William D. Hartung: on the high cost of the bad advice from Richard Perle Ehsan Ahrari: on mixing reform and regime change in Saudi Arabia Ronald Bruce St John: on the victory for diplomacy in Libya's voluntary opening to inspections

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

MAKING A VIRTUE OF WAR

A "WAR PRESIDENT"
Broadcast pundit Cokie Roberts counted no less than 30 references to war during President Bush's one-hour interview with NBC's Tim Russert on Meet The Press. "I'm a war president," the president explained.  " I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign-policy matters with war on my mind..."
A runaway budget deficit of half a trillion dollars, the decimation of social services, the circumvention of civil liberties normally guaranteed by the Constitution are easier to swallow when there is a war on, even though it is not clear who the enemy is or why. The U.S. once defined itself by its struggle for world peace. But in the upcoming election, it promises to be the candidate's credentials as a warrior that will count. At least that seems to be the assessment in the White House. Questioned on his own history of using political influence to get a safe posting in the Texas Air National Guard, and then failing to attend the required meetings, Bush told Russert that he had to have attended the required meetings since he received an "honorable discharge."
• Full transcript of the Meet the Press interview
•Meet the Press interview in streaming video
•James Moore looks at the questions the President didn't answer on Buzzflash
•Hendryk Hertzberg notes in the New Yorker that the real issue may not be war as much as character. On that score combat experience counts more than simply donning a uniform
•Mother Jones compares the military histories of George W. Bush and John Kerry
•William Saletan, writing in Slate, compares the President's version of history with what he actually said at the time.
•Editor & Publisher lists the 10 questions that Tim Russert forgot to ask

FAULTY INTELLIGENCE?
When CIA director George Tenet spoke at Georgetown University last week, some saw the speech as another sign of Tenet's readiness to still tow the White House line. Others saw a subtle opening skirmish in a bureaucratic struggle to determine who will take blame for the War in Iraq. The real issue is not whether Saddam was a monster--but rather whether the threat was so immediate and overwhelming that the U.S. had to rush precipitously into combat without building an international consensus or preparing adequately for the political vacuum that would inevitably result from Saddam's removal. It is now obvious that Saddam was not an immediate threat to anyone except the downtrodden citizenry of Iraq. The CIA may have underestimated Saddam's frailty, but it is hard for anyone who following developments in Washington over the last year to ignore the fact that the overwhelming pressure to go to war came from the neoconservative clique which seemed to have exercised a Svengali-like influence on the Bush White House. As some saw it, Tenet appeared last week to be subtly trying to set the record straight and to defend the CIA in the process.
•George Tenet's speech (Transcript from the CIA)
•BBC sees Tenet drawing the lines for a bureaucratic struggle
•Business Week reaches the same conclusion
•Fortune Credits Tenet with bringing the CIA back from the dead
•Flashback: the knives were already out for the CIA last summer
•The Washington Post notes that world opinion is skeptical of the White House efforts to shift blame to intelligence agencies.
•Dan Smith in Foreign Policy in Focus on why everyone got it wrong

PAKISTAN'S BOMB
The televised public confession by Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan's atomic bomb, may signal the end to nearly a decade of Pakistan's dissemination of nuclear secrets to potential rogue states. A memorandum by David Albright of the Institute for Science and International Security notes that Pakistan was ready to sell Saddam Hussein plans for a nuclear weapon before the outbreak of Desert Storm in 1991. Pakistan allegedly also considered selling nuclear secrets to Iran, Libya and North Korea. While it is hard to imagine Khan selling secrets without the knowledge of Pakistan's pervasive intelligence apparatus, the U.S. faces a dilemma: if it comes down too forcefully on President Musharraf or Khan, Islamic extremists will be strengthened. If Musharraf is killed or overthrown, Pakistan's knowledge of how to make the bomb will be available to any group who holds a grudge against Washington.
•ISIS memorandum on Pakistan's nuclear operations
•Photocopy of an alleged intelligence document implicating Khan
•Were Malaysian factories producing "dual-use" equipment for Libya's nuclear program?
•White House spokesman Scott McClellan reaffirms the administration's faith in Pakistan's assurances
•UPI's Claude Salhani asks why the administration is not more upset
•Global Security's John Pike recaps the Pakistan nuclear program
•India asks if Pakistan's nuclear threat isn't more dangerous than Al Qaeda

RUSSIA ALSO UNDER ATTACK
Russian premier Vladimir Putin appeared to be taking a lesson from the Bush administration when he reacted to Moscow's deadly explosion on a Moscow metro subway which killed 39 people (unofficial estimates put the actual casualty figures at from 50 to 120 killed with another 100 wounded). Moscow doesn't talk with terrorists, Putin declared, it destroys them. The Moscow Times now reports that Russian intelligence officers from the FSB may have been tipped off in advance that an attack was coming. The Times says that one theory in circulation is that the bomb may have been set by an agent of Georgia's breakaway Abkhazi Republic, who wanted to create the impression that it had been carried out by Chechens based in Georgia's lawless Pankasi Pass. The FSB says it is still carrying out an investigation. (Moscow Times, February 10, 2004)
•Is a lack of confidence in Russia's justice system aiding the terrorists? Nikolai Zlobin comments in Nezavisimaya Gazeta (Zlobin, Center for Defense Information, February 9, 2004)

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN ARIEL SHARON AND GEORGE BUSH
Israel's Ariel Sharon has visited the White House more often than any other foreign leader. To a certain extent, what is clearly a warm friendship is based on shared experiences, interests and understanding. Both men are neoconservatives. Both are criticized for similar reasons. If the Democrats win the next election, Sharon may find the going a great deal tougher. He has every reason to want to give the president all the support he can.
(Brad Burston, in Haaretz, February 10, 2004)

RIGHT TO RETURN, OR NOT
At the root of the Israeli-Palestine dispute is the demand by Palestinian refugees to return to their original homeland. Given the increase in population, the right of return would spell the end of Israel's identity as a Jewish state. In the ongoing dispute both sides have valid arguments mixed with some notions that may be open to question. The International Crisis Group explores the issue, and what can be done. (ICG, February 5, 2004)

MORE ANXIETY OVER FLYING
Find airline take-offs and landings to be a white-knuckle experience? Things are about to get a lot worse. the world is experiencing a sudden proliferation of shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles--the perfect tool for terrorists. The Center for Strategic and International Studies provides a concise wrap-up of the growing threat which is already making its presence felt in Iraq. (CSIS, February 2004)

75 or more killed and dozens wounded in latest Iraq attacks
The dead and wounded from a car bomb at Iskandaria, 25 kilometers south of Baghdad, included a crowd of potential recruits who had lined up outside an Iraqi police station.That bomb was followed by another car bomb that killed at least 25 people outside an Army recruiting station that was actually in Baghdad. Despite the administration's determination to exit Iraq in June, opponents of U.S. policy now seem determined to prolong the American occupation into a bloody protracted civil war that will make any kind of graceful exit nearly impossible. Casualties among Iraqi civilians have been increasing exponentially. (BBC, Feb. 10, 2004)

FEEDING AT THE PUBLIC TROUGH
New York Times columnist Paul Krugman writing in the New York Review of Books notes that the Bush family differs from other dynasties in its readiness to turn personal profit from national calamity.
Writes Krugman," ...As all the world knows, Halliburton, the company that made Dick Cheney rich, has been given multibillion-dollar contracts, without competitive bidding, in occupied Iraq. Suspicions of profiteering are widespread; critics think they have found a smoking gun in the case of gasoline imports. For Halliburton has been charging the US authorities in Iraq remarkably high prices for fuel—far above local spot prices.
The company denies wrongdoing, saying that its prices in Baghdad reflect the prices it has to pay its Kuwaiti supplier. That's not quite true; Halliburton's reported expenses for transporting gasoline are, for some reason, much higher than anyone else's. But the real question is why Halliburton chose that particular supplier—a company with little experience in the oil business, mysteriously selected as the sole source of gasoline after what appears to have been a highly improper bidding procedure. Why did it get the job? We don't know. But it's interesting to note that the company appears to be closely connected with the al-Sabahs, Kuwait's royal family. And the al-Sabahs, in turn, have in the past had close business ties with the Bush family, in particular the President's brother Marvin.
In any previous administration—at least any administration of the past seventy years—this sort of incestuous relationship among foreign governments, private businesses, and the personal fortunes of people in or close to the US government would have been considered unusual and prima facie scandalous. What we learn from Kevin Phillips's new book, however, is that this kind of intertwining of public policy and personal self-interest has been standard operating procedure not just for George W. Bush, but for his entire family..."

Paul Krugman in The New York Review of Books, February 26, 2004.

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