ORIGINAL MATERIAL PRODUCED BY THE GLOBAL BEAT SYNDICATE Phyllis Bennis: We are paying far too high a price for failure in Iraq, and 15 months on, few Americans have any real sense of the cost of this war. Tod Crowell: Want a model intermediary for Iraq? why not Malaysia's former prime minister Mahatir? The National Security Archives provides a comprehensive list of recently published government documents outlining U.S. policy in Iraq and the 'War on Terror'. click here... Senegalese editors go on strike/Botswana Bushmen fight for ancestral land

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BAGHDAD CAR BOMB TARGETS IRAQ'S TRANSITIONAL GOVERNMENT
The white car, packed with 1,000 lbs of high explosive, detonated as office workers and journalists were waiting to pass a police checkpoint into the area occupied by Iraq's transitional government offices, and the U.S. and British embassies. U.S. tanks immediately cordoned off the street, strewn with torn corpses and wounded. An Iraqi woman screamed, "Evil America, America is evil. It is all their fault." The father of a wounded teenage boy kept repeating over and over, "Why? Why?" The BBC's Peter Greste provides an eye-witness account. (BBC, July 14, 2004)
•More car bombs and governor of Mosul assassinated.

Blair under fire

BLAIR TAKES A BASHING FOR IRAQ IN THE BRITISH PRESS
The subhead in Britain's Independent summarizes reactions to the Butler Report:
" The intelligence: flawed
The dossier: dodgy
The 45-minute claim: wrong
Dr Brian Jones: vindicated
Iraq's link to al-Qa'ida: unproven
The public: misled
The case for war: exaggerated
And who was to blame? No one" Tony Blair, reacting to the report, accepted full responsibility, but added that he still does not feel that it was a mistake to get rid of Saddam.
•Key points in report (BBC, July 15, 2004)
•FULL TEXT OF THE BUTLER REPORT FOR DOWNLOAD
•BUTLER COMMISSION WEBSITE

RIDGE ASKS ADVICE ON DELAYING U.S. ELECTIONS
The question seems simple enough: What would happen if terrorist attacks shut down polling places in part of the U.S. eliminating possibly decisive election results? Could the Bush administration delay or cancel the vote? When Newsweek revealed that Homeland Security Czar Tom Ridge was exploring the question, it was enough to set off a tsunami of political paranoia. It also called into question the president's claims to have made the U.S. a safer place.(Newsweek Periscope column, July 12, 2004)
RANKING DEMOCRAT SAYS HE HAS SEEN NO INTELLIGENCE OF ANY THREAT TO U.S. ELECTIONS
Representative Jim Turner (Texas), the ranking Democrat on the House Select Committee on Homeland Security, says that he has attended several recent classified intelligence briefings on likely terrorist operations for this summer and fall, and none of them have mentioned any threats directed at U.S. elections. "Nobody knows anything about timing," says Turner. Some Democrats suspect that the Republicans are using the menace of more terrorism in order to rally support for President Bush. Republicans deny that, but despite repeated warnings of impending danger, they have so far been unable to point to solid information about a specific threat. (John Minz, Washington Post, July 13, 2004)
•Changing the date for elections a complex task
Insight on the News points out that changing the date for elections would face monumental obstacles.(Insight on the News, July 12, 2004)

THE ANATOMY OF A FAILURE OF INTELLIGENCE
The Senate report on the devastating intelligence failures leading to 9/11 was fierce in its condemnation of CIA shortcomings, but postponed any serious examination of the role played by the Pentagon and White House until after the November elections. David Corn analyzes the missing elements(The Nation, July 12, 2004)
• Key sections censored by the CIA dealt with what the president actually knew about weapons of mass destruction The National Security Archives analyzes the parts the public was not allowed to see (July 12, 2004)
•The Full Text (except for censored portions)of the Senate Intelligence Report

WHERE IT WENT WRONG
Near the center of the distortion of U.S. intelligence reaching the White House was a secret operation in the Pentagon known as the Office of Special Plans. It was manned by neoconservative ideologues with little knowledge of military strategy or of how to interpret intelligence, but with powerful connections to Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush. U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski was assigned to observe the operation on a daily basis. Kwiatkowski describes what she saw in articles for Salon, and for the American Conservative.
•Kwiatkowski's description in Salon (March 2004)
•Kwiatkowski's article in American Conservative (via Military Week.com, December 2003)

PLAYING THE PRESS AND THE NEOCONS
Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress kept a list of gullible newsmen and Pentagon aides who were only too willing to listen to stories that painted Saddam as a danger to the world at large. The object of the INC's sophisticated public relations campaign: seduce the United States into a costly war. Neocons had a similar agenda. Douglas McCollam asks why the press was not more skeptical early on. (Douglas McCollam, Columbia Journalism Review, July-August 2004)

U.S. NATIONAL GUARD AND RESERVES NOW MAKE UP 43% OF IRAQ FIGHTING FORCE AND THEY ARE TAKING 25% OF CASUALTIES
The combat toll on units that were initially intended for limited rear support is considered unsustainable. (Star Ledger via Global Security.org, July 11, 2004)

U.S. NEWS & WORLD REPORT OFFERS SEVERAL MISSING ANNEXES OF THE TAGUBA REPORT
New documents concerning the mistreatment of detainees at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq include the interrogations of Brigadier General Janis Karpinsky, Colonel Pappas and others. (Taguba Report, U.S. Army, 2004 )

Israel & The Middle East
SHARON REACHES OUT TO SHIMON PERES
Sharon's strategy of pulling out of Gaza while retaining large portions of the occupied territories depends on an alliance of three ancient veterans with a total of 228 years of shared experience. (Bradley Burston, July 12, 2004)
• Dave Bender interviews former Israeli intelligence analyst Eran Lerman on the psychological impact of the world courts decision on the wall (Access Middle East, July 11, 2004)

WAKING UP TO IRAN
David Ignatius, writing in the Beirut Daily Star, observes that Iran has become too important for the U.S. to ignore. Ironically, Iran was prepared to help the U.S. question Al Qaeda suspects, but the deal fell through because of divisions between the Pentagon and State Department. (David Ignatius, Beirut Daily Star, July 12, 2004)

YEMENI TROOPS TAKE ON SHIITE DISSIDENTS
Tribal warfare is common along Yemen's borders, what makes the current fighting different is that the U.S. war in Iraq and American help to Israel has suddenly made the United States the target for religious fanatics feeding off the general frustrations resulting from joblessness and endemic poverty. (Peter Willem, Al Ahram Weekly, 8-14 July 2004)

Russia & the Caucuses
THE EDITOR OF FORBES' RUSSIAN EDITION GUNNED DOWN
Paul Khlebnikov, editor-in-chief of Forbes' Russian edition was working on a special issue on Russia's newest millionaires, when he was gunned down outside his office. (Russia Journal, July 12, 2004)
•Forbes will name 36 billionaires in its upcoming issue on the 100 richest Russians. Yukos chief, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, ranks at the top of the list with a personal fortune estimated at $15.2 billion. (Russia Journal, July 13, 2004)

CONFUSION OVER PUTIN'S INTENTIONS TOWARDS YUKOS
Mikhail Khodorkovsky, still in jail, has offered to give up his shares in Yukos to pay its tax debt. It is not certain whether the government wants to accept his offer. (Moscow Times, July 12, 2004)

FRICTION BETWEEN MOSCOW AND GEORGIA OVER SOUTHERN OSSETIA
Georgia's dynamic new president, Mikhail Saakashvili, seemed to be ushering in a period of improved relations with his northern neighbor, but then he decided to reassert control over Georgia's breakaway province. The trouble is many Ossetians would rather belong to Russia. (Institute for War, Peace Reporting, July 7, 2004)
•Background on Ossetia conflict (Moscow Times, July 12, 2004)
•Saakashvili warns of possible confrontation (Eurasianet.org, July 12, 2004)

Africa
Sudan Refugee Flap
Europeans were moved by the plight of 37 Africans--supposedly refugees from Sudan's embattled Darfur region-- were rescued by a German ship, the Cap Anamur, after their boat began to sink off the coast of Malta. Pleading strict new European Union regulations on immigration, Italy kept the ship from entering its waters for nearly a month. It has now allowed the refugees to land in Sicily, and has arrested the ship's captain. It turns out that the Cap Anamur belongs to a German aid society that helps boat people emigrate, and the refugees may not even be from Sudan (Sudan Tribune, July 12, 2004)
•Cap Anamur website

IVORY COAST FACES STALEMATE IN ALL FACETS OF NEGOTATIONS WITH REBELS
The peace accords have now reached a state of paralysis. Economics has a lot to do with the intransigence. The International Crisis Group provides a comprehensive background briefing. (ICG, July 12, 2004)

STANDING BY THE WAR
Speaking to the staff at the U.S. nuclear facilities at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee the president went on the offensive to justify the invasion of Iraq and, in the process, his own administration.
"Although we have not found stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction," he told the audience, "we were right to go into Iraq. We removed a declared enemy of America, who had the capability of producing weapons of mass murder, and could have passed that capability to terrorists bent on acquiring them. In the world after September the 11th, that was a risk we could not afford to take..." (President Bush, July 12, 2004)
•Juan Cole on the President's assertions
"... The UK ambassador to the US maintains that it was Tony Blair who talked Bush into going after al-Qaeda in Afghanistan first, with a promise that he would later support an Iraq war...(Juan Cole, Informed Comment, July 14, 2004)

OUTFOXED?
Does anyone seriously think that Fox News can be accused of engaging in balanced journalism? the authors of the new documentary, "Outfoxed," certainly do not. To prove their point, they leaked some 30 internal memos from Fox News president John Moody. The memos are readable on-line at the website of the Wonkette.com
click here to browse through them...


SKIMPING ON AIDS
The U.S. is coming under heavy criticism at the International Aids Conference now being held in Bangkok. Although the Bush administration promised $15 billion to fight AIDS, it turns out that a third of that is going to faith-based groups of the Christian right whose support Bush needs in the upcoming election. Other payments are being stalled by the demands of the war in Iraq. The administration has also allegedly kept a number of U.S. physicians from attending the conference, and it has created a complicated procedure for authorizing generic drugs for treatment which is likely to further hinder efforts to bring the pandemic under control.
•The BBC on the controversy
•The Guardian reports on the administration blocking certain U.S. doctors from attending the conference
•Defusing China's AIDS time bomb (CSIS.org)
•U.N. AIDS report on financing
•AIDS Conference Website

Baghdad blogger: Christopher Allbritton

BACK TO IRAQ ON A BLOG
Christopher Allbritton, 34, wanted to go to Iraq as a journalist and couldn't find a news organization to bankroll him, so he went on the internet, raised $15,000 from potential subscribers, and arrived in Iraq as editor of his own Baghdad web log. Now he is back in Baghdad, writing for TIME Magazine.
•Mark Glaser on Allbritton in the UCLA Annenberg Online Journalism Review
•Allbritton's blog: Back to Baghdad
•Allbritton's first by-line in TIME, on getting hostages back alive

The Security Policy Working Group
William Hartung, Marcus Corbin, Winslow T. Wheeler
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