Voice from the Commonwealth Commentary, World Views and Occasional Rants from a small 'l' libertarian in Massachussetts
"If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest for freedom, go home and leave us in peace. We seek not your council nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." - Samuel Adams
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Praise for Voice
"A smart fellow...I do like, recommend and learn from Barbera's blog." -Roger L. Simon
"Your blog is bullshit"- anonymous angry French reader.
Asia Times has an article looking at Khalid Sheik Mohammed's arrest. There is some interesting stuff there.
He was actually captured on September 11, 2002, but the Pakistani authorities had shown him as captured on March 1 this year in order to soften any US anger due to their ambivalent stand on the Iraq issue. This did not stand scrutiny. If this was really so, the Pakistanis would have stage-managed a raid at some other place near the Pakistan-Afghan border and shown him as arrested there. They would not have shown him as arrested in Rawalpindi in an area where many serving and retired officers of the army and the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) live, which was bound to create a suspicion in the minds of the Americans about the complicity of military officials with Khalid.
Not a comforting thing, that.
While the dregs of the Taliban have taken shelter in the tribal areas of Balochistan, North-West Frontier Province and the Federally-Administered Tribal Areas, those of al-Qaeda have spread out into the urban areas of Sindh and Punjab. Pakistani components of the IIF have taken shelter in Karachi, Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir and the Northern Areas.
The complicity of the JEI with al-Qaeda should be a matter of concern. Of all the Islamic political parties in Pakistan, the JEI has always been the most favored by the military-intelligence establishment. Its leaders are perceived in Pakistan as the army's blue-eyed mullahs. While maintaining an overtly anti-establishment line, it has always covertly collaborated with the army and the ISI. Many Pakistani army officers and nuclear scientists gravitate towards the JEI after their retirement.
Worrisome examples are those of Lieutenant-General Hameed Gul and Lieutenant-General Javed Nasir, both former directors-general of the ISI, and A Q Khan, the "father" of the Pakistani atomic bomb. It is likely that the women's wing leader of the JEI gave shelter to Khalid at the instance of such retired officers who have been helping al-Qaeda and the Taliban escape decimation by the Americans. The JEI's nexus with al-Qaeda is the tip of the iceberg of the nexus with the terrorists of at least some sections of the army.
Sorry, anyone who follows this page knows I am a pretty solid supporter of President Bush. However, I give his performance tonight a D-. I think this was possibly the most important news conference/speech he has made to date. He must make the case for war. And, unlike Afghanistan he doesn't have the well of Sept 11th support. Public opinion polls in Britain, Australia, Spain and even some Eastern European countries are not supportive, even though those governments are. This had to be for the governments against and on the fence. I know Bush is sincere. They couldn't care less. It's not what they feel that will not sway them. Only proof will. There should have been one overriding purpose to the night instead it drifted at times and seemed message-less at times.
First, let’s put it in context. Today Mr. Straw and Mr. Powell made solid appearances in press briefings at the UN. Secondly in recent days France and Germany have continued their opposition to any new resolution. And, apparently, have convinced China and Russia to back that position. Saddam has bought himself breathing space with Kofi, the nations on his side, the world media and others by destroying the al-Sammoud missiles and claiming to have found some anthrax and VX.
From all indications Hans Blix is going to say that Iraq is showing very positive signs of cooperation. This is going to put France and Germany on the offensive while Straw and Powell are going to have to make very strong cases. It should have been President Bush’s job to make de Villepin and Fischer think twice before going into tomorrow with their prepared statements. He needed to come out swinging. He needed to lay the case out in no uncertain terms. He failed.
Tonight’s news briefing should have been focused on a single message. Saddam is not complying; we have proof that he is not complying; we are going to present that proof and force every nation in the Security Council to look at that proof; then we are going to all vote yes or no on whether they think Saddam is in ‘full’ compliance. Make de Villepin and Fischer come in and defend their positions to the countries still unconvinced. Instead it is now up to Straw and Powell alone to face down Kofi, Blix, Germany, France, Russia, China and the others. The President did not give Powell and Straw anything to work off.
In short, now that we are in the ‘final stages of diplomacy’ it is time to show what cards we are holding. "Full House Aces and Kings. Show us what you've got." Make Blix defend his report against our proof. Force France and Germany to go on the defensive instead of going through the motions with their pre-written speeches. They should have gone into tomorrow’s briefing afraid and knowing they have a lot of work to do. Instead they go in confident that they can deflect whatever Blix says and put the burden of proof on Straw and Powell.
The only thing that saved him from an F is that he made very clear that his duty is first and foremost to the American people and the Constitution. Saying that he was going to give the resolution no matter what would have been effective if he had been able to knock France and Germany off balance. He didn’t, so it was a useless remark. Plus, there were some questions that he should have hit out of the park instead they dribbled foul. I am very disappointed and not optimistic about what will happen tomorrow.
Speculation is rampant. What will the President announce tonight? Here is my best guess.
I don't think it will be a declaration of commencement of hostilities or an announcement of bin Laden's capture. It is too early for war to begin. That may come next week. If bin Laden was captured there is no way it wouldn't be blaring across the news already. There is no way they could keep a lid on it until tonight.
At best, tonight will be Bush giving us hard Intel information proving Saddam's continuing duplicity (photos wiretaps and anything else we have). Bush would do this to head off Blix's report tomorrow morning. Now that Saddam is dismantling the al Sammoud missiles Blix is already softening and there is a chance tomorrow's report could be really bad news. By doing this the US, UK and Spain could go tomorrow and force the UNSC to vote on the new resolution. "Back Saddam knowing what you heard last night or do what we promised in 1441."
At worst this will be another gut call for support in removing Saddam based on information that we already have mixed with a little boasting about Khalid Sheik Mohammed. That would be really bad and put Powell and Straw in a very uncomfortable position tomorrow.
Saddam's former mentor lives in Australia and is working to set up a new Iraq when Saddam is gone.
ONCE he was Saddam Hussein's political mentor. Now Mohamed Al Jabiri, a former Iraqi diplomat exiled by Hussein's regime, lives in Sydney, where he is devising plans for Iraq after war.
From a tiny office in Sydney's southwest, Dr Al Jabiri is the only Australian member of the US State Department's Transitional Justice Working Group, which has been developing a framework for Iraq after Hussein is deposed.
In a week, he will be in Washington with 30 Iraqi exiles and top US planners to adopt a post-Hussein plan.
But for Dr Al Jabiri, the war is about more than liberating his homeland. It is also deeply personal.
Hussein, once a family friend, ordered the deaths of his brother and his son.
He also kept Dr Al Jabiri in solitary confinement for two years from 1980 after suspecting him of being an Israeli spy and a US stooge.
"He kept me in a room with no light for two years . . . I tried to commit suicide and they found me in a coma on the ground five days later," Dr Al Jabiri told The Australian.
Hussein and Dr Al Jabiri first met in 1959 when the dictator was 22.
Dr Al Jabiri, at that time a thirtysomething powerbroker in the Ba'ath Party, remembers him as unimpressive and uncharismatic.
"I used to meet him and give him advice," he said.
"When I went to the palace in 1969, Saddam had already become vice-president and I saw him and told him, 'You will be boycotted by the people if you go on like this'. I had noticed he was changing.
"He was my friend, but when he became the president he started to imprison everyone he knew, so everyone would be afraid of him.
"He hates educated people, that's why he hated me, because I established the party and tried to keep it clean. My father was the president of the Iraqi chamber of commerce, and Saddam was very jealous of me, because he never had a penny in his pocket.
"I never believed he would betray us."
Dr Al Jabiri's brother had been a classmate of Hussein's at law school.
"He was my youngest brother's best friend, and he used to be too shy to come to our house. He wouldn't come inside because I was older than him.
"He then killed my brother. He used to tell everyone he loved my brother, but he still killed him."
Hussein also killed Dr Al Jabiri's son in 1988 after he refused to inform on his father.
"I don't support unlitateral action, I am a man of law . . . If the US takes action themselves it will be the end of the UN . . . The French and Germans are being selfish, and they are not looking at the suffering Iraqis."
It is a common mistake to underestimate the importance of ideology, or political values, in US foreign policy
Antiwar demonstrators in the US and Europe wave "No blood for oil" placards. But oil is only a background factor in the conflict. It is true, of course, that if Saddam Hussein were not sitting on 11% of the world's oil reserves and within striking distance of much of the rest, there would be less western concern about him. Questions of long-term supply and price are of vital interest to the western world, but it does not follow that the war is being fought on behalf of "big oil". Notwithstanding the personal connections of senior US politicians to the oil sector, it is oil consumers, not oil producers, that matter. And even they are just one factor in the Iraq conflict.
The Middle East is now more important than ever to the US because it exports terrorism as well as oil. And the US administration's main motive is roughly what it says: to pre-empt the possibility of weapons of mass destruction being used by a man with a proven record of hostility to the US.
Despite having two former oilmen in the White House the president and vice-president US oil companies have failed to get the administration to relax the ban on their investing in Libya and Iran. The oil lobby proved no match for the proIsrael groups that got US sanctions on Libya and Iran retained. Those sanctions prevent US companies from buying Libyan or Iranian oil.
There is no doubt that Saddam would use oil as a political weapon if he could. He tries to do so even in his weakened state. Last April, for example, he stopped all Iraqi exports in protest against Israel's actions in the occupied territories albeit with minimal effect on the oil price.
From the oil industry perspective, the worst scenario would be a strike by Iraq on Ras Tanura, the main Saudi oil-loading port. A more plausible scenario is that, if facing defeat by the US, Saddam might destroy his own oil wells. His army set fire to about 700 wells during its 1991 retreat from Kuwait. To guard against this happening in Iraq, the Pentagon has been planning to take rapid control of Iraq's 1500 oil wells in the event of war.
Assuming that Iraq's oil fields are not destroyed, what will the US want to do with the Iraqi oil industry, if and when it gets hold of it? Colin Powell says: "It will be held in trust for the Iraqi people, to benefit the Iraqi people. That is a legal obligation that the occupying power will have."
Grabbing Iraq's oil for itself would be counterproductive for the US. It would probably raise the oil price and therefore the cost of all other US oil imports. Iraqi production is now about 2,5-million barrels a day, less than a third of the 9-million barrels the US imports daily.
But the US would want to see Iraqi output increased, as would any postSaddam regime in Baghdad. And there is no doubt it can be increased.
Would a pro-US Iraqi government or a US military governor go as far as handing all foreign oil contracts to US companies? It is hard to imagine Washington getting away with such favouritism even if it has fought a war largely on its own. For one thing, it would be difficult to decide whom to favour. BP, for instance, is now the largest oil and gas producer in the US, and its CE, John Browne, has made clear his company should be included in any distribution of Iraqi spoils. For another, it could cause a row with Russia. The Russian government has a major stake in preserving a commercial relationship with Iraq. Iraq still owes Russia an estimated $8bn from the Soviet era, which may be most easily recoverable in the form of oil.
One option being discussed by some people around the Bush administration is privatisation of the Iraqi oil industry. This would go beyond granting foreign oil companies licences to develop new fields and would include selling shares in the state Iraqi National Oil Company, which now pumps all of Iraq's oil. One supporter of this is Fadhil Chalabi, a former Iraqi oil ministry official, now based in London. "Partial privatisation would promote efficiency. But it would be hard to sell politically, because Iraqis feel very nationalist about their oil," he says.
Privatisation, however, could indirectly serve the US goal of weakening Opec. It is most unlikely that even a pro-US puppet regime in Baghdad would take Iraq out of Opec; such a move would be very hard to sell to its own citizens and neighbours. But the more Opec governments invite foreign oil companies in, the more the latter push the former to bust their production quotas. This is happening in three Opec members Nigeria, Algeria and Venezuela (before the current strike) which are all trying to persuade the rest of the cartel that they must have higher relative quotas.
Creating such pressures inside Iraq, through privatisation, might modestly increase world oil supplies and bring down the oil price.
"It might lessen US dependence on Saudi Arabia. And if it were to bring the oil price (now around $30 a barrel) into the teens, then this might force Arab oil-producing governments to open up politically and economically," says Alkadiri.
Underlining, again, that the US game is as much political as it is commercial.
President Yoweri Museveni yesterday threw his weight behind America's George W. Bush against Iraq.
Addressing journalists at State House in Nakasero after a meeting with US Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Mr Walter Kansteiner, President Museveni said America has a right to defend itself against terrorists.
"If the Americans are convinced that (Iraq's President) Saddam (Hussein) is linked to the Al Qaeda network (of Osama bin Laden), then it is within their rights to defend themselves," the President said.
Looking relaxed in a sky-blue shirt and a dark trouser, Mr Museveni said he respects the United Nations Security Council decisions, but also reminded Ugandans about the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the US, in which more than 3,000 people were killed.
''Islam is among the most progressive religions envisaging the vindication of women's rights, and as the first harbinger of liberty, equality and justice,'' said Shojaei speaking in English to the audience of Members of European Parliament, diplomats, women activists, journalists and scholars.
Saddam Hussein fondly remembers how his mother used to run her fingers through his hair and tell him children's stories during a poverty-stricken upbringing.
Men and a City, a new autobiography of Iraq's president, tells the story of a shepherd boy growing up close to his mother with no qualms about using force to achieve his objectives.
It also strays into the present, expressing frustration with corruption that has crept into Iraqi society since the 1991 Gulf War and describes in detail the tribes and terrain that Iraq finds difficult to govern from the Centre.
"This is his best book yet," said one housewife. "It is easy to read. The president has changed the names of few persons in his life. It is easy to identify them though."
Their mouths say 'no war' but the Gulf States' actions say something different entirely. All of the Gulf States have committed troops to defend Kuwait and now they have pledged oil to Jordan to replace the free flowing oil from Iraq.
Encouraged by the Bush administration, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates will provide Jordan with 120,000 barrels of oil a day indefinitely, an Arab official said Wednesday.
The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the Saudis would provide 50,000 barrels daily, Kuwait 50,000 and the United Arab Emirates 20,000 barrels. He placed the net value at $1.3 billion.
In an effort to cushion the war's impact, Saudi Arabia has stored about 15 million barrels of oil and has pledged to increase production by 1.5 million barrels daily if Iraq's production is halted, the official said.
Italian troops are gearing up to take over patrolling the Paktia region in Eastern Afghanistan.
About 500 Italians will stay at Bagram and the remaining 500 special forces soldiers, paratroopers and other soldiers specially trained in mountain warfare will take over in mid-March from Americans at Camp Salerno, a coalition base near the eastern town of Khost in Paktia province.
However no date has been fixed for replacement. The Italians would be deployed in Khost for a minimum of six months.
"They'll be doing the same work that the Americans are doing now, patrolling near the (Pakistani) border," Piani told reporters at Bagram.
After thumbing charts and calculating planetary positions, Thailand's top mystics have settled on April 8 as the last possible date for the launch of an American-led war on Iraq.
Mars, the planet symbolising war, was at its closest point to earth in 76 000 years this year so war was inevitable, four top Thai astrologers told a public symposium on Wednesday.
Mars would be at its closest point to earth on April 8, but war could start as soon as the end of March because Uranus was in Aquarius, explained Pinyo Phongcharoen, president of the 6 000-member National Astrological Association of Thailand.
"The United States will win the war but it won't be as short as they expect. It will drag on for months and months," he said.
"At the end of this year Saddam Hussein will be squeezed and toppled by the people closest to him. But it's unclear whether he will die."
"There can be long-lasting peace afterwards, with Jupiter entering the orbit of Uranus," Pinyo concluded.
This is a good example in microcosim of what many are claiming about Iraq. The FBI is claiming that Khalid Shaikh Mohammed's arrest may accelerate terrorist attacks on the US.
Should we, therefore, have not arrested him? Obviously not. Why? Because the attacks were going to come anyway. Saddam regularly declares himself still at war with America. This has been ongoing since 1991. Bin Laden also declared himself at war with America. We ignored the delcaration and it has cost us thousands of lives. We ignore Saddam's declaratoins and threats at our own risk.
One small house in a middle-class neighborhood presented an especially inviting target. Judging from the waist-high grass in the front yard, the home evidently had been untended for some time.
Nothing about the place, the burglar said later, offered a clue that it might be some kind of al-Qaida safe house, or at least a records repository for business transactions investigators strongly suspect were conducted for the benefit of Osama bin Laden.
At first, the 31-year-old burglar said, it was just in and out - look around quickly, grab a television set or something equally easy to sell and then leave. As the realization dawned that nobody was living in the house, the burglar's visits grew longer, sometimes extending overnight.
It was on one of those occasions, he recalled in a recent interview, that he discovered three cartons filled with documents stashed beneath the eaves.
According to the burglar, the documents included anti-Semitic and anti-U.S. tracts in Arabic and English, copies of Iraqi newspapers with Saddam Hussein's picture on the front page and architect's drawings of what appeared to be a synagogue and a hospital with markings showing where explosive charges could be placed.
Of more interest to investigators are the reams of files reflecting business dealings by Mamoun Darkazanli, a 44-year-old Syrian-born Hamburg export broker with ties to al-Qaida and the Sept. 11 hijackers.
Sources familiar with the documents say they concern Darkazanli's role in several business transactions, including the purchase of an ocean-going cargo freighter that investigators say was "probably" procured on behalf of Osama bin Laden.
The United States has condemned Zimbabwe over the mass arrests of opposition supporters and civil society leaders and called on other countries to join in its "forthright" condemnation of Harare.
A US State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said recent detentions and alleged beatings of more than 100 opposition activists are part of a systematic campaign of repression by President Robert Mugabe's government.
"These arrests are part of a sustained campaign by the Government of Zimbabwe and its supporters to suppress civil society and to suppress supporters of the political opposition through intimidation and violence," Mr Boucher said.
Those arrested included a group holding anti-government posters at a World Cup cricket match in Bulawayo, 19 protesting clergymen, and 26 supporters of the opposition Movement for Democratic Change in the capital Harare.
Twenty-three of the group were held in a single cell designed for six prisoners and were unable to sit or lie down. They were denied water and food, until it was eventually brought to them by family members, he said.
Mr Boucher took aim at comments from Zimbabwean officials and "some members of the international community" who have said that conditions in the country, beset by massive food shortages and a crippled economy, are improving.
These comments, he said, "have no basis in reality".
The rebuff appeared to be aimed at South Africa, whose Foreign Minister said this week that Pretoria would never condemn Harare and that "slow" progress was being made.
The Bush administration has concluded that it probably cannot prevent North Korea from developing nuclear weapons and is focusing on managing the geopolitical fallout, informed Capitol Hill sources said Tuesday.
In closed briefings and private conversations with members of Congress over the last several weeks, administration officials have indicated that they expect North Korea to begin reprocessing its plutonium stockpiles soon, perhaps within a few weeks, the sources said. Once reprocessing begins, North Korea will be able to produce enough plutonium for one nuclear weapon a month.
A Senate staff member who is privy to the briefings said the administration was "preparing people up here for a de facto, if not declared, North Korean nuclear state and saying that this is something we can deal with through isolation, sanctions, deterrence and national missile defense."
Resigned to the likelihood that North Korea may soon be making weapons-grade plutonium, officials "are trying to prevent Congress from leaping in alarm and either calling for preemptive military actions, which they don't think offers them good options, or criticizing them for being surprised by the North becoming a nuclear power on their watch," the staff member said. "They want to appear witting."
That last line is a bit disingenuous. Most intelligence reports say that Kim has at least one nuclear weapon already and we don't know when that became an operational fact. But, I am not happy to hear that the Administration plans on just accepting the fact as a reality and get on with it.
Reached for comment on the reports, a senior official said the administration is planning for the possibility that North Korea will acquire more nuclear weapons. But he said the U.S. has in no way accepted this as an inevitable outcome.
"Resigned? Throwing up our hands? Working out how to accept them as a nuclear power? No, that's not what we're doing," the official insisted.
Let's hope so.
No senator would confirm or deny the reports by the Capitol Hill sources. But in a statement responding to questions from The Times, Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) said the reports, if true, are "disturbing."
"I'm amazed that we would sit back and let North Korea become a plutonium factory churning out the world's most dangerous material and possibly selling it to the highest bidder," Biden said. "We need to treat this problem for what it is — a crisis — and listen to our allies who say we can still head it off if we just sit down and talk" to the regime in Pyongyang, he said.
Note to Joe. They've been refining plutonium since 1994. Where were you for the past 8 years?
Sit down and talk? Just like Jimmy did in 1994? Get them to sign a worthless piece of paper, send them a few billion dollars, build them a couple of reactors, congratulate ourselves dance a jig and go home happy?
Joel S. Wit, a former State Department expert on North Korea, said that by ruling out bilateral talks, the White House had in effect torpedoed diplomacy even before Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's five-day swing through Asia last month.
The Administration did not 'rule-out' bilateral negotiations. They maintain that until Kim ceases his nuclear ambitions we will not have bilateral negotiations. While Kim stands there shouting about a 'Sea of Fire' while demanding to be paid off we will not give in to his demands. Before mouthing off about the strategy the Administration is taking now perhaps these people should honestly consider the history of negotiations with North Korea.
Don't listen to their words look at their actions. Three thousand Saudi troops are deploying to Kuwait. Every Arabian Gulf state has now deployed some sort of force to defend Kuwait.
This is great. I can almost taste the irony. The Screen Actors Guild is whining because Hollywood folk are getting 'hate mail' for mouthing off on subkects they have no more expertise in than the rest of us. Being disagreed with isnot McCarthyism.
Hollywood actors, facing a vitriolic backlash for their opposition to a war against Iraq, have raised the specter of Cold War McCarthyism in an appeal to avoid returning to one of the movie industry's darkest hours.
The Screen Actors Guild (SAG) said a slew of hate-mail directed at actors who have taken a public personal stand against war, along with calls for boycotts of movies and albums on the nation's talk radio airwaves and Internet message boards, "suggests that the lessons of history have, for some, fallen on deaf ears."
"We deplore the idea that those in the public eye should suffer professionally for having the courage to give voice to their views. Even a hint of the blacklist must never again be tolerated in this nation," SAG, the nation's largest actors' union, said in a statement.
The SAG statement was issued in response to a growing tide of abuse toward American celebrities who have spoken out against a "rush to war" on nationally televised award shows, through interviews, anti-war TV ads or by taking part in mass protests.
Martin Sheen, who plays TV's popular fictional President Josiah Bartlet on NBC's "The West Wing," has been under fire since emerging as a chief spokesman in the anti-war coalition.
Sheen said in a Los Angeles Times interview this week that his hate-mail critics have demanded that NBC fire him from the Emmy-award winning series, adding that NBC executives had privately expressed fears that ratings would suffer because of the furor.
SAG said suggestions that "well-known individuals who express 'unacceptable' views should be punished by losing their right to work" was a "shocking development" which recalled the 1950s House Committee on Un-American Activities under Senator Joseph McCarthy.
"I will not go to the movies. I will not support their television shows, I will not buy their music. My family and I shall boycott supporting anyone in Hollywood until they decide their job is for entertainment value only," said one writer to the "Citizens Against Celebrity Pundits" online petition.
McCarthyism expert Ellen Schrecker, professor of history at Yeshiva University in New York, said the level of rhetoric against anti-war campaigners could presage a return to the era of witch-hunts and blacklists.
"I think it is certainly a possibility. What I find heartening about the SAG statement is that it recognizes the importance of remembering that history, and being determined not to repeat it.
"It's very important to take a public stand the way the SAG has done," Schrecker told Reuters.
How moronic. Their little echo chamber is broken and suddenly it is McCathyism? In that case their disagreement with those supporting force to remove Saddam is McCarthyite. After all they have a much larger bullypulpit than do common folk such as I.
We disagree and will therefore not give these people our money and that is McCarthyism? Do they give money to causes they disagree with? How many have donated to a pro-life cause or a Cuban exile group? This is just another example of their McCarthy-like tactics against theses non-politicallly correct movements. Last I knew we were not required to see their movies. If we choose not to then we will not do so.
There is occasional vitriolic language aimed at them for their stance? Perhaps they should review the language they have used to attack the people who disagree with them. Their McCarthyite ad-hominem attacks on the administration are just as heinous and again given far larger audience than our voices.
Attacking a public that owes no obligation to you is a sure way to assure that you will be boycotted and ignored by Americans. You hate us for our views why should we be expected to not mind making you a millionaire? I don't deny you the right to your view but if you are going to go on TV or something talk about your damn movie or record. If you want to rant and rave about foreign policy do it on your own time and dime.
Reporters Sans Frontiers has a page detailing Predators of Press Freedom. I find it interesting that Ariel Sharon is included yet for the Palestinian Authority they just have a figure with a blacked out face and detail the 'Predator' as 'Palestinian Security Forces'. And who is it that holds those forces in an iron grip? It seems RSF cannot recall his name.
France has all but ruled out using its veto in the U.N. Security Council to block a U.S.-backed resolution paving the way for war on Iraq (news - web sites), a weekly newspaper reported in its Wednesday edition.
Le Canard enchaine quoted President Jacques Chirac as telling a small private gathering on Feb. 26 that a veto would be pointless because it would not stop U.S. President George W. Bush (news - web sites) from launching military action.
"France is doing everything it can, but the problem is that it is impossible to stop Bush from pursuing his logic of war to the end," Chirac was quoted as saying by Le Canard, a satirical newspaper that is known to have well-informed sources.
Le Canard also quoted Foreign Minister Dominique de Villepin as privately telling a group of conservative lawmakers on Feb. 25 that "using the right of veto would be shooting the Americans in the back."
I love this rationale, though.
French officials say that talk of a veto is premature because Washington currently lacks the necessary support in the Security Council to pass a new resolution.
A French diplomatic source said Tuesday France believes it has 10, perhaps 11, nations on its side — more than enough negative votes to block a second resolution. The source asked not to be further identified.
So, apparently a knnife in the back is fine but, a bullet is unacceptable?
The tale of the three little pigs and the big bad wolf has delighted children for generations. Yet the head of a Yorkshire school has banned the story in classes from fears it will offend Muslims. Barbara Harris, headteacher of Park Road Junior Infant and Nursery School, Batley, removed all books containing stories about pigs, including the fairy tale and the talking pig Babe, from the classrooms of children aged under seven in case they upset Muslim pupils and their families. She claimed it had been school policy for seven years to avoid telling the stories to young Muslim children, following complaints from Muslim parents, and that the books had been removed after a teacher had accidentally breached the policy.
But wait. It gets better. Who is upset by the move?
Last night Yorkshire Muslims condemned the move as "nonsense", as their holy book, the Koran, permits followers of Islam to talk or read about pigs as long as they do not eat their meat. Bradford magistrate Bary Malik, an Ahmadiyya Muslim, said: "Every day Muslims recite passages from the Koran.
"As the Koran mentions pig, Muslims must say that word. All the Koran says you should not do is eat pork, but there is no harm in using the word or reading it.
"This school has gone too far – what will they do next, ban the word cow because Hindus believe the cow is sacred?
"In this world there are many extremists who do not like Jews or Muslims – does that mean that we should ban the words Jews or Muslim out of respect for their views?
"Really it shows a lack of religious understanding. It's nonsense."
What a freaking moron this woman is. Even after Muslim leaders in the community said that this is a completely foolish move, she still defends it.
"I very much regret that anyone should find this controversial as all we are doing is trying hard and reasonably successfully to ensure all of our children are awarded the respect that all human beings deserve."
Parents of children at Park Road Junior Infant and Nursery school in Batley, West Yorkshire, discovered the ban after spotting that words relating to pigs had been removed from homework sheets.
Religious leader Shaykh Ibrahim Mogra told the paper: "It is rather sad. Muslims would not find the Three Little Pigs offensive."
Does the UN have a secret plan already drawn up for post-Saddam Iraq?
The London Times said the plan was produced over the past month, as U.N. officials discussed Saddam's compliance with the world body's demand that he destroy his weapons of mass destruction, and as U.S. and British forces amassed in the Persian Gulf for a possible war if he fails to do so.
Asked about the report, U.N. spokesman Fred Eckhard told The Associated Press: "We do not comment on leaked documents."
The Times, which said it had obtained a copy of the 60-page plan, quoted from the text in the story. The newspaper said the plan was ordered by Louise Frechette, the Canadian deputy of U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan (news - web sites), and drawn up by a six-member group at U.N. headquarters in New York.
The paper said the plan envisages the United Nations stepping in about three months after a successful war against Iraq and steering the country toward self-government.
The Times said the plan resists British pressure to set up a full-scale U.N. administration. The report also says the United Nations should avoid taking direct control of Iraqi oil or staging elections under U.S. military occupation.
Instead, the plan proposes the creation of a U.N. Assistance Mission in Iraq to help establish a new government, and recommends that the United Nations immediately appoint a senior official to coordinate its strategy, the Times said.
"Full Iraqi ownership is the desired end-state whereby a heavy U.N. involvement is unnecessary," the paper quotes the plan as saying. "The people of Iraq rather than the international community should determine national government structures, a legal framework and governance arrangements."
Russia will not abstain when the United Nations Security Council votes on authorizing war with Iraq, and might be prepared to use its veto, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Tuesday.
Ivanov, in London for talks with his British counterpart, Jack Straw, said Russia "will not support any decision that would directly or indirectly open the way to war with Iraq.
"Abstaining is not a position Russia can take. We have to have a clear position, and we are for a political solution," Ivanov said, through a translator, on BBC World Service radio.
A group of Israeli Arabs are going to travel to Auschwitz to try to understand where the Israelis are coming from.
The trip in May by about 100 Arab intellectuals, athletes and business people is unprecedented in scope and is being planned at a time of great polarization and bitterness created by 29 months of Mideast fighting.
One of the organizers of the trip to Auschwitz is Nazir Mgally, a 52-year-old Arab journalist from Nazareth, a city of Jews and Arabs in northern Israel. He remembers feeling little emotion during childhood school lessons about the Holocaust because he was more focused on stories of how Jews had stolen Arab land.
It wasn't until Mgally saw how suspicious Jews had become of Israel's Arabs during the past 2 1/2 years of Mideast fighting that he began to wonder if the Holocaust was part of the problem.
''One of the main things that pushes Jews and Arabs to be enemies is that they don't think of each other as human beings,'' he said.
The Holocaust has played a central role in shaping the identity of Israel, a nation at war since it won statehood in 1948. For many Israelis, the slaughter of 6 million Jews during World War II is a constant reproach to the world for denying sanctuary to Europe's Jews.
''The Holocaust is everywhere,'' said Israeli historian Tom Segev. ''There's not a single day without some reference to the Holocaust in an Israeli newspaper. It influences views on almost every subject.''
During their four-day trip starting May 26, the 100 or so Israeli Arab community leaders plan to visit Auschwitz, the largest of the Nazi death camps, where about 1 million Jews perished in gas chambers or died of disease, starvation and torture.
In preparation, some of the Arabs visited the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem and listened to a Holocaust survivor describe life in the Warsaw Ghetto.
The group will be led by Emil Shoufani, 47, a Catholic priest, and includes an Islamic sheik and an Arab midfielder for Maccabi Haifa, a mostly Jewish soccer team. It will link up with a group of about 50 Jewish Israelis, including pop singers and actors.
No such large group of Arabs has ever traveled to a Nazi camp, although there have been visits by a few Arab members of Israel's parliament and children from mixed Jewish and Arab schools.
The recent violence has caused what little Arab interest there was in the Holocaust to wither, said Irit Abramski, director of Arab education programs at Yad Vashem. The number of Arabs visiting the museum's seminars annually fell to about 250, half the former level, and journalists, poets and politicians from Arab countries no longer come, Abramski said. Mgally, the journalist who helped plan the trip, said the effort to understand the Holocaust can help mend the trust broken by recent fighting.
''We see that Jews look at Arabs as if we want to push them from the land,'' Mgally said. ''Arabs have to do something to give a feeling to the Jews that we don't want to destroy them.''
Judging from the signs I saw at the protests a few weeks ago, I would say there are plenty of Americans and Europeans who need to make the same journey.
NATO is reviewing plans to shift US troops to Eastern Europe.
NATO's top commander laid out his vision Monday for a radical overhaul of how U.S. forces are deployed in Europe, which would reduce the American presence in Germany in favor of smaller, less costly bases in Eastern Europe.
The commander, Gen. James L. Jones, said the plans, which were still at an ``embryonic stage,'' would shift the weight of U.S. forces from Western Europe to countries farther east, like Poland, Bulgaria and Romania, which are closer to the post-Cold-War conflicts of today.
``With an alliance that is moving to the east, it stands to me as eminently logical that we will have more contacts with the east,'' Jones said in a briefing in Stuttgart, at the European headquarters of the U.S. forces. ``We will be looking for ways to be more flexible, more agile.''
Nasser is 12 years old. He has never met his dad because he was taken away by the Iraqi Army for taking photographs.
"My father was taken when I was not born - his favourite thing was taking pictures - he'd see a pond in Quatar and he take a picture. If I see my dad I am going to give him a big hug and a kiss - but there is no chance of that, well maybe a chance now. People tell me that he liked to take pictures and that he was a strong man. He just liked his country, Kuwait, and he went to jail for his country."
Miriam is 14 years old. She and her whole family were taken prisoner and most of them were released. But her 15-year-old brother Khled wasn't set free, and they haven't heard from him since.
"I don't remember my brother. I was told that he was taken away. I think my mum and sister saw him being taken away. They came asking for my brother - they were going to ask him a few questions they took him and then after a few days they came and took the rest of us away too. I don't feel that I have an older brother. He knows me but I don't know him - I don't know his ways or his character. If my brother comes back it will be the best day of my life and it is a dream of mine that he comes back. It would be a dream come true."
Three more amphibious ships head ot from Norfolk Naval base.
"Trust me, we all want to go over there and get it over with," said Capt. David C. Taylor, commander of Amphibious Squadron Six. He said the crews had trained hard and had been ready to go since late November.
The amphibious assault ship USS Iwo Jima left Norfolk Naval Station on its maiden deployment, along with the amphibious transport dock ship USS Nashville. The amphibious dock landing ship USS Carter Hall left from nearby Little Creek Naval Amphibious Base.
The ships carried about 2,000 sailors and were headed to Morehead City, N.C., to pick up about 2,200 Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit based at Camp Lejeune.
A banner reading "Let's Roll" hung from the Iwo Jima, the lead ship of the Iwo Jima Amphibious Ready Group. The banner also bore a quote from President Bush - "We will not tire, we will not falter, we will not fail" - and a drawing of the twin towers of the World Trade Center.
When was the last time our military was proud enough of a President to fly a banner with his words?
The vehicle is tractor trailer containing a methanol-powered fuel cell that powers on-board electronics as well as auxiliary items such as computers, lights and satellite dishes, preventing the need for the truck to idle.
On average, heavy trucks idle 20 to 40 percent of the time, using one to two gallons of fuel an hour, the Army said in a statement. A single idling vehicle can easily consume more than 2,000 gallons of fuel in a year.
The savings for using fuel cells could be dramatic. The Army said it spends nearly $600 a gallon to transport fuel to the battlefield.
But the industry would first have to hurdle the current cost of fuel cell production. Stationary fuel cells cost $4,500 per kilowatts (kw) versus $800 to $1,500 per kw for diesel generators.
New Zealander Greg Dixon tells us his thoughts about the documentary on Saddam done by Joel Soler. He doesn't hold back though. The first paragraph gives the game away.
The world seems to need its bogeymen. The West discovered a large number of them under its bed during the 20th century, from the Kaiser to Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Ho Chi Min and the Ayatollah Khomeini before demonising them and doing its best to get rid of them.
These men were figments of our imagination? We just didn't understand them and unfairly demonised them? We were just quivering children to fear these men who murdered tens if not hundreds of millions. These purveyors of fear who preached hatred?
He then goes on the diminish the work done by Soler.
While you expect this sort of reporting from America's press and television which, in the main, seems incapable of discerning the difference between cool fact and Bush administration blather, you would hope that an outsider, particularly a Frenchman, might offer something more.
He just doesn't seem willing to accept that what Soler risked his life and what he found is the truth. Saddam is truly evil and deserving of our efforts to "get rid" of him.
But as a questionably justifiable war draws closer, it would seem a better use of his nerves and our time to have delivered a documentary that told us what we really need to know.
And is it that Greg needs to know? That Saddam is a great guy and the West has just turned him into the bogeyman for their own nefarious purposes?
Angola is not saying how it will vote. In this story about the struggles of Angola, by Nick Danziger (who writes some great travel novels), a government official warns that they won't necessarily adhere to the African Union's stance.
The Foreign Minister, João Miranda, will not say how Angola intends to vote, but stresses that his country will not necessarily align itself with the African Union, which is opposed to war. “Angola’s presence on the Security Council was due to the backing of the African Union, but we are not the African Union’s spokesman. Angola will define its position in accordance with its own interests,” he says. “Angola believes it is possible to wage war to achieve world peace.”
In Angola peace came only after a civil war that raged for more than a quarter of a century following independence from Portugal in 1975. Up to 1.5 million lives were lost in the fighting and millions fled to the capital, Luanda.
Washington gave the Angolan Government its support in the conflict against the rebel group Unita, which ended after the guerrilla leader Jonas Savimbi was killed in a gunfight. While Angola has huge wealth from oil, much of it from payments by US companies, three quarters of its people earn less than a dollar a day. This has been attributed to enormous debts run up during the years of strife, but there have been reports that the International Monetary Fund found that hundreds of millions of dollars of government revenues had gone missing.
For Sale. A walking stick made from the spear used to kill Captain Cook.
Edinburgh-based auction house Lyon and Turnbull said it expects the stick, handed down through the family of one of Cook's fellow naval officers, to fetch up to 2,000.
Heh. Nothing like a little infighting. Saudi Arabi and Libya have been at each other's throat for the past couple of days. Sarting with a spat at the Arab League meeting in Egypt that included this exchange:
Libyan leader Colonel Muammar Gaddafi
The Iraqi danger, ie the current Iraqi situation, became a cause of anxiety and even threat to our brothers in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the whole Gulf [region]. America is used to protect this region because the latter is a very important source of energy. [Addressing Saudi Crown Prince Abdallah] If there is a correction please go ahead brother Abdallah.
Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah Bin Abdel Aziz
Your Excellency president [Gaddafi]; your comments are rejected. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is a Muslim country. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its people are not a slave of colonialism like yourself and others. Who brought you to power? Who brought people like yourselves to power? Tell us the truth, who brought you to power? Do not talk about things which have nothing to do with you. Lies precede you and the grave is ahead of you.
[At this point, the Egyptian TV interrupts the live broadcast]
"...It (the General People's Congress) expresses its strong indignation at the attack by the head of the Saudi delegation at the Arab summit against the positions of (Libya) and its symbol, the leader Muammar Gaddafi.'
And today a major Saudi newspaper (and as with all media in the Kingdom, there is very tight Royal control over content) comes this editorial calling for the removal of Gaddafi.
"The continuity of this regime and others like it will pose a real and crushing danger to this (Arab) nation ... more than arrogant foreign powers," Okaz daily said in an editorial.
"When we say it is time to remove the 'suspicious' regime of Gaddafi and regimes like it, we affirm there is no way to face potential dangers without this couragous and essential step," it said.
"Dealing with the madness of Gaddafi and others like him must be the first point on the agenda of a programme to reform the Arab situation, otherwise this nation will go from bad to worse."
Nothing like leaders from two oppressive regimes going at it.
Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal was quoted by Al-Jazirah newspaper on Monday as saying that the "era of comity and flattering is over and every Arab official should be held responsible for practices which may harm Arab world interests."
More heartburn for Chirac. The new Czech President, replacing that guy Chomsk despises for not understanding how nigh-Utopian Eastern Europe was under Soviet dominion, is a Euro-skeptic.
The Czech Republic's forthcoming membership of the European Union, and the stability of its government, were cast into uncertainty last night when Vaclav Klaus, a Thatcherite and Eurosceptic, snatched the presidency by the narrowest of margins.
In the third ballot of the third round of voting by parliament to elect a successor to Vaclav Havel, Mr Klaus, a former prime minister, secured the presidency by a single vote.
He received 142 votes, one more than the simple majority needed in the 281-seat house.
Although Mr Klaus is unlikely to run an overtly anti-EU campaign, his outspokenness could strain relations with France and Germany, which are already incensed by the Czechs' support for Washington's plans to go to war in Iraq.
Mr Klaus is an ardent Thatcherite monetarist who led the effort to break up Czechoslovakia in 1992 and then presided over the economic transformation of the Czech Republic through the 1990s.
Doesn't sound like the kind of guy who knows when he should 'shut up'.
The Kurds are threatening war if the Turks suddenly show up in their territory.
Standing on a ridge high on the Chamamak peak, Cdr Musa gazed over the Dast-e-Khoslev plain towards the Iraqi city of Mosul. Oil rich and strategically vital, Mosul is heavily defended by the guns of Saddam Hussein. But the Kurds' bitterest enemy is coming from the opposite direction.
"If the Turks are coming there will be war here," he said, slapping his worn AK47 for emphasis. "I myself will take my gun and shoot every Turk I see." The Kurds' enmity for the Turks is even fiercer than their hatred of Saddam, who has orchestrated the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Kurds since taking power in the 1960s. "Everybody here, the men, women and children, will fight the Turks.
"We expect them to be much worse to the Kurds than any one else. Saddam's forces are better than the Turkish; both are dictators but he is Iraqi and we are Iraqi also."
He appealed to another familiar force for help. "We would like to know if the British Army will help us like in 1917 when they drove the Ottoman out," he said. "We had some problems with them after that but they helped us then. We would like them to help us now."
For all of Britains protests about the brutality of Comrade Bob, what's up with this?
Britain is sheltering a former supporter of an outlawed terrorist group who also acts as a propagandist for the Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe.
David Matsanga, a Ugandan businessman, acts as a public relations adviser for Mr Mugabe. He also writes a weekly column for a Zimbabwean newspaper in which he regularly denounces Britain
Mr Matsanga, 43, a former official of the disgraced former Ugandan president Milton Obote, has lived in Croydon, Surrey, with his wife and four children for nine years. He was granted political asylum on the grounds that he would be killed if he returned home.
Until recently he was the British spokesman for the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA) in Uganda, a proscribed terrorist organisation which conscripts child soldiers and has been accused by Amnesty International of terrorising the population.
Two months ago it was accused of killing 104 people and, last Wednesday, of abducting 30 children from a school. In January 1999, Kampala magistrates issued a warrant for Mr Matsanga's arrest, along with leaders of the LRA, for three murders allegedly committed by the terrorist organisation on February 14, 1997, in the northern town of Gulu. It requested his extradition.
Mr Matsanga, who claims to have worked as a researcher for Robin Cook, then the shadow foreign secretary, before the 1997 election, writes a vitriolic anti-British column in the Daily Herald, a Zimbabwean newspaper. Among his many rants are attacks on Tony Blair and journalists who have written about Mr Mugabe's despotic rule.
He described an article in The Daily Telegraph about a possible coup in Zimbabwe as "nothing but a faked story by gay gangsters", adding that British "gays who hate President Mugabe" were sneaking into the country under the pretext of playing golf.
In another column, Mr Matsanga wrote: "Let Tony Blair seek the help of African medicine men to cleanse this soul that is haunting the very centre of British democracy."
Last week Mr Matsanga boasted about his Zimbabwean connections when he met two undercover journalists from The Telegraph at a hotel in Croydon.
He said: "I know all the government, all the ministers they turn to me for advice. Mugabe is always interested in what I have to say."
With Zimbabwean government cash, Mr Matsanga runs a company trading as Africa Strategy. Its aim is to try to win favourable publicity for the regime. Despite his attacks on Mr Blair, the businessman claims to have got a British passport and be a member of the Labour Party.
Zimbabwean police seized 21 clerics in Harare yesterday as they protested against the misuse of police power.
The churchmen, from the Zimbabwe National Pastors' Conference and representing Anglicans, Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists and evangelical churches around Harare, marched through the capital to police headquarters in the city centre.
The group, many dressed in purple stocks or dog collars and carrying three large crosses tried to deliver a petition protesting against police harassment of clergymen. But officers, backed by baton-wielding riot police, bundled them into lorries and drove them to the central police station.
Pastor Joseph Munemo, from the Apostolic Faith Mission in Harare, said: "They are being released [but] I do not know if they will be charged. In terms of my conscience, and the churches, we will not be silent any longer."
The Catholic archbishop of Bulawayo, Pius Ncube, who was questioned by police yesterday, supported the protest, saying: "We must march forward to liberation for all."
The 'peace' protestors have plenty of side pet projects, I wonder how many signs at the protests call for the ouster of Comrade Bob and the extension of human rights to the people of Zimbabwe. When was the last time Jesse Jackson flew to speak for these 'voiceless' oppresses Africans? Buncha hypocrites.
The last time the United States and its allies confronted Iraq, Navy SEALs and other Special Operations forces were largely left out of the main attack.
This time, after a decade of reinventing themselves and receiving generally good reviews in Afghanistan, the SEALs and their Army and Air Force counterparts hope to play a more vital part.
"We didn't have a major role," in the Persian Gulf War of 1991, said Capt. Walter Pullar, a SEAL and commander of Naval Special Warfare Group Three operating in the region. "We weren't part of the strategic picture. We were part of the tactical picture -- a small one. We've looked for the reason why we didn't get deployed as much as we thought we should. You learn and adjust."
Among other things, the SEALs have tried to forge a better command system that would integrate with top generals running any new war. While Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf favored conventional Army power 12 years ago, the current leadership of the U.S. Central Command, under Army Gen. Tommy Franks, saw what commandos, including SEALs, could do when they helped in the fight against Taliban and al-Qaida guerrillas in Afghanistan.
SEALs were involved in the biggest U.S. ground battle of the Afghan war, Operation Anaconda, during which U.S. forces pursued Taliban and al-Qaida remnants in the Shahikot Valley last March. Attempts to rescue a SEAL team that came under attack during the operation led to a gun battle in which seven U.S. soldiers were killed.
"Coming out of Afghanistan, whatever the next conflict is, people will remember that SEALs and Special Forces played an important role," said Pullar. "All these things have changed. Who knows what we'll do or when we'll do it? But we've learned from all that, and whatever comes, it will not be the kinds of things we did in Desert Storm."
To compare today's war protesters to Vidkun Quisling or the Vichy French would be unfair . . . to Quisling and to the French collaborators. They sucked up to Hitler, but they were bowing to a superior power which had occupied their land. The support Jackson et al. are giving the Butcher of Baghdad is entirely gratuitous.
The activists say we should be impressed with the turnout for their protests. But the Nuremberg rallies attracted bigger crowds. Neville Chamberlain was never more popular than upon his return from Munich.
In a giant yellow banner hanging behind them, refugees Kim Yong and Min Bok Lee, in English and Korean, asked: "Mr. Spielberg with your attention to the issues you can save over 200,000 lives suffering in North Korean concentration camps." Kim and Lee held a news conference at a Koreatown church Friday to describe what happens at such "management centers."
Kim, who served as a lieutenant colonel with North Korea's Defense Ministry before he fled the country, said he witnessed two men hog-tying his mother to a rod to carry her when she walked too slowly in a food line.
Kim shed tears and had to compose himself with a glass of water.
"It tore my heart out because I was her son and I was just watching this helplessly without being able to do anything," Kim said through interpreter and human rights activist Douglas Shin.
Kim described to reporters how he felt after visiting the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.
"I had this urge to tell the world that in North Korea, in this day and age, in the 21st century, something far worse than the Jewish Holocaust is going on right now," Kim said, his eyes tearing once more.
"France is back!" Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin exclaimed after mass protests around the world last month against war with Iraq. "France is heard. She is being followed. She has confidence in herself. France is being what is expected of her: the bearer of the message of humanity."
Doesn't matter if we're right. Doesn't matter if the people backing us so ardently are a bunch of hard-line communist groups who heap praise on vile dictatroships. In fact we like tyrants, too. The people of Iraq? Well who needs them. As long as we can have our voice heard and have people follow France, then everything is spiffy, non?
The Afghan-born Mr. Khalilzad, the highest-ranking Muslim in the Bush administration, has quietly emerged as a key architect of Washington's ambitious plans for remaking the political landscape of the Persian Gulf and Central Asia.
This week, Mr. Khalilzad led a historic U.S. mission into Kurdish- controlled northern Iraq for a summit of Iraqi opposition leaders. Making a dramatic arrival at the Kurdish resistance's mountain stronghold of Salahuddin, along with an entourage of heavily armed U.S. agents, he laid out the Bush administration's vision of a prosperous and democratic post- Saddam Iraq.
"The horrors of the past will become a memory," Mr. Khalilzad assured the 56 opposition delegates assembled there. "A new Iraq will join the family of nations."
Officially, Mr. Khalilzad, 52, is White House senior director for Persian Gulf, Southwest Asian and other regional issues, working directly for U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.
The title minimizes his growing influence as a strategist, emissary and troubleshooter for Mr. Bush's doctrine of pre-emption in the region.
Mr. Khalilzad, a Middle East scholar and former oil-industry consultant, is also working as a key negotiator with Turkey, which has been resisting U.S. pressure to allow its troops to use Turkish soil as a key launch pad for invading Iraq.
Mr. Khalilzad has toiled in the shadows for decades as a foreign- policy expert in the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan and George Bush Sr. He is regarded as a protégé of U.S. Undersecretary of State Paul Wolfowitz, and a confidante of Defence Secretary Donald Rumseld and Vice-President Dick Cheney, the administration's leading foreign-policy hawks. When Mr. Bush became President in 2000, Mr. Khalilzad headed up Mr. Rumsfeld's transition team at the Pentagon.
Mr. Khalilzad, a native Pashtun who came to the United States as a graduate student, moved over to work at the White House four months before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
His remarkably prophetic pre- Sept. 11 warnings about the Taliban regime in Afghanistan, his early advocacy of overthrowing Mr. Hussein and his Muslim heritage have made him a respected voice within Mr. Bush's inner circle.
"Afghanistan is a haven for some of the world's most lethal anti-U.S. terrorists and their supporters," Mr. Khalilzad, then a political scientist at the Rand Corp., wrote along with colleague Daniel Byman in a winter, 2000, article.
"Bin Laden is only the most famous of a large and skilled network of radicals. . . . Owing to Taliban tolerance, the network bin Laden helped created flourishes in Afghanistan, where terrorists have a place to train, forge connections and indoctrinate others. They pose a threat to U.S. soldiers and civilians at home and abroad, to the Middle East peace process and to the stability of our allies in the region."
Warning against neglect, he and Mr. Byman urged the United States to undermine the Taliban regime by working with the Pashtun-led Northern Alliance, pressing Pakistan to cut off ties, providing humanitarian relief and then organizing a grand tribal council to plan a new government.
That strategy quickly became U.S. policy in the weeks after the terrorist attacks.
Mr. Khalilzad was similarly ahead of the curve on Iraq. In 1998, he joined Mr. Wolfowitz and others in signing an open letter to the Clinton administration, urging Mr. Hussein's overthrow. A decade earlier, he sparred with former secretary of state George Schultz by suggesting the United States should dump Iraq as a strategic partner in favour of closer ties with Iran.
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