Winslow T. Wheeler: Does Saddam Hussein's capture really marks a second end to major hostilities in Iraq? Charles Knight and Richard Corbin: Who gets to pay for a costly occupation in Iraq? Ronald Bruce St John: Judging the Bush doctrine on Iraq performance. Dan Smith: Next comes Iraqi nationalism

New York University

U.S. State Department's
Report on Patterns of Global Terrorism for 2002

The US State Department's Report on Patterns of Global Terrorism for 2001

A POLITICAL BRIEFING BOOK FOR DEALING WITH OIL
There is a certain irony in the fact that one outcome of the Bush strategy in Iraq is that a U.S. company, Halliburton, is now importing oil at inflated prices into a country that was originally sold to the American public as potentially the world’s second largest oil producer. If American tax payers quake at the extra burden that looms in the future, it’s all par for the course when it comes to “petropolitics.” An oil crunch, in fact, is inevitable. The United States has 5% of the world’s population but uses 26% of its oil, and consumption is projected to increase by 33% over the next two decades while domestic American production declines by 12%. A conference sponsored at the beginning of the month by Foreign Policy in Focus looks at the political implications for the United States and the Middle East. (FPIF, January 2004)

THE REAL REASON FOR INVADING IRAQ?
Michael Klare points out that the U.S. was already facing a looming energy crisis before President Bush took office. California was facing blackouts, and U.S. oil imports were ballooning out of control. The Bush administration, guided by Vice-President Dick Cheney's National Energy Policy Group, faced a critical choice: try to move towards new sources of renewable energy backed by conservation, or decide to accept an increased dependency on foreign oil. Cheney, and ultimately Bush, opted for increased foreign dependency, which made securing foreign sources a top priority.
(Michael Klare, Foreign Policy, January 8, 2004)

OIL AND POVERTY
"...When taken as a group, all of the less- developed countries that depend on exporting oil, have seen the living standards of their populations drop--and drop dramatically.
(Terry Lyn Karl and Ian Gary, January 8, 2004)

GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE?
The impact of pumping unlimited quantities of carbon into the atmosphere is not only heating up the world's atmosphere. It is also freezing some areas and triggering drought and flooding in others. (UNEP, January, 2004)

ANY DOUBT THAT THE ARABS SEE OIL AS PART OF A SECRET AGENDA?
Salameh Nematt, writing in Dar al-Hayat, notes that faced with the White House exaggerations about Iraq’s non-existent “weapons of mass destruction,” many Arab editorial writers are still asking what Iraq was all about and what the U.S. is really after. Even Israel went on record almost immediately expressing doubts that the weapons existed. If there was no clear danger, why was America willing to pay such a heavy price in terms of finance and human lives. Concludes Nematt, the overriding interest is oil. “There is no American administration that can accept the decrease of its power in a region that contains 40% of the world’s oil. The issue is about maintaining the position of the super powers…”
(Salameh Nematt, Dar al-Hayat, January 17, 2004)

GETTING IT WRONG
Saddam violated U.N.resolutions and he had long term goals that were definitely ominous, but the evidence indicates that he did not present an immediate danger to the United States. So why did the U.S. rush into a war with potentially disasterous consequences without taking the time to properly assess the risks? White House and Pentagon pressure on the CIA and other agencies to exaggerate Iraqi capabilities is part of the answer, but more important reason is the overall lack of intelligence in the Middle East and a general failure to understand what was actually going on in Iraq. Former CIA analyst, Kenneth pollack, who originally supported the war, thinks it's time for Washington to finally get its act together. (Kenneth Pollack, the Atlantic Monthly, January 2004)

CHENEY SEES IT DIFFERENTLY
In a speech to the Los Angeles World Affairs Council, the vice-president waxes nostalgic about President Truman and the cold war, insists that the War in Iraq has made the U.S. safer, and argues that military force may sometimes be the only option. As Cheney puts it,"The use of military force is, for the United States, always the last option in defending ourselves and our interests. But sometimes the last resort must be taken. And by acting in Iraq to enforce the just demands of the U.N. Security Council, America and our allies not only removed one danger, but made it more likely that other dangers can be dealt with through diplomatic means..." Cheney's speech marks one of the rare times the vice-president has shown deference to the U.N. There was no mention of the fact that U.S. casualty rates in Iraq are now double what they were during the combat phase of the war.
(Dick Cheney, Los Angeles World Affairs Council, January 14, 2003)

LEAVING THE PRESS OUT IN THE COLD
It's tough being a White House reporter when the president admits openly that the only thing he cares about reading in newspapers is the sports page. In fact, one of the most interesting strategies of this administration has been to challenge the notion that journalists represent the public and therefore have a right to know. Ken Auletta, writing in the New Yorker, points out that one effect has been to downgrade the status of reporters assigned to cover the president. Auletta's story is only available in the print edition of the New Yorker, however, he summarizes his main points in an on-line interview. (Ken Auletta, New Yorker on-line content, January 12, 2004)

BANKRUPTCY ON THE HORIZON
In just three short years, the U.S. has gone from one of the largest budget surpluses in recent years to one of the greatest deficits in history. Latest predictions set the current shortfall at $500 billion--roughly 4.4% of U.S. GDP. As the Brookings Institution's Alice Rivalin and Isabel V. Sawhill explain in their new book, "Restoring Fiscal Sanity," the country is not in immediate danger but the longterm costs are likely to prove painful. Brookings offers a copy of the book on line and transcripts of a panel discussion on the topic. In the news last week, it was abundantly clear that the splurge is not over yet and that not all of it is connected to the War on Terrorism. Besides the $200 billion Iraq is expected to cost, the administration is preparing to launch a gaggle of other projects, including a $1.5 billion program intended to give classes to poor people on the nature of marriage, and billions more to go to put a colony on the moon and eventually on Mars. Not everyone will lose. For some corporate interests with close connections to the White House, the splurging promises a windfall. Why else would a company like Enron plow $600,000 into Bush's life-time political career?
•Brookings Report
•Bush plans marriage education to curry favor with the Christian Right
• The Center for Public Integrity reports on Bush's financial backing with Enron at the top.

WHO IS ALI SISTANI?
The grand Shiite ayatollah's admonition to followers not to resist the U.S. occupation of Iraq was taken by some to be a sign of recognition and a willingness to collaborate. It was a mistaken assumption. Today Sistani is more powerful in some ways than Paul Bremer, and the grand ayatollahas his own organization and website. (Sistani.org, January 18, 2004)

George Soros takes a hars look at President Bush's approach to foreign policy

TAKING A CRITICAL LOOK AT CURRENT U.S.FOREIGN POLICY
George Soros doesn't mince words. In his speech to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace to launch his latest book, The billionaire financier predicts disaster unless George Bush alters course:
An excerpt from Soros' presentation: "...President Bush was elected in 2000 on a platform that promised a humble foreign policy. Yet, from the day he was inaugurated, he went out of his way to denounce international agreements and institutions. Then came the terrorist attack of September 11th, which according to him changed everything. He used the war on terror as a pretext to pursue a dream of American supremacy that is neither attainable nor desirable. It endangers civil liberties at home and embroils us in military adventures abroad. There has been a dangerous discontinuity in the way we conduct our affairs: we engage in behavior that in normal times would have been considered unacceptable. Our new national security posture has been embodied in the Bush doctrine. The Bush doctrine is built on two pillars. First, the United States will not tolerate any military rival, globally or in any region of the world. Second, we have the right to engage in pre-
emptive military action. Taken together, these two pillars support two levels of sovereignty: The sovereignty of the United States which is sacrosanct and exempt from any constraint imposed by international law, and the sovereignty of all other states which is subject to the pre-emptive actions of the United Sates. This is reminiscent of George Orwell’s famous book Animal Farm in which all animals are equal but some animals are more equal than others. Underlying the Bush doctrine is the belief that international relations are relations of power not law, and that international law merely serves to ratify what the use of power has wrought. This dogma can be very appealing especially when you are powerful, but it contradicts the values that have made America great. And the rest of the world cannot possibly accept it. This has been demonstrated in the case of Iraq. The invasion of Iraq was the first practical application of the Bush doctrine and the rest of the world had an allergic reaction to it. Nobody had a good word to say about Saddam Hussein yet the overwhelming majority of the people and governments of the world opposed the invasion because we did it unilaterally, indulging in pre-emptive military action. If we reelect Bush in 2004 we endorse the Bush doctrine and we will have to live with the consequences. We shall be regarded with widespread hostility and terrorists will be able
to count on many sympathizers around the world. We are liable to be trapped in a vicious circle of violence, as we already are in Iraq.... (George Soros, The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, January 12, 2004)
•complete transcript
•speech In streaming audio

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