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Company Paid Twice for War Support Work
Overall, the contractor's employees at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait worked about 188,000 additional hours to fix Humvees, heavy transporters and fighting vehicles that allegedly were mended but flunked a military inspection, the Government Accountability Office said. The GAO estimates the Army paid $4.2 million for the additional labor. Under the terms of the $581 million contract, the company is to be paid for all maintenance hours worked. That includes "labor hours associated with maintenance performed after the Army rejects equipment that fails to meet Army maintenance standards," said the GAO, which is the investigative arm of Congress. The contractor is not named in the GAO audit. The contract number is, however. The Federal Procurement Data System, a Web site that tracks government contracts, shows ITT Federal Services International of Colorado Springs, Colo., as the company performing the work. In a statement, ITT spokesman Tom Glover said the company does not agree with the GAO's conclusions. "We have taken numerous corrective actions and have dramatically improved our performance," Glover said. "We believe that we have met the requirements of the contract and have fully supported the mission needs of the U.S. Army." In one case, a semitrailer used for hauling massive M-1 tanks was fixed and submitted to the Army as ready for return to the field. It failed inspection. After that, the contractor charged the government for 636 hours of repair work before it passed inspection more than three months later. In another instance, a Bradley Fighting Vehicle failed inspection after a cotter pin in the brake assembly was found to be missing and could have left the heavy vehicle with no way to stop. As part of the contract, the contractor was also required to thoroughly clean vehicles and other gear before it was returned to the United States. This step ensures the equipment doesn't come back with dirt and other contaminants that could cause public health problems. The contractor didn't do that job well either. "We observed an inspection in which a contractor employee was trying to remove water from the interior piece of equipment with his hands and the vehicle tracks were clearly filled with mud," the auditors said. The Army attributes the shoddy performance to flaws with the contractor's quality control systems and its reliance on the military to point out what was wrong with the gear, according to the GAO. But auditors said the Army did a poor job of monitoring the company's performance. That's partly due to a shortage of qualified contracting personnel. The audit, which is an interim report on a broader GAO investigation of war support contracts, was released Wednesday by the House Appropriations defense subcommittee. |
Israeli town Sderot lives in fear amid rocket fire
| Israeli town struggles to survive on front line of Middle East conflict SDEROT, Israel – Worn down by thousands of rockets fired from the nearby Gaza Strip, an estimated one-seventh of the people of this Israeli town have fled. Many more say they would go if they could. The mayor says life here has become "impossible." This is all welcome news to Gaza's Islamic militants, who say their goal is to turn Sderot into a ghost town. While no one in Israel considers that a realistic scenario, the unrelenting barrage of missiles is pushing Israel ever closer to an armed showdown with the Hamas hard-liners who rule the Gaza Strip. Last week, Israeli fire killed more than 30 Palestinians, mostly armed militants, and rocket barrages continued unabated. The rockets are homemade and inaccurate, especially by comparison with the deadly high-tech weaponry Israel deploys to suppress the attacks. But they have killed 12 people in Sderot and neighboring villages in the past six years, wounded dozens more and caused millions of dollars in damage. Residents say the worst part of their disrupted life is the constant fear – never knowing where the next rocket will fall. "I am falling apart; it is killing me; it is killing my family," says Shulamit Sasson, 44. Her family of seven sleeps side by side on mattresses on the living room floor, to be close to a makeshift bomb shelter. Two of her children are afraid to bathe or even undress lest they be caught unready for an incoming rocket. Her 13-year-old son wets himself each time he hears public loudspeakers blare "tseva adom" – "color red" – meaning a rocket will arrive in less than a minute. This month, a rocket landed next to the Sasson home, blasting away the windows and filling it with a cloud of smoke. Ms. Sasson said she spent five days in the hospital with trauma. The Israel Trauma Center for Victims of Terror and War, a nonprofit group that works with Tel Aviv University, says it polled 500 adults in the town of 24,000 in July and found that 91.9 percent had witnessed a rocket landing near them, and 48.4 percent in the closely knit community know someone who was killed. As a result, 28.4 percent of adults older than 18 have severe forms of post-traumatic stress disorder, it said. "These are not people who are simply feeling bad. In the middle of the night, they are woken up by their own thoughts, by their own fears, by the memory of these fears," said Marc Gelkopf, who conducted the telephone survey. "We're talking about stressed-out people who are not able to function well in couple relationships. People who are not able to hold down jobs." Ms. Sasson said that four years ago a rocket landed near her son, Raziel, then 9, inside a schoolyard and sent him into shock. She says she hasn't worked since and her boy has never recovered. "My son goes to school, hears a siren, wets his pants and comes home, is that a normal child? A 13-year-old boy that needs me to go into the shower with him – is that a normal boy? I need to stand next to him when he goes to the bathroom – is that a normal child?" she said, her jumpiness evident in her trembling hands. "I cannot be this child's psychologist; I cannot be his social worker. I am his mother – that's all I can be." The plight of those like Ms. Sasson has Israel's government in a quandary. Having promised the public that its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip in 2005 would make Israelis safer, it now faces a Hamas government that is arming itself and vowing never to accept Israel's existence. Palestinian moderates may accept the existence of a town like Sderot, built for Jewish immigrants in the 1950s within Israel proper, but Islamic radicals view it as no different than a settlement in the West Bank – illegitimately built on Arab land. Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has repeatedly said he is not eager to venture on a risky Gaza operation. But no Israeli government perceived as weak on defense can survive for long, and it is widely assumed among Israelis that Mr. Olmert eventually will be forced to send the army into Gaza. The consequences are hard to foresee. Sderot is less than a mile from Gaza, but a full-blown war could result in longer-range Palestinian rockets hitting cities and strategic targets farther away. |
Military planes admission fails to solve Stephenville UFO mystery
The U.S. military has owned up to having F-16 fighters in the air near Stephenville on the night that several residents reported unusual lights in the sky. But the correction issued Wednesday doesn't exactly turn UFOs into Identified Flying Objects. Several dozen witnesses reported that they had seen unusual lights in the sky near Stephenville shortly after dusk Jan. 8. One sighting included a report that the lights were pursued by military jets. Military officials had repeatedly denied they had any flights in the area that night. But that position changed Wednesday with a terse news release: "In the interest of public awareness, Air Force Reserve Command Public Affairs realized an error was made regarding the reported training activity of military aircraft. Ten F-16s from the 457th Fighter Squadron were performing training operations from 6 to 8 p.m., Tuesday January 8, 2008, in the Brownwood Military Operating Area (MOA), which includes the airspace above Erath County." Maj. Karl Lewis, a spokesman for the 301st Fighter Wing at the former Carswell Field, blamed the erroneous release on "an internal communications error." That still left unanswered the question of what F-16s might have been doing that would look like a line of silent, glowing spheres. Maj. Lewis said he could not give any details. "What we do down there falls under operational procedures that cannot be released because of operations security for our mission," he said. One battle tactic used routinely by F-16s involves the ejection of flares that are intended to confuse heat-seeking missiles. The flares can be ejected several at a time, and could form a pattern of bright lights traveling across the sky. But such activity would not match other aspects of the descriptions of the Stephenville lights. Witnesses generally described what they saw as silent, apparently changing speeds and passing over populated areas. That does not sound like a flare release, said Jay Miller, an aviation consultant and historian in Fort Worth. For one thing, any jet that dumps flares would also be trying to get away as fast as possible. "He's going to be in full afterburner," Mr. Miller said, and that's very loud. But the jets wouldn't be the only noise associated with flares. "Flares don't burn silently. They actually burn quite loudly," he said. Flares are also extremely hot and dangerous, and it's highly unlikely that any drill would involve their use over populated areas, Mr. Miller said. Wednesday's news release refocused attention on the lights a few days after more than 500 people attended a meeting intended to gather witness statements. The weekend meeting was hosted by the Mutual UFO Network, which collected more than 200 reports, though many were not about the recent sightings. The military's admission that it had jets up in the area actually strengthens the credibility of some of the reports, said Ken Cherry, Texas state director for the network. After all, some of the witnesses had said they had seen military aircraft along with the lights. "We have witnesses who could clearly distinguish the difference between an F-16 and some extraordinary craft performing in a manner not typical of an aircraft," he said. Steve Allen, a pilot, was one of three men who first went public with their sightings to the local newspaper. Wednesday's military news release answers none of his questions, he said. The Brownwood Military Operating Area is not close enough to Stephenville to explain what he saw, Mr. Allen said. And pilots are supposed to perform training exercises at high altitude, he said. What he saw happened near the ground. He said he and his friends first spotted a row of glowing spheres that silently changed formation before vanishing. A few minutes later, they saw two more glowing spheres, with military jets in hot pursuit. "They were on the deck and with the pedal down," he said. Mr. Allen said that he had no trouble hearing the roar from the jets when they appeared, but he had heard nothing from the glowing lights before that. "A bunch of stuff is bubbling up," he said about Wednesday's news release. "They may have to tell us the truth." |
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What Does Islam Say about Terrorism?
Was Islam Spread by the Sword?
| It is a common misconception with some non-Muslims that Islam would not have millions of adherents all over the world, if it had not been spread by the use of force. The following points will make it clear, that far from being spread by the sword, it was the inherent force of truth, reason and logic that was responsible for the rapid spread of Islam. Islam has always given respect and freedom of religion to all faiths. Freedom of religion is ordained in the Quran itself: “There shall be no compulsion in [acceptance of] the religion. The right course has become clear from the wrong.” (Quran 2:256) The noted historian De Lacy O’Leary wrote:[1] “History makes it clear however, that the legend of fanatical Muslims sweeping through the world and forcing Islam at the point of the sword upon conquered races is one of the most fantastically absurd myths that historians have ever repeated.” The famous historian, Thomas Carlyle, in his book Heroes and Hero worship, refers to this misconception about the spread of Islam: “The sword indeed, but where will you get your sword? Every new opinion, at its starting is precisely in a minority of one; in one man’s head alone. There it dwells as yet. One man alone of the whole world believes it, there is one man against all men. That he takes a sword and tries to propagate with that will do little for him. You must get your sword! On the whole, a thing will propagate itself as it can.” If Islam was spread by the sword, it was the sword of intellect and convincing arguments. It is this sword that conquers the hearts and minds of people. The Quran says in this connection: “Invite to the way of your Lord with wisdom and good instruction, and argue with them in a way that is best.” (Quran 16:125) The facts speak for themselves· Indonesia is the country that has the largest number of Muslims in the world, and the majority of people in Malaysia are Muslims. But, no Muslim army ever went to Indonesia or Malaysia. It is an established historical fact that Indonesia entered Islam not due to war, but because of its moral message. Despite the disappearance of Islamic government from many regions once ruled by it, their original inhabitants have remained Muslims. Moreover, they carried the message of truth, inviting others to it as well, and in so doing endured harm, affliction and oppression. The same can be said for those in the regions of Syria and Jordan, Egypt, Iraq, North Africa, Asia, the Balkans and in Spain. This shows that the effect of Islam on the population was one of moral conviction, in contrast to occupation by western colonialists, finally compelled to leave lands whose peoples held only memories of affliction, sorrow, subjugation and oppression. · Muslims ruled Spain (Andalusia) for about 800 years. During this period the Christians and Jews enjoyed freedom to practice their respective religions, and this is a documented historical fact. · Christian and Jewish minorities have survived in the Muslim lands of the Middle East for centuries. Countries such as Egypt, Morocco, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan all have significant Christian and Jewish populations. · Muslims ruled India for about a thousand years, and therefore had the power to force each and every non-Muslim of India to convert to Islam, but they did not, and thus more than 80% of the Indian population remains non-Muslim. · Similarly, Islam spread rapidly on the East Coast of Africa. And likewise no Muslim army was ever dispatched to the East Coast of Africa. · An article in Reader’s Digest ‘Almanac’, yearbook 1986, gives the statistics of the increase of the percentage of the major religions of the world in half a century from 1934 to 1984. This article also appeared in The Plain Truth magazine. At the top was Islam, which increased by 235%, while Christianity had increased by 47%. During this fifty-year period, there was no “Islamic conquest” yet Islam spread at an extraordinary rate. · Today the fastest growing religion in America and Europe is Islam. The Muslims in these lands are a minority. The only sword they have in their possession is the sword of truth. It is this sword that is converting thousands to Islam. · Islamic law protects the privileged status of minorities, and that is why non-Muslim places of worship have flourished all over the Islamic world. Islamic law also allows non-Muslim minorities to set up their own courts, which implement family laws drawn up by the minorities themselves. The life and property of all citizens in an Islamic state are considered sacred whether they are Muslims or not. ConclusionIt is clear, therefore, that Islam did not spread by the sword. The “sword of Islam” did not convert all the non-Muslim minorities in Muslim countries. In India, where Muslims ruled for 800 years, they are still a minority. In the U.S.A., Islam is the fastest growing religion and has over six million followers. In his book The World’s Religions, Huston Smith discusses how the prophet Muhammad granted freedom of religion to the Jews and Christians under Muslim rule: The Prophet had a document drawn up in which he stipulated that Jews and Christians “shall be protected from all insults and harm; they shall have an equal right with our own people to our assistance and good offices,” and further, “they shall practice their religion as freely as the Muslims.”[2] Smith points out that Muslims regard that document as the first charter of freedom of conscience in human history and the authoritative model for those of every subsequent Muslim state. |
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Pakistan early poll 'impossible'
| The spokesman for Pakistan's election commission has said that holding parliamentary elections as scheduled on 8 January "looks impossible" But Kanwar Dilshad said the final decision would be reached on Wednesday after consulting political parties. The main opposition parties want the poll to go ahead as planned. The campaign was thrown into doubt by the assassination of the opposition leader, former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, and the violence that followed. Mr Dilshad told reporters that violent protests had directly affected the organisation of the poll in some parts of the country. "We will inform the political parties about the situation in Sindh where our 13 offices were burnt," he said. "We will inform them about the ground realities and then we will fix a date in consultation with them." But opposition parties were quick to condemn any delay as a desperate measure to avoid defeat by the governing pro-Musharraf party. "There are no grounds whatsoever for delaying the elections," said Raza Rabbani, deputy secretary general of Ms Bhutto's party, the PPP. "It is being done only at the behest of the PML-Q as they are seeing their defeat," he said. The other main opposition leader, former PM Nawaz Sharif, vowed his party would "agitate" against a delay. The ruling PML-Q party has said the 8 January vote should be delayed for several weeks, on the grounds that the vote would "lose credibility" if held under current conditions. On Monday US State Department spokesman Tom Casey said Washington wanted elections to go ahead as planned if they could be held in a "safe and secure" way. 'One-man calamity' Mr Sharif said his party would not accept the expected postponement. He told a news conference that President Pervez Musharraf was a "one-man calamity" and should step down immediately. Ms Bhutto's husband Asif Ali Zardari, who has been nominated co-chair of the PPP along with their son, Bilawal, also said the elections should go ahead as planned. "There can be elections in Afghanistan when there is an al-Qaeda movement. Why can't there be elections in Pakistan and on time?" he asked in an interview with CNN. Bilawal Bhutto has returned to the family home in Dubai after succeeding his mother as head of the PPP two days earlier. PPP senator Babar Awan warned of dire consequences if the vote was postponed. "If elections are delayed, the constitution is violated, then this would amount (to an) opening of a floodgate of violence throughout the country," he said. At least 47 people have been killed in violence since Ms Bhutto's death. Sympathy vote But correspondents say that life has been returning to normal in much of Pakistan, with many shops and offices re-opening. The BBC's Chris Morris in Islamabad says the PPP wants elections as soon as possible, in order to take advantage of what could be a big sympathy vote. The electoral commission has asked each of Pakistan's four provincial governments to compile reports on their readiness for an election. At least 10 local election offices have been burnt down in the rioting which followed Benazir Bhutto's death. Ballot boxes and voting screens have been destroyed and the printing of ballot papers - and their delivery around the country - has also been disrupted. If the election does go ahead, it is not clear who the PPP would propose as prime minister. At 19, Bilawal is legally too young to stand for parliament. And his father has been repeatedly accused of corruption - though he denies the charges and has never been convicted in court. Mr Zardari said PPP vice-chairman Makhdoom Amin Fahim would probably be its candidate for prime minister. |
Will Iraq's Great Awakening Lead to a Nightmare?
| Washington Dispatch: U.S. casualties are down in Iraq. But a retired Army Colonel argues that the surge and American payoffs to Sunni tribal leaders may eventually backfire—producing more instability and possibly a regional war. American casualties in Iraq have declined dramatically over the last 90 days to levels not seen since 2006, and the White House has attributed the decline to the surge of 35-40,000 U.S. combat troops. But a closer look suggests a different explanation. More than two years of sectarian violence have replaced one country called Iraq with three emerging states: one Kurdish, one Sunni, and one Shiite. This created what a million additional U.S. troops could not: a strategic opportunity to capitalize on the Sunni-Shiite split. So after Shiite leader Muqtada al-Sadr decided to restrain his Mahdi army from attacking U.S. forces, General David Petraeus and his commanders began cutting deals with Sunni Arab insurgents, agreeing to allow these Sunnis to run their own affairs and arm their own security forces in return for cooperation with U.S. forces against Al Qaeda fighters. As part of the bargain, the Sunni leaders obtained both independence from the hated Shiite-dominated government, which pays far more attention to Tehran's interests than to Washington's, and money—lots of money. Striking such a "sheikhs for sale" deal (whether they be Sunni or Shiite) is nothing new in the Arab world. The men who ran the British Empire routinely paid subsidies in gold to unruly tribal leaders from the Khyber Pass to the headwaters of the Nile. (Of course, British subsidies were a pittance compared with the billions Britain extracted from its colonies in Africa and Asia.) While the arrangement reached by U.S. military commanders and dubbed the "Great Awakening" has allowed the administration and its allies to declare the surge a success, it carries long-term consequences that are worrisome, if not perilous. The reduction in U.S. casualties is good news. But transforming thousands of anti-American Sunni insurgents into U.S.-funded Sunni militias is not without cost. In fact, the much-touted progress in Iraq could lead to a situation in which American foreign-policy interests are profoundly harmed and the Middle East is plunged into even a larger crisis than currently exists. First, a warning. We don't know much about developments within Iraq. Military officers who have recently served in Iraq tell me they don't truly understand Iraq's complexity or the duplicitous nature of the Iraqis they work with. In my conservations with them, they raise troubling questions that don't lend themselves to sound-bite answers on talk radio or the evening news. Is the Great Awakening inside the Sunni Arab community the road to Iraq's stability, or is it just a pause for Sunni rearmament and reorganization? Is it a means to secure American military bases inside an emerging Sunni client state generously supplied with cash from Saudi Arabia, a kind of cordon sanitaire along the fault line that separates the Sunni Arab world from Shiite Iran and its beachhead in southern Iraq? Does this development mean America wins when our former Sunni Arab enemies regain power in central Iraq? Or—here's the most disturbing question—will the presumed successes of today be catalysts for yet bloodier civil war inside Iraq or, worse, larger regional war? With eyes firmly fixed on Jan. 20, 2009—the departure date for this administration—the White House and its generals aren't publicly addressing such policy implications. They're not interested in explaining why the world's most powerful military establishment has resorted to buying off its enemies, effectively supplanting counterinsurgency with cash-based cooptation. Officers who've served in Iraq warn that the Great Awakening could be transitory. "The Sunni insurgents are following a 'fight, bargain, subvert, fight' approach to get what they want," said one colonel. So Americans need to explore whether U.S. forces are courting long-term strategic success, or if the expedient cash surge is leading U.S. forces into a new phase of conflict that could engulf the region and create a perfect storm. In four years of occupation and civil war, hundreds of thousands of Arabs, including many Sunnis, have been killed, wounded, or incarcerated. About two million more Arabs, most of them Sunni, have fled the country. How many more Sunni and Shiite Arabs have died over the last two years as a result of the civil war is unknown, but the numbers are likely greater than anyone in the Pentagon or State Department is prepared to admit. That the Sunni Arab population is tired of fighting is beyond dispute, but winning Sunni Arab hearts and minds in the aftermath of the last four years' violence seems a remote possibility. So, in the absence of the common interest in disposing of Al Qaeda's unwanted foreign fighters and war fatigue, what besides cash motivates the Great Awakening? Officers familiar with Iraq's Sunni Arab leaders insist these leaders genuinely believe that if left alone by U.S. occupation forces and receiving modest financial support from Saudi Arabia they can eventually crush the Shiite militias and regain their dominant position inside Iraq. If true, the "awakening" may simply be an opportunity for Iraq's Sunni Arabs to consolidate and prepare without American interference for an inevitable, future showdown with the Shiites whether U.S. forces withdraw or not. A former U.S. Army battalion commander with extensive service in Iraq reports, "It is my sense the Sunni Arab leaders are using the pause in the fight with U.S. forces to take a breather, harden and regroup themselves much like a conventional army would rest and refit after a major battle. Besides, who do the generals in Baghdad think are targeting and killing Iraqi Security Forces? It's the Sunni insurgents. They're just not shooting at us right now." One of the unspoken assumptions that underpins the "awakening" is that U.S. occupation forces can place untold thousands of Sunni insurgents on the U.S. government's payroll, allowing them to rearm and recuperate inside Sunni-pure enclaves while U.S. forces open a new front in the war against the Shiite militias. Thus far, Tehran has advised its Shiite friends in Iraq to restrain their fighters in the hope the U.S. occupation will end and allow the Shiites to consolidate their victory. The question now is whether the Shiite militias will continue to lie low or risk the kind of campaign against U.S. forces that the Sunnis waged for nearly four years. No one knows the answer. But it is doubtful Muqtada al-Sadr will do nothing as U.S. forces halt operations against the Shiites' old enemies and allow these enemies to rebuild. He may well step up attacks on Americans, assisted by the Shiite-dominated Iraqi Security Forces. And if that happens, retaliatory attacks by U.S. forces on the Mahdi Army could mobilize the Shiite population behind Muqtada al-Sadr in the fight against their old Sunni Baathist oppressors who are now openly allied with the Americans. In such a battle—a revived civil war—what the majority Shiite Iraqi army will do is another unknown. What happens in Iraq will not stay in Iraq. That is, other states have an interest in the Sunni-Shiite fight. In many Arab countries, particularly the United States' oil-providing protectorates in the Persian Gulf, the ruling elite fear Iran and oppose the emergence of a Shiite-dominated Iraq, something the U.S. military occupation effectively created when it sided with the Shiites against the Sunnis in 2003. These ruling elites worry that they too could be replaced one by one with "faithful" Sharia-based Islamists. The Bush State Department seems determined to exploit such fears, promising that giant American bases like the 30,000-man Balad Air Base will offer the Sunni elites security in the form of an anti-Iranian Maginot line that stretches from the Indian Ocean to the Turkish border. This may be the Bush administration's strategic ploy to win the support (or acquiescence) of neighboring Sunni Arab countries for continuing the U.S. military occupation of Iraq long after Bush leaves office. However, what the corrupt ruling elites of the Arab world agree to and what their restive populations will accept are very different things—meaning that a status quo predicated on U.S. troops remaining stationed in Iraq lacks stability. Tehran is certainly watching developments in Iraq with interest. The Iranian leaders have turned out to be very competent chess players in foreign affairs, carefully calculating each move. As demonstrated by the recent National Intelligence Estimate's reassessment of Iranian nuclear aims, the Bush administration and its generals are, at best, poker players. Every raise and bluff by the Bush administration and its generals in Baghdad has been effectively countered with some very thoughtful, strategic moves by Tehran—moves aimed at cultivating close relationships with Turkey, Russia, China, and even Europe. This brings us to the big concern: The unresolved (if not heightened) instability within Iraq could lead to unforeseen consequences of a strategic nature—say, a war between Turkey and the Kurds. Inside Turkey, the United States is viewed as a false friend, and as having betrayed the interests of its steadfast Turkish ally. Not only has Washington failed to end Kurdish support in Iraq for the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), which advocates independence for Kurds inside Turkey, but the United States also occupied Iraq over Ankara's strong objections. These points of friction coincide with an Islamic revival and a growing desire within Turkey for an assertion of national power. Like the Orthodox Church and Russian nationalism, Islam is inextricably intertwined with Turkish identity, culture, and history. According to the Pew Research Center, only 9 percent of Turks still hold a favorable view of the United States, a figure that places Turkey last of 46 countries surveyed. Turks now see America as a threat to Turkish national security. The anti-American attitude has been reinforced in the past few years within popular culture. In the Turkish blockbuster Valley of the Wolves Iraq, a small Turkish force heroically battles an evil U.S. military commander and his troops. In Metal Storm, a recent best-selling work of fiction, an all-out war between Ankara and Washington in 2007 is described, a war Turkey wins with the aid of Russian and European support. Iran suspects it is a matter of when, not if, the Turks intervene in northern Iraq. Turkey, which boasts the largest army in NATO, is the 500-pound gorilla of the Muslim world and Iran knows it. And anti-Kurdish sentiment is leading to an alliance between Iran, Turkey, and Syria, each of which fear growing Kurdish independence. It's hard to imagine a worse outcome for the United States than the sudden intervention of 100,000 Turkish troops in northern Iraq. Turkish intervention would rob the United States of the support of Kurdish troops that are now policing northern Iraq against Al Qaeda and containing the Sunni insurgency. And the Iranians, who are the real power behind the Shiite-dominated Baghdad government, would support a Turkish military intervention. (Russia and China might support the anti-Kurdish alliance, too.) All this could well embolden the Sunni Arab insurgents to renew their war against the U.S. military. In the midst of this, the Saudis, Egyptians, and Gulf oil protectorates might even turn to the Turks, the natural leaders of the Sunni Muslim world, as a preferable alternative to their ties with the West and Israel. And add to this mix the instability within nuclear-armed Pakistan. This could all lead to a dreaded situation in which the United States finds itself stuck in the middle of a regional war, with the potential for chaos in Iraq on the rise and Iran's influence in Iraq growing. Which brings us back to the Great Awakening. As 2008 approaches, all we can say with certainty is that unrelenting Arab hatred of the U.S. military presence in Iraq and the nature of the Sunni-Shiite struggle will make it unlikely that the cash-for-cooperation strategy will buy Iraq genuine stability, let alone the legitimate political order that is needed. (In the Saidiyah neighborhood of Baghdad, U.S. military officers have groups of "concerned citizens"—mainly Sunni—on the payroll. And the office of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has tried to undermine this effort, fearing the United States is organizing a rival Sunni force.) Wherever American forces operate, they make a difference to their surroundings, but even officers with years of service in Iraq doubt that whatever the U.S. military builds for Iraq will survive the withdrawal of U.S. military power. History supports their conclusion. The last thousand years of history demonstrate that the imposition of foreign, particularly Western Christian, political systems or control on Muslim Arabs through military occupation has no chance of enduring permanently. The storm may not hit soon. Until January 20, 2009, there is a high probability that the Arabs will take all the cash the generals are willing to give them, make minimal trouble, and bide their time. The Turks also prefer to wait for U.S. forces to leave or draw down before they intervene to eliminate the Kurdish threat. And Iran is nothing if not patient. That said, if the next administration fails to disengage its forces from Iraq and renews the determination to hold on to the country, if it does not renounce the myth that America's mission in the world is to impose American concepts of political order on foreign peoples burdened with undeveloped economies and dysfunctional societies, all bets are off. Sunni and Shiite patience may well wear out, neighboring powers may cooperate to intervene, and this worst-case scenario (or one just as frightening) may eventually come to pass, compelling the United States to fight a major regional war far from its shores, one that is irrelevant to its strategic interests. Meanwhile, thanks to superficial analysis and weak reporting from the media, the right questions about the "awakening" are going unasked and, therefore, unanswered. If the Marine Corps leadership were able to achieve a cease-fire with the Sunni tribal leaders in Anbar province, a place where U.S. forces sustained a disproportionate number of their casualties on a monthly basis over the last three years, was it really necessary to commit additional U.S. combat troops? Why was it not possible to extend the Anbar model to the rest of Sunni-held Iraq? Or did the generals in Baghdad begin cutting deals with the Sunni insurgents only when the mounting casualties from the surge in the spring and early summer of 2007 compelled them to do so? But the main problem is the belief held by U.S. policymakers and generals that the critical issue in Iraq is tactics, not the overall mission: occupying and trying to control a Muslim Arab country. Given the conventional wisdom that the U.S. counterinsurgency efforts are working, the imperial hubris at the top of the Bush administration, and the complacency in Congress, the conditions are ideal for a spin-off war that could cause us one day to wonder how we Americans could have ever been so stupid as to occupy Iraq. |
No Congress, No Peace in Iran
| If the United States spreads its Middle Eastern disaster into Iran, it won't be the fault of George W. Bush alone – a Democratic Congress will share some of the blame. Fortunately, the legislative branch has effective options for stopping war before it starts Gauging the Bush administration's true intentions toward Iran is not easy. Each week brings a new story that hints at a struggle between the hardliners who'd like to take down one more point on the Axis of Evil and the realists who prefer one disastrous Middle East conflict at a time. Given the administration's track record, uncoordinated and sporadic attempts by members of Congress to prevent an attack on Iran will restrain it no more than would cobwebs. Yet Congress does possess the power to stop a war—if it chooses to exercise it. If we wake up one morning to find cruise missiles flying, the responsibility will not be Bush's alone. It will also belong to a Democratic-controlled Congress that could have acted but decided not to. What, then, would a serious congressional strategy to block a war with Iran look like? Constitutional scholars and congressional staff agree there's no one magic answer. The alarming truth is that 220 years after the adoption of the Constitution, there are few settled answers about what legal powers the executive branch possesses to start a war. But there are several steps Congress could take to make a war with Iran politically very difficult for the White House. Unfortunately, the Constitution isn't much help here. It does state that Congress alone has the ability to declare war, but precedent, inertia, and technology have eroded this power almost to naught. (In the age of intercontinental ballistic missiles, the commander in chief can launch an apocalyptic nuclear strike without so much as a courtesy call to the speaker of the House.) The 1973 War Powers Act requires the president to "consult" Congress before launching military action; if he doesn't receive further authorization, he must cease operations within 60 days. But this leaves the door wide open for all sorts of attacks—a massive bombing campaign could certainly be carried out within two months. Bill Clinton arguably breached the War Powers Act during his 78-day Kosovo bombing campaign, without consequences. The limiting factor on a determined president, then, is not whether an attack is legal. Rather, it is how high a political cost he's willing to pay. Just because Bush can launch an attack on Iran in the absence of congressional action does not mean he can legally do so in contravention of congressional action. If Congress specifically forbids Bush from attacking Iran, and he does so anyway, it would precipitate a political crisis. Fortunately, Congress has some powerful tools at its disposal. Here's what it could do: Cut Off Funding The Bush administration might well claim such a requirement was an unconstitutional infringement on the president's authority to defend the country and the troops from Iranian "meddling" in Iraq, and proceed with an attack on Tehran anyway. To prevent this, Congress could make such a funding prohibition "non-severable" from the rest of the appropriations bill. This means that if the president ignored that particular section of the bill, the entire bill would become inoperative. Congress also could prohibit Bush from using any other funds to attack Iran, essentially challenging the administration to blatantly violate federal law. Close the Loopholes Attacking Iran under the 2002 AUMF, which gave the president power to defend against "the continuing threat posed by Iraq," is even more of a reach. But squaring that kind of circle is what executive branch lawyers are for. As a former Bush administration official told me, "If I had to make the case for war with Iran, I would definitely look to the 2002 authorization. So that's one loophole Congress would want to nail shut." Congress would be prudent to rewrite both AUMFs to explicitly exclude action against Iran. Get Good Intel The most recent National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran's nuclear capability, completed in 2005, judged that Tehran could not build a nuclear bomb much earlier than 2015. A new NIE is near completion but may be held up by the administration, because its findings will likely echo those of the 2005 NIE and should reflect the CIA's reported inability to find conclusive evidence of any Iranian nuclear weapons program. So, despite what the Bush administration says, there's plenty of time to strategize. The congressional intelligence committees should demand that the new NIE be finished, and then hold high-profile hearings on its findings, with witnesses explaining why there's no cause for panic. Congress could also commission an nie that examines the possible consequences of an American attack on Iran. Its findings would likely dampen war fever. Don't Get Fooled Again Congress must immediately demand answers about what the administration is doing now in Iran. Only a coordinated congressional effort can uncover the truth and help Americans understand how they could be bamboozled into yet another war. Of course, the unfortunate reality is that without public pressure, the Democratic leadership is unlikely to take most or even some of these actions. It doesn't help that Democratic presidential candidates have been echoing the administration's refrain that "all options are on the table" regarding Iran. If the Democrats continue to sit tight as the White House decides its next move, the administration will have won the first battle of the next war without firing a single shot. |
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Canada's climate change boomtown
"The next economic boom is going to happen in northern Canada and Churchill's going to be a part of that." So says Mike Spence, a part Cree Indian and part Orcadian Scot who is mayor of the tiny Canadian settlement of Churchill on Hudson Bay. When I first arrived in the sub-Arctic town in early October, I found his claim hard to believe. No one was on the streets as I wandered alongside a freight train which had just arrived from Winnipeg, 1000km (600 miles) to the south. Behind me was the port and the towering granary building - concrete and almost windowless. Ahead the countless railroad trucks of grade A Canadian grain stretching far beyond the scattering of Churchill's low lying buildings. Countless, because I had been warned not to stray beyond the town's limits as this was the beginning of polar bear season. The weather forecast had suggested a 40% chance of snow, but instead there was low cloud and rain, with no sign of any ice yet on the slate grey water of Hudson Bay. Global warming Winters are coming later to Churchill these days, and it's global warming which Mike Spence reckons will bring the town's big opportunity. "We need to define the benefits of climate change - and there are many. Look at a map of Northern Canada - there's only one deep water port and Churchill is it," says Mr Spence. With the latest estimates of ice-free summers in the Arctic as early as 2013 and the Northwest Passage becoming navigable for the first time this year, Mr Spence claims that Churchill could find itself at the centre of a new network of international shipping routes. Churchill can look to northern Europe as well as Asia, which puts it slap in the middle of an Arctic sea route that bypasses the Panama Canal and could shave two weeks off the journey between east and west. $10 bargain And if Churchill is to be the first boom town of the globally warmed age, one US company stands to do very nicely. Ten years ago the dilapidated port and railroad were bought for just 10 Canadian dollars (£5; $10) by Omnitrax, a transportation services company based in Colorado. Not a bad price for derelict infrastructure which nobody wanted because it was ice-bound eight months of the year. That C$10 now looks like a very good investment indeed and while managing director of Omnitrax, Mike Ogborn admits that global warming was not a topic around the board table in Denver at the time, it certainly is now. "We already see a lengthening of the season by at least two weeks and we anticipate that that trend will continue," he says. "My big vision is that the port will be as busy as a beehive at least six months of the year, serving North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia." That optimism is shared by the man who negotiated the sale to Omnitrax, Canadian statesman Lloyd Axworthy, minister of transport at the time. "If you look at the transportation potential there are all kinds of opportunities which, 10 years out, I think could quite dramatically change the entire sea transit system, globally." He envisages Churchill as the key link in a chain, which would see goods arriving by ship from Europe and Asia, and then distributed by rail throughout North and Central America. Arctic bridge But the big vision for Churchill is not quite so clear out in the harbour where a tanker approaches through the mist to pick up that trainload of grain. It is sailing in with empty holds and, as pilot Brian Moulton explains, that is the norm. "The inbound cargoes are few and far between. Usually, coming in, it's in ballast," he says. "This year they have just one Russian fertiliser ship coming in." That single Russian shipment, late in the season, was a historic arrival. It was the first to use a proposed new route across the Arctic between Murmansk and Churchill. Politicians have branded it "The Arctic Bridge". "What we have demonstrated is that this route is possible and is worth trying. Now it is up to Churchill to market itself," says Pavel Sarbashev from the Murmansk Shipping Company. On my last day in Churchill, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper flew into this small community to announce a C$68m investment in the port and railway. "As the world beats a path to our Arctic doorstep, our government is working hard to ensure that Canada is ready to greet them when they arrive," the prime minister told the town's residents. Less than one thousand people live in Churchill. For the moment. It is impossible to imagine how this neat and well kempt little town, rather beautifully landscaped from the rock and the scrubland on the banks of the Hudson Bay, will change if it does become a boom town in a warmer world. And not that I want to pour cold water on its bright future, but as I leave for home I consider the natural as well as the economic uncertainties ahead. For if sea levels rise too much, or the permafrost softens underneath the railroad, or Hudson Bay clogs up with ice floes from a disintegrating ice cap, or the Gulf Stream shifts direction, then Churchill's big chance could melt away. |