Ahmad Faruqui: on the chances for success of the recent tentative steps towards rapprochement between India and Pakistan 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

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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

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"DISAPPEARING THE DEAD"
Ever since Vietnam, the ability of modern news media to communicate the horrors of war directly to the public has presented Pentagon policy planners with a tricky problem: how do you fight a war without hurting anyone, or at least without being seen on television to be hurting anyone? The dilemma once led Madeleine Albright to ask what the use was in having an army if you couldn't use it. The situation is more complicated now that the Middle East is producing its own network news programming. While U.S. reporters remained embedded with U.S. troops in Iraq, Arab journalists working for Al Jazeera and An Minar feel no particular obligation to support Washington's policy line, and they are playing an increasingly prominent role in shaping how the U.S. is seen abroad. In a timely new study, "Disappearing the Dead," Carl Conetta of the Project on Defense Alternatives analyzes the impact of the fast changing mediasphere on defense policy, and the efforts of Pentagon to control public perception.
• "Disappearing the Dead" in HTML format
• "Disappearing the Dead" in PDF format
• Executive summary

ADDING UP THE HUMAN COSTS
Army specialist Robert Shrode may consider himself one of the lucky survivors from Iraq. Shrode only lost part of his right arm, but as Sara Corbett points out in the New York Times Magazine this week, the psychological damage to both Shrode and his family cuts much more deeply than the loss of a limb. Shrode can no longer talk to his wife, and he will have to defend his rights with the Veteran's Administration in order to get disability benefits that could add up to $2,500 a month, if he is lucky. While the U.S. has only lost 547 soldiers killed in Iraq so far, more than 3,000 soldiers have been wounded in action. Many, like Shrode, will be handicapped for life. And with no credible exit plan in view, the total casualties will be much higher before the last troops go home.(Sara Corbett, New York Times Magazine, February 15, 2004)

BEYOND BAGHDAD
PBS Frontline's Martin Smith and Marcela Gaviria spent a month traveling the length of Iraq last November. their one-hour documentary and supporting interviews are accessible in streaming video on line. While U.S. commanders remained resolutely upbeat in interviews, they noted that critically needed coalition funds for reconstruction dried up months ago, and that had stepped up the violence. Iraqi Arabs were less optimistic about the U.S. approach. "Do you think that by kicking my door down, you will make me a friend?" asked one.(Frontline, February 15, 2004)

IRAN'S NEW NUCLEAR SHELL GAME
Despite promises at greater transparence in its nuclear ambitions, Iran tried to hide plans for a powerful centrifuge capable of producing weapons grade material. The question now is whether Iran also bought weapons plans from the same blackmarket sources. (Sonni Efron and Douglas Frantz in the Los Angeles Times, February 13, 2004-requires free registration)
•The U.S. Army War College's Institute for Strategic Studies analyzed the risks of Iran getting the bomb.(Henry Sokolski, Patrick Clawson, editors, ISS, US Army War College)

THE PSYCHODYNAMICS OF EMPIRE
Psychoanalyst Stephen Soldz points out that many of the administration's recent actions can be explained by psychoanalytical theory. Inflaming fears about terrorism is a convenient way of tapping into an even greater national anxiety which is due to the unpredictability of the economy and concerns about job security. Add to that a marked inclination by Bush administration strategists for social narcissism and you have the necessary elements for a government run by demagogues. (Stephen Soldz, The Information Clearinghouse, February 11, 2004)

AMERICA'S NUCLEAR HAIR TRIGGER
The Center for Defense Information's Bruce Blair observes that there is reason for concern about U.S. nuclear weapons. The most troubling aspect is that procedures for the president unleashing a retaliatory nuclear strike are designed for speed rather than a well-thought out analysis of the potential consequences. (Bruce Blair, CDI, February 16, 2004)

AS PUTIN REGAINS CONTROL OF RUSSIA'S OIL, OLIGARCH'S SEEM READY TO GIVE IN
Shareholders in Russia's Yukos oil appear ready to cede control to the government, but they want their former CEO, Mikhail Khodorkovsky released from prison as part of the deal. (Catherine Belton, Moscow Times, February 17, 2004)

JAPAN'S REEXAMINATION OF ITS SECURITY REQUIREMENTS
Writing in the Asia Times, David Isenberg notes that while Japan is supporting the U.S. in Iraq now, and appears to be one of America's staunches allies in the Pacific, there is no guarantee that that situation will continue in the future unless the U.S. returns to its support of international institutions and accepts some shared responsibility in policy making.
(David Isenberg, Asia Times, February 18, 2004)
•The U.S. Army War College's Institute of Strategic Studies analyzes Japan's future security concerns.

WILL SHARON REALLY GIVE UP GAZA?
By offering to pull out completely from Gaza, Ariel Sharon gave the impression that he was getting ready to draw the lines for a final separation. The only problem is that pulling out of Gaza completely would be an open invitation to Hamas to install its operations there. That has led to speculation that this may be yet another wily feint by a political master. (Haaretz, February 18, 2004)

SHIFTING POPULATION SIZES
Everyone knows that population growth is going to have a major impact on the political map of the future--but some changes are likely to surprise even the experts. Take Pakistan and Russia. In 1975, Russia had roughly twice the population of Pakistan. By 2025, that situation will be reversed. There will be at least two Pakistanis for every Russian on the planet. Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute charts some of the predicted changes and the implications.
(Nicholas Eberstadt, Policy Review, February 2004)

MAKING UP THE LAW AS YOU GO ALONG
In an astonishing declaration last week, Donald Rumsfeld announced that the executive branch had awarded itself authority to hold prisoners indefinitely without trial or recourse to legal consultation. As a sop to civil rights groups, Rumsfeld said that prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay would have their cases reviewed at least once a year to see whether they warranted being held indefinitely for crimes which had never been clearly defined. Who would be appointed to the three man panels, or what they would base their decisions on was not clearly defined either. Rumsfeld's explanation for a policy that runs counter to the basic tenets of American legal tradition is that these are dangerous men and therefore their presumed guilt should not need independent verification according to the U.S. code of justice. Absent a rule of justice, however, we are dependent on Rumsfeld's word for their guilt. As long as the victims are "foreign combattants" the idea seems acceptable enough, except that it establishes a precedent for circumventing the Constitution and the separation of powers. On the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Paul Butler defends the Pentagon's position. David Cole, a Georgetown University law professor explains why some legal experts are disturbed.(PBS NewsHour, February 13, 2004)

HAITI'S BELEAGUERED PRESIDENT ARISTIDE WANTS HELP. HE WON'T GET IT FROM WASHINGTON
Amy Wilentz, writing in the Nation, points out that Aristide's rule has taken as many casualties among his supporters as it has from his opponents. The best that can be said for him is that he is still there, although not for long.
(Amy Wilentz, The Nation, February 12, 2004)

CHENEY'S FORTUNES
When U.S. G.I.'s facing combat in Iraq were down to one meal a day because of logistical failures, the company responsible was Halliburton, and the man who had given Halliburton the edge it needed to obtain a monopoly over supplying the U.S. Army was Dick Cheney. Interviewed on her article about Cheney in this week's New Yorker, Jane Mayer observes that Halliburton is in a sense the same old Washington revolving door story--except that this time it is on steroids. (Jane Mayer, The New Yorker, February 16, 2004)
•Jane Mayer's story on Dick Cheney in the New Yorker

White House spokesman Scott McClellan vigorously presents the administration's point of view, but where was the Washington Press corps?

NOW THEY TELL US
Michael Massing writes in the current issue of the New York Review of Books:
"In recent months, US news organizations have rushed to expose the Bush administration's pre-war failings on Iraq. "Iraq's Arsenal Was Only on Paper," declared a recent headline in The Washington Post. "Pressure Rises for Probe of Prewar-Intelligence," said The Wall Street Journal. "So, What Went Wrong?" asked Time. In The New Yorker, Seymour Hersh described how the Pentagon set up its own intelligence unit, the Office of Special Plans, to sift for data to support the administration's claims about Iraq. And on "Truth, War and Consequences," Frontline documentary that aired last October, a procession of intelligence analysts testified to the administration's use of what one of them called "faith-based intelligence."
Watching and reading all this, one is tempted to ask, where were you all before the war? Why didn't we learn more about these deceptions and concealments in the months when the administration was pressing its case for regime change—when, in short, it might have made a difference? Some maintain that the many analysts who've spoken out since the end of the war were mute before it. But that's not true. Beginning in the summer of 2002, the "intelligence community" was rent by bitter disputes over how Bush officials were using the data on Iraq. Many journalists knew about this, yet few chose to write about it.
Before the war, for instance, there was a loud debate among intelligence analysts over the information provided to the Pentagon by Iraqi opposition leader Ahmed Chalabi and defectors linked to him. Yet little of this seeped into the press. Not until September 29, 2003, for instance, did The New York Times get around to informing readers about the controversy over Chalabi and the defectors associated with him. In a front-page article headlined "Agency Belittles Information Given by Iraqi Defectors," Douglas Jehl reported that a study by the Defense Intelligence Agency had found that most of the information provided by defectors connected to Ahmed Chalabi "was of little or no value." Several defectors introduced to US intelligence by the Iraqi National Congress, Jehl wrote, "invented or exaggerated their credentials as people with direct knowledge of the Iraqi government and its suspected unconventional weapons program."
Why, I wondered, had it taken the Times so long to report this? Around the time that Jehl's article appeared, I ran into a senior editor at the Times and asked him about it. Well, he said, some reporters at the paper had relied heavily on Chalabi as a source and so were not going to write too critically about him.
(Michael Massing, The New York Review of Books, February 2004)

The Security Policy Working Group