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

December 26, 2005

Queen's speech

BBC NEWS | UK | In full: Queen's speech

The day after my last Christmas message was broadcast, the world experienced one of the worst natural disasters ever recorded.

The devastating tsunami struck countries around the Indian Ocean causing death and destruction on an unprecedented scale.

This was followed by a number of vicious hurricanes across the Caribbean and the inundation of the city of New Orleans.

Then in the autumn came the massive earthquake in Pakistan and India.

This series of dreadful events has brought loss and suffering to so many people - and their families and friends - not only in the countries directly affected but here in Britain and throughout the Commonwealth.

As if these disasters were not bad enough, I have sometimes thought that humanity seemed to have turned in on itself - with wars, civil disturbances and acts of brutal terrorism.

In this country, many people's lives were totally changed by the London bombings in July.

This Christmas my thoughts are especially with those everywhere who are grieving the loss of loved ones during what for so many has been such a terrible year.

Religious belief

These natural and human tragedies provided the headline news, they also provoked a quite remarkable humanitarian response.

People of compassion all over the world responded with immediate practical and financial help.

There may be an instinct in all of us to help those in distress, but in many cases I believe this has been inspired by religious faith.

Christianity is not the only religion to teach its followers to help others and to treat your neighbour as you would want to be treated yourself.

It has been clear that in the course of this year relief workers and financial support have come from members of every faith and from every corner of the world.

This last year has reminded us that this world is not always an easy or a safe place to live in, but it is the only place we have
There is no doubt that the process of rebuilding these communities is far from over and there will be fresh calls on our commitment to help in the future.

Certainly, the need for selflessness and generosity in the face of hardship is nothing new.

The veterans of World War II whom we honoured last summer can tell us how so often, in moments of greatest trial, those around them seemed able to draw on some inner strength to find courage and compassion.

We see this today in the way that young men and women are calmly serving our country around the world often in great danger.

Renewed hope

This last year has reminded us that this world is not always an easy or a safe place to live in, but it is the only place we have.

I believe also that it has shown us all how our faith - whatever our religion - can inspire us to work together in friendship and peace for the sake of our own and future generations.

For Christians this festival of Christmas is the time to remember the birth of the one we call the 'prince of peace' and our source of 'light and life' in both good times and bad.

It is not always easy to accept his teaching, but I have no doubt that the new year will be all the better if we do but try.

I hope you will all have a very happy Christmas this year and that you go into the new year with renewed hope and confidence.

December 26, 2005 at 04:30 AM in UK | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report

Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report - New York Times

By ERIC LICHTBLAU and JAMES RISEN
Published: December 24, 2005

WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 - The National Security Agency has traced and analyzed large volumes of telephone and Internet communications flowing into and out of the United States as part of the eavesdropping program that President Bush approved after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to hunt for evidence of terrorist activity, according to current and former government officials.

The volume of information harvested from telecommunication data and voice networks, without court-approved warrants, is much larger than the White House has acknowledged, the officials said. It was collected by tapping directly into some of the American telecommunication system's main arteries, they said.

As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said.

The government's collection and analysis of phone and Internet traffic have raised questions among some law enforcement and judicial officials familiar with the program. One issue of concern to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which has reviewed some separate warrant applications growing out of the N.S.A.'s surveillance program, is whether the court has legal authority over calls outside the United States that happen to pass through American-based telephonic "switches," according to officials familiar with the matter.

"There was a lot of discussion about the switches" in conversations with the court, a Justice Department official said, referring to the gateways through which much of the communications traffic flows. "You're talking about access to such a vast amount of communications, and the question was, How do you minimize something that's on a switch that's carrying such large volumes of traffic? The court was very, very concerned about that."

Since the disclosure last week of the N.S.A.'s domestic surveillance program, President Bush and his senior aides have stressed that his executive order allowing eavesdropping without warrants was limited to the monitoring of international phone and e-mail communications involving people with known links to Al Qaeda.

What has not been publicly acknowledged is that N.S.A. technicians, besides actually eavesdropping on specific conversations, have combed through large volumes of phone and Internet traffic in search of patterns that might point to terrorism suspects. Some officials describe the program as a large data-mining operation.

The current and former government officials who discussed the program were granted anonymity because it remains classified.

Bush administration officials declined to comment on Friday on the technical aspects of the operation and the N.S.A.'s use of broad searches to look for clues on terrorists. Because the program is highly classified, many details of how the N.S.A. is conducting it remain unknown, and members of Congress who have pressed for a full Congressional inquiry say they are eager to learn more about the program's operational details, as well as its legality.

Officials in the government and the telecommunications industry who have knowledge of parts of the program say the N.S.A. has sought to analyze communications patterns to glean clues from details like who is calling whom, how long a phone call lasts and what time of day it is made, and the origins and destinations of phone calls and e-mail messages. Calls to and from Afghanistan, for instance, are known to have been of particular interest to the N.S.A. since the Sept. 11 attacks, the officials said.

This so-called "pattern analysis" on calls within the United States would, in many circumstances, require a court warrant if the government wanted to trace who calls whom.

The use of similar data-mining operations by the Bush administration in other contexts has raised strong objections, most notably in connection with the Total Information Awareness system, developed by the Pentagon for tracking terror suspects, and the Department of Homeland Security's Capps program for screening airline passengers. Both programs were ultimately scrapped after public outcries over possible threats to privacy and civil liberties.

But the Bush administration regards the N.S.A.'s ability to trace and analyze large volumes of data as critical to its expanded mission to detect terrorist plots before they can be carried out, officials familiar with the program say. Administration officials maintain that the system set up by Congress in 1978 under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act does not give them the speed and flexibility to respond fully to terrorist threats at home.

A former technology manager at a major telecommunications company said that since the Sept. 11 attacks, the leading companies in the industry have been storing information on calling patterns and giving it to the federal government to aid in tracking possible terrorists.

"All that data is mined with the cooperation of the government and shared with them, and since 9/11, there's been much more active involvement in that area," said the former manager, a telecommunications expert who did not want his name or that of his former company used because of concern about revealing trade secrets.

Such information often proves just as valuable to the government as eavesdropping on the calls themselves, the former manager said.

"If they get content, that's useful to them too, but the real plum is going to be the transaction data and the traffic analysis," he said. "Massive amounts of traffic analysis information - who is calling whom, who is in Osama Bin Laden's circle of family and friends - is used to identify lines of communication that are then given closer scrutiny."

Several officials said that after President Bush's order authorizing the N.S.A. program, senior government officials arranged with officials of some of the nation's largest telecommunications companies to gain access to switches that act as gateways at the borders between the United States' communications networks and international networks. The identities of the corporations involved could not be determined.

The switches are some of the main arteries for moving voice and some Internet traffic into and out of the United States, and, with the globalization of the telecommunications industry in recent years, many international-to-international calls are also routed through such American switches.

One outside expert on communications privacy who previously worked at the N.S.A. said that to exploit its technological capabilities, the American government had in the last few years been quietly encouraging the telecommunications industry to increase the amount of international traffic that is routed through American-based switches.

The growth of that transit traffic had become a major issue for the intelligence community, officials say, because it had not been fully addressed by 1970's-era laws and regulations governing the N.S.A. Now that foreign calls were being routed through switches on American soil, some judges and law enforcement officials regarded eavesdropping on those calls as a possible violation of those decades-old restrictions, including the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which requires court-approved warrants for domestic surveillance.

Historically, the American intelligence community has had close relationships with many communications and computer firms and related technical industries. But the N.S.A.'s backdoor access to major telecommunications switches on American soil with the cooperation of major corporations represents a significant expansion of the agency's operational capability, according to current and former government officials.

Phil Karn, a computer engineer and technology expert at a major West Coast telecommunications company, said access to such switches would be significant. "If the government is gaining access to the switches like this, what you're really talking about is the capability of an enormous vacuum operation to sweep up data," he said.

December 26, 2005 at 01:20 AM in NSA | Permalink | Top of page | Blog Home

December 25, 2005

Godalming geek made millions running the Pentagon's propaganda war in Iraq

America, United States, Times Online, The Times, Sunday Times

By Patrick Foster and Tim Reid in Washington
IT WAS astounding enough for Washington’s political elite: last month they discovered that the man at the heart of a scandal over the planting of US propaganda in Iraqi newspapers was a dapper but unknown 30-year-old Oxford graduate who had somehow managed to land a $100 million Pentagon contract.

What is even more remarkable however, after an investigation by The Times, is that just ten years ago Christian Bailey, whose US company is under investigation for planting fake news stories in Iraqi newspapers, was a nerdy, socially awkward English school-leaver called Jozefowicz.

The transformation of the geeky but ambitious Christian Jozefowicz, who just a few years ago was growing up in a modest terraced house in Godalming, Surrey, to the charming, baby-faced multimillionaire Christian Bailey now rubbing shoulders with some of the most powerful figures in Washington — and who next year will probably face questions on Capitol Hill about his company — is one of the more extraordinary stories to have emerged from the Iraq war.

This month it was revealed that Mr Bailey’s US company, the Lincoln Group, was the