Hydrablog: May 2009 Archives

CIA Announces Push to Improve Agency's Language Proficiency

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/29/AR2009052903054.html
CIA Announces Push to Improve Agency's Language Proficiency
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 30, 2009 [obama white house] [[bureaucracy] [IC] [post-IRTPA changes] [only nearly 8 year in and the CIA is finally doing something on language proficiency!] [****]
Five years after it was faulted by the 9/11 Commission for inadequate language skills among its employees, the CIA yesterday launched an ambitious program to double the

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/29/AR2009052903054.html
CIA Announces Push to Improve Agency's Language Proficiency
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 30, 2009 [obama white house] [[bureaucracy] [IC] [post-IRTPA changes] [only nearly 8 year in and the CIA is finally doing something on language proficiency!] [****]
Five years after it was faulted by the 9/11 Commission for inadequate language skills among its employees, the CIA yesterday launched an ambitious program to double the number of analysts proficient in languages deemed critical in the fight against America's enemies.

The new initiative, announced by CIA Director Leon Panetta, was an acknowledgment of the agency's slow progress in adding employees fluent in languages such as Arabic, Farsi and Urdu.

"To gather intelligence and understand a complex world, CIA must have more officers who read, speak, and understand foreign languages," Panetta said in a message sent to employees.

Panetta unveiled plans for recruiting more officers fluent in foreign languages and for retraining thousands of current employees, using the agency's in-house "CIA University." The agency will offer night classes and online training, and will enable new recruits to study languages while awaiting security clearance, he said.

In addition to doubling the number of officers competent in certain "mission-critical" languages, the agency seeks to increase by 50 percent the number of analysts fluent in the dialect of the culture or region to which they are assigned, Panetta said.

The CIA recently reported that a small fraction of its overall workforce -- about 13 percent -- is fluent in a second language. Among officers of the agency's National Clandestine Service, to which most foreign-deployed officers are assigned, the figure is about 30 percent.

The 9/11 Commission identified a lack of skilled translators as a factor in the U.S. government's failure to prevent the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. The commission found that intercepted communications that could have alerted U.S. officials to the plot were missed because they were not translated until days after the attack.

Amy Zegart, an expert on intelligence reform and an associate professor at the University of California at Los Angeles, said the foreign-language deficit is a government-wide problem that reflects flaws in the security-clearance process. Often, CIA job applicants who are fluent in key languages have been turned away because they have relatives living in countries where terrorists are known to operate, she said. Such family ties can result in the candidate being denied a security clearance needed for the job.
"You can't hire the right people until you change the security-clearance rules," Zegart said.
© 2009 The Washington Post Company

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Contractors Vie for Plum Work, Hacking for U.S. Government

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/us/31cyber.html
May 31, 2009
Cyberwar
Contractors Vie for Plum Work, Hacking for U.S. Government
By CHRISTOPHER DREW and JOHN MARKOFF [obama white house] [bureaucracy] [use psci344, 455] [use nsc] [post-IRTPA changes] [new administration—counter role expectations] [apparentl collapses the homeland security council—that is NSC level—back into the NSC] [use NSC] [use psci355, 455] [ditto, the cybersecurity “czar” that’s been in the news] [command in military but the czar liaisons with both NSC and NEC] [use NSC] [****]
MELBOURNE, Fla. — The government’s urgent push into cyberwarfare has set off a

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/us/31cyber.html
May 31, 2009
Cyberwar
Contractors Vie for Plum Work, Hacking for U.S. Government
By CHRISTOPHER DREW and JOHN MARKOFF [obama white house] [bureaucracy] [use psci344, 455] [use nsc] [post-IRTPA changes] [new administration—counter role expectations] [apparentl collapses the homeland security council—that is NSC level—back into the NSC] [use NSC] [use psci355, 455] [ditto, the cybersecurity “czar” that’s been in the news] [command in military but the czar liaisons with both NSC and NEC] [use NSC] [****]
MELBOURNE, Fla. — The government’s urgent push into cyberwarfare has set off a rush among the biggest military companies for billions of dollars in new defense contracts.

The exotic nature of the work, coupled with the deep recession, is enabling the companies to attract top young talent that once would have gone to Silicon Valley. And the race to develop weapons that defend against, or initiate, computer attacks has given rise to thousands of “hacker soldiers” within the Pentagon who can blend the new capabilities into the nation’s war planning.

Nearly all of the largest military companies — including Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon — have major cyber contracts with the military and intelligence agencies.

The companies have been moving quickly to lock up the relatively small number of experts with the training and creativity to block the attacks and design countermeasures. They have been buying smaller firms, financing academic research and running advertisements for “cyberninjas” at a time when other industries are shedding workers.

The changes are manifesting themselves in highly classified laboratories, where computer geeks in their 20s like to joke that they are hackers with security clearances.

At a Raytheon facility here south of the Kennedy Space Center, a hub of innovation in an earlier era, rock music blares and empty cans of Mountain Dew pile up as engineers create tools to protect the Pentagon’s computers and crack into the networks of countries that could become adversaries. Prizes like cappuccino machines and stacks of cash spur them on, and a gong heralds each major breakthrough.

The young engineers represent the new face of a war that President Obama described Friday as “one of the most serious economic and national security challenges we face as a nation.” The president said he would appoint a senior White House official to oversee the nation’s cybersecurity strategies.

Computer experts say the government is behind the curve in sealing off its networks from threats that are growing more persistent and sophisticated, with thousands of intrusions each day from organized criminals and legions of hackers for nations including Russia and China.

“Everybody’s attacking everybody,” said Scott Chase, a 30-year-old computer engineer who helps run the Raytheon unit here.

Mr. Chase, who wears his hair in a ponytail, and Terry Gillette, a 53-year-old former rocket engineer, ran SI Government Solutions before selling the company to Raytheon last year as the boom in the military’s cyberoperations accelerated.

The operation — tucked into several unmarked buildings behind an insurance office and a dentist’s office — is doing some of the most cutting-edge work, both in identifying weaknesses in Pentagon networks and in creating weapons for potential attacks.

Daniel D. Allen, who oversees work on intelligence systems for Northrop Grumman, estimated that federal spending on computer security now totals $10 billion each year, including classified programs. That is just a fraction of the government’s spending on weapons systems. But industry officials expect it to rise rapidly.

The military contractors are now in the enviable position of turning what they learned out of necessity — protecting the sensitive Pentagon data that sits on their own computers — into a lucrative business that could replace some of the revenue lost from cancellations of conventional weapons systems.

Executives at Lockheed Martin, which has long been the government’s largest information-technology contractor, also see the demand for greater computer security spreading to energy and health care agencies and the rest of the nation’s critical infrastructure. But for now, most companies remain focused on the national-security arena, where the hottest efforts involve anticipating how an enemy might attack and developing the resources to strike back.

Though even the existence of research on cyberweapons was once highly classified, the Air Force plans this year to award the first publicly announced contract for developing tools to break into enemy computers. The companies are also teaming up to build a National Cyber Range, a model of the Internet for testing advanced techniques.

Military experts said Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics, which have long been major players in the Pentagon’s security efforts, are leading the push into offensive cyberwarfare, along with the Raytheon unit. This involves finding vulnerabilities in other countries’ computer systems and developing software tools to exploit them, either to steal sensitive information or disable the networks.

Mr. Chase and Mr. Gillette said the Raytheon unit, which has about 100 employees, grew out of a company they started with friends at Florida Institute of Technology that concentrated on helping software makers find flaws in their own products. Over the last several years, their focus shifted to the military and intelligence agencies, which wanted to use their analytic tools to detect vulnerabilities and intrusions previously unnoticed.

Like other contractors, the Raytheon teams set up “honey pots,” the equivalent of sting operations, to lure hackers into digital cul-de-sacs that mimic Pentagon Web sites. They then capture the attackers’ codes and create defenses for them.

And since most of the world’s computers run on the Windows or the Linux systems, their work has also provided a growing window into how to attack foreign networks in any cyberwar.

“It takes a nonconformist to excel at what we do,” said Mr. Gillette, a tanned surfing aficionado who looks like a 1950s hipster in his T-shirts with rolled-up sleeves.

The company, which would allow interviews with other employees only on the condition that their last names not be used because of security concerns, hired one of its top young workers, Dustin, after he won two major hacking contests and dropped out of college. “I always approach it like a game, and it’s been fun,” said Dustin, now 22.

Another engineer, known as Jolly, joined Raytheon in April after earning a master’s degree in computer security at DePaul University in Chicago. “You think defense contractors, and you think bureaucracy, and not necessarily a lot of interesting and challenging projects,” he said.

The Pentagon’s interest in cyberwarfare has reached “religious intensity,” said Daniel T. Kuehl, a military historian at the National Defense University. And the changes carry through to soldiers being trained to defend and attack computer and wireless networks out on the battlefield.

That shift can be seen in the remaking of organizations like the Association of Old Crows, a professional group that includes contractors and military personnel.

The Old Crows have deep roots in what has long been known as electronic warfare — the use of radar and radio technologies for jamming and deception.

But the financing for electronic warfare had slowed recently, prompting the Old Crows to set up a broader information-operations branch last year and establish a new trade journal to focus on cyberwarfare.

The career of Joel Harding, the director of the group’s Information Operations Institute, exemplifies the increasing role that computing and the Internet are playing in the military.

A 20-year veteran of military intelligence, Mr. Harding shifted in 1996 into one of the earliest commands that studied government-sponsored computer hacker programs. After leaving the military, he took a job as an analyst at SAIC, a large contractor developing computer applications for military and intelligence agencies.

Mr. Harding estimates that there are now 3,000 to 5,000 information operations specialists in the military and 50,000 to 70,000 soldiers involved in general computer operations. Adding specialists in electronic warfare, deception and other areas could bring the total number of information operations personnel to as many as 88,700, he said.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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Obama Outlines Coordinated Cyber-Security Plan

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/us/politics/30cyber.html
May 30, 2009
Obama Outlines Coordinated Cyber-Security Plan
By DAVID E. SANGER and JOHN MARKOFF [obama white house] [NSC] [NSC principals, deputies, regular staffer] [use psci344, 455] [use nsc] [post-IRTPA changes] [new administration—counter role expectations] [apparentl collapses the homeland security council—that is NSC level—back into the NSC] [use NSC] [use psci355, 455] [ditto, the cybersecurity “czar” that’s been in the news] [command in military but the czar liaisons with both NSC and NEC] [use NSC] [****]
WASHINGTON — President Obama declared Friday that the country’s disparate efforts to “deter, prevent, detect and defend” against cyberattacks would now be run out of the White House, but he also promised that he would bar the federal government from regular monitoring of “private-sector networks” and the Internet traffic that has become

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/us/politics/30cyber.html
May 30, 2009
Obama Outlines Coordinated Cyber-Security Plan
By DAVID E. SANGER and JOHN MARKOFF [obama white house] [NSC] [NSC principals, deputies, regular staffer] [use psci344, 455] [use nsc] [post-IRTPA changes] [new administration—counter role expectations] [apparentl collapses the homeland security council—that is NSC level—back into the NSC] [use NSC] [use psci355, 455] [ditto, the cybersecurity “czar” that’s been in the news] [command in military but the czar liaisons with both NSC and NEC] [use NSC] [****]
WASHINGTON — President Obama declared Friday that the country’s disparate efforts to “deter, prevent, detect and defend” against cyberattacks would now be run out of the White House, but he also promised that he would bar the federal government from regular monitoring of “private-sector networks” and the Internet traffic that has become the backbone of American communications.

Mr. Obama’s speech, which was accompanied by the release of a long-awaited new government strategy, was an effort to balance the United States’ response to a rising security threat with concerns — echoing back to the debates on wiretapping without warrants in the Bush years — that the government would be regularly dipping into Internet traffic that knew no national boundaries.

One element of the strategy clearly differed from that established by the Bush administration in January 2008. Mr. Obama’s approach is described in a 38-page public document being distributed to the public and to companies that are most vulnerable to cyberattack; Mr. Bush’s strategy was entirely classified.

But Mr. Obama’s policy review was not specific about how he would turn many of the goals into practical realities, and he said nothing about resolving the running turf wars among the Pentagon, the National Security Agency, the Homeland Security Department and other agencies over the conduct of defensive and offensive cyberoperations.

The White House approach appears to place a new “cybersecurity coordinator” over all of those agencies. Mr. Obama did not name the coordinator Friday, but the policy review said that whoever the president selects would be “action officer” inside the White House during cyberattacks, whether they were launched on the United States by hackers or governments.

In an effort to silence critics who have complained that the official will not have sufficient status to cut through the maze of competing federal agencies, Mr. Obama said the new coordinator would have “regular access to me,” much like the coordinator for nuclear and conventional threats.

Many computer security executives had been hoping that Mr. Obama’s announcement would represent a turning point in the nation’s unsuccessful effort to turn back a growing cybercrime epidemic. On Friday, several said that while the president’s attention sounded promising, much would depend on whom he chose to fill the role.

James A. Lewis, a director at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, a Washington group that published a bipartisan report last year calling on the president to appoint a cyberczar, said that the White House had now narrowed the list of candidates for the position to fewer than 10, but that choosing the right person would be difficult.

“There aren’t a lot of people who have the policy and the strategy skills and the technological knowledge to carry this out,” Mr. Lewis said. “If you’re talking about missiles and space, there are a lot of people who know policy and technology, but in cyber its such a new field we’re talking about a really small gene pool.”

For the first time, Mr. Obama also spoke of his own brush with cyberattacks, in the presidential campaign. “Between August and October, hackers gained access to e-mails and a range of campaign files, from policy position papers to travel plans,” he said, describing events that were known, though sketchily, at the time.

“It was,” he said, “a powerful reminder: in this information age, one of your greatest strengths — in our case, our ability to communicate to a wide range of supporters through the Internet — could also be one of your greatest vulnerabilities.”

Mr. Obama’s speech delved into technology rarely discussed in the East Room of the White House. He referred to “spyware and malware and spoofing and phishing and botnets,” all different approaches to what he called “weapons of mass disruption.”

Although the president did not discuss details of the expanding role for the military in offensive and pre-emptive cyberoperations, senior officials said Friday that the Pentagon planned to create a new cybercommand to organize and train for digital war, and to oversee offensive and defensive operations.

A lingering disagreement has been how to coordinate that new command with the work of the National Security Agency, home to most of the government’s expertise on computer and network warfare. One plan now under discussion would put the same general in charge of both the new cybercommand and the N.S.A. Currently, the security agency’s director is Lt. Gen. Keith B. Alexander, who would be expected to be the leading contender for the new, dual position.

Industry executives were generally supportive of the initiative Mr. Obama announced, but also cautious.

“There was nothing I was disappointed in,” said Mark Gerencser, a cybersecurity executive at Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm that deals extensively in the government’s cybersecurity strategy.

Mr. Hamilton noted that the United States had separated defense and offense in the cybersecurity arena, while its opponents, including Russia and China, had a more fluid strategy.
“It’s like we’re playing football and our adversaries are playing soccer,” he said.
Thom Shanker contributed reporting from Washington.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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Justice Dept. Backs Saudi Royal Family on 9/11 Lawsuit

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/us/politics/30families.html
May 30, 2009
Justice Dept. Backs Saudi Royal Family on 9/11 Lawsuit
By ERIC LICHTBLAU [obama white house] [holdover from previous adminiostration] [Saudis rounded up and treated abysmally after 9/11 as it was assumed any Arab and particularly and Saud iwas jihadis] [bureaucracy] [DoJ] [followup] [federal judiciary] [when victims’ families’ attempted to sue Saudis, political imbroglio] [****]
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is supporting efforts by the Saudi royal family to defeat a long-running lawsuit seeking to hold it liable for the Sept. 11, 2001,

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/us/politics/30families.html
May 30, 2009
Justice Dept. Backs Saudi Royal Family on 9/11 Lawsuit
By ERIC LICHTBLAU [obama white house] [holdover from previous adminiostration] [Saudis rounded up and treated abysmally after 9/11 as it was assumed any Arab and particularly and Saud iwas jihadis] [bureaucracy] [DoJ] [followup] [federal judiciary] [when victims’ families’ attempted to sue Saudis, political imbroglio] [****]
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is supporting efforts by the Saudi royal family to defeat a long-running lawsuit seeking to hold it liable for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The Justice Department, in a brief filed Friday before the Supreme Court, said it did not believe the Saudis could be sued in American court over accusations brought by families of the Sept. 11 victims that the royal family had helped finance Al Qaeda. The department said it saw no need for the court to review lower court rulings that found in the Saudis’ favor in throwing out the lawsuit.

The government’s position comes less than a week before President Obama is scheduled to meet in Saudi Arabia with King Abdullah as part of a trip to the Middle East and Europe intended to reach out to the Muslim world.

Lawyers for the Saudi family said that they were heartened by the department’s brief and that it served to strengthen their hand before the court, which has not decided whether to hear the case.

But family members of several Sept. 11 victims said they were deeply disappointed and questioned whether the decision was made to appease an important ally in the Middle East. The Saudis have aggressively lobbied both the Bush and Obama administrations to have the lawsuit dismissed, [***]government officials say.

“I find this reprehensible,” said Kristen Breitweiser, a leader of the Sept. 11 families, whose husband was killed in the attacks on the World Trade Center. “One would have hoped that the Obama administration would have taken a different stance than the Bush administration, and you wonder what message this sends to victims of terrorism around the world.”

Bill Doyle, another leader of the Sept. 11 families whose son was killed in the attacks, said, “All we want is our day in court.”

The lawsuit, brought by a number of insurance companies for the victims and their families, accuses members of the royal family in Saudi Arabia of providing financial backing to Al Qaeda — either directly to Osama bin Laden and other terrorist leaders, or indirectly through donations to charitable organizations that they knew were in turn diverting money to Al Qaeda.

A district court threw out the lawsuit, finding that the Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act provided legal protection from liability for Saudi Arabia and the members of the royal family for their official acts. [***]

Solicitor General Elena Kagan said in the brief to the Supreme Court that her office agreed with the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit “that the princes are immune from petitioners’ claims,” although she pointed to somewhat different legal rationales in reaching that conclusion.

Ms. Kagan noted that the Supreme Court had historically looked to the executive branch to take the lead on such international matters because of “the potentially significant foreign relations consequences of subjecting another sovereign state to suit.”

The government said in its brief that the victims’ families never alleged that the Saudi government or members of the royal family “personally committed” the acts of terrorism against the United States “or directed others to do so.” And it said the claims that were made — that the Saudis helped to finance the plots — fell “outside the scope” of the legal parameters for suing foreign governments or leaders.

Justice Department officials declined to address the issue of whether the timing of the brief was related to Mr. Obama’s trip to Riyadh, but other lawyers involved in the case said the timing appeared to be coincidental. They said as a practical matter the department, which was invited to state its views in the case in February, needed to do so by this week if it hoped to influence the court’s decision on whether to accept the case before it leaves for summer recess in June.

William H. Jeffress, a Washington lawyer who is representing Prince Turki Al-Faisal, a former Saudi ambassador to the United States who is one of the princes named in the lawsuit, said the Justice Department came down on the right side of the law in supporting immunity.

Any suggestion that the timing of the brief was influenced by Mr. Obama’s upcoming visit was “baseless,” Mr. Jeffress said, as were the accusations in the lawsuit itself about the Saudi ties to Al Qaeda. “Osama bin Laden is a sworn enemy of the royal family of Saudi Arabia, and the idea that they would be providing financial support to Bin Laden is a little absurd,” Mr. Jeffress said.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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Pentagon Plans New Arm to Wage Wars in Cyberspace

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/us/politics/29cyber.html
May 29, 2009
Pentagon Plans New Arm to Wage Wars in Cyberspace
By DAVID E. SANGER and THOM SHANKER [obama white house] [NSC] [NSC principals, deputies, regular staffer] [use psci344, 455] [use nsc] [post-IRTPA changes] [new administration—counter role expectations] [apparentl collapses the homeland security council—that is NSC level—back into the NSC] [use NSC] [use psci355, 455] [ditto, the cybersecurity “czar” that’s been in the news] [command in military but the czar liaisons with both NSC and NEC] [use NSC] [****]
WASHINGTON — The Pentagon plans to create a new military command for cyberspace, administration officials said Thursday, stepping up preparations by the armed forces to conduct both offensive and defensive computer warfare.

The military command would complement a civilian effort to be announced by President Obama on Friday that would overhaul the way the United States safeguards its computer networks.

Mr. Obama, officials said, will announce the creation of a White House office — reporting to both the National Security Council and the National Economic Council — that will coordinate a multibillion-dollar effort to restrict access to government computers and protect systems that run the stock exchanges, clear global banking transactions and manage the air traffic control system.

White House officials say Mr. Obama has not yet been formally presented with the Pentagon plan. They said he would not discuss it Friday when he announced the creation of a White House office responsible for coordinating private-sector and government defenses against the thousands of cyberattacks mounted against the United States — largely by hackers but sometimes by foreign governments — every day.

But he is expected to sign a classified order in coming weeks that will create the military cybercommand, officials said. It is a recognition that the United States already has a growing number of computer weapons in its arsenal and must prepare strategies for their use — as a deterrent or alongside conventional weapons — in a wide variety of possible future conflicts.

The White House office will be run by a “cyberczar,” but because the position will not have direct access to the president, some experts said it was not high-level enough to end a series of bureaucratic wars that have broken out as billions of dollars have suddenly been allocated to protect against the computer threats. [that’s typical of czars] [we’ll see] {***]

The main dispute has been over whether the Pentagon or the National Security Agency should take the lead in preparing for and fighting cyberbattles. Under one proposal still being debated, parts of the N.S.A. would be integrated into the military command so they could operate jointly. [NSA is DoD entity but because the IC budget divided into NIP, JMIP< and TIARA, nobody knows who’s in control of what] [and armed services and intelligence committess in both chambers will not allow change] [****]

Officials said that in addition to the unclassified strategy paper to be released by Mr. Obama on Friday, a classified set of presidential directives is expected to lay out the military’s new responsibilities and how it coordinates its mission with that of the N.S.A., where most of the expertise on digital warfare resides today.

The decision to create a cybercommand is a major step beyond the actions taken by the Bush administration, which authorized several computer-based attacks but never resolved the question of how the government would prepare for a new era of warfare fought over digital networks. [**]

It is still unclear whether the military’s new command or the N.S.A. — or both — will actually conduct this new kind of offensive cyberoperations.

The White House has never said whether Mr. Obama embraces the idea that the United States should use cyberweapons, and the public announcement on Friday is expected to focus solely on defensive steps and the government’s acknowledgment that it needs to be better organized to face the threat from foes attacking military, government and commercial online systems.

Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has pushed for the Pentagon to become better organized to address the security threat. [shocker] [***\]

Initially at least, the new command would focus on organizing the various components and capabilities now scattered across the four armed services.

Officials declined to describe potential offensive operations, but said they now viewed cyberspace as comparable to more traditional battlefields.

“We are not comfortable discussing the question of offensive cyberoperations, but we consider cyberspace a war-fighting domain,“ said Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman. “We need to be able to operate within that domain just like on any battlefield, which includes protecting our freedom of movement and preserving our capability to perform in that environment.”

Although Pentagon civilian officials and military officers said the new command was expected to initially be a subordinate headquarters under the military’s Strategic Command, which controls nuclear operations as well as cyberdefenses, it could eventually become an independent command.

“No decision has been made,” said Lt. Col. Eric Butterbaugh, a Pentagon spokesman. “Just as the White House has completed its 60-day review of cyberspace policy, likewise, we are looking at how the department can best organize itself to fill our role in implementing the administration’s cyberpolicy.”

The creation of the cyberczar’s office inside the White House appears to be part of a significant expansion of the role of the national security apparatus there. A separate group overseeing domestic security, created by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11 attacks, now resides within the National Security Council. A senior White House official responsible for countering the proliferation of nuclear and unconventional weapons has been given broader authority. Now, cybersecurity will also rank as one of the key threats that Mr. Obama is seeking to coordinate from the White House. [***]

The strategy review Mr. Obama will discuss on Friday was completed weeks ago, but delayed because of continuing arguments over the authority of the White House office, and the budgets for the entire effort.

It was kept separate from the military debate over whether the Pentagon or the N.S.A. is best equipped to engage in offensive operations. Part of that debate hinges on the question of how much control should be given to American spy agencies, since they are prohibited from acting on American soil.

“It’s the domestic spying problem writ large,” one senior intelligence official said recently. “These attacks start in other countries, but they know no borders. So how do you fight them if you can’t act both inside and outside the United States?”
John Markoff contributed reporting from San Francisco.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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PRISONER ABUSE

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/28/AR2009052803957.html
The Obama Presidency
Friday, May 29, 2009
PRISONER ABUSE
Push to Block Photos [obama white house] [president and bureaucracy] [the recent photos the president was going to relese under FOIA request but has now changed him mind] [probably wise decision] [sooner or later they wil come out but he buys good will with military by defending institution from “bad apples”] [on other hand, evidence exists that some of this stuff came from the top (Cheney, Addington, et al/)] [****]
The Obama administration asked a federal court of appeals in New York on Thursday to

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/28/AR2009052803957.html
The Obama Presidency
Friday, May 29, 2009
PRISONER ABUSE
Push to Block Photos [obama white house] [president and bureaucracy] [the recent photos the president was going to relese under FOIA request but has now changed him mind] [probably wise decision] [sooner or later they wil come out but he buys good will with military by defending institution from “bad apples”] [on other hand, evidence exists that some of this stuff came from the top (Cheney, Addington, et al/)] [****]
The Obama administration asked a federal court of appeals in New York on Thursday to recall its order requiring the release of photographs held by the Pentagon that depict the abuse of prisoners in Iraq and Afghanistan.

President Obama, while describing the 21 photos as "not particularly sensational, especially when compared to the painful images that we remember from Abu Ghraib," said their release would "further inflame anti-American opinion" and "put our troops in danger."

The administration had initially agreed to the release, but it reversed its position after Obama viewed the images and heard from his generals, who objected to their publication.

The American Civil Liberties Union had sued for release of the photos.

The government argued Thursday that withdrawing the order is appropriate because Congress may pass legislation blocking the release and that if it does not, the administration will appeal to the Supreme Court.

The government motion also included a statement from Gen. Ray Odierno, the commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, which said that the "next six to eight months are a time of particular fragility in Iraq" and that publication of the pictures would create a "substantial risk to the Nation's military personnel." [****]

The White House and the Pentagon dismissed as false a report in a British newspaper this week that the photographs the administration has refused to release include images of rape and sexual abuse of Iraqi detainees by U.S. military personnel. [***]

"That news organization has completely mischaracterized the images," said Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman, referring to a report in the Daily Telegraph of London. "None of the photos in question depict the images that are described in that article."

The court order, however, could apply to hundreds of other photographs in the possession of the Defense Department. The British newspaper quoted retired U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who investigated detainee abuse in 2004, as saying, "These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency."

Taguba did not return phone calls requesting comment, but he appeared to be referring to the larger universe of photos, not the 21 at the center of the litigation.
-- Peter Finn
© 2009 The Washington Post Company

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U.S. Presses China for Tough Response to North Korea

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/world/asia/29diplo.html
May 29, 2009
U.S. Presses China for Tough Response to North Korea
By MARK LANDLER and DAVID E. SANGER [[obama white house] [Obama’s team presses China for help] [DPRL acting exceptionally erratic lately] [could be test of Obama] [could be succession struggle] [who knows] [followup]
WASHINGTON — The United States is pressing China to consider taking a variety of severe sanctions against North Korea, including the inspection of suspect ships and planes, as it tries to ratchet up the global response to Pyongyang’s latest nuclear test, administration officials said Thursday.

But it is not clear that the Chinese government has the stomach for a heightened showdown with North Korea, these officials said, even though its criticism of the underground test on Monday was unusually vehement.

The administration’s initiative reflects a belief that the greatest threat posed by a nuclear North Korea is the leakage of critical weapons parts or fissile material to other states or terrorist organizations, rather than the prospect of North Korea’s making one of its neighbors a target for a bomb. President Obama’s national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones, described the proliferation threat in some detail in a speech in Washington on Wednesday evening.

The White House has not said publicly whether it supports enforcing a 2006 United Nations Security Council resolution, passed after the North’s first nuclear test, that permits the inspection of ships suspected of carrying missile parts or nuclear technology.

Those operations could be tricky: North Korea has said it will regard such an action as an act of war, and American intelligence about North Korean shipments has been poor. The North’s involvement in the construction of a Syrian nuclear reactor went undetected for years, until shortly before Israel destroyed the reactor in September 2007.

Yet there is a growing conviction in Washington and other capitals that North Korea’s actions demand a stronger response than the usual menu of economic sanctions and political rebukes that have left the nation isolated but unbowed in its pursuit of nuclear status.

The administration is also seeking China’s cooperation in a global effort to disrupt the flow of money to North Korea’s ruler, Kim Jong-il, and his family, officials said. Some of that money is suspected to be held in Chinese-owned banks, making such an effort diplomatically sensitive.

Still, a senior official said he was “pleasantly surprised” by how open China was to cooperating with the United States. China has historically tolerated the erratic behavior of Mr. Kim, worrying more about a calamitous collapse of his government than about his nuclear ambitions. But the recent test and missile launchings, the official said, may have crossed a line with China’s leaders.

“At the level of Chinese irritation, this is historic,” said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. “Normally, the Chinese urge us not to react. But they are reaching a point where they could be agreeable to using more of their own weight.”

The Chinese, officials said, have taken note of South Korea’s decision this week to join an American-led security campaign to stop the spread of nuclear material, as well as the harsh words about North Korea from some parts of Japan’s political establishment. The United States is to discuss efforts to intercept ships coming from North Korea with officials from South Korea and Japan at a regional security conference this weekend in Singapore, where the defense secretary, Robert M. Gates, will meet with his Japanese and South Korean counterparts.

The deputy secretary of state, James B. Steinberg, will attend those meetings, and will then travel to Tokyo for further meetings with Japanese officials, according to the State Department. Mr. Steinberg may also be involved in negotiations with the Chinese, a senior official said.

At home, the United States continued to rally support for a resolution in the United Nations. The State Department spokesman, Ian C. Kelly, said no agreement was likely to be reached for at least two days.

While the major powers uniformly condemned North Korea’s test, there was some confusion Thursday about whether Russia, which holds a veto in the Security Council and is a member of the multilateral talks on North Korea’s nuclear program, was balking at additional sanctions.

A spokesman for the Foreign Ministry, Andrei Nesterenko, told reporters in Moscow, “We do not need to use the language of sanctions.” Still, American and Japanese officials said they did not believe that Russia had retreated from its tough initial response.

Because North Korea would regard the interception of its ships as an act of war, the Bush administration decided not to do that after the North’s first nuclear test in 2006.

The United States and South Korea have already raised the alert level for their forces in South Korea to its highest level in three years — increasing the number of surveillance flights and satellite reconnaissance — reflecting what military commanders say is a “grave threat” from North Korea.

Whatever the risks, some independent experts are advising the Obama administration to put all options on the table, including a military strike on North Korea’s nuclear sites and missile launching pads. “We could have stopped this last nuclear test if we had chosen to,” said William Perry, a former defense secretary who negotiated with North Korea during the Clinton administration. “We could have stopped the first one if we had chosen to.”

“That requires military action, and I’m not recommending military action,” Mr. Perry said, speaking Thursday at the Council on Foreign Relations. “But somewhere along in this series of coercive actions, one can imagine an escalation, and if the ones that are less do not succeed, we have to be willing to consider the other ones.”

The nuclear test and North Korea’s other actions, he said, suggested that the government no longer viewed its nuclear program as a chip to be used in negotiations with neighbors or the United States. Rather, he said, North Korea is determined to remain a nuclear-weapons state.

This presents Mr. Obama with a different set of calculations than either President George W. Bush or President Bill Clinton confronted.

“We now have a new situation that has not appeared before,” said Brent Scowcroft, a national security adviser to President Gerald R. Ford and the first President Bush, who spoke on a panel with Mr. Perry. Under these circumstances, he said, the United States had both more leverage and incentive to enlist the cooperation of China, as North Korea’s most influential neighbor.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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Obama Pushes Israel On Settlement Issue

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/28/AR2009052803771.html
Obama Pushes Israel On Settlement Issue
Palestinians Also Urged to Boost Security
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 29, 2009 [Obama white house] [president Obama and national-security team][111th congress, 1st session] [carry over from Bush administration] [Obama’s national-security team] [Dennis Blair as DNI] [Panetta as CIA director] [Gen (retired) James Jones as NSC adviser] [Sec Def Robert Gates held over from Bush] [and SecState Clinton] [bureaucracy] [IC and other bureaucracies] [internecine struggle over Netanyahu’s Likud policies] [the old fight about moderates who can be approached and whether moderates can control any leverage?] [ [use psci355] [followup] [use psci 355] [***]
President Obama yesterday continued to press his administration's tough stance on

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/28/AR2009052803771.html
Obama Pushes Israel On Settlement Issue
Palestinians Also Urged to Boost Security
By Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 29, 2009 [Obama white house] [president Obama and national-security team][111th congress, 1st session] [carry over from Bush administration] [Obama’s national-security team] [Dennis Blair as DNI] [Panetta as CIA director] [Gen (retired) James Jones as NSC adviser] [Sec Def Robert Gates held over from Bush] [and SecState Clinton] [bureaucracy] [IC and other bureaucracies] [internecine struggle over Netanyahu’s Likud policies] [the old fight about moderates who can be approached and whether moderates can control any leverage?] [ [use psci355] [followup] [use psci 355] [***]
President Obama yesterday continued to press his administration's tough stance on Jewish settlements in the West Bank, telling reporters after a meeting with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas that Israel must halt all settlement activity to build momentum for peace.

Obama, who met last week with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, said, "In my conversations with Prime Minister Netanyahu, I was very clear about the need to stop settlements, to make sure that we are stopping the building of outposts . . . to alleviate some of the pressures that the Palestinian people are under in terms of travel and commerce." [***]

Obama noted that Palestinians also must improve security as part of their commitments under the 2003 "road map" for peace, though he added that the Palestinian Authority had made "great progress" with the assistance of a U.S. general.

The road-map plan commits Israel to dismantling settler outposts and freezing "all settlement activity," including building to accommodate what is known as "natural growth." [***]But the near-daily barrage of U.S. demands that Israel halt settlement growth has surprised Israeli officials, who argue that they greatly restrained growth under an unwritten 2005 agreement with the Bush administration. Under that deal, Israel was to stop providing incentives for settlers to move to the West Bank and was to build only in areas it expected to keep in future peace agreements. [***]

But the continued growth even in those settlements – and an unwillingness by various Israeli governments to dismantle outposts – has left the Arab world doubtful that Israel would agree to a peace deal. The Obama administration appears to have calculated that pressing Israel on settlements will help demonstrate to the Arab nations that the United States is serious about pursuing peace, even at the risk of appearing to undermine Netanyahu’s nascent government.

“Time is of the essence,” Obama said. “We can’t continue with the drift, with the increased fear and resentments on both sides, of the sense of hopelessness around the situation that we’ve seen for many years now. We need to get this thing back on track.” [***]

Netanyahu's coalition of mostly right-wing parties has erupted in anger at the demand to halt settlements. Israeli media have reported that he is trying to craft a compromise in which he would move forcefully against illegal outposts, telling members of parliament that it was the only way to win American help on countering Iran's nuclear program.

Netanyahu has been a longtime skeptic of proposals to create a Palestinian state, and he refused to commit to the concept during his U.S. visit.

By contrast, his predecessor, Ehud Olmert, pressed hard to strike a deal with Abbas. In November, Olmert offered to withdraw from 90 percent of the West Bank, while swapping 6.5 percent of the West Bank for 5.8 percent of Israeli territory and establishing a corridor linking the West Bank to the Gaza Strip, according to an account recently given by senior Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat to Agence France-Presse. Holy places in Jerusalem would have shared sovereignty under that plan.

Abbas did not agree to the deal because Olmert did not answer questions about water issues and the treatment of refugees, Erekat said.

Earlier yesterday, Abed al-Majid Dudin, a longtime Hamas leader accused of plotting fatal attacks against Israel, was killed during an exchange of gunfire after Israeli forces surrounded his West Bank home, an Israeli military official said.

A spokesman for Hamas, which is considered a terrorist group by the United States and Israel, confirmed that Dudin was a commander in its armed wing, the Izzedine al-Qassam Brigades. Dudin's death "inflames the situation all over again," the Hamas official said, after months of relative quiet in the wake of Israel's military operation in Gaza in the winter.
Correspondent Howard Schneider in Amman, Jordan, contributed to this report.
© 2009 The Washington Post Company

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Obama Calls for Swift Move Toward Mideast Peace Talks

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/world/middleeast/29prexy.html
May 29, 2009
Obama Calls for Swift Move Toward Mideast Peace Talks
By HELENE COOPER [Obama white house] [president Obama and national-security team][111th congress, 1st session] [carry over from Bush administration] [Obama’s national-security team] [Dennis Blair as DNI] [Panetta as CIA director] [Gen (retired) James Jones as NSC adviser] [Sec Def Robert Gates held over from Bush] [and SecState Clinton] [bureaucracy] [IC and other bureaucracies] [internecine struggle over Netanyahu’s Likud policies] [the old fight about moderates who can be approached and whether moderates can control any leverage?] [ [use psci355] [followup] [use psci 355] [***]
WASHINGTON — President Obama called on Israelis and Palestinians on Thursday to

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/world/middleeast/29prexy.html
May 29, 2009
Obama Calls for Swift Move Toward Mideast Peace Talks
By HELENE COOPER [Obama white house] [president Obama and national-security team][111th congress, 1st session] [carry over from Bush administration] [Obama’s national-security team] [Dennis Blair as DNI] [Panetta as CIA director] [Gen (retired) James Jones as NSC adviser] [Sec Def Robert Gates held over from Bush] [and SecState Clinton] [bureaucracy] [IC and other bureaucracies] [internecine struggle over Netanyahu’s Likud policies] [the old fight about moderates who can be approached and whether moderates can control any leverage?] [ [use psci355] [followup] [use psci 355] [***]
WASHINGTON — President Obama called on Israelis and Palestinians on Thursday to move swiftly toward peace talks, as his administration embarked on its first public dispute with Israel.

Speaking to reporters at the White House after talks with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, Mr. Obama said that the absence of peace between Israelis and Palestinians was clogging up other critical issues in the Middle East.

“Time is of the essence,” Mr. Obama said. “We can’t continue with the drift and the increased fear on both sides, the sense of hopelessness that we’ve seen for too many years now. We need to get this thing back on track.”

Mr. Obama reiterated his call for a halt to Israeli settlements in the West Bank, and said he expected a response soon from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

Mr. Obama’s words echoed — albeit less bluntly — Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s brusque call on Wednesday for a complete freeze of construction in settlements on the West Bank. In expansive language that left no wiggle room, Mrs. Clinton said that Mr. Obama “wants to see a stop to settlements — not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions.” [***]

Her comments took Israeli officials by surprise. [***]

Mr. Obama said something similar last week during private talks with Mr. Netanyahu at the White House, and Mr. Netanyahu responded that he could crack down on outposts, but not on the natural growth of settlements, according to American and Israeli officials.

The administration then took the quarrel public, laying down the marker that allowing natural growth would not satisfy the United States and that administration officials would not limit themselves to the diplo-speak of the past that simply called settlement expansion “unhelpful.” The decision left the two allies hurtling toward their first public fight.

On Thursday, Mr. Netanyahu’s spokesman, Mark Regev, said that “normal life” would be allowed in settlements in the occupied West Bank, using the phrase that Israel often uses to describe continued construction to accommodate population growth.

Privately, Israeli officials said they were upset by the administration’s hard line. Israel’s defense minister, Ehud Barak, is scheduled to visit Washington next week with Israel’s response to Mr. Obama’s call for a settlement freeze, American officials said.

Advisers to the Palestinian Authority said that Mr. Abbas’s meetings in Washington with administration officials — including Mrs. Clinton and the national security adviser, Gen. James L. Jones — had been more amicable than the Israelis’ meetings were. That could reflect the view in Washington that Mr. Abbas does not have the political weight at the moment to push through anything on the Palestinian side.

Part of the reason administration officials are pushing the Israelis on settlements is that they think that stance will bolster Mr. Abbas, who has an increasingly fractured Palestinian population. Mr. Obama congratulated Mr. Abbas for adhering to the West’s argument that he should not form a national unity government with the militant Islamist organization Hamas until Hamas forswears violence and recognizes Israel’s right to exist.

Several American presidents, from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush, have called on Israelis to halt settlement activity, to no avail. The question now, Middle East experts said, is how far Mr. Obama is willing to go to make that happen.

“Hillary Clinton’s statement was notable because the language was stronger than we’ve heard in years,” said Ali Abunimah, the co-founder of ElectronicIntifada, a Web site that analyzes the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “And clearer than we’ve heard in years. But the burden of proof is still on them. If it’s just going to be strong statements, that’s not enough.”

Administration officials have not said whether there is an “or else” attached to their demand for a settlement freeze.

Mr. Obama said Thursday that it was not yet time for that. “In my conversations with Prime Minister Netanyahu, I was very clear of the need to stop settlements, stop the building of outposts,” he said. “I think we don’t have a moment to lose, but I don’t make decisions based on a conversation we just had last week.”

Administration officials are trying to elicit support for Mr. Obama’s stance from pro-Israel lawmakers in Congress, including Senator John Kerry, the Democrat of Massachusetts who is chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.

If they can expand that support to include House members like Gary Ackerman and Nita M. Lowey, both Democrats of New York, then Mr. Netanyahu could find himself on the defensive at home for allowing Israel’s relationship with its most powerful backer, the United States, to sour, foreign policy experts said.

“This approach is predicated on the assumption that an Israeli prime minister needs a tough American president to justify tough decisions to an Israeli public,” said Martin Indyk, [***]director of the Saban Center for Middle East Policy and a former United States ambassador to Israel. “People in the American Jewish community and in Israel are sick of settlement activity. The whole zeitgeist has changed.”
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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Review of Government Secrecy Ordered

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/27/AR2009052702924.html
Review of Government Secrecy Ordered
Obama Names Holder, Napolitano to Lead Drive for 'Unprecedented Level of Openness'
By Carrie Johnson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 28, 2009
President Obama directed his national security adviser and senior Cabinet officials yesterday to examine whether the government keeps too much information secret.

In a memo, Obama acknowledged that too many documents have been kept from the public eye for years and affirmed that he remains "committed to operating with an unprecedented level of openness."

Obama asked national security adviser James L. Jones to canvass executive branch officials about their procedures for handling classified information and to make recommendations about better information sharing.

The president also said that turf battles and problems with technology continue to pose obstacles to disseminating unclassified national security information among federal agencies with their partners in states and the private sector.

To help clear the path, Obama created a task force yesterday to study that and related issues for 90 days, putting Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano at the helm.

Government officials representing a broad swath of agencies will review procedures for labeling and sharing sensitive information to make sure that the needs of law enforcement, privacy and civil liberties "strike the proper balance," the memo said.

Obama also proposed a National Declassification Center to streamline procedures for releasing classified information, when appropriate, under the guidance of the archivist of the United States. The broad initiative is in line with an executive order issued by Obama on Jan. 21, when he promised to move forward with "a presumption in favor of openness."

Instructions to Jones made specific reference to Bush administration orders that delayed automatic declassification dates, eliminated a presumption of declassification that dated from the Clinton administration and reclassified some information that had been made public.

Obama asked for recommendations on "the possible restoration of the presumption against classification" that would preclude making something secret where there was "significant doubt" about the need to do so. It also raised the possibility of a "prohibition of reclassification of material that has been declassified and released to the public under proper authority."

Steven Aftergood, director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, praised the move as a way to "set the wheels in motion."

"This is music to the ears of many of us," Aftergood said, "but the hard work remains to be done -- how to translate these goals into policies."
Staff writer Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.
© 2009 The Washington Post Company[!!

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Israeli Settlement Growth Must Stop, Clinton Says

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/world/middleeast/28mideast.html
May 28, 2009
Israeli Settlement Growth Must Stop, Clinton Says
By MARK LANDLER and ISABEL KERSHNER [[Obama administration] [111th congress, 1st session] [carry over from Bush administration] [Obama’s national-security team] [Dennis Blair as DNI] [Panetta as CIA director] [Gen (retired) James Jones as NSC adviser] [Sec Def Robert Gates held over from Bush] [and SecState Clinton] [bureaucracy] [IC and other bureaucracies] [internecine struggle over Netanyahu’s Likud policies] [the old fight about moderates who can be approached and whether moderates can control any leverage?] [followup] [use psci355] [followup] [Netanyahu’s recent meeting with Obama] [see yesterday’s govt] [Israel’s frankensteing monster created when they allowed settlement “temporarily” as “bargaining chip”] [this is actually one of those “role” bromides] [SecState Clinton is as pro Israel as almost anyone in Cabinet] [use role theory] [use psci 355] [***]
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration reiterated emphatically on Wednesday

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/world/middleeast/28mideast.html
May 28, 2009
Israeli Settlement Growth Must Stop, Clinton Says
By MARK LANDLER and ISABEL KERSHNER [[Obama administration] [111th congress, 1st session] [carry over from Bush administration] [Obama’s national-security team] [Dennis Blair as DNI] [Panetta as CIA director] [Gen (retired) James Jones as NSC adviser] [Sec Def Robert Gates held over from Bush] [and SecState Clinton] [bureaucracy] [IC and other bureaucracies] [internecine struggle over Netanyahu’s Likud policies] [the old fight about moderates who can be approached and whether moderates can control any leverage?] [followup] [use psci355] [followup] [Netanyahu’s recent meeting with Obama] [see yesterday’s govt] [Israel’s frankensteing monster created when they allowed settlement “temporarily” as “bargaining chip”] [this is actually one of those “role” bromides] [SecState Clinton is as pro Israel as almost anyone in Cabinet] [use role theory] [use psci 355] [***]
WASHINGTON — The Obama administration reiterated emphatically on Wednesday that it viewed a complete freeze of construction in settlements on the West Bank as a critical step toward a peace accord between Israel and the Palestinians.

Speaking of President Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said, “He wants to see a stop to settlements — not some settlements, not outposts, not ‘natural growth’ exceptions.” Talking to reporters after a meeting with the Egyptian foreign minister, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, she said: “That is our position. That is what we have communicated very clearly.”

Mrs. Clinton’s remarks, the administration’s strongest to date on the matter, came as an Israeli official said Wednesday that the Israeli government wanted to reach an understanding with the Obama administration that would allow some new construction in West Bank settlements.

The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, is expected to focus on the issue of settlement expansion when he meets with Mr. Obama on Thursday in Washington. Mr. Abbas and other Palestinian leaders have said repeatedly that they see no point in resuming stalled peace negotiations without an absolute settlement freeze.

Mr. Obama and other senior American officials have called on the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, the leader of the right-wing Likud Party who became prime minister almost two months ago, to halt all settlement activity.

Some Middle East peace analysts in Washington interpreted Mrs. Clinton’s comments as a sign that the administration was determined to change Israel’s policy on settlements rather than accept a compromise.

Dan Meridor, the Israeli minister of intelligence, and other senior Netanyahu aides returned to Jerusalem on Wednesday from meetings in Europe with Mr. Obama’s Middle East envoy, George J. Mitchell, and other American officials. The purpose was to continue discussing issues raised in last week’s Netanyahu-Obama meeting, including Mr. Obama’s objections to settlement expansion.

Mr. Mitchell has been negotiating reciprocal measures with Israel’s Arab neighbors, in which they would take steps, like granting visas to Israeli citizens or allowing Israel to open trade offices in their capitals, in return for Israel’s action on settlements. But administration officials say the onus is on Israel to show progress. Almost 300,000 Israelis now live in settlements in the West Bank, excluding East Jerusalem, among a Palestinian population of some 2.5 million. Much of the world considers the 120 or so settlements a violation of international law.

Mr. Netanyahu says his government will not build any new settlements and will take down outposts erected in recent years by settlers without proper government authorization. But he insists that his government will allow building within existing settlements to accommodate what he terms “natural growth.”

Israel says it reached understandings with the Bush administration — some formal, some informal and some tacit — on building within settlements. For example, construction was limited in small outlying settlements but more tolerated in large ones in areas that Israel intends to keep under any deal with the Palestinians. “We want to work to reach understandings with the new administration” that are “fair” and “workable,” said the Israeli official. He was speaking on condition of anonymity because the issue was still under discussion.

But the tenor of Mrs. Clinton’s comments Wednesday indicated to some analysts that the Obama administration was unlikely to budge from its position, even at the risk of putting Mr. Netanyahu’s government into jeopardy.

“She is stripping away whatever nuance, or whatever fig leaf, that would have allowed a deeply ideological government to make a settlement deal that is politically acceptable at home,” said Aaron David Miller, a public policy analyst at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. “They’ve concluded, ‘We’re going to force a change in behavior.’ ”

Within the Israeli government, however, there is a consensus that the ever-growing settler population must be accommodated.

Mark Regev, a spokesman for Mr. Netanyahu, said the final status of the existing settlements would be determined in negotiations with the Palestinians. “In the interim, normal life should be allowed to continue in those communities,” Mr. Regev said.

In an interview with Army Radio on Monday, Ehud Barak, the defense minister and leader of the center-left Labor Party, gave a hypothetical example of a family of four that originally moved into a two-room home in a settlement. “Now there are six children,” he said. “Should they be allowed to build another room or not?” He added, “Ninety-five percent of people will tell you it cannot be that someone in the world honestly thinks an agreement with the Palestinians will stand or fall over this.”

In an effort to show good will, Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Barak have been underscoring their willingness to take down 22 small outposts that are illegal under Israeli law, and that were supposed to have been removed under the 2003 American-backed peace plan known as the road map. That plan specified that Israel should halt “all settlement activity (including natural growth).”

In the early hours of Wednesday morning, the police removed some sheds and a tent from two tiny outposts in the Hebron area. Another small outpost was demolished in the Ramallah region last week, but new shacks have already appeared there. None of the three outposts were on the list of 22, but the measures against them prompted furious reactions from the hard right.

Many religious Jewish nationalists say it is their right to settle in the biblical heartland of the West Bank, which they call Judea and Samaria. Other Israelis cite security for holding on to the areas captured in the 1967 war.
Mark Landler reported from Washington, and Isabel Kershner from Jerusalem.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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Time to Plant Mideast Seeds

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/29/AR2009052902219.html
Time to Plant Mideast Seeds
By Jim Hoagland
Sunday, May 31, 2009 [oped] [columnist] [Israeli-Palestinian conflict] [*****]
Memo to President Obama:
Cling to one thought as you work on your greatly anticipated speech to the Muslim world Thursday in Cairo, Mr. President: There is no American solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict that you can heroically deliver from on high. Peace must be built from the bottom up by the warring sides. Cling to that thought but keep it to yourself.

It would be pleasing to your hosts to suggest the opposite -- a made-in-the-USA plan for the Middle East. Some of your aides believe this is a special moment that can end the region's Sixty Years' War if you intervene forcefully enough. But that neglects history and the internal logic of the conflict.

Your own jut-jawed face-off with Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu in the Oval Office two weeks ago suggested that you hoped to bring a West Bank settlement freeze to the Cairo masses and a global Muslim audience this week. Netanyahu pushed back by ruling out unilateral gestures, insisting that Israel, the Palestinians and moderate Arab states move simultaneously.

You will not, of course, take Netanyahu's no as a final answer on the settlements. You are right when you say they are not only a huge obstacle to regional peace but also a stain on the global reputations of Israel and the United States. But the settlements cannot be treated in isolation or used as trophies with which to win Arab favor. They will eventually have to be for the most part evacuated as part of a give-and-take in which Israel's legitimate security concerns are addressed. For Netanyahu, agreeing to freeze settlements is tantamount to declaring them chips to be bargained away. He will require a good bit more than is on offer now from the Palestinians and other Arabs to make that move.

Yes, new administrations feel compelled to offer overarching initiatives to the Arab-Israeli conflict, and some have been useful -- especially when they have been so poorly thought out that they scared the two sides into bypassing the United States and seriously negotiating with each other.

See Carter, Jimmy, and the Oct. 1, 1977, Soviet-U.S. communique that drove Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to Jerusalem and eventually to the Camp David treaty. Other presidents have cynically put forward peace plans, road maps and demands for settlement freezes to placate the Arabs with process rather than substance. See everybody from Nixon, Richard M., to Bush, George W.

But cynicism is not your long suit, and unwittingly scaring others into acting in their own best interest is not your style. You need instead to start a step-by-step process built on squeezing Israel and the Palestinian Authority to fulfill the implicit bargain struck in Oslo in 1993. You should give glimpses of that approach -- but not present an American blueprint for the final outcome.

In the Oslo accords, Yasser Arafat was offered a Palestinian state in return for that state's eliminating Palestinian terrorism. But Arafat never intended to go through with either part of the bargain. He feared a two-state solution's finality as much as he feared dismantling the terrorist machine he had helped create. Instead, he bobbed and weaved his way through U.S. peace efforts while enriching himself and his cronies and destroying the Palestinian Authority's claim to moral and political legitimacy.

But the bargain's logic remains intact and should be incorporated into a revival of a realistic two-state solution, not the rhetorical fig leaf your predecessor offered. Israel must come back to empowering Arafat's successor, Mahmoud Abbas, and his security forces, by dismantling settlements and roadblocks to bring stability to the West Bank and eventually Gaza.

The United States has trained two brigades of Palestinian security forces, which kept order in the West Bank during the January upheaval in Gaza, and wants to train half a dozen more. This is patient, low-visibility U.S. help that builds confidence for Israelis and Palestinians to reach their own settlement. So does Tony Blair's work on economic development.

Today the Arab side lacks a leader as visionary as Sadat to save a failing U.S. effort or a Palestinian leader as skillfully duplicitous as Arafat to keep a homegrown one afloat. It is a moment for what George Shultz, Ronald Reagan's secretary of state, called the "gardening" phase of diplomacy -- pulling weeds and planting seeds -- rather than overly ambitious plans that raise expectations too high.
jimhoagland@washpost.com
© 2009 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 02:28 PM | Permalink

A Better Bargain for Aid to Pakistan

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/29/AR2009052902620.html
A Better Bargain for Aid to Pakistan
By C. Christine Fair
Saturday, May 30, 2009 [oped] [AfPak] [use psci469b] [*****]
The Obama administration pledged more than $100 million in aid last week to Pakistanis fleeing the fighting between the Taliban and the military in the Swat Valley. All told, since 2001, the United States has spent about $12 billion to help Pakistan. Yet last month, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared Pakistan a "mortal threat" to international security.

Washington needs to strike a far better bargain for its billions.

Faced with a Taliban offensive and the threat of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal falling into jihadists' hands, the United States is proposing to spend an additional $1.5 billion each year until 2013 on civilian aid programs and to increase funding for Pakistan's security forces. Last month in Tokyo, international donors pledged $4 billion to help Pakistan.

U.S. officials and the public want to know whether these massive sums will be spent wisely. "We've sent money in the past," House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Howard Berman (D-Calif.) told an interviewer this month. "It has been stolen."

How can the United States ensure that the new funds won't disappear into the pockets of well-connected kleptocrats and their cronies instead of helping Pakistanis in need? First, it's important to understand how so many billions have been spent for so little apparent positive effect.

One likely reason is that aid itself corrupts and corrodes. Foreign aid lessens the requirement for a government to forge a bond with its citizens by raising revenue and redistributing those funds as services. Such a social contract is fundamental to Pakistan's emergence as a robust democracy that provides for its people.

Some estimates suggest that of 180 million Pakistanis, fewer than 1.5 million pay taxes. Pakistan should be encouraged to reform its tax code and commit to collecting what is owed -- even from recalcitrant politicians, savvy business executives, feudal landlords and other well-connected tax evaders.

The massive infusion of foreign aid has also allowed Pakistan to avoid having to choose between guns and butter. Such choices define the democratic process. But successive Pakistani governments have successfully wagered that chronic instability and the imminent dangers of terrorism and nuclear black-marketeering would leave the world with no choice but to bail them out, regardless of their failures.

The world needs a smarter way to help Pakistan. There is little time: The government in Islamabad has developed a sense of entitlement to international assistance.

Yet ensuring transparent and effective assistance is more than just fiscally responsible. It is critical to securing the support of the Pakistani people.

During several trips to Pakistan in recent months, I have heard from many citizens that they believe Washington is deliberately aiding corrupt people and institutions to ensure that Pakistan remains a vassal state beholden to Washington.

There is a better way: a well-structured trust fund administered by a trusted body such as the World Bank. A similar fund operates successfully in Afghanistan. This trust fund should require Pakistani entities to contribute to their own aid programs, develop a robust plan for execution and adhere to international accounting standards. Information on expenditures should be transparent and available to all, especially Pakistanis.

Such a trust fund offers several advantages over direct aid. First, it would be truly international, mitigating the view that Pakistan is being turned into a client state of the United States. Second, it would shame countries that promise assistance but fail to deliver. Third, it would ensure that programs meet the actual needs of Pakistanis rather than fund pet projects that satisfy domestic concerns of donor countries.

In addition, Pakistan should be expected to undertake fiscal reforms, including tax reform, tax collection and anti-corruption measures. Pakistan must begin to pay its own way. Providing for one's citizens is a key element of sovereignty.

To be sure, such an approach will trouble Pakistani civilian and military leaders. They can be expected to decry demands for accountability as signifying a lack of trust and to claim that such a trust fund would undermine Pakistan's sovereignty. They may also argue -- less persuasively -- that without unfettered access to international funds, the fragile civilian government will fall. But it is failure to govern well that poses an even greater risk to Pakistani democracy.

U.S. taxpayers should get value for their investment. They should have confidence their contributions have helped Pakistan, not rendered it ever more corrupt, insecure and ineptly governed. Most important, Pakistanis should see tangible benefits in their daily lives when their government works with -- and is not merely subsidized by -- the international community.
C. Christine Fair is a senior political scientist at Rand Corp., a nonprofit, nonpartisan research institution.
© 2009 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 02:27 PM | Permalink

Mr. Obama and Mr. Abbas

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/opinion/30sat1.html
May 30, 2009
Editorial
Mr. Obama and Mr. Abbas
[editorial] [Barack-Abu Masen talks] [***]
President Obama’s meeting this week with the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, was a reminder of how much the Palestinians and leading Arab states, starting with Saudi Arabia and Egypt, must do to help revive foundering peace negotiations.

We have sympathy for Mr. Abbas, the moderate-but-weak leader of the Fatah party. Israel, the Bush administration and far too many Arab leaders have failed to give him the support that he needs to make the difficult compromises necessary for any peace deal.

The refusal of Israel’s new prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to commit to a two-state solution or halt settlement activity is feeding militancy and strengthening Mr. Abbas’s Hamas rivals. That’s no excuse, however, for the depressing passivity that Mr. Abbas displayed in an interview with The Washington Post before his White House meeting.

Mr. Abbas suggested that his only role in the American-led peace initiative is to wait — for Hamas to join in a unity government, for Mr. Netanyahu to act. He said he can’t ask Arab states to have anything to do with Israel, “until Israel agrees to freeze settlements and recognize the two-state solution,” the columnist Jackson Diehl quoted him as saying. “Until then, we can’t talk to anyone,” he said.

Mr. Abbas has made some important progress. Palestinian security forces (financed and trained by the United States and other countries) have become more professional and more willing to head off attacks.

He needs to do a lot more. He must keep improving those forces. He must redouble efforts to halt the constant spewing of hatred against Israel in schools, mosques and media. He must work harder to weed out corruption. Unless Mr. Abbas’s government does more to improve the lives of Palestinians it will surely lose again to Hamas in elections scheduled for January.

Arab states have shirked their responsibilities to bolster Mr. Abbas with aid and with actions that could advance Palestinian statehood. They say they are committed to a worthwhile 2002 Saudi initiative — offering Israel normalized relations in exchange for a two-state agreement — but are vague about details.

When Mr. Obama visits Saudi Arabia and Egypt next week he must urge leaders to do more. They could help ratchet up pressure on Mr. Netanyahu with preliminary — but symbolically important — steps like opening commercial offices in Tel Aviv and holding publicly acknowledged meetings with Israeli officials.

When Mr. Netanyahu visited the White House last week, Mr. Obama publicly pressed the Israeli leader to freeze settlements and commit to a two-state solution. Now he has set markers for Mr. Abbas, urging him to make greater efforts to rein in militants and halt incitement against Israel. We hope he will do the same for leading Arab states.

For eight years, Arab leaders and the Palestinians complained bitterly because President George W. Bush wasn’t willing to invest in Middle East peace. Now that they have an American president who is willing, they finally have to do their part.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 02:27 PM | Permalink

Abbas's Waiting Game

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/28/AR2009052803614.html
Abbas's Waiting Game
By Jackson Diehl
Friday, May 29, 2009 [oped] [columnist] [Barak-Abu Mase] [****\
Mahmoud Abbas says there is nothing for him to do.
True, the Palestinian president walked into his meeting with Barack Obama yesterday as the pivotal player in any Middle East peace process. If there is to be a deal, Abbas must (1) agree on all the details of a two-state settlement with the new Israeli government of Binyamin Netanyahu, which hasn't yet accepted Palestinian statehood,

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/28/AR2009052803614.html
Abbas's Waiting Game
By Jackson Diehl
Friday, May 29, 2009 [oped] [columnist] [Barak-Abu Mase] [****\
Mahmoud Abbas says there is nothing for him to do.
True, the Palestinian president walked into his meeting with Barack Obama yesterday as the pivotal player in any Middle East peace process. If there is to be a deal, Abbas must (1) agree on all the details of a two-state settlement with the new Israeli government of Binyamin Netanyahu, which hasn't yet accepted Palestinian statehood, and (2) somehow overcome the huge split in Palestinian governance between his Fatah movement, which controls the West Bank, and Hamas, which rules Gaza and hasn't yet accepted Israel's right to exist.

Yet on Wednesday afternoon, as he prepared for the White House meeting in a suite at the Ritz-Carlton in Pentagon City, Abbas insisted that his only role was to wait. He will wait for Hamas to capitulate to his demand that any Palestinian unity government recognize Israel and swear off violence. And he will wait for the Obama administration to force a recalcitrant Netanyahu to freeze Israeli settlement construction and publicly accept the two-state formula.

Until Israel meets his demands, the Palestinian president says, he will refuse to begin negotiations. He won't even agree to help Obama's envoy, George J. Mitchell, persuade Arab states to take small confidence-building measures. "We can't talk to the Arabs until Israel agrees to freeze settlements and recognize the two-state solution," he insisted in an interview. "Until then we can't talk to anyone."

For veterans of Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, Abbas's bargaining position will be bone-wearyingly familiar: Both sides invariably begin by arguing that they cannot act until the other side offers far-reaching concessions. Netanyahu suggested during his own visit to Washington last week that the Palestinians should start by recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, though he didn't make it a precondition for meeting with Abbas.

What's interesting about Abbas's hardline position, however, is what it says about the message that Obama's first Middle East steps have sent to Palestinians and Arab governments. From its first days the Bush administration made it clear that the onus for change in the Middle East was on the Palestinians: Until they put an end to terrorism, established a democratic government and accepted the basic parameters for a settlement, the United States was not going to expect major concessions from Israel.

Obama, in contrast, has repeatedly and publicly stressed the need for a West Bank settlement freeze, with no exceptions. In so doing he has shifted the focus to Israel. He has revived a long-dormant Palestinian fantasy: that the United States will simply force Israel to make critical concessions, whether or not its democratic government agrees, while Arabs passively watch and applaud. "The Americans are the leaders of the world," Abbas told me and Post Editorial Page Editor Fred Hiatt. "They can use their weight with anyone around the world. Two years ago they used their weight on us. Now they should tell the Israelis, 'You have to comply with the conditions.' "

It's true, of course, that if Obama is to broker a Middle East settlement he will have to overcome the recalcitrance of Netanyahu and his Likud party, which has not yet reconciled itself to the idea that Israel will have to give up most of the West Bank and evacuate tens of thousands of settlers. But Palestinians remain a long way from swallowing reality as well. Setting aside Hamas and its insistence that Israel must be liquidated, Abbas -- usually described as the most moderate of Palestinian leaders -- last year helped doom Netanyahu's predecessor, Ehud Olmert, by rejecting a generous outline for Palestinian statehood.

In our meeting Wednesday, Abbas acknowledged that Olmert had shown him a map proposing a Palestinian state on 97 percent of the West Bank -- though he complained that the Israeli leader refused to give him a copy of the plan. He confirmed that Olmert "accepted the principle" of the "right of return" of Palestinian refugees -- something no previous Israeli prime minister had done -- and offered to resettle thousands in Israel. In all, Olmert's peace offer was more generous to the Palestinians than either that of Bush or Bill Clinton; it's almost impossible to imagine Obama, or any Israeli government, going further.

Abbas turned it down. "The gaps were wide," he said.

Abbas and his team fully expect that Netanyahu will never agree to the full settlement freeze -- if he did, his center-right coalition would almost certainly collapse. So they plan to sit back and watch while U.S. pressure slowly squeezes the Israeli prime minister from office. "It will take a couple of years," one official breezily predicted. Abbas rejects the notion that he should make any comparable concession -- such as recognizing Israel as a Jewish state, which would imply renunciation of any large-scale resettlement of refugees.

Instead, he says, he will remain passive. "I will wait for Hamas to accept international commitments. I will wait for Israel to freeze settlements," he said. "Until then, in the West Bank we have a good reality . . . the people are living a normal life." In the Obama administration, so far, it's easy being Palestinian.
© 2009 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 02:26 PM | Permalink

Inflating the Guantánamo Threat

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/opinion/29bergen.html
May 29, 2009
Op-Ed Contributors
Inflating the Guantánamo Threat
By PETER BERGEN and KATHERINE TIEDEMANN
Washington [oped] [gitmo trails] [recidivism] [use psci 469b] [***]
ABDULLAH GHULAM RASOUL and Said Ali al-Shihri may be the two best arguments for why releasing detainees from Guantánamo Bay poses a real risk to America. Mr. Rasoul, who was transferred to Afghanistan in 2007 and then released by the Kabul

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/opinion/29bergen.html
May 29, 2009
Op-Ed Contributors
Inflating the Guantánamo Threat
By PETER BERGEN and KATHERINE TIEDEMANN
Washington [oped] [gitmo trails] [recidivism] [use psci 469b] [***]
ABDULLAH GHULAM RASOUL and Said Ali al-Shihri may be the two best arguments for why releasing detainees from Guantánamo Bay poses a real risk to America. Mr. Rasoul, who was transferred to Afghanistan in 2007 and then released by the Kabul government, is now the commander of operations for the Taliban in southern Afghanistan. Mr. Shihri, sent back to his native Saudi Arabia in 2007, is now a leader of Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Yemen.

Are these two men exceptional cases, or are they emblematic of a much larger problem of dangerous terrorists who, if released, will “return to the battlefield”? To help answer that question, a Pentagon report made public on Tuesday concluded that 74 of the 534 men who have been freed from Guantánamo were “confirmed or suspected of re-engaging in terrorist activities.” This is a recidivism rate of around 14 percent, which was up from the Pentagon’s previous estimate in January of 11 percent. [***]

But are things this bad? While we must of course be careful about who is released, these numbers are very likely inflated. This is in part because the Pentagon includes on the list any released prisoner who is either “confirmed” or just “suspected” to have engaged in terrorism anywhere in the world, whether those actions were directed at the United States or not. And, bizarrely, the Defense Department has in the past even lumped into the recidivist category former prisoners who have done no more than criticize the United States after their release. [***]

Because of national security concerns, the new report does not include the names of the majority of those believed to have engaged in violence — 45 of the 74. There is surely some legitimacy to that claim. Yet the omissions make it hard to scrutinize the report. That said, thanks to previous Pentagon documents and other public records, we do have a good picture of what the 29 men the report does name have been up to.

First, nearly half of the men on the new list — 14 of the 29 — are listed as being “suspected” of terrorist activities, which makes “recidivist” a fairly vague definition. Next, the acts that at least nine of the 29 are either known or suspected of having been involved with were not directed at America or at our immediate allies in our current wars, the governments of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

This group includes men like Ravil Gumarov and Timur Ishmurat, who were convicted in 2006 of blowing up a gas pipeline in Russia. Another former detainee, Ruslan Odijev, was shot by the authorities in the city of Nalchik in the Russian North Caucasus who suspected he had taken part in a murderous raid against government security forces in 2005. Another Russian, Almasm Sharipov, made the list for “association” with Hizb ut-Tahrir, a pan-Islamic organization that is not considered a terrorist group by the United States.

Eleven other men named in the report are Saudis who were put on a “most wanted” list the kingdom issued with much fanfare in February. While two of them have clearly taken up jihad against America, the other nine stand accused of fomenting resistance only to the monarchy, according to Christopher Boucek of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, a top American expert on the Saudi program for the rehabilitation of terrorists. As he told us, “None of these guys has engaged in violence.” [****]

In the end, the Pentagon has given out the names of only 12 former detainees who can be independently confirmed to have taken part in terrorist acts directed at American targets, and eight others suspected of such acts. This is about 4 percent of the 534 men who have been released. Obviously, the percentage would be higher if we were able to factor in the former detainees whose names were withheld. Yet it seems fair to say that the much-hyped 14 percent figure is likely a large overstatement of former Guantánamo inmates who have taken up arms.

Now, some Americans may argue that even a 1 percent recidivism rate from Guantánamo would be too high, while others will point out that this rate compares quite favorably to that of the United States writ large, as some two-thirds of people released from prison here are rearrested within three years.

We make neither of these arguments. Rather, our point is that the Pentagon should be as accurate as possible about how many of those released pose a threat to America. This is the only way that policy makers can make informed choices about closing Guantánamo, revising military commissions, deporting or repatriating prisoners or moving them to the United States, and keeping our nation safe.
Peter Bergen is a senior fellow and Katherine Tiedemann is a program associate at the New America Foundation.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 02:25 PM | Permalink

The Hoped-For Laser Miracles

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/opinion/29fri3.html
May 29, 2009
Editorial
The Hoped-For Laser Miracles
[editorial] [space lasers] [laser race?] [****]
The world’s most powerful installation of lasers will be dedicated in California on Friday before a throng of well-wishers. The new National Ignition Facility, or NIF, is touted as an important step toward maintaining the nation’s nuclear deterrent, developing fusion energy and conducting basic research. We hope its next few years will go a lot better than its problem-plagued development phase. There is a high risk of failure.

NIF, in a building the size of a football stadium, is built on an awesome scale, as described by William J. Broad in Science Times on Tuesday. It will use 192 lasers to fire light beams through a complicated array of mirrors and amplifiers to pulverize a tiny target filled with hydrogen fuel. The resulting heat and compression are supposed to fuse the hydrogen atoms into helium, releasing transient bursts of thermonuclear energy.

When first proposed in 1994, the facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was expected to cost $1.2 billion and be completed by 2002. But technical, practical and managerial problems caused repeated delays and drove up costs to $3.5 billion or more. Now NIF will be coming into operation barely ahead of a competing laser facility under construction in France. [***]

The project’s primary purpose has always been to help weapons scientists ensure the reliability of the American nuclear arsenal without underground testing. The notion is that experiments under the extreme conditions of fusion would allow bomb makers to study the physics of nuclear weapons without exploding them and check the accuracy of computer codes that calculate how well weapons will perform. It is a worthy goal, but some experts believe there are better ways to ensure reliability and question NIF’s importance. [***]

The latest focus, at least in promoting the project, has been the potential to achieve fusion energy, a carbon-free, widely available source of power should it ever prove attainable. The principal goal over the next year or two is to reach self-sustaining “ignition,” the point at which more energy is produced from fused atoms than is applied to make it happen. Scientists at NIF seem confident that they will succeed, but so many things have to go right simultaneously that many experts deem ignition unlikely any time soon. And even ignition is a long way from achieving practical, economical fusion power.

A more immediate payoff could come from basic research on processes that occur under pressures and temperatures typically found at the cores of stars or giant planets. Some critics view NIF as an expensive toy for weapons scientists. But the energy potential is alluring enough that all of us should root for NIF to succeed.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 02:23 PM | Permalink

How Is Cheney Wrong? Let Me Count the Ways

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/27/AR2009052702961.html
How Is Cheney Wrong? Let Me Count the Ways
By Ruth Marcus
Wednesday, May 27, 2009 5:52 PM [oped] [columnist] [on former veep cheney’s mouth tour] [why he’d do the GOP and former President Bush a big favor by keeping it shut] [his aphorisms are inaccurate—his hubris is showing and I actually think Bush lost osme of his and began to understand the power of presidency in second term after he jettisoned Cheney] [understandably, cheney cannot abide same] [***]
Some people think we're paying too much attention to former Vice President Dick Cheney. I think we may be paying too little. As bracing as last week's Obama-Cheney

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/27/AR2009052702961.html
How Is Cheney Wrong? Let Me Count the Ways
By Ruth Marcus
Wednesday, May 27, 2009 5:52 PM [oped] [columnist] [on former veep cheney’s mouth tour] [why he’d do the GOP and former President Bush a big favor by keeping it shut] [his aphorisms are inaccurate—his hubris is showing and I actually think Bush lost osme of his and began to understand the power of presidency in second term after he jettisoned Cheney] [understandably, cheney cannot abide same] [***]
Some people think we're paying too much attention to former Vice President Dick Cheney. I think we may be paying too little. As bracing as last week's Obama-Cheney face-off was, the inevitable focus was on the current president, not the former vice. And for those of us who are relieved he's out of office, there's a tendency to treat Cheney with "there he goes again" ennui. Yet Cheney's speech at the American Enterprise Institute was so chockfull of faulty arguments and rank misrepresentations that it's worth taking the time to review them, in their multiple incarnations. [***]

The baseless straw man: "[H]ere's the great dividing line in our current debate over national security. You can look at the facts and conclude that the comprehensive strategy has worked and therefore needs to be continued as vigilantly as ever. Or you can look at the same set of facts and conclude that 9/11 was a one-off event -- coordinated, devastating -- but also unique and not sufficient to justify a sustained wartime effort." [as if there are not infitesimal points along that continuum in between the two points he articulates] [****]

Now Obama has erected his squadron of straw men, but this one of Cheney's is particularly hollow. There has not been another terrorist attack; therefore, everything the previous administration did must be kept in place. Anyone who disagrees is by definition feckless about confronting terrorism.

But Obama's speech made clear he understands that "this threat will be with us for a long time, and that we must use all elements of our power to defeat it." The "great dividing line" between Obama and Cheney involves whether to fight terrorism in a way consistent with the Constitution and American values or to subordinate those niceties to the imperative of self-defense.

The dangerous overstatement, topped off with partisan jab: "The administration seems to pride itself on searching for some kind of middle ground in policies addressing terrorism... But in the fight against terrorism, there is no middle ground. And half measures keep you half exposed... Triangulation is a political strategy, not a national security strategy."

If there is no middle ground, why place any limits on how enhanced interrogations can get? Why not wiretap all conversations? Why give detainees any legal process at all? Calibrating the proper balance between liberty and security is difficult, and reasonable people can differ about where lines should be drawn. But Cheney's whatever-it-takes worldview seems to contemplate no tradeoffs whatsoever. Obama isn't seizing on terrorism for political advantage, like Bill Clinton with welfare reform. He's addressing a real threat -- and cleaning up Cheney's mess.

The outright misstatement: "The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts had failed. They were legal, essential, justified, successful and the right thing to do."

But former FBI agent Ali Soufan offered a completely conflicting account of his interrogation of Abu Zubaida, telling the Senate Judiciary Committee that the injured terrorist was cooperating and yielding important information -- the previously unknown role of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed in the Sept. 11 attacks -- until other interrogators insisted on stepping up the pressure, at which point Zubaydah clammed up. [just one guy but powerful testimony] [a Arabic interrogator] [****]

A twist on the above, misstatement wrapped in demagoguery: "Attorney General Holder and others have admitted that the United States will be compelled to accept terrorists here in the homeland, and it has even been suggested U.S. taxpayer dollars will be used to support them.... Keep in mind that these are hardened terrorists picked up overseas since 9/11. The ones that were considered low risk were released a long time ago."

Hard to know where to start parsing the misinformation here. "Compelled to accept terrorists here in the homeland" makes it sound like they'll be roaming the local malls. I don't recall Cheney deploying the "terrorists in the homeland" bogeyman when Zacarias Moussaoui, the 20th hijacker, was being tried, sentenced and imprisoned here. As Obama said: "We are not going to release anyone if it would endanger our national security, nor will we release detainees within the United States who endanger the American people. Where demanded by justice and national security, we will seek to transfer some detainees to the same type of facilities in which we hold all manner of dangerous and violent criminals within our borders -- highly secure prisons that ensure the public safety."

U.S. taxpayer dollars supporting terrorists sounds like the 2009 version of welfare queens driving Cadillacs, with about as much truth. As if tax dollars aren't being spent on Guantanamo? As to the notion that only the "worst of the worst" remain, in fact, courts have ruled -- and in some cases Cheney's administration acknowledged -- that there was no legitimate reason to hold 21 of the 241 prisoners currently at Guantanamo; another 50 have been approved for transfer to another country. So the notion that the "low risk" ones are long gone is simply wrong. Ask the Chinese Uighurs who never intended harm to America but have been held without basis for seven years.

The best defense is a good offense: "[T]here has been a strange and sometimes willful attempt to conflate what happened to Abu Ghraib with a top-secret program of enhanced interrogations. At Abu Ghraib, a few sadistic prison guards abused inmates in violation of American law, military regulation and simple decency.... And it takes a deeply unfair cast of mind to equate the disgraces of Abu Ghraib with the lawful, skillful and entirely honorable work of CIA personnel trained to deal with a few malevolent men."

What radicals have engaged in this slur? Well, a panel appointed by then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and headed by former Defense Secretary James Schlesinger, for one. Enhanced interrogation techniques "migrated to Afghanistan and Iraq where they were neither limited nor safeguarded," Schlesinger's report found.

Finally, ultimate chutzpah: Cheney assailing the Obama administration for failing to disclose documents. "[A]ll that remains an official secret is the information that we gained as a result [of interrogations]. Some of his defenders say the unseen memos are inconclusive, which only raises the question why they won't let the American people decide that for themselves."
Cheney, ardent tribune of open government. Now, that's rich.
© 2009 Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive

Posted by Kent Bolton at 02:22 PM | Permalink

Mr. Obama in Egypt

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/27/AR2009052703099.html
Mr. Obama in Egypt
Will he speak to a rising generation of Muslims -- or the autocrats who rule them?
Thursday, May 28, 2009
PRESIDENT OBAMA'S decision to deliver an address to the Muslim world from Egypt next week has raised expectations that are as varied as they are inflated. Many Arabs insist that the president should spell out a detailed prescription for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Others would like to see him distinguish mainstream Islam from the extremism represented by al-Qaeda. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, like other Arab

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/27/AR2009052703099.html
Mr. Obama in Egypt
Will he speak to a rising generation of Muslims -- or the autocrats who rule them?
Thursday, May 28, 2009
PRESIDENT OBAMA'S decision to deliver an address to the Muslim world from Egypt next week has raised expectations that are as varied as they are inflated. Many Arabs insist that the president should spell out a detailed prescription for ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Others would like to see him distinguish mainstream Islam from the extremism represented by al-Qaeda. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, like other Arab Sunni autocrats, wants Mr. Obama to make clear that the United States will prevent Shiite Iran from gaining hegemony over the region.

Then there are the people across the Muslim world who feel wounded by Mr. Obama's very choice of locale. One of Egypt's foremost democratic dissidents, Saad Eddin Ibrahim, published an article on the opposite page in December urging Mr. Obama to choose Indonesia or Turkey, both modernizing liberal democracies, for his address, arguing that "democracy should be central to Obama's message -- and to his choice of where to deliver it." Mr. Mubarak's ruling party responded by bringing criminal charges against Mr. Ibrahim -- adding to a host of previous charges and an outstanding prison sentence that have kept the 70-year-old professor in exile since 2007.

On Monday, just 10 days before Mr. Obama's arrival, Mr. Ibrahim's conviction was overturned, and most of the charges against him were dropped. That -- and the release from prison in February of Ayman Nour, another leading democratic dissident -- spared Mr. Obama from the potential embarrassment of honoring a Muslim regime even as it was persecuting its most pro-American opponents. But Mr. Mubarak's concessions should not prevent Mr. Obama from raising human rights and democracy in his address. If the past decade has proved anything, it is that real partnership between the United States and the Muslim world will require the common embrace of values such as freedom of speech and religion, free elections, and the renunciation of torture.

So far the Obama administration has stoutly resisted that lesson -- partly because of a misguided reaction to the failures of the Bush administration. Yet if it chooses to uncritically embrace autocrats such as Mr. Mubarak -- as it has so far -- the administration will merely repeat the failures of earlier U.S. administrations, which for decades propped up Arab dictators and ignored their human rights abuses, only to reap the harvest represented by al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein. It will accomplish the opposite of what Mr. Obama intends, by alienating a young generation of Arabs and Muslims that despises the old order and demands the freedoms that have spread everywhere else in the world.

Contrary to what Mr. Obama is being told by the likes of the 81-year-old Mr. Mubarak, that rising generation doesn't want to hear more rhetoric about the Middle East "peace process" or a jeremiad directed at Iran. What will inspire it is the news that a new U.S. president shares its aspirations for religious pluralism, secular education, more rights for women, a modern market economy -- and the right to elect a dynamic new leader such as Barack Obama. The president should speak to those Muslims -- not to the strongman who invited him.
© 2009 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 02:21 PM | Permalink

North Korea Tests

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/opinion/28thur1.html
May 28, 2009
Editorial
North Korea Tests
[editorial] [DPRK’s strange need for constanct attention] [I suspect this time it’s more complicated] [just seeing the Dear Leader and how frail he looks I cannot help but think leadership succession fight underway] [let’s remember: there are those who appropriatel would be called hardliners relative to dear leader!] [***]
Erratic, frightening and hugely self-destructive. Those are the words we would use to describe North Korea’s behavior. First it defied the United Nations Security Council’s cease-and-desist orders and tested both a nuclear device and half a dozen missiles.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/opinion/28thur1.html
May 28, 2009
Editorial
North Korea Tests
[editorial] [DPRK’s strange need for constanct attention] [I suspect this time it’s more complicated] [just seeing the Dear Leader and how frail he looks I cannot help but think leadership succession fight underway] [let’s remember: there are those who appropriatel would be called hardliners relative to dear leader!] [***]
Erratic, frightening and hugely self-destructive. Those are the words we would use to describe North Korea’s behavior. First it defied the United Nations Security Council’s cease-and-desist orders and tested both a nuclear device and half a dozen missiles. Now it is threatening to launch military strikes against South Korea and may have resumed production of nuclear fuel.

Given all of that, and the fact that no one is sure who is calling the shots in the North’s capital, Pyongyang, it is tempting to throw up one’s hands and say that there is no point in trying to negotiate. But there is no military option here. Diplomacy — backed by stiff sanctions — is the only hope for walking North Korea back from the brink. And for now, China — not Washington — is the prime player.

It is time for China (host of the six-party talks scuttled by Pyongyang) to exercise the leadership it has long shirked. As the North’s main oil and food supplier, it has more leverage than any other country. We understand that China is worried that too much pressure could topple the government, pouring refugees over the border.

Beijing should be able to calibrate that pressure. If not, North Korea will end up with a nuclear arsenal that could pose an even greater threat to China and the whole region. Already some in Japan and South Korea are arguing for their own weapons.

The Security Council displayed welcome unity on Sunday, condemning North Korea’s test and its missile launches. Now, it must impose new sanctions — and implement existing ones — on North Korea’s political and military elite: blocking luxury imports, freezing overseas bank accounts, and making it much harder for government-controlled companies to get the hard currency they need to do business.

Pyongyang has already sold nuclear fuel technology and missiles to unsavory customers including Iran and Syria. And some analysts suggest, chillingly, that this week’s tests may be advertising. North Korea must be prevented from selling any more of its dangerous wares.

South Korea’s decision to join the Proliferation Security Initiative — a voluntary group of 95 countries that shares intelligence and trains to interdict dangerous shipments — is overdue. North Korean officials need to be told quietly that Washington and its allies are not looking for a showdown, but they will redouble efforts to track those shipments and stop them if necessary.

The goal of all of this is to get nuclear inspectors back into North Korea and North Korean officials back to the bargaining table. President Obama has said that he is committed to the six-party talks — which also include Japan, South Korea and Russia — and aides say to eventual bilateral negotiations. Those talks are North Korea’s only hope for coming in from the cold and ending its deep economic privation.

Unfortunately, Pyongyang doesn’t see it that way right now, which is why the international response must be firm and skillfully choreographed. Loudly castigating and threatening North Korea and then failing to implement sanctions is worse than doing nothing at all. It will only embolden Pyongyang and send a dangerous message to others — Iran is surely watching — about the fecklessness of the major powers.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 02:20 PM | Permalink

Stalemate at Ground Zero

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/opinion/28thur3.html
May 28, 2009
Editorial
Stalemate at Ground Zero
[editorial] [going on 8 years since 9/11] [and the bureaucrats in NYC, state, federales, interest groups, are still a pretzel of demands] [***]
After yet another impasse between the developer and the owner of the World Trade Center site, Mayor Michael Bloomberg invited the big players to Gracie Mansion last week. Around the table were the developer, Larry Silverstein; Gov. David Paterson of

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/opinion/28thur3.html
May 28, 2009
Editorial
Stalemate at Ground Zero
[editorial] [going on 8 years since 9/11] [and the bureaucrats in NYC, state, federales, interest groups, are still a pretzel of demands] [***]
After yet another impasse between the developer and the owner of the World Trade Center site, Mayor Michael Bloomberg invited the big players to Gracie Mansion last week. Around the table were the developer, Larry Silverstein; Gov. David Paterson of New York; Gov. Jon Corzine of New Jersey; Sheldon Silver, the New York Assembly speaker; and staff galore.

It was not exactly the quiet setting for complicated negotiations but it did emphasize the importance of resolving this latest disagreement quickly and fairly. If not, the Sept. 11 memorial is unlikely to be ready in time for the 10th anniversary of the attacks.

Mr. Silverstein and top officials of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which owns the site, are barely talking to one another. He wants to reopen a 2006 building agreement with the authority, citing delays by the authority and the weakness in the economy.

At the mayor’s meeting, Mr. Silverstein made his pitch that the authority should use its money to help him build two skyscrapers that the private market won’t finance in the current climate. Basically he is asking the authority, which has limited resources and many other demands, to get even deeper into real estate speculation.

The authority should instead be focusing on what it has already committed to: building the substructure for the 16-acre site, the Calatrava PATH terminal and the tallest tower. The authority’s designers have also come up with an interim proposal to build multistory bases for some of Mr. Silverstein’s towers. Those could house retail shops until the market needs more skyscrapers. [I thought that was well under way?] [my understanding and when last saw it in 2007 it appeared underway] [***]

The authority’s board has authorized over $800 million so far to help with Mr. Silverstein’s financing. The mayor and his dealmakers should not drain any more of the funds the authority needs to maintain and manage the bridges, tunnels, ports, terminals and airports in the metropolitan area. We all want the ground zero memorial and the other structures finished. But it cannot come at the expense of the authority’s primary mission.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 02:20 PM | Permalink

Chávez Seeks Tighter Grip on Military

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/world/americas/30venez.html
May 30, 2009
Chávez Seeks Tighter Grip on Military
By SIMON ROMERO [Venezuela] [Hugo Chavez] [back to Chavez’s normal form: seizing and nationalizing petroleum sectors] ] [use ir text] [followp May 9] [little good it will have done him] [use ir text] [near total control of media] [***]
LOS TEQUES, Venezuela — They say prison life can be lonely, but not for Raúl Isaías Baduel, Venezuela’s former army chief and once one of President Hugo Chávez’s confidants, who was detained last month.

Among his cellmates in the Ramo Verde military prison here are a former admiral, Carlos Millán, and Wilfredo Barroso, a onetime general arrested along with Mr. Millán on charges of conspiring to oust Mr. Chávez.

Since February, Mr. Chávez has moved against a wide range of domestic critics, and his efforts in recent weeks to strengthen his grip on the armed forces have led to high-profile arrests and a wave of reassignments.

These are seen here as part of a larger effort by Mr. Chávez to cement loyalty in the military, where some officers are growing resentful at what they see as his micromanagement and politicizing of a proud and relatively independent institution.

“Chávez does not have the support he thinks he has in the armed forces,” Mr. Baduel, 53, said in an interview in the cell that has become his home since agents from the military intelligence service arrested him, shoving him into a vehicle and holding a pistol to his temple.

In March, Mr. Chávez replaced the chiefs of the army, the air force and the Bolivarian Militia, a Cuban-inspired reserve force created to repel what Mr. Chávez repeatedly raises as the threat of an invasion by the United States.

During the same wave of dismissals, Mr. Chávez also cashiered his defense minister, Gen. Gustavo Rangel Briceño. On Thursday night, intelligence agents detained another former officer, Otto Gebauer, a retired captain who was ordered to hold Mr. Chávez during a brief coup in April 2002. Mr. Gebauer, who had angered Mr. Chávez by saying the president cried during the 48-hour coup, was accused of violating the terms of his house arrest, his wife said.

The authority of as many as 800 military officers was stripped away last year after doubts surfaced over their loyalty to Mr. Chávez, according to news reports. The officers were said to have been angered by favoritism shown to pro-Chávez officers, as well as by revelations of the military’s close ties to leftist Colombian guerrillas and by infiltration of the military by Cuban intelligence, civilian experts on Venezuela’s military said.

In recent months, the crackdown has been extended to the civilian arena. Manuel Rosales, the president’s opponent in the 2006 elections, sought asylum in Peru after being faced with corruption charges, and Mr. Chávez handpicked a new mayor for Caracas after legislators eliminated most of the budget of the elected mayor, Antonio Ledezma.

The government even singled out smaller targets, like an outspoken biologist critical of Mr. Chávez who was fired from his tenured post at the Institute of Advanced Studies, a state-run scientific research group.

Mr. Chávez has asked officials to investigate Globovisión, a television news network that is often critical of him, over claims of disrupting public order that the station’s owner calls baseless. The National Assembly is considering giving Mr. Chávez’s government control over financing for nongovernment organizations.

The arrest of Mr. Baduel is a reflection of how much has changed in Venezuela, especially since oil prices plunged last summer. A few years ago, a rift between Mr. Chávez and him would have seemed unimaginable.

Mr. Baduel was long a member with Mr. Chávez of a secret cell of leftist officers that conspired to seize power. A coup failed in 1992 but thrust Mr. Chávez, then a lieutenant colonel, into the spotlight. In 2002, Mr. Baduel led a paratrooper operation that returned the elected Mr. Chávez to power after the April coup.

But after retiring as defense minister, Mr. Baduel broke with Mr. Chávez in 2007. He publicly criticized the president’s proposal to overhaul the Constitution and transform Venezuela into a socialist state with greatly expanded presidential authority. The measure was rejected by voters in December 2007, and Mr. Baduel emerged as a prominent voice of dissent.

Then, as often happens with Mr. Chávez’s critics, Mr. Baduel found himself under the scrutiny of the justice system. A military prosecutor said he was responsible for about $14 million that disappeared during his tenure as defense minister, and the military intelligence directorate sent agents to follow his every move. Mr. Baduel says he is innocent.

His protestations are echoed by his fellow inmates at the Ramo Verde prison, in this city on the outskirts of Caracas.

“The plot is a concoction, an amateurish fable,” said Mr. Millán, the former admiral. He questioned why he and Mr. Barroso were still detained when no proof of the supposed conspiracy had surfaced beyond crackling taped phone conversations played on state television that were attributed to him and others.

Mr. Millán, who was detained in September, and Mr. Baduel said they had been denied their due-process rights in a “witch hunt” among former officers.

Whether or not the charges are false, reports of quiet discontent within the military seem to be well founded. There is resentment over a policy shift that speeds promotions of pro-Chávez noncommissioned officers, over a decline in bonus pay for soldiers as oil revenues fell and over Mr. Chávez’s order that soldiers use the Cuban-style pledge, “Fatherland, socialism or death,” according to active and retired officers.

“On the one hand we have officers who believe in the military’s institutional independence, and on the other the Praetorians who prop up the government,” said Hernán Castillo, a political scientist at Simón Bolívar University in Caracas.

Mr. Baduel is believed to wield influence among the non-Praetorians. Asked about the possibility that such discontent could foster an armed conspiracy against the government, as has happened at least three times in the past two decades, Mr. Baduel demurred.

“To subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence,” said Mr. Baduel, quoting from Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese military strategist. “I was trained for decades in the administration of violence, but I personally think that violence is not the answer to our dilemma.”

Instead, Mr. Baduel suggests convening an assembly to rewrite Venezuela’s Constitution as a step toward reintroducing checks on Mr. Chávez’s power.

Meanwhile, the armed forces seem increasingly weakened and divided as they come further under Mr. Chávez’s thumb.

Notwithstanding the quiet deference to Mr. Baduel by his military jailers, he says he has no option but to wait. He has a routine. He prays each morning. He meditates after reading from “Tao Te Ching,” Lao Tzu’s Chinese text. And bides his time.

“I won’t leave this prison,” Mr. Baduel said, “until Chávez leaves the presidency of Venezuela.”
María Eugenia Díaz contributed reporting from Caracas, Venezuela.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 02:19 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Plant to Destroy Chemical Weapons Opens in Russia

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/29/AR2009052903109.html
Plant to Destroy Chemical Weapons Opens in Russia
U.S. Gave $1 Billion as Part of Effort to Dispose of Huge Stockpile of Munitions
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 30, 2009 [Russia] [former USSR] [US-Russia relations] [rfts of Cold War munitions and what to dow with them] [similar problems to lose nukes but with conventional military hardware]] [use ir text[ [***]
MOSCOW, May 29 -- Russia and the United States formally opened on Friday a plant in Siberia to destroy a huge stockpile of artillery shells filled with deadly nerve agents,

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/29/AR2009052903109.html
Plant to Destroy Chemical Weapons Opens in Russia
U.S. Gave $1 Billion as Part of Effort to Dispose of Huge Stockpile of Munitions
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 30, 2009 [Russia] [former USSR] [US-Russia relations] [rfts of Cold War munitions and what to dow with them] [similar problems to lose nukes but with conventional military hardware]] [use ir text[ [***]
MOSCOW, May 29 -- Russia and the United States formally opened on Friday a plant in Siberia to destroy a huge stockpile of artillery shells filled with deadly nerve agents, more than a decade after alarmed U.S. officials first pledged to help secure and dispose of the weapons.

The 250-acre facility, built with $1 billion in U.S. aid, is said to be the largest in the world dedicated to destroying chemical munitions. Its debut represents a milestone in Russia's long, rocky partnership with the United States to safeguard and eliminate the arsenal of chemical, biological and nuclear arms the former Soviet Union produced.

Located in the town of Shchuchye, about 1,000 miles southeast of Moscow near the border with Kazakhstan, the plant is supposed to neutralize about 2 million shells and warheads stored nearby that are loaded with VX, sarin and soman.

The stockpile has worried U.S. officials since 1994, when an American inspection team found it in a loosely guarded complex of run-down warehouses. Just one of the shells could kill tens of thousands of people if detonated in a stadium or other crowded area.

Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.) dramatized the potential for terrorism posed by the weapons during a visit to the complex in 1999, when he was photographed holding a briefcase with a VX-filled shell inside.

"In Washington, that photo became an important symbol of the challenge we faced," Lugar said Friday at the ceremony opening the Chemical Weapons Destruction Facility. "Today, we must ensure that the weapons are never used and never fall into the hands of those who would do harm to us or others," he said.

U.S. and Russian officials began discussing destroying the stockpile in the early 1990s as part of an effort launched by Lugar and then-Sen. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) to help the countries of the former Soviet Union clean up weapons of mass destruction left after the Cold War.

But cost overruns, bureaucratic obstacles and contracting disputes repeatedly delayed the project, the largest in the Nunn-Lugar program. Congressional resistance to U.S. funding mounted as the Russian economy recovered in recent years, and other Western countries have contributed more than $200 million to the facility. Russia says it has spent more than $250 million.

The plant began preliminary operations in March using a process that involves drilling a hole in each shell, draining the nerve agents and neutralizing them with other chemicals.

But Lev Fyodorov, president of the Russian Union for Chemical Safety, said officials have not fully addressed local residents' safety concerns. A reservoir to collect and test water for contamination has not been built, the air-monitoring stations are not accurate enough and emergency procedures are insufficient, he said.

Paul Walker, director of Global Green USA, an affiliate of an environmental group founded by former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev that manages community outreach for the facility, said Friday's ceremony may be premature, because only one of the two main buildings in the complex has been completed.

Walker urged Congress to appropriate more money to ensure the facility is finished, maintain U.S. oversight and restore funding for his organization's work with local residents, which has been cut.

Andy Fisher, Lugar's spokesman, said Russia is now responsible for financing and operating the facility. "If assistance from outside partners was requested, I'm sure it would be considered," he said.

The munitions in Shchuchye account for about 14 percent of the 40,000 tons of chemical agents declared at seven locations by Russia under the 1997 Chemical Weapons Convention. It could take years to destroy them all, even with the new facility working at full capacity.

Of Russia's other chemical weapons stockpiles, work has begun at four and has been completed at two, Walker said. But plants remain incomplete at two sites, including one in the eastern region of Udmurtia with shells like those in Shchuchye that can be carried by hand.

Under the 1997 treaty, Russia and the United States are required to destroy their chemical weapons by 2012. Officials say both countries are unlikely to meet that deadline.
© 2009 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 02:18 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

India: Report Alleges Atrocities by a State’s Police

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/world/asia/30briefs-brfIndia.html
May 30, 2009
World Briefing | Asia
India: Report Alleges Atrocities by a State’s Police
By REUTERS [India] [SAsia] [allegations of policie corruption and capriciousness] [heating up] [use ir text] [****]
Human rights abuses by Indian security forces have helped fuel a Maoist insurgency that has killed thousands, the Asian Center for Human Rights said in a report released

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/world/asia/30briefs-brfIndia.html
May 30, 2009
World Briefing | Asia
India: Report Alleges Atrocities by a State’s Police
By REUTERS [India] [SAsia] [allegations of policie corruption and capriciousness] [heating up] [use ir text] [****]
Human rights abuses by Indian security forces have helped fuel a Maoist insurgency that has killed thousands, the Asian Center for Human Rights said in a report released Friday. The organization, which is based in New Delhi, said government forces and state-sponsored civilian militias in Chhattisgarh State “were responsible for gross human rights violations,” including torture and extrajudicial killings. A spokesman for the state police dismissed the allegations as “Maoist propaganda.” The report also accused the rebels of committing “violence of extraordinary brutality.”
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 02:17 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

U.S. Soldier and 11 Iraqis Die in Attacks

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/world/middleeast/30iraq.html
May 30, 2009
U.S. Soldier and 11 Iraqis Die in Attacks
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [renewed sectarian tensions and fault lines] [followup] [Saddam continues to preoccupy many –iraqis well after his death] [provincial elections last Saturday] [post-election reports that –ir relatively calm with apparent victories for secular parties over Islamists] [now the US is focused on big elections set for December after which the US intends to drawdown rather quickly] [goings on as June SOFA provisions loom] [***]
BAGHDAD — An American soldier was killed when unidentified men threw a grenade at a military patrol in the northern city of Mosul on Friday, according to Iraqi and American

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/world/middleeast/30iraq.html
May 30, 2009
U.S. Soldier and 11 Iraqis Die in Attacks
By CAMPBELL ROBERTSON [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [renewed sectarian tensions and fault lines] [followup] [Saddam continues to preoccupy many –iraqis well after his death] [provincial elections last Saturday] [post-election reports that –ir relatively calm with apparent victories for secular parties over Islamists] [now the US is focused on big elections set for December after which the US intends to drawdown rather quickly] [goings on as June SOFA provisions loom] [***]
BAGHDAD — An American soldier was killed when unidentified men threw a grenade at a military patrol in the northern city of Mosul on Friday, according to Iraqi and American authorities.

The death brings to at least 22 the number of American military personnel members killed in Iraq in May, the highest monthly figure since September. The increase in the number of deadly attacks on American forces may be related to the deadline of June 30, when the Iraqi-American security agreement signed last year dictates that coalition forces are to withdraw from the cities.

But Mosul is in many ways an exception to that deadline. An enormous American base on the edge of Mosul — a city that has remained a redoubt for the insurgency even as attacks have decreased substantially around the rest of Iraq — will remain open.

Two Iraqi soldiers were shot and killed in another part of Mosul on Friday, Iraqi police officials said. Nineveh, of which Mosul is capital, is one of two provinces in Iraq that have remained steadily violent as the country has calmed. The other is Diyala, northwest of Baghdad, where a string of deadly attacks occurred on Friday; at least nine people were killed.

One bomb went off in a minibus in a large bus depot, killing 5 and wounding 11, several of them women and children, local security officials said. Another, which exploded in a car, killed two children and injured two others.

A third bomb, which was attached to a motorbike, killed one and injured seven, including a leader of one of the Awakening Councils, the Sunni armed groups that are paid by the government to fight insurgents.

But several Awakening members have been killed recently in Diyala, and a number have also been arrested as Iraqi security forces conduct a major security operation in the province.
Duraid Adnan contributed reporting.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 02:16 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Iranian Candidate Taps Student Woes

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/world/middleeast/31iran.html?hp
May 31, 2009
Iranian Candidate Taps Student Woes
By NAZILA FATHI [iran] [domestic politics intersect foreign policy] [upcoming presidential elections next month] [incumbency has its priviledges: controlling parts of meadia where Ahmadinejad might otherwise take a beating] [as elections approach in just weeks] [rampant speculatio about what constintuencies may be most xercised about the economic situation—and to some extent the interational one—wrough by Ahamdeinjade] [it’s possiblbe but not like that he will lose th elections] [*****]
TABRIZ, Iran — Rassool Zarehee, 22, shouted at the top of his lungs as he and several other students raced around a basketball court at the University of Tabriz recently,

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/world/middleeast/31iran.html?hp
May 31, 2009
Iranian Candidate Taps Student Woes
By NAZILA FATHI [iran] [domestic politics intersect foreign policy] [upcoming presidential elections next month] [incumbency has its priviledges: controlling parts of meadia where Ahmadinejad might otherwise take a beating] [as elections approach in just weeks] [rampant speculatio about what constintuencies may be most xercised about the economic situation—and to some extent the interational one—wrough by Ahamdeinjade] [it’s possiblbe but not like that he will lose th elections] [*****]
TABRIZ, Iran — Rassool Zarehee, 22, shouted at the top of his lungs as he and several other students raced around a basketball court at the University of Tabriz recently, encouraging more than 2,000 students to chant with them. “Yasharsoon Moussavi!” he screamed in the local Turkish Azeri dialect. “Long Live Moussavi!”

Mr. Zarehee is a staunch supporter of Mir Hussein Moussavi, a moderate politician who is the strongest challenger to Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, ahead of the June 12 election. Mr. Zarehee’s enthusiasm for his candidate is so strong that he waited several hours behind closed gates with other students before the angry crowd finally pushed its way inside.

Wearing a green headband, a green cloak and green ribbons on his wrists — the trademark color for Mr. Moussavi’s supporters — Mr. Zarehee warmed up the crowd before Mr. Moussavi spoke. He remained on the court for more than two hours, along with some 400 other students, chanting and singing in support of Mr. Moussavi.

“This is all my hope, and I will do my share so that he gets elected,” he said after the event. “We have been like prisoners at university for the past four years.”

Mr. Moussavi, a former prime minister, was born in Khameneh, a small town near this northwestern city in East Azerbaijan Province. He was speaking here on Tuesday as part of a two-day tour to win the votes of Turkish speakers, nearly one-third of Iran’s eligible voters.

In his speech, Mr. Moussavi denounced the pressure put on student activists through expulsions and jail terms during Mr. Ahmadinejad’s term and called the president’s policies “old and backward.” He said the major goal of the 1979 revolution was freedom.

“We wanted to become free and be progressive in the world, not faced with backward ideas and notions today,” he said.

The rally was an unusual event in this northwestern city, where political and social restrictions are enforced more fiercely than in the capital, Tehran. Young men and women sang together, and even moved their bodies rhythmically to the music. The young men rushed from their side of the segregated auditorium to the women’s side, to take cellphone pictures of girls dancing. The women had green headbands or ribbons in their hair, and had pushed back the black hoods they are required to wear as far back as they could go.

Many in the audience said they were frustrated by four years of economic mismanagement and social and political suppression under Mr. Ahmadinejad. They said they hoped that Mr. Moussavi would reverse those policies.

Nassim, 19, a radiology student, who withheld her family name for fear of retribution, said she had to resign as a member of her university’s Islamic Association, the only pro-reform political association for student activists, because of pressure from university hard-liners. “I could not even do social or cultural work,” she said. “They accused us of doing political work no matter what we did.”

“Mr. Ahmadinejad has a different interpretation of justice and freedom,” she said.

Mr. Zarehee, a computer science student at Payam-e-Noor, another university in Tabriz, said that at his school hard-line guards monitored the school to ensure that people did not wear un-Islamic clothes, a reference to what could be deemed fashionable or Western.

“Boys and girls are not allowed to speak,” he said. “They have even installed cameras in the classrooms to make sure they watch us all the time. Instead of investing the money into facilities for students, like a restaurant, which we do not have, they use the money against us.”

He said that he had worked at a small casting factory to pay for his university fees but that he was laid off recently because the factory had not received any orders in months — a result of the faltering economy.

Not all students at the rally were supporters of Mr. Moussavi.

Some were separatists with banners that said “federalism,” a reference to Turkish Azeri separatist sentiment, or opponents of Mr. Moussavi who held banners that accused him of being involved in the execution of thousands of prisoners in 1988 when he was prime minister. At one point they turned their backs to Mr. Moussavi as a sign of protest.

Another student, Mohammad, 23, a mechanical engineering major, said he had just come to the rally to have a good time. He said he would vote, but only to get his birth certificate stamped.

“I need the stamp in case I need to get a government job later,” he said. “But I do not believe in any of the candidates. I believe in a secular democracy.”
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 02:15 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

Disgruntled Urbanites Could Sway Iran Vote

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/29/AR2009052903108.html
Disgruntled Urbanites Could Sway Iran Vote
Middle Class May Oust Ahmadinejad
By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 30, 2009 [[iran] [domestic politics intersect foreign policy] [upcoming presidential elections next month] [incumbency has its priviledges: controlling parts of meadia where Ahmadinejad might otherwise take a beating] [as elections approach in just weeks] [rampant speculatio about what constintuencies may be most xercised about the economic situation—and to some extent the interational one—wrough by Ahamdeinjade] [it’s possiblbe but not like that he will lose th elections] [*****]
TEHRAN, May 29 -- Iran's urban middle class is increasingly disenchanted with the

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/29/AR2009052903108.html
Disgruntled Urbanites Could Sway Iran Vote
Middle Class May Oust Ahmadinejad
By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Saturday, May 30, 2009 [[iran] [domestic politics intersect foreign policy] [upcoming presidential elections next month] [incumbency has its priviledges: controlling parts of meadia where Ahmadinejad might otherwise take a beating] [as elections approach in just weeks] [rampant speculatio about what constintuencies may be most xercised about the economic situation—and to some extent the interational one—wrough by Ahamdeinjade] [it’s possiblbe but not like that he will lose th elections] [*****]
TEHRAN, May 29 -- Iran's urban middle class is increasingly disenchanted with the current government and may turn out in larger numbers than four years ago to oppose President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, voters said in interviews here.

In 2005, many of Tehran's 12 million residents boycotted the presidential election to protest a system they thought did not represent them. But many say they are going to vote against Ahmadinejad on June 12. [***]

There are no trustworthy opinion polls in Iran, and turnout is highly dependent on current events, but many people who rarely vote are saying that this time, they will.

“I never voted for anybody, because I don’t like this system,” said Faranak, a Tehran housewife who asked not to be further identified. “But this time, I will bring my entire family to vote for one of the opponents of Ahmadinejad.”

Leili Rashidi, a well-known Iranian actress, said four more years of Ahmadinejad would be disastrous. “The middle classes are decaying under this government,” she said. As a prominent Iranian, Rashidi said, she considers it her duty to try to cause change. “We should massively vote Ahmadinejad out, or we will be lost.” [***]

Others who normally shy away from politics, including prominent artists, athletes and academics, have joined Rashidi in speaking at campaign rallies, urging people to vote.

Seventy percent of Iran's population lives in cities, and urban voters generally support candidates who promise expanded rights, more personal freedoms and better relations with other nations.

"We want Ahmadinejad to go," said Tina, a 21-year-old computer engineering student, speaking outside a sandwich shop in a stylish northern Tehran neighborhood. Neither she nor her friends have ever voted in an Iranian election, she said. "But Ahmadinejad has made the lives of people in the cities miserable. So now all of us will vote, and we will vote him out."

The complaints from the middle class appear rooted in several causes. Thousands of experienced managers working for state companies and government ministries were replaced by Ahmadinejad supporters. At the same time, Iran's private entrepreneurs, who make up about 20 percent of the economy and provide many jobs in the cities, were hurt by an influx of imported Chinese goods. During Ahmadinejad's term, inflation has run to nearly 30 percent, and the cost of housing in the capital has doubled.

"The middle classes who didn't vote four years ago have now felt what a calamity has befallen us. I don't think the people are as stupid to repeat their error," Rashidi said, speaking on her cellphone on her way to shoot a campaign film for the president's main challenger, former prime minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, who seems to be gaining momentum.

Nightmares of war with the United States have plagued her in recent years, Rashidi said, and she could no longer stand to keep quiet. "These elections are our chance for a better future," she said. "If city voters stay home now, only more fear and destruction await us."

Appealing to city voters, Mousavi and the other significant challenger, cleric Mehdi Karroubi, have said that, if elected, they would stop the morality police patrols, which are intensely disliked. The patrols began operating in major cities after Ahmadinejad's election.

Stationed at the entrances to shopping malls and busy streets, the patrols have detained thousands of women for wearing what morality police consider improper Islamic dress. Tehran women with a taste for dressing out of the ordinary have been taken to the police station for wearing boots over their trousers or showing too much hair from under their obligatory head scarves.

"Now there is an atmosphere of fear because of these patrols," Tina said as she took money from her black leather Gucci handbag to buy a chicken sandwich. "During the previous president, we never had such fears," she said, referring to Mohammad Khatami, a hugely popular leader who implemented social freedoms during his 1997-2005 term. He now backs Mousavi.

Ahmadinejad's opponents are campaigning fiercely in Tehran and other major urban centers.

"If Ahmadinejad wins again, there will be great hopelessness, especially if many people decide to turn out," said Nasim Anvari, waiting for Mousavi to arrive Monday at the airport in Tabriz, Iran's fourth-largest city and a major trade hub. "We have many problems here in Iran. We need educated people to solve them. Thank God we have good candidates to choose from; there are no excuses this time," [***]she said.

Ahmadinejad, a populist who has often relied on the poor and working class for his political base, has been handing out cash, and even potatoes, in backwater areas where presidents have not campaigned before.

"Our government has from the very beginning shown that it does not see the whole of Iran as Tehran," presidential adviser Ali Reza Zaker Isfahani said during a speech in the provincial town of Ardel, according to the semiofficial Fars news agency. "The policies were based on justice, and that's why they focus away from the metropolises. Ahmadinejad has tried to spend the budget for the weak all over Iran," he said.

In the 2005 vote, Ahmadinejad won on the second ballot. Of the 46 million eligible voters, more than half stayed home, making it relatively easy for him to win the necessary 50 percent.

"God willing, the people will participate in the elections with a high percentage," Mousavi told a crowd of more than 30,000 people in a Tabriz soccer stadium. As he stepped onstage with his wife, Zahra Rahnavard, a former university dean, thousands screamed his name. "If we use this never-ending power of the people, we can get our rights," Mousavi said. [****]

Ahmadinejad, with his trademark worker's coat, scruffy beard and confrontational remarks, seems a world away from Iran's middle and upper classes, which pride themselves on their refinement.

Urban culture has become much more dominant, said Naser Fakohi, a professor of anthropology at the University of Tehran. "Ahmadinejad, for city people, does not embody the social status that many people want to achieve."
© 2009 The Washington Post Company

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Iran: Official Blames U.S. for Bombing at Mosque

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/world/middleeast/30briefs-brfIran.html
May 30, 2009
World Briefing | Middle East
Iran: Official Blames U.S. for Bombing at Mosque
By REUTERS [iran] [domestic politics intersect foreign policy] [upcoming presidential elections next month] [incumbency has its priviledges: controlling parts of meadia where Ahmadinejad might otherwise take a beating] [as elections approach in just weeks, Ahmadinejad and mullahs have gone wobbly] [difficult to know who’s trying ot create chaos before elections only couple weeks away] [followup] [*****]
An Iranian official accused the United States on Friday of involvement in a bombing that

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/world/middleeast/30briefs-brfIran.html
May 30, 2009
World Briefing | Middle East
Iran: Official Blames U.S. for Bombing at Mosque
By REUTERS [iran] [domestic politics intersect foreign policy] [upcoming presidential elections next month] [incumbency has its priviledges: controlling parts of meadia where Ahmadinejad might otherwise take a beating] [as elections approach in just weeks, Ahmadinejad and mullahs have gone wobbly] [difficult to know who’s trying ot create chaos before elections only couple weeks away] [followup] [*****]
An Iranian official accused the United States on Friday of involvement in a bombing that killed more than 20 people on Thursday at a Shiite mosque in southeastern Iran. An armed Sunni opposition group, Jundullah, said it was behind the bombing, Al Arabiya television said. Iran says Jundullah is a terrorist group that is linked to Al Qaeda but is backed by the United States. Jalal Sayyah, of the governor’s office in Sistan-Baluchestan Province, said Friday that three people arrested in connection with the blast had been “equipped by America.” Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said “no one can doubt” that some “interfering powers and their spying services” were involved.
The United States denied any involvement. “We condemn this terrorist attack in the strongest possible terms,” Ian C. Kelly, a State Department spokesman, said.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 02:13 PM | Permalink

North Korea Is Warned by Gates on Testing

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/world/asia/30military.html
May 30, 2009
North Korea Is Warned by Gates on Testing
By ELISABETH BUMILLER [Guam yesterday] [now SecDef Gates Singapore] [DPRK] [6-way talks] [anyone who has watched dear leader’s regime operate knows this is standard-operating procedure] [you’re just sort of stuck with it] [now all hell is breaking loose with US, China, Russia, and ROK exercised about latest antics: new detonation and declaring armistice meaningless] [***] [obama white house] [SecDef Gates] [archive in govt too] [***]
SINGAPORE — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned North Korea on Saturday that the United States would not accept it as a nuclear weapons state and would

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/world/asia/30military.html
May 30, 2009
North Korea Is Warned by Gates on Testing
By ELISABETH BUMILLER [Guam yesterday] [now SecDef Gates Singapore] [DPRK] [6-way talks] [anyone who has watched dear leader’s regime operate knows this is standard-operating procedure] [you’re just sort of stuck with it] [now all hell is breaking loose with US, China, Russia, and ROK exercised about latest antics: new detonation and declaring armistice meaningless] [***] [obama white house] [SecDef Gates] [archive in govt too] [***]
SINGAPORE — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates warned North Korea on Saturday that the United States would not accept it as a nuclear weapons state and would consider any transfer of nuclear material to other countries or terrorist groups a “grave threat” to the United States and its allies. [****] [odd thing to say since the uS HAS ALREDY accepted it as such] [***]

“We will not stand idly by as North Korea builds the capability to wreak destruction on any target in the region — or on us,” Mr. Gates told a major security conference here that has been dominated by North Korea’s test this week of a nuclear device and the firing of at least six short-range missiles, all in defiance of international sanctions. North Korea test-fired a missile on Friday, according to a South Korean defense official.

North Korea, Mr. Gates said, had a choice: “To continue as a destitute, international pariah, or chart a new course.” [***]

Mr. Gates, who was speaking for the first time at the annual conference, called the Shangri-La Dialogue, as an emissary of his new commander in chief, said the new administration had limited patience with North Korea’s bellicose words and behavior.

“President Obama has offered an open hand to tyrannies that unclench their fists,” Mr. Gates said. “He is hopeful, but he is not naïve. Likewise, the United States and our allies are open to dialogue, but we will not bend to pressure or provocation.” [***]

Military officials traveling with Mr. Gates said the tough talk was aimed at increasing worldwide pressure on North Korea as well as reassuring allies in the region, particularly Japan and South Korea, that the United States was committed to their defense should North Korea make good on talk of war this week. [***]On Wednesday, North Korea threatened military strikes against the South.

The officials acknowledged that the United States had only limited information about what was happening inside North Korea and suspected but did not know for certain that its leader, Kim Jong-il, was in the midst of political maneuvers to make his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, his successor. The officials described the country’s leadership as unpredictable and bizarre. [***]

Mr. Gates’s sharp language was met with some skepticism by at least one participant in the conference, a Hong Kong television commentator, who in a question-and-answer session after the defense secretary’s formal remarks noted that although Mr. Gates had declared that the United States would not recognize North Korea as a nuclear weapons state, it was already a “de facto nuclear weapons state.” The questioner asked about the next step for the United States and whether the long-running six-nation talks aimed at getting North Korea to abandon its nuclear program had failed.

Mr. Gates responded that the next step was political and that the United States would send a team to Asia to “reassess” how to go forward with the talks. He acknowledged, “It would be hard to point to them at this point as an example of success.” [***]

Although North Korea was the “hot topic” at the conference, as Mr. Gates put it to reporters on his plane, he also used the forum to appeal to Asian allies for help, both financial and military, with the war in Afghanistan.

“I know some in Asia have concluded that Afghanistan does not represent a strategic threat to their countries, owing in part to Afghanistan’s geographic location,” Mr. Gates said. “But the threat from failed or failing states is international in scope.”

In representing Mr. Obama, Mr. Gates concluded that the United States, “in our efforts to protect our own freedom, and that of others” had “from time to time made mistakes, including at times being arrogant in dealing with others.”
He did not name names, but then said, “We always correct our course.”
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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Pakistan Army Claims Control of Main Town in Swat Valley

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/31/world/asia/31pstan.html
May 31, 2009
Pakistan Army Claims Control of Main Town in Swat Valley
By SABRINA TAVERNISE [Pakistan] [hydra] [Pakistan became the clear staging area for operations into Afghanistan during 2007] [AfPak] [additional indications that offensive is on: Taliban getting bolder in their stronghold] [hard to know where the insurgency ends and common criminality begins] [Swat and other accomodations] [followup] [use psci469b] [Taliban and jihadis move closer to Islamabad] [general populace has fleed Talibanization] [use psci469b] [***]
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s military said Saturday that it had taken full control of Mingora, the most populous city in the Swat Valley, scoring a significant victory against Taliban forces three weeks after the start of an offensive in the area.

Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, a military spokesman, said at a news conference that the army was able to flush out militants, in part with the help of locals who showed soldiers Taliban hiding places in hotels and other buildings. The military estimates it has killed more than 1,000 militants since the campaign began on May 8. [***]

Mingora, 100 miles northwest of Islamabad, the capital, is the most important city in Swat, a resort area that was overrun by the Taliban. The campaign is seen as a test of Pakistan’s resolve to fight its growing insurgency, which has spread substantially in the past two years, and which the United States says is compromising efforts to quell a similar insurgency in neighboring Afghanistan.

General Abbas announced the killing of two militant commanders, Abu Syed and Misbahuddin, but said it was unclear whether any more senior leaders had been killed or captured. “We are refraining from announcing or declaring until we have something in hand — some proof, some smoking gun,” General Abbas said.

Pakistan’s military has conducted two previous operations in Swat, but each involved fewer ground troops than this offensive, and they were criticized as causing too much harm to civilians without discernible gains against the Taliban.

Now, General Abbas said, the Pakistani public seems to be firmly behind the expanded offensive. “The military feels it’s in a much better position to finish the job because it has public support,” [***]he said.

Soldiers’ deaths have been commemorated in emotional public ceremonies, and news channels have been praising troops with segments with headlines like “All the Right Moves.”

The fight in Swat has been against an enemy that is largely local, General Abbas said. Just 10 percent of the militants are from outside the valley, mostly from Central Asia and Afghanistan; a handful are from Waziristan, a tribal area in Pakistan’s northwest that is a no-go zone for the military and a stronghold for the Taliban and Al Qaeda. The military estimates that there were 5,000 militants in the valley before the operation. [***]

“It’s not a monolithic force,” General Abbas said.

Pakistan has said it plans to conduct its next campaign in Waziristan.

In Mingora, militants were hiding in hotels and other private buildings, posing as civilians, General Abbas said. They had converted some buildings into bunkers. Soldiers also found five tunnels, 100 feet long and 12 feet wide, filled with arms.

The fighting has displaced what the United Nations and Pakistani officials estimate to be as many as three million people, and Pakistan’s information minister, Qamar Zaman Kaira, said the government was responding as fast as it could to the humanitarian crisis.

The military has said it is not keeping track of civilian casualties in the campaign. General Abbas said Saturday that 81 soldiers had been killed and 250 wounded since its start.

A team of 21 doctors reached Mingora on Saturday to reopen the hospital there for the wounded who have been stuck in their homes, Mr. Kaira said. The gas has been turned on, and generators are being put in place to get the water supply working.

It will take two weeks to restore electricity, which has been off since the military operation began, General Abbas said. Twenty-five tons of rations have been sent for about 40,000 people who are assumed to be stranded in Swat, he said.
“Civilians are in desperate need of provisions,” General Abbas said.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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Refugees Join List of Climate-Change Issues

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/world/29refugees.html
May 29, 2009
Refugees Join List of Climate-Change Issues
By NEIL MacFARQUHAR [global] [global climate change] [refugees] [use ir text] [use psci390-5] [****]
UNITED NATIONS — With their boundless vistas of turquoise water framed by swaying coconut palms, the Carteret Islands northeast of the Papua New Guinea mainland might seem the idyllic spot to be a castaway.

But sea levels have risen so much that during the annual king tide season, November to March, the roiling ocean blocks the view from one island to the next, and residents stash their possessions in fishing nets strung between the palm trees. [***]

“It gives you the scary feeling that you don’t know what is going to happen to you, that any minute you will be floating,” Ursula Rakova, the head of a program to relocate residents, said by telephone. The chain could well be uninhabitable by 2015, locals believe, but two previous attempts to abandon it ended badly, when residents were chased back after clashing with their new neighbors on larger islands.

This dark situation underlies the thorny debate over the world’s responsibilities to the millions of people likely to be displaced by climate change.

There could be 200 million of these climate refugees by 2050, according to a new policy paper by the International Organization for Migration, depending on the degree of climate disturbances. Aside from the South Pacific, low-lying areas likely to be battered first include Bangladesh and nations in the Indian Ocean, where the leader of the Maldives has begun seeking a safe haven for his 300,000 people. Landlocked areas may also be affected; some experts call the Darfur region of Sudan, where nomads battle villagers in a war over shrinking natural resources, the first significant conflict linked to climate change.

In the coming days, the United Nations General Assembly is expected to adopt the first resolution linking climate change to international peace and security. The hard-fought resolution, brought by 12 Pacific island states, says that climate change warrants greater attention from the United Nations as a possible source of upheaval worldwide and calls for more intense efforts to combat it. While all Pacific island states are expected to lose land, some made up entirely of atolls, like Tuvalu and Kiribati, face possible extinction.

“For the first time in history, you could actually lose countries off the face of the globe,” said Stuart Beck, the permanent representative for Palau at the United Nations. “It is a security threat to them and their populations, which will have to be relocated, which is the security threat to the places where they go, among other consequences.”

The issue has inspired intense wrangling, with some nations accusing the islanders of both exaggerating the still murky consequences of climate change and trying to expand the mandate of the Security Council by asking it to take action.

“We don’t consider climate change is an issue of security that properly belongs in the Security Council; rather, it is a development issue that has some security aspects,” said Maged A. Abdelaziz, the Egyptian ambassador. “It is an issue of how to prevent certain lands, or certain countries, from being flooded.”

The island states are seeking a response akin to the effort against terrorism after the Sept. 11 attacks. “The whole system bent itself to the task, and that is what we want,” Mr. Beck said, adding that the Council should even impose sanctions on countries that fail to act. “If you really buy into the notion that the Suburban you are driving is causing these islands to go under, there ought to be a cop.”

As it is, the compromise resolution does not mention such specific steps, one of the reasons it is expected to pass. Britain, which introduced climate change as a Security Council discussion topic two years ago, supports it along with most of Europe, while other permanent Council members — namely, the United States, China and Russia — generally backed the measure once it no longer explicitly demanded Council action.

Scientific studies distributed by the United Nations or affiliated agencies generally paint rising seas as a threat. A 2007 report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, detailing shifts expected in the South Pacific, said rising seas would worsen flooding and erosion and threaten towns as well as infrastructure. Some fresh water will turn salty, and fishing and agriculture will wither, it said.

The small island states are not alone in considering the looming threat already on the doorstep. A policy paper released this month by Australia’s Defense Ministry suggests possible violent outcomes in the Pacific. While Australia should try to mitigate the humanitarian suffering caused by global warming, if that failed and conflict erupted, the country should use its military “as an instrument to deal with any threats,” said the paper.

Australia’s previous prime minister, John Howard, was generally dismissive of the problem, saying his country was plagued with “doomsayers.” But a policy paper called “Our Drowning Neighbors,” by the now governing Labor Party, said Australia should help meld an international coalition to address it. Political debates have erupted there and in New Zealand over the idea of immigration quotas for climate refugees. New Zealand established a “Pacific Access Category” with guidelines that mirror the rules for any émigré, opening its borders to a limited annual quota of some 400 able-bodied adults between the ages of 18 and 45 who have no criminal records.

But its position has attracted criticism for leaving out the young and the old, who have the least ability to relocate. Australia’s policy, by contrast, is to try to mitigate the circumstances for the victims where they are, rather than serving as their lifeboat.

The sentiment among Pacific Islanders suggests that they do not want to abandon their homelands or be absorbed into cultures where indigenous people already struggle for acceptance.

“It is about much more than just finding food and shelter,” said Tarita Holm, an analyst with the Palauan Ministry of Resources and Development. “It is about your identity.”

Ms. Rakova, on the Carteret Islands, echoes that sentiment. A year ago, her proposed relocation effort attracted just three families out of a population of around 2,000 people. But after last season’s king tides — the highest of the year — she is scrounging for about $1.5 million to help some 750 people relocate before the tides come again.

Jennifer Redfearn, a documentary maker, has been filming the gradual disappearance of the Carterets for a work called “Sun Come Up.” One clan chief told her he would rather sink with the islands than leave. It now takes only about 15 minutes to walk the length of the largest island, with food and water supplies shrinking all the time.

“It destroys our food gardens, it uproots coconut trees, it even washes over the sea walls that we have built,” Ms. Rakova says on the film. “Most of our culture will have to live in memory.”
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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U.S. Urged to Relax Cuba Policy to Boost Regional Relations

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/28/AR2009052803766.html
U.S. Urged to Relax Cuba Policy to Boost Regional Relations
By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 29, 2009 [OAS] [Obama administration overtures to Cuba] [years ago I suspect this would have been welcomed in OAS [the times they are a changing] [use psci350] [*****]
The U.S. government is fighting an effort to allow Cuba to return to the Organization of American States after a 47-year suspension. But the resistance is putting it at odds with

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/28/AR2009052803766.html
U.S. Urged to Relax Cuba Policy to Boost Regional Relations
By Mary Beth Sheridan
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 29, 2009 [OAS] [Obama administration overtures to Cuba] [years ago I suspect this would have been welcomed in OAS [the times they are a changing] [use psci350] [*****]
The U.S. government is fighting an effort to allow Cuba to return to the Organization of American States after a 47-year suspension. But the resistance is putting it at odds with much of Latin America as the Obama administration is trying to improve relations in the hemisphere.

Eliminating the Cold War-era ban would be largely symbolic, because Cuba has shown no sign of wanting to return to the OAS, the main forum for political cooperation in the hemisphere. But the debate shows how central the topic has become in U.S. relations with an increasingly assertive Latin America. The wrangling over Cuba threatens to dominate a meeting of hemispheric foreign ministers, including Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, scheduled for Tuesday in Honduras.

"Fifty years after the U.S. . . . made Cuba its litmus test for its commercial and diplomatic ties in Latin America, Latin America is turning the tables," said Julia E. Sweig, a Cuba scholar at the Council on Foreign Relations. Now, she said, Latin countries are "making Cuba the litmus test for the quality of the Obama administration's approach to Latin America."

President Obama has taken steps toward improving ties with Cuba, lifting restrictions on visits and money transfers by Cuban Americans and offering to restart immigration talks suspended in 2004. But he has said he will not scrap the longtime economic embargo until Havana makes democratic reforms and cleans up its human rights record. Ending the embargo would also entail congressional action.

Obama is facing pressure to move faster, both from Latin American allies and from key U.S. lawmakers. Bipartisan bills are pending in Congress that would eliminate all travel restrictions and ease the embargo.

Cuba has sent mixed signals about its willingness to respond to the U.S. gestures.

Latin American leaders say that isolating Cuba is anachronistic when most countries in the region have established relations with communist nations such as China. The OAS secretary general, José Miguel Insulza, has called the organization's 1962 suspension of Cuba "outdated" -- noting it is based on the island's alignment with a "communist bloc" that no longer exists. However, he has suggested that OAS members could postpone Cuba's full participation until it showed democratic reforms. [****]

Cuban exile organizations and some U.S. lawmakers are strongly opposed to readmitting the island.

"If we invite Cuba back in, in spite of their violations, what message are we sending to the rest of the hemisphere -- that it's okay to move backwards away from democracy and human rights, that there will be no repercussions for such actions?" Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), a Cuban American, demanded in a speech. He threatened to cut off U.S. funding for the OAS -- about 60 percent of its budget -- if the measure passed.

Clinton said last week that Cuba should be readmitted only if it abided by the OAS's Democratic Charter, a set of principles adopted in 2001 that commits countries to hold elections and to respect human rights and press freedoms.

Most Latin American countries broke relations with Cuba after its 1959 revolution. Nearly all have restored diplomatic ties, and the United States will soon be the only holdout in the hemisphere.

The Cuba ban could be lifted by a two-thirds vote of the OAS foreign ministers on Tuesday. However, the organization generally works by consensus, and several countries have indicated they do not want a showdown with the United States.

Diplomats have been trying in recent days to hammer out a compromise. U.S. diplomats introduced a resolution that would instruct the OAS to open a dialogue with Cuba about its "eventual reintegration," consistent with the principles of "democracy and full respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms."

A diplomat said last night that the United States appears to be softening its opposition to lifting the ban as long as Cuba's full reinstatement is contingent on moving toward democracy. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks.

Venezuela, an ally of Cuba, has indicated it will not support any resolution that includes such conditions. "This is 'Jurassic Park,' " fumed Venezuelan Ambassador Roy Chaderton. "We're still in the Cold War."

Some Latin American diplomats worry that the Cuba imbroglio could further marginalize the OAS. The organization is respected for monitoring elections, and it has tried to broker disputes in the hemisphere. But critics lambaste it as largely a debating society.

Venezuela has threatened to quit the organization and form an alternative regional group. It has set up a leftist trade alliance known as ALBA with several poor countries in Latin America. Cuba has derided the OAS as a U.S.-dominated tool of the United States.

Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a think tank in Washington, said the Cuba resolution has trapped the Obama administration between two of its priorities: democracy promotion and better relations with its neighbors. In 2001, the U.S. government supported the Democratic Charter, a milestone in a region once known for dictatorships. But Obama told hemispheric leaders in Trinidad and Tobago last month that he wanted to form closer partnerships and not have the United States dictate policy.

"There's really two different values at play here: multilateralism versus democracy. You can't have multilateralism and then let one country, i.e. the U.S., make the decision for a multilateral organization," Hakim said.
© 2009 The Washington Post Company

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In Reporting a Scandal, the Media Are Accused of Just Listening

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/world/asia/29japan.html
May 29, 2009
Memo From Tokyo
In Reporting a Scandal, the Media Are Accused of Just Listening
By MARTIN FACKLER [Japan] [Tokyo] [Japan’s domestic politics] [the far-too-cozy relationship between the Liberal Democratic Party (which is neither) and Japan’s media] [unique Japanese] [use psci350] [use ir text] [*****]
TOKYO — When Tokyo prosecutors arrested an aide to a prominent opposition political leader in March, they touched off a damaging scandal just as the entrenched Liberal

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/world/asia/29japan.html
May 29, 2009
Memo From Tokyo
In Reporting a Scandal, the Media Are Accused of Just Listening
By MARTIN FACKLER [Japan] [Tokyo] [Japan’s domestic politics] [the far-too-cozy relationship between the Liberal Democratic Party (which is neither) and Japan’s media] [unique Japanese] [use psci350] [use ir text] [*****]
TOKYO — When Tokyo prosecutors arrested an aide to a prominent opposition political leader in March, they touched off a damaging scandal just as the entrenched Liberal Democratic Party seemed to face defeat in coming elections. Many Japanese cried foul, but you would not know that from the coverage by Japan’s big newspapers and television networks.

Instead, they mostly reported at face value a stream of anonymous allegations, some of them thinly veiled leaks from within the investigation, of illegal campaign donations from a construction company to the opposition leader, Ichiro Ozawa. This month, after weeks of such negative publicity, Mr. Ozawa resigned as head of the opposition Democratic Party.

The resignation, too, provoked a rare outpouring of criticism aimed at the powerful prosecutors by Japanese across the political spectrum, and even from some former prosecutors, who seldom criticize their own in public. The complaints range from accusations of political meddling to concerns that the prosecutors may have simply been insensitive to the arrest’s timing.

But just as alarming, say scholars and former prosecutors, has been the failure of the news media to press the prosecutors for answers, particularly at a crucial moment in Japan’s democracy, when the nation may be on the verge of replacing a half-century of Liberal Democratic rule with more competitive two-party politics.

“The mass media are failing to tell the people what is at stake,” said Terumasa Nakanishi, a conservative scholar who teaches international politics at Kyoto University. “Japan could be about to lose its best chance to change governments and break its political paralysis, and the people don’t even know it.”

The arrest seemed to confirm fears among voters that Mr. Ozawa, a veteran political boss, was no cleaner than the Liberal Democrats he was seeking to replace. It also seemed to at least temporarily derail the opposition Democrats ahead of the elections, which must be called by early September. The party’s lead in opinion polls was eroded, though its ratings rebounded slightly after the selection this month of a new leader, Yukio Hatoyama, a Stanford-educated engineer.

Japanese journalists acknowledge that their coverage so far has been harsh on Mr. Ozawa and generally positive toward the investigation, though newspapers have run opinion pieces criticizing the prosecutors. But they bridle at the suggestion that they are just following the prosecutors’ lead, or just repeating information leaked to them.

“The Asahi Shimbun has never run an article based solely on a leak from prosecutors,” the newspaper, one of Japan’s biggest dailies, said in a written reply to questions from The New York Times.

Still, journalists admit that their coverage could raise questions about the Japanese news media’s independence, and not for the first time. Big news organizations here have long been accused of being too cozy with centers of power.

Indeed, scholars say coverage of the Ozawa affair echoes the positive coverage given to earlier arrests of others who dared to challenge the establishment, like the iconoclastic Internet entrepreneur Takafumi Horie.

“The news media should be watchdogs on authority,” said Yasuhiko Tajima, a journalism professor at Sophia University in Tokyo, “but they act more like authority’s guard dogs.”

While news media in the United States and elsewhere face similar criticisms of being too close to government, the problem is more entrenched here. Cozy ties with government agencies are institutionalized in Japan’s so-called press clubs, cartel-like arrangements that give exclusive access to members, usually large domestic news outlets.

Critics have long said this system leads to bland reporting that adheres to the official line. Journalists say they maintain their independence despite the press clubs. But they also say government officials sometimes try to force them to toe the line with threats of losing access to information.

Last month, the Tokyo Shimbun, a smaller daily known for coverage that is often feistier than that in Japan’s large national newspapers, was banned from talking with Tokyo prosecutors for three weeks after printing an investigative story about a governing-party lawmaker who had received donations from the same company linked to Mr. Ozawa.

The newspaper said it was punished simply for reporting something the prosecutors did not want made public. “Crossing the prosecutors is one of the last media taboos,” said Haruyoshi Seguchi, the paper’s chief reporter in the Tokyo prosecutors’ press club.

The news media’s failure to act as a check has allowed prosecutors to act freely without explaining themselves to the public, said Nobuto Hosaka, a member of Parliament for the opposition Social Democratic Party, who has written extensively about the investigation on his blog.

He said he believed Mr. Ozawa was singled out because of the Democratic Party’s campaign pledges to curtail Japan’s powerful bureaucrats, including the prosecutors. (The Tokyo prosecutors office turned down an interview request for this story because The Times is not in its press club.)

Japanese journalists defended their focus on the allegations against Mr. Ozawa, arguing that the public needed to know about a man who at the time was likely to become Japan’s next prime minister. They also say they have written more about Mr. Ozawa because of a pack-like charge among reporters to get scoops on those who are the focus of an investigation.

“There’s a competitive rush to write as much as we can about a scandal,” said Takashi Ichida, who covers the Tokyo prosecutors office for the Asahi Shimbun. But that does not explain why in this case so few Japanese reporters delved deeply into allegations that the company also sent money to Liberal Democratic lawmakers.

The answer, as most Japanese reporters will acknowledge, is that following the prosecutors’ lead was easier than risking their wrath by doing original reporting.

The news media can seem so unrelentingly supportive in their reporting on investigations like that into Mr. Ozawa that even some former prosecutors, who once benefited from such favorable coverage, have begun criticizing them.

“It felt great when I was a prosecutor,” said Norio Munakata, a retired, 36-year veteran Tokyo prosecutor. “But now as a private citizen, I have to say that I feel cheated.”
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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Russia: Arrests in Spare-Parts Ring

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/world/europe/29briefs-Russia.html
May 29, 2009
World Briefing | Europe
Russia: Arrests in Spare-Parts Ring
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY [Russia] [former USSR] [Vlad and his proclivities represent a lot of Russians who don’t care for the way the world has changed since 1991] [in new assertive Russia] [shadows of the early to mid 1990s when Russia could not afford to pay its soliders and Russia’s might was brunt of jokes] [similar problems to lose nukes but with conventional military hardware]] [use ir text[ [***]
A group of Russian military personnel stole spare parts for antiaircraft and radar

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/world/europe/29briefs-Russia.html
May 29, 2009
World Briefing | Europe
Russia: Arrests in Spare-Parts Ring
By CLIFFORD J. LEVY [Russia] [former USSR] [Vlad and his proclivities represent a lot of Russians who don’t care for the way the world has changed since 1991] [in new assertive Russia] [shadows of the early to mid 1990s when Russia could not afford to pay its soliders and Russia’s might was brunt of jokes] [similar problems to lose nukes but with conventional military hardware]] [use ir text[ [***]
A group of Russian military personnel stole spare parts for antiaircraft and radar systems, including highly classified ones, and sought to sell them in nearby countries before being arrested, Russian officials said Thursday. Many details about the scheme were not immediately made public, but officials said in a statement that the parts were intercepted before being exported. They said the ring, based in the St. Petersburg area, intended to sell the parts in three former Soviet republics — Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan — as well as Bulgaria. The officials gave no indication whether they suspected that the parts would then be transferred elsewhere. [***]

The spare parts were for systems that included the S-300, a highly sophisticated weapon that can track aircraft and fire at them from as many as 100 miles away. Iran has said that Russia has agreed to sell it the S-300, but the Kremlin has denied that it intended to do so. The Russian armed forces have been plagued by corruption, and insider rings that steal and resell military property are common.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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Graves Disturbed, Jewish Group Says

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/world/europe/29spain.html
May 29, 2009
Graves Disturbed, Jewish Group Says
By THE NEW YORK TIMES [Spain] [EU] [relations between orthodox Jews in America and authorities and Jews in Spain] [oy vey] [societal too] [in old days this is the sort of thing I might have used as an example of transnationalism in psci350] [****]
MADRID — A group of Orthodox Jewish leaders from New York has called on Spain to stop what they said is the excavation of an ancient Jewish burial site in Toledo, in central Spain.

Rabbi David Niederman, president of the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg and one of those leading the campaign, said that the cemetery lay beneath, and adjacent to, a school built in Toledo in the 1970s. Builders, who unearthed Jewish graves during the school’s original construction, were now excavating new ones in order to extend the school, he said.

Rabbi Niederman said the disinterment of graves, which is largely forbidden in Judaism, added a fresh violation to a painful history for Jews in Spain.

A spokesman for the Spanish Foreign Ministry said the regional government in Toledo had reached an agreement with local Jewish representatives over re-burying the remains.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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Misery Hangs Over Gaza Despite Pledges of Help

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/world/middleeast/29gaza.html
May 29, 2009
Misery Hangs Over Gaza Despite Pledges of Help
By ETHAN BRONNER [Palestine] [West Bank] [Fatahstine] [more information on what’s happening between Hamas and Fatah and faction within either?] [followp] [Abu Masen as a key?] [lol] [my own view] [he’s a decent man who wants best for his people and usually wants peace with Israel] [consequently, he can deliver almost nothing as he’s seen as to accommodating to Israel] [the day-to-day misery of regular Palestinians] [whatever one things abouyt Israel’s rights, these collective punishments are brutal] [***]
GAZA — Dozens of families still live in tents amid collapsed buildings and rusting pipes. With construction materials barred, a few are building mud-brick homes. Everything but

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/world/middleeast/29gaza.html
May 29, 2009
Misery Hangs Over Gaza Despite Pledges of Help
By ETHAN BRONNER [Palestine] [West Bank] [Fatahstine] [more information on what’s happening between Hamas and Fatah and faction within either?] [followp] [Abu Masen as a key?] [lol] [my own view] [he’s a decent man who wants best for his people and usually wants peace with Israel] [consequently, he can deliver almost nothing as he’s seen as to accommodating to Israel] [the day-to-day misery of regular Palestinians] [whatever one things abouyt Israel’s rights, these collective punishments are brutal] [***]
GAZA — Dozens of families still live in tents amid collapsed buildings and rusting pipes. With construction materials barred, a few are building mud-brick homes. Everything but food and medicine has to be smuggled through desert tunnels from Egypt. Among the items that people seek is an addictive pain reliever used to fight depression.

Four months after Israel waged a war here to stop Hamas rocket fire and two years after Hamas took full control of this coastal strip, Gaza is like an island adrift. Squeezed from without by an Israeli and Egyptian boycott and from within by their Islamist rulers, the 1.5 million people here are cut off from any productivity or hope.

“Right after the war, everybody came — journalists, foreign governments and charities promising to help,” said Hashem Dardona, 47, who is unemployed. “Now, nobody comes.”

But with the Obama administration pressing Israel to allow in reconstruction materials, and with attention increasingly focused on internal Palestinian divisions, Gaza will soon be back at the center of Middle East peace negotiations. The Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, met with President Obama on Thursday in Washington.

For many Israelis, Gaza is a symbol of all that is wrong with Palestinian sovereignty, which they view increasingly as an opportunity for anti-Israeli forces, notably Iran, to get within rocket range.

That leaves Gaza suspended in a state of misery that defies easy categorization. It is, of course, crowded and poor, but it is better off than nearly all of Africa as well as parts of Asia. There is no acute malnutrition, and infant mortality rates compare with those in Egypt and Jordan, according to Mahmoud Daher of the World Health Organization here.

This is because although Israel and Egypt have shut the borders for the past three years in an effort to squeeze Hamas, Israel rations aid daily, allowing in about 100 trucks of food and medicine. Military officers in Tel Aviv count the calories to avoid a disaster. And the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees runs schools and medical clinics that are clean and efficient.

But there are many levels of deprivation short of catastrophe, and Gaza inhabits most of them. It has almost nothing of a functioning economy apart from basic commerce and farming. Education has declined terribly; medical care is declining.

There are tens of thousands of educated and ambitious people here, teachers, engineers, translators, business managers, who have nothing to do but grow frustrated. They cannot practice their professions and they cannot leave. They collect welfare and smoke in cafes. A United Nations survey shows a spike in domestic violence.

Some people say they have started to take a small capsule known as Tramal, the commercial name for an opiate-like painkiller that increases sexual desire and a sense of control. Hamas has recently warned of imprisonment for those who traffic in and take the drug.

Yet the pills arrive, along with clothing, furniture and cigarettes, through the hundreds of tunnels punched into the desert at the southern border town of Rafah by rough-edged entrepreneurs who pay the Hamas authorities a tax on the goods.

Similar tunnels also serve as conduits for arms. Israel periodically bombs those in hopes of weakening Hamas, which says it will never recognize Israel and will reserve the right to use violence against it until it leaves all the land it won in the 1967 war. After that, there would be a 10-year truce while the next steps were contemplated, although the Hamas charter calls for the destruction of Israel in any borders.

Israel began the siege after Hamas won Palestinian legislative elections in 2006. It was tightened after Hamas pushed the Palestinian Authority out of Gaza in June 2007. Iranian backing for Hamas has added to Israel’s conviction that the siege is the right path.

The aim is to keep Gaza at subsistence and offer a contrast with the West Bank, which in theory benefits from foreign aid and economic and political development. Hamas supporters will then realize their mistake. The plan has not gone well, however, partly because the West Bank under Israeli occupation remains no one’s idea of paradise and partly because Hamas seems more in control here every year, with cleaner streets and lower crime, although its popularity is hard to gauge.

“Hamas is learning from its mistakes and getting stronger and stronger,” said Sharhabeel al-Zaeem, a prominent lawyer here. He and others have been urging international officials to get construction materials and other goods into Gaza through the closed crossings.

They argue that the current system serves only Hamas, since it taxes the illicit tunnel goods and limited currency exchanges and is not blamed by the people for the outside siege. If glass and cement were allowed in through the crossings with Israel, they say, Hamas would not get the credit and the Palestinian Authority could collect the taxes.

“The people of Gaza are depressed, and depressed people turn to myth and fantasy, meaning religion and drugs,” said Jawdat Khoudary, a building contractor. “This kind of a prison feeds extremism. Let people see out to see a different version of reality.”

Israeli officials remain skeptical of opening the borders. Many believe that their war served as deterrence and note the drastic reduction in rocket fire as evidence. They fear that steel or cement will be siphoned off by Hamas for arms. But they are feeling pressure from the Americans and United Nations, and they are discussing a pilot project.

Meanwhile, Gaza feels more and more like a Hamas state and less linked to the West Bank. Men are increasingly bearded, women are more covered. Hamas is the main employer. Schools and courts, once run by the Fatah-dominated Palestinian Authority, are all Hamas. The government is collecting information on companies and nonprofit groups and seeking control over them.

Many here are especially worried about the young. At a program aimed at helping those traumatized by the January war, teenagers are offered colored markers to draw anything they like, says Farah Abu Qasem, 20, a student of English translation who volunteers at the program.

“They seem only to choose black and to draw things like tanks,” she said. “And when we ask them to draw something that represents the future, they leave the paper blank.”
Taghreed El-Khodary contributed reporting.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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Allotting of Iraqi Oil Rights May Stoke Hostility

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/world/middleeast/29kirkuk.html
May 29, 2009
Allotting of Iraqi Oil Rights May Stoke Hostility
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS and SUADAD AL-SALHY [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [renewed sectarian tensions and fault lines] [followup] [Saddam continues to preoccupy many –iraqis well after his death] [provincial elections last Saturday] [post-election reports that –ir relatively calm with apparent victories for secular parties over Islamists] [now the US is focused on big elections set for December after which the US intends to drawdown rather quickly] [goings on as June SOFA provisions loom] [***]
KIRKUK, Iraq — Sheik Habih Shawqi Hamakan peered through his binoculars on a recent afternoon at a sight he considers, despite the rising columns of black smoke that

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/world/middleeast/29kirkuk.html
May 29, 2009
Allotting of Iraqi Oil Rights May Stoke Hostility
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS and SUADAD AL-SALHY [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [renewed sectarian tensions and fault lines] [followup] [Saddam continues to preoccupy many –iraqis well after his death] [provincial elections last Saturday] [post-election reports that –ir relatively calm with apparent victories for secular parties over Islamists] [now the US is focused on big elections set for December after which the US intends to drawdown rather quickly] [goings on as June SOFA provisions loom] [***]
KIRKUK, Iraq — Sheik Habih Shawqi Hamakan peered through his binoculars on a recent afternoon at a sight he considers, despite the rising columns of black smoke that blot out the sun, pure beauty.

As far as the eye can see are oil fields, among the most productive in Iraq. He turned, gesturing to his rambling two-story house with its garden of blossoming pink and yellow rosebushes. That, too, sits on an oil field.

The sheik is one of thousands of Kurds who have moved to Kirkuk, an unstable oil town in northern Iraq, since the 2003 United States-led invasion and claimed plots of land not theirs to build houses. Some of the homes, illegal facts on the ground aimed at furthering Kurdish claims to Kirkuk, [***]sit a mere half mile from towering flames of natural gas among the oil fields.

Their presence is one of many pressure points converging at a critical time in Kirkuk, as rights to those fields are scheduled to be awarded to the highest bidding international oil company next month as part of Iraq’s larger effort to bolster its slumping economy by nearly tripling oil production over the next six years. [***]

Kirkuk Province, wedged between Kurdistan and the rest of Iraq, is smaller than Connecticut but produces as much oil as Alaska. It is believed to possess as much as one-sixth of Iraq’s total petroleum reserves.

Both Kurds and the central government have long claimed Kirkuk as their own — and many residents and Western observers fear that the awarding of the contract, along with the bonanza of jobs and cash expected to follow, may decisively stoke hostility among the Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens who live here. Many worry this may tear at Iraqi unity and embroil the disputed territory in greater violence. At worst, it could bring the open ethnic warfare that many have predicted since security for the province was handed over to Kurdish forces after the 2003 invasion.

Any dispute over Kirkuk is of concern to Turkey, Syria and Iran, each with a minority Kurdish population, and could ignite simmering Arab-Kurdish tensions throughout northern Iraq, the country’s most restive region.

Still, even though the status of Kirkuk remains unresolved and it is unclear how much oil actually lies beneath it, many of the world’s largest oil corporations are competing for the contract here. It is one of eight large but underperforming oil and gas fields throughout Iraq for which the government is scheduled to award production rights at the end of June.

“By opening bids on fields in Kirkuk, Prime Minister Maliki is clearly poking the Kurds in the eye by asserting Iraqi sovereignty over oil in territories whose status is constitutionally in dispute,” said Joost Hiltermann, an Iraq expert at the International Crisis Group.

In recent weeks, even after a summit meeting in Berlin among Kirkuk’s Arabs, Kurds, Turkmens and Assyrians, violence in the province has increased. This spring, Kirkuk city has been rocked by car bombings, shootings and suicide attacks that have killed at least a dozen police officers, three Assyrian Christians, a high-ranking Arab police official and workers going to the oil fields.

Kirkuk’s predominately Kurdish security forces say they need help controlling the violence, but not from the largely Arab Iraqi Army troops stationed on the city’s outskirts. The American military held a series of meetings with Arab and Kurdish political leaders and security forces this month without reaching an accord to allow an Iraqi Army unit to operate in the city. [****]

“We hope it is not going back again to very serious violence, but all signs are that it will,” said Maj. Gen. Turhan Abdul Rahman Yasif, deputy chief of the province’s police force.

A United Nations report last month offered several recommendations to reduce tensions, including making Kirkuk a region jointly administered by Iraq and Kurdistan. Residents would ultimately hold a referendum to decide their future.

Kirkuk’s population of Kurds, Arabs, Turkmens and Assyrian Christians generally live apart from one another in mutual suspicion. The other groups accuse the Kurds of seeking to annex Kirkuk and its oil wealth into the semiautonomous Kurdistan Regional Government, which could give Kurdistan the economic underpinning to become an independent state.

But there has been almost no oil exploration in Iraq for decades. The Oil Ministry says Kirkuk contains about 15 billion barrels of oil, or 16 percent of Iraq’s total, and 2 percent of the world’s proven oil reserves.

But most oil industry estimates put Kirkuk’s reserves at between 5.5 billion barrels and 10 billion barrels.

Revenue Watch Institute, a New York-based nonprofit natural resources policy group, estimated in a 2006 report that 62 percent of Kirkuk’s petroleum had already been extracted.

“That means this super giant field is at the final stages of its life,” the report said. [interesting] [****]

But Mena’a Abdullah Alubaid, director general of Iraq’s North Oil Company, a branch of the Oil Ministry that oversees Kirkuk’s fields, insists that the fields will last until 2074.

Wayne Kelley, managing director of RSK Ltd., an independent oil engineering firm, said the petroleum company that ultimately wins the Kirkuk field would face issues including the potential for violence and the likely contamination of part of the field with waste oil.

“Nowhere in the world has a field of anywhere near this size been so grossly mismanaged,” he said.

Another significant impediment could be the growing population of Kurdish settlers, many of whom have built homes on land that the Oil Ministry says is not theirs.

The families say they were forced out of Kirkuk by Saddam Hussein’s government, which bulldozed their villages. They call the contested city their “Jerusalem,” and some said they would take up arms to stay.

Sheik Hamakan, 60, said that after years of exile in Iran and elsewhere he had finally satisfied his longing to be home. He will not, he vowed, stand aside for government bulldozers to raze his family’s house a second time.

“I won’t leave,” he said. “It would be up to them to demolish the village on my head.”

Reporting was contributed by Riyadh Mohammed, Abeer Mohammed, Sam Dagher and Mohamed Hussein from Baghdad, and Tareq Maher and an Iraqi employee of The New York Times from Kirkuk.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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Iran: Bomb at Mosque Kills 15

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/world/middleeast/29briefs-Iran.html
May 29, 2009
World Briefing | Middle East
Iran: Bomb at Mosque Kills 15
By NAZILA FATHI [iran] [domestic politics intersect foreign policy] [upcoming presidential elections next month] [incumbency has its priviledges: controlling parts of meadia where Ahmadinejad might otherwise take a beating] [as elections approach in just weeks, Ahmadinejad and mullahs have gone wobbly] [difficult to know who’s trying ot create chaos before elections only couple weeks away] [*****]
A blast at a Shiite mosque in the southeastern city of Zahedan, near the border with Pakistan, [Sunni Arab minority?] [Kurdish population?] [Baluchi population?] [***]killed

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/world/middleeast/29briefs-Iran.html
May 29, 2009
World Briefing | Middle East
Iran: Bomb at Mosque Kills 15
By NAZILA FATHI [iran] [domestic politics intersect foreign policy] [upcoming presidential elections next month] [incumbency has its priviledges: controlling parts of meadia where Ahmadinejad might otherwise take a beating] [as elections approach in just weeks, Ahmadinejad and mullahs have gone wobbly] [difficult to know who’s trying ot create chaos before elections only couple weeks away] [*****]
A blast at a Shiite mosque in the southeastern city of Zahedan, near the border with Pakistan, [Sunni Arab minority?] [Kurdish population?] [Baluchi population?] [***]killed 15 people and wounded more than 55 on Thursday evening, the news agency ISNA reported. The bomb went off at 7:45 p.m. at Ali-ibn-Abitaleb, the second largest Shiite mosque in the city. ISNA said the bomb had been hidden in a bag in the men’s section of the mosque.

Zahedan is the capital city of Sistan-Baluchistan Province, near the border with Pakistan and Afghanistan. The majority of Iran’s population are Shiite Muslims, but a large number of Sunnis live in the province. [***]No group immediately took responsibility for the attack. An armed opposition group called Jundullah has carried out similar attacks in the region in the past, including one on a bus carrying members of the Revolutionary Guards in 2007. The group says it is fighting discrimination against Sunnis by Iranian authorities. Iran says the group is a terrorist organization with ties to Al Qaeda.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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N. Korea Fires a Missile as Gates Heads to Region

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/world/asia/30gates.html
May 30, 2009
N. Korea Fires a Missile as Gates Heads to Region
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and CHOE SANG-HUN [DPRK] [6-way talks] [anyone who has watched dear leader’s regime operate knows this is standard-operating procedure] [you’re just sort of stuck with it] [now all hell is breaking loose with US, China, Russia, and ROK exercised about latest antics: new detonation and declaring armistice meaningless] [***] [obama white house] [SecDef Gates] [archive in govt too] [***]
ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Friday that the United States had detected no unusual military movement in North Korea

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/world/asia/30gates.html
May 30, 2009
N. Korea Fires a Missile as Gates Heads to Region
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and CHOE SANG-HUN [DPRK] [6-way talks] [anyone who has watched dear leader’s regime operate knows this is standard-operating procedure] [you’re just sort of stuck with it] [now all hell is breaking loose with US, China, Russia, and ROK exercised about latest antics: new detonation and declaring armistice meaningless] [***] [obama white house] [SecDef Gates] [archive in govt too] [***]
ANDERSEN AIR FORCE BASE, Guam — Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said Friday that the United States had detected no unusual military movement in North Korea and had no plans to reinforce some 28,000 American forces in South Korea after North Korea threatened is neighbor to the South with a military attack.

A South Korean Defense Ministry official said later that North Korea had test-fired a short-range missile from its northeast coast on Friday. The official declined to be identified because of the sensitivity of the issue. Since it tested a nuclear device last Monday, triggering an international crisis, Korea has test-fired at least six missiles.

Mr. Gates made his comments before the latest missile launch, but military officials traveling with him indicated it would be unlikely to change his assessment. By military movements, Mr. Gates appeared to be referring to troop movements or other signs that the North was preparing for an impending military conflict. [so far they haven’t acted suicidal in all these years] [****]

In a continuing sign of nervousness in the region, Chinese fishing boats were seen pulling out of ports in the North and heading elsewhere, according to South Korean and other news reports. From Yeonpyeong, the South Korean island closest to the North, about a dozen Chinese ships were seen moving away, The Associated Press reported, quoting South Korea’s Yonhap news agency which also said that the number of Chinese vessels fishing in the area had fallen from more than 280 earlier this week to about 140.

In Seoul, the Yonhap news agency said North Korea had test-fired a new surface-to-air missile with a range of about 160 miles. The Defense Ministry official said the missile was launched from the Musudan-ri missile base — the same base as was used on April 5 to launch a long-range rocket in what was seen as a test of North Korea’s intercontinental ballistic missile technology.

The launch on Friday came as hundreds of thousands of South Koreans attended an emotional state funeral in Seoul for their former president, Roh Moo-hyun. Mr. Roh committed suicide a week ago in the midst of a corruption scandal. [Mr Roh was especially friendly with DPRK so it’s rather rude how they reciprocated his friendship] [***]

Maintaining its strident rhetoric, North Korea said Friday would respond to action against it by the United Nations Security Council, which is discussing tough measures against Pyongyang. “If the U.N. Security Council makes a further provocation, it will be inevitable for us to take further self-defense measures,” the Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency. [these guys simply have no sense of propriety] [diplomacy? What’s that] [that when you rattle your saber repeatedly] [***]

Speaking to reporters on his plane en route to Singapore for an annual security conference that will de dominated by North Korea’s nuclear test, Mr. Gates said he will use the gathering to reassure America’s strongest allies in northeast Asia, Japan and South Korea, of President Obama’s commitment to their defense in the face of the latest of a half-century of threats from North Korea.

“I’m not aware of any military moves in the North that are out of the ordinary,” Mr. Gates said. The defense secretary said that he saw no need to bolster American troops in South Korea, and that “should the North Koreans do something rash and extremely provocative militarily,” the United States “has the forces to deal with it.”

The North tested a nuclear device and launched three missiles in defiance of international sanctions on Monday, fired more missiles on Tuesday and threatened military strikes against South Korea on Wednesday. By Thursday, the South Korean and American militaries had raised their alert level on North Korea to the second highest, invoked when “a grave threat” is feared from the North.

But Mr. Gates said the Obama administration considered the test aggressive but not a crisis. Nonetheless, he echoed other senior officials by saying that North Korea’s export of its nuclear technology to other countries was a major concern.

“These guys have shown a penchant in the past for selling anything they’ve been able to develop,” Mr. Gates said.

North Korea’s military threats on Wednesday against the South, which were more belligerent than usual, were in response to South Korea’s decision on Tuesday to join an American-led operation to stop and search ships carrying suspicious cargo. The operation, called the Proliferation Security Initiative, was created by former President George W. Bush in 2003 and now includes 95 countries.

North Korea reacted by calling South Korea’s action a “declaration of war.”

North Korea’s nuclear test on Monday, an underground blast in the mountains of Kilju near the Chinese border, was the country’s second nuclear test. So far, American officials believe it to be more of a successful explosion than North Korea’s first nuclear test, conducted in 2006 in the same spot and later judged only partially successful. [***]

In Singapore, Mr. Gates is to attend the annual Shangri-la Dialogue, a regional defense conference organized by the International Institute for Strategic Studies and named for the luxury hotel in which it is held. While there, Mr. Gates is to meet with the highest-ranking defense official sent by China, the deputy chief of staff of the general staff for the People’s Liberation Army, Lieut. Gen. Ma Xiaotian, and is likely to push China to follow up strong condemnations of North Korea’s test with action. [***]

Mr. Gates said that China, which has some influence on North Korea, could help by strongly supporting strengthened sanctions against North Korea that the United States is now pushing in the United Nations Security Council. The sanctions could include banning imports and exports of all arms — only heavy weapons are restricted now — and cutting off North Korea’s access to international banks.

In Singapore, Mr. Gates will also meet with the defense ministers of Japan and South Korea. He is to be joined by James Steinberg, the deputy secretary of state, and Dennis Blair, the director of national intelligence.

Mr. Gates also told reporters that six-party talks between the United States, North Korea and other countries in the region had not worked so far.

“They clearly have not had the impact in North Korea that any of us have wanted,” Mr. Gates said. “That doesn’t mean they’re useless, by any means, and we are still committed to the six-party talks.”
Elisabeth Bumiller reported from Andersen Air Force Base, Guam, and Choe Sang-hun from Seoul, South Korea.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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Europe Objects Anew to Detainees

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/28/AR2009052803920.html
Europe Objects Anew to Detainees
Reluctance Centers On U.S. Refusal to Also Admit Inmates
By Craig Whitlock and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, May 29, 2009 [Germany] [Berlin] [EU3] [America’s gitmo detainees] [Europeans have been lambasting the US for them for as long as I can remember] [despite several Euro govt’s complicity in renditions] [now they are telling the US to take the detainees?] [clearly, it become politicized in both US and respective Euro domestic politics] [followup] [***]
BERLIN, May 28 -- The Obama administration's push to resettle at least 50 Guantanamo Bay prisoners in Europe is meeting fresh resistance as European officials

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/28/AR2009052803920.html
Europe Objects Anew to Detainees
Reluctance Centers On U.S. Refusal to Also Admit Inmates
By Craig Whitlock and Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, May 29, 2009 [Germany] [Berlin] [EU3] [America’s gitmo detainees] [Europeans have been lambasting the US for them for as long as I can remember] [despite several Euro govt’s complicity in renditions] [now they are telling the US to take the detainees?] [clearly, it become politicized in both US and respective Euro domestic politics] [followup] [***]
BERLIN, May 28 -- The Obama administration's push to resettle at least 50 Guantanamo Bay prisoners in Europe is meeting fresh resistance as European officials demand that the United States first give asylum to some inmates before they will do the same. [***]

Rising opposition in the U.S. Congress to allowing Guantanamo prisoners on American soil has not gone over well in Europe. Officials from countries that previously indicated they were willing to accept inmates now say it may be politically impossible for them to do so if the United States does not reciprocate. [***]

"If the U.S. refuses to take these people, why should we?" said Thomas Silberhorn, a member of the German Parliament from Bavaria, where the White House wants to relocate nine Chinese Uighur prisoners. "If all 50 states in America say, 'Sorry, we can't take them,' this is not very convincing."

Interior ministers from the 27-member European Union are pressing the Obama administration to agree to a joint declaration that would commit the United States to accept some prisoners, something Congress has been highly reluctant to do.

European officials involved in the negotiations said Obama administration officials had assured them that some detainees who are not considered security threats would be released in the United States, while others would be prosecuted in U.S. courts. [that was before the GOP rans the scary music adds with terrorists being released in America’s heartland] [****]

But now European governments are seeking fresh assurances that the White House will be able to follow through on its pledge, given recent opposition by Democratic and Republican leaders in Congress to permitting any prisoners on U.S. territory.

Congress has refused to authorize $80 million Obama wants to pay for closing the detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, until he reveals exactly what he plans to do with the 240 prisoners held there.

In a speech last week, Obama said that some inmates would be tried in federal courts or military commissions and that others would probably be held in preventive detention, although he did not say where. U.S. courts have ordered that 21, including the Uighurs, be released, and there are 50 more "who we have determined can be safely transferred to another country," Obama said.

Several European countries, including Spain, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland and Portugal, said they were willing to give a new home to Guantanamo inmates after Obama announced in January that he would empty the prison within a year. Guantanamo has been a human rights sore point in Europe since President George W. Bush opened it in 2002. [***]

Agreements to resettle individual prisoners, however, have been slow in coming. Britain and France have each accepted one Guantanamo prisoner since Obama took office, but no other arrangements have come to fruition.
German Assent Evaporated
Perhaps the thorniest case so far has involved a group of prisoners that many U.S. and European officials had thought would be the easiest to resolve: the Uighurs, members of a Muslim ethnic group from China. [***]

There are 17 Uighurs at Guantanamo; all were captured in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. A U.S. federal judge ruled in October that none poses a security threat and that they should be freed. But American officials have struggled to find a place for them.

Attorneys for the 17 men have said they cannot be sent back to China because, as members of a persecuted minority group, they would face imprisonment or even death. Other countries have been reluctant to accept them for fear of antagonizing the Chinese government, which considers them terrorists.

Recently, U.S. officials thought they had found a solution. Leaders in Germany, which hosts the largest expatriate community of Uighurs in Europe, indicated a willingness to resettle some of the men.

After weeks of informal discussions, the State Department delivered a formal request last month to the German government to accept nine Uighurs. The response was positive. German diplomats supported the idea. Interior Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble, a leading opponent of accepting Guantanamo prisoners, softened his position in a meeting with Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., saying he would consider helping under certain conditions. [***]

In Munich, the capital of the southern state of Bavaria, the City Council passed a resolution saying it would be glad to welcome the Uighurs. Members of Munich's Uighur community, about 500 immigrants, promised to line up jobs and homes for the former detainees.

"It is important to send the signal that we should do what we can to help close Guantanamo," Friedrich Graffe, director of social services for the city of Munich, said in an interview. "If the Uighurs should come to Munich, we would take care of them."

Since then, however, negotiations have stumbled. German officials complained that the Obama administration has not shared enough details from the Uighurs' files to allow an independent assessment of whether they pose a security risk. More trouble emerged when Washington stipulated that the Uighurs would be barred from traveling to the United States. [***]

"If the U.S. says they should come here, but they cannot travel to the U.S., we would have to ask why not?" said a German Interior Ministry official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the negotiations. "Does that mean they are dangerous?"
Protest in Northern Virginia
The Obama administration is facing similar problems at home.

In a bipartisan eruption, lawmakers across the country have protested any relocation of detainees in their states. One of the most adamant has been Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R), in whose Northern Virginia district the administration hopes to resettle several Uighurs.

When constituents with inside information alerted him May 1 that a plane was being readied for the "imminent" transfer of two to five Uighurs, Wolf shot off a letter to Obama asking the president to "declassify all intelligence regarding their capture, detention, and your administration's assessment of the threat they may pose to Americans, prior to any decision to release them." Obama did not respond, but Wolf's chief of staff received a call from the White House accusing him of playing politics with the issue, Wolf said.

Earlier, Wolf added, the Justice Department had given him an informal promise not to carry out any resettlements without congressional consultation in exchange for his agreement not to grill Holder on the Uighurs during the attorney general's House testimony April 23.

Wolf's letter to Obama was followed by one to Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano on May 4, and another to Holder on May 13. The Uighurs, Wolf told Holder, are "trained terrorists" and members of an al-Qaeda affiliate, allegations that the military and federal courts had dismissed. [sadly politicized] [congressman Wolf clearly knows better than others whether they qualify as dangerously trained terrorists] [****]

Although neither Napolitano nor Holder responded to his letters, Wolf said, the Justice Department set up a classified meeting with him last week. The session ended abruptly and unsatisfactorily, he said, when Ronald H. Weich, the assistant attorney general for legislative affairs, was unable or unwilling to fully answer Wolf's questions.

"My sense is that Holder just wants to release someone so he can go back and say [to the Europeans], 'Well, we've taken one or two or three,' " Wolf said yesterday.

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd declined to respond directly to Wolf's assertions, saying in an e-mail that the department has briefed Wolf and other members of Congress "on the detainee review process. . . . We will continue to do so as we work to close the detention facilities at Guantanamo Bay."

A White House aide noted that "a federal judge ordered the release of the Uighurs during the previous administration, and we've been working hard to implement that order, bearing in mind that we will not release any detainee who would endanger the security of the American people."

"Contacts with the congressman's office," the aide said of Wolf, "were the result of an effort to bring him into the consultative process" of determining where the detainees should go.
Some Germans Digging In
The hitches that have developed in admitting some of the Uighurs to the United States have, in turn, severely hampered efforts to send the nine other Uighurs to Germany.

"It's very clear that the [Obama] administration has to bring some of them to the U.S.," said Susan Baker Manning, a Washington lawyer who represents two Uighurs seeking to go to Munich.

"Our European allies have made it quite clear that they expect our help and participation in solving the problem of Guantanamo, which we created," she said.

Meantime, some influential German authorities are digging in their heels. Joachim Herrmann, Bavaria's interior minister, said in an interview that he would not completely rule out accepting some Uighurs. But he said the Obama administration needed to do a much better job of allaying German concerns.

Herrmann also said he was not convinced by Washington's insistence that the Uighurs do not pose a threat.

"These are people who participated in terror camps, who had military training, who are radicalized, who do not follow democratic principles, who follow radical goals," he said. "And we do not want to accept such people."

Siegfried Benker, a Munich City Council member and local Green Party leader, said officials such as Herrmann are trying to stir fears by portraying the Uighurs as sinister.

"With the Uighurs, there is no proof at all that they were guilty. They have been cleared from being enemy combatants, and the U.S. no longer sees them as being suspicious," said Benker, whose party endorsed the resolution welcoming the Uighurs to Munich. "But the opponents act like anyone who comes from Guantanamo has to be a terrorist. They do not allow for innocence. Apparently they hope for votes."
DeYoung reported from Washington. Special correspondent Shannon Smiley in Munich contributed to this report.
© 2009 The Washington Post Company

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Sudan Says 244 Have Died in Clashes This Week

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/world/africa/29sudan.html
May 29, 2009
Sudan Says 244 Have Died in Clashes This Week
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE [Sudan] [Chad] [Darfur genocide shares border with eastern Chad where border has become nearly meaningless at times] [Sudan charges Chadians with aiding and abetting insurgents and almost surely that happens] [tribunal has issued warrants for Bashir’s war crimes in past couple months] [now, at least one of souther rebels about whom West seldom reads is being charged for war crimes too] [followup] [***]
KHARTOUM, Sudan (Agence France-Presse) — Clashes between major Arab nomadic

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/world/africa/29sudan.html
May 29, 2009
Sudan Says 244 Have Died in Clashes This Week
By AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE [Sudan] [Chad] [Darfur genocide shares border with eastern Chad where border has become nearly meaningless at times] [Sudan charges Chadians with aiding and abetting insurgents and almost surely that happens] [tribunal has issued warrants for Bashir’s war crimes in past couple months] [now, at least one of souther rebels about whom West seldom reads is being charged for war crimes too] [followup] [***]
KHARTOUM, Sudan (Agence France-Presse) — Clashes between major Arab nomadic tribes this week in the South Kordofan region of Sudan have killed 244 people, [***]including police officers, Interior Minister Ibrahim Mahmoud Hamad said Thursday.

Mr. Hamad said at a cabinet meeting that 75 police officers were killed in the fighting, along with 169 members of the two tribes, the official Suna news agency reported.

Those responsible will be brought to justice and the authorities will take steps to disarm civilians, he also said.

Members of the tribes — the Misseriya and Rizeyqat — clashed last weekend near the village of Meiram, near the border between South Kordofan and Darfur, more than 500 miles southwest of Khartoum, the capital.

When Sudanese police officers interceded on Tuesday to break up the fighting, they were attacked by 3,000 horsemen from the Rizeyqat tribe. [horsemen typically indicates Arab tribesman] [Arab tribesman fighting Khartoum govt?] [****]

That attack led to many of the deaths of police officers and civilians, the minister said.

Members of the two tribes said that at least 100 people had died in the fighting, while local newspapers reported that more than 150 people had been killed.

The tribes live on either side of the border dividing South Kordofan and Darfur, and they have clashed in the past over access to drinking water for their horses and livestock.

This week, the authorities called on both sides to pull back to avoid additional fighting.

“The situation worries us a lot, because the incidents took place in a sensitive sector,” said Kouider Zerrouk, a spokesman of the United Nations Advance Mission in Sudan.

South Kordofan, which lies between Darfur and South Sudan, is one of the most unstable parts of the country. [***]
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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29 Militants Killed in Afghanistan

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/world/asia/29afghan.html
May 29, 2009
29 Militants Killed in Afghanistan
By ABDUL WAHEED WAFA and ALAN COWELL [Afghanistan] [hydra] [Pakistan became the clear staging area for operations into Afghanistan during 2007] [AfPak] [incredible cockup from way back in early Bush 43 first term] [signs of this year’s spring offensive underway] [followup] [large quantities of US armaments falling into Taliban hands?] [more on the most recent incident with serious collateral damamge] [meanwhile, additional situations that turn the hearst and minds away from the coalition’s efforts] [use psc469b] [***]
KABUL, Afghanistan — American and Afghan forces backed by airstrikes engaged in a “fierce firefight” with Taliban insurgents in a remote and mountainous region of eastern

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/world/asia/29afghan.html
May 29, 2009
29 Militants Killed in Afghanistan
By ABDUL WAHEED WAFA and ALAN COWELL [Afghanistan] [hydra] [Pakistan became the clear staging area for operations into Afghanistan during 2007] [AfPak] [incredible cockup from way back in early Bush 43 first term] [signs of this year’s spring offensive underway] [followup] [large quantities of US armaments falling into Taliban hands?] [more on the most recent incident with serious collateral damamge] [meanwhile, additional situations that turn the hearst and minds away from the coalition’s efforts] [use psc469b] [***]
KABUL, Afghanistan — American and Afghan forces backed by airstrikes engaged in a “fierce firefight” with Taliban insurgents in a remote and mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan on Thursday, killing at least 29 militants in an effort to capture one of their leaders, [***]according to a joint military statement.

But a Taliban spokesman, Zabiullah Mujahid, gave a vastly different account of the battle, saying that the militants had killed 15 members of the coalition forces and captured four Afghan police officers. The spokesman said no Taliban fighters had been killed. [***]

American military officials said the leader in question, known as Mullah Sangeen, [***]is a “fairly significant” commander of the Haqqani network, a radical group headed by the Taliban commander Maulavi Jalaluddin Haqqani that is believed to be behind some of the largest attacks in recent years. Unconfirmed reports surfaced in 2007 and in 2008 that Mullah Sangeen was killed, but both proved untrue. [***]

The battle was part of a widening effort by the Obama administration to crush Taliban and Qaeda insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan. The intensifying conflict has led to Afghan claims that civilian casualties caused by American airstrikes are undermining public support for the war.

The joint statement on Thursday said that “no noncombatants were injured during this operation” and said that the 29 dead were all militants. They included six insurgents who blew themselves up with suicide vests without causing coalition fatalities, the statement said.

In the battle, coalition forces advanced under a hail of fire from militants on higher ground, the statement said.

The firefight took place about 100 miles southwest of the eastern city of Khost along the border with Pakistan. Afghan and American forces had been directed by intelligence reports to a remote militant encampment used as a staging area for attacks in Afghanistan’s Paktika Province. When the forces arrived, they came under fire, the statement said.

The military accused the commander Mullah Sangeen of helping senior leaders of Al Qaeda and “hundreds of foreign fighters” infiltrate Afghanistan from Pakistan.

Hamidullah Zhuak, a spokesman for the provincial governor of Paktika, said officials had counted the bodies of 34 insurgents, most of them from Arab countries and Pakistan. The battle took place far from populated areas, reducing the risk of civilian casualties, he said. The Taliban spokesman denied that any non-Afghan fighters had been involved in the battle.

In a separate episode on Thursday, Afghan Army troops killed 35 militants and wounded 13 others in the Deh Chopan district of Zabul Province, according to American military officials. The Afghan force, backed by American troops, was conducting a reconnaissance patrol when it responded to fire from militants.

The issue of civilian casualties caused by the United States in Afghanistan has been heightened in the wake of the bombing of the western province of Farah. Afghan officials said 140 civilians were killed in American airstrikes during a battle with the Taliban there on May 4. The American military has said 20 or 30 civilians may have died, along with 60 to 65 Taliban fighters.

The Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission, which carried out its own investigation, said this week that American forces had used “disproportionate” force in the attack, which it said might have killed up to 97 civilians, most of them children.
Abdul Waheed Wafa reported from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Alan Cowell from Paris. Adam B. Ellick contributed reporting from Kabul, and Taimoor Shah from Kandahar.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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Linked Attacks in Northwest Pakistan Kill 13

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/28/AR2009052800181.html
Linked Attacks in Northwest Pakistan Kill 13
Tactics, Timing Suggest Increased Sophistication
By Griff Witte
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, May 29, 2009 [Pakistan] [hydra] [Pakistan became the clear staging area for operations into Afghanistan during 2007] [AfPak] [additional indications that offensive is on: Taliban getting bolder in their stronghold] [hard to know where the insurgency ends and common criminality begins] [Swat and other accomodations] [followup] [use psci469b] [Taliban and jihadis move closer to Islamabad] [general populace has fleed Talibanization] [use psci469b] [***]
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, May 28 -- Insurgents used an array of tactics to kill 13 people across northwestern Pakistan on Thursday, ambushing police officers with small-arms fire, detonating explosives planted in a crowded market and attacking security

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/28/AR2009052800181.html
Linked Attacks in Northwest Pakistan Kill 13
Tactics, Timing Suggest Increased Sophistication
By Griff Witte
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, May 29, 2009 [Pakistan] [hydra] [Pakistan became the clear staging area for operations into Afghanistan during 2007] [AfPak] [additional indications that offensive is on: Taliban getting bolder in their stronghold] [hard to know where the insurgency ends and common criminality begins] [Swat and other accomodations] [followup] [use psci469b] [Taliban and jihadis move closer to Islamabad] [general populace has fleed Talibanization] [use psci469b] [***]
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, May 28 -- Insurgents used an array of tactics to kill 13 people across northwestern Pakistan on Thursday, ambushing police officers with small-arms fire, detonating explosives planted in a crowded market and attacking security checkpoints with suicide bombers.

Most of the deaths occurred in Peshawar, the largest city in the northwest, and security forces appeared to be the targets of much of the violence. The attacks marked the second consecutive day that extremists have used a combination of gunfire and explosives to terrorize a major Pakistani city. The tactics echo two major gun-and-bomb strikes in South Asia in recent years -- the Mumbai siege late last year and the assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in December 2007. [***]

The style of this week's strikes suggests that insurgents are becoming more sophisticated in launching coordinated attacks requiring pinpoint timing and that they are prepared to unleash their full arsenal to undermine a government they see as a tool of the United States. [***]Taliban fighters have turned their guns against Pakistan in recent years; the Pakistani army has responded in recent weeks with a sweeping campaign in the Swat Valley, where the Taliban had taken charge. Officials suggested Thursday that the Peshawar attacks were retribution for the military offensive.

The attacks in the northwest followed an assault on a police building and intelligence agency office in the eastern city of Lahore on Wednesday that killed as many as 30 people. The Taliban asserted responsibility for that attack, and government officials were quick to blame the group for Thursday's attacks as well.

Police said the violence began late in the afternoon with the explosion of a bomb that had been planted on a motorbike in the Khyber bazaar in central Peshawar. "Some TV and CD shops are here that may be the target of militants," said Sajjad Shah, a shopkeeper who works nearby.

As emergency workers and police responded to the first blast, a second bomb exploded in the Qissa Khwani bazaar.

With chaos breaking out in the smoke-filled alleys between the shops, insurgents stationed on the rooftops opened fire on the police below. For more than an hour, police and commandos battled the insurgents, trading gunfire as shopkeepers and customers ran for cover. Eight people were killed. Two of the attackers were also killed, and two others were taken into custody.

Minutes after police secured the bazaars, a suicide bomber attacked a checkpoint on the outskirts of the city. Three soldiers were killed.

Later in the evening, a suicide bomber detonated explosives at a checkpoint outside a hospital in the northwestern city of Dera Ismail Khan. The explosion killed two people, officials said.

About 250 people have been killed in insurgent attacks in the northwest this year, according to police statistics.

In a call to the Reuters news agency, Taliban commander Hakimullah Mehsud [***] warned of more strikes in Pakistan's main cities. "We plan major attacks against government facilities in coming days and weeks," [***]he said.
Special correspondent Haq Nawaz Khan in Peshawar contributed to this report.
© 2009 The Washington Post Company

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Several Blasts in Pakistan After Taliban Warning

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/world/asia/29pstan.html
May 29, 2009
Several Blasts in Pakistan After Taliban Warning
By ISMAIL KHAN and SALMAN MASOOD [Pakistan] [hydra] [Pakistan became the clear staging area for operations into Afghanistan during 2007] [AfPak] [additional indications that offensive is on: Taliban getting bolder in their stronghold] [hard to know where the insurgency ends and common criminality begins] [Swat and other accomodations] [followup] [use psci469b] [Taliban and jihadis move closer to Islamabad] [general populace has fleed Talibanization] [use psci469b] [***]
PESHAWAR, Pakistan — Multiple bombs exploded in two Pakistani cities on Thursday, just hours after Taliban groups warned people to evacuate several large cities, saying they were preparing “major attacks.” The groups also claimed responsibility for a bloody attack in Lahore a day earlier [***]that killed at least 26 people.

Three bombs detonated in Peshawar, northwest of Pakistan’s capital, and one exploded in Dera Ismail Khan, in the country’s troubled west, killing at least 11 people and wounding dozens.

The attacks were reminders of the potency of militants in Pakistan, a nuclear-armed American ally that is fighting a war against the Taliban in its north and west. Pakistan is central to American policy in this region; militants in its lawless tribal areas cross the border into Afghanistan, where the United States is fighting a similar insurgency. [***]

Hakimullah Mehsud, a young Taliban commander and lieutenant of Baitullah Mehsud, the chief of the Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, [***]said that more attacks would follow the one in Lahore, [***]the Pakistani newspaper Dawn reported. Hakimullah Mehsud, who spoke from an undisclosed location, claimed responsibility for the Lahore bombing.

“We want the people of Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Multan to leave those cities, as we plan major attacks against government facilities in coming days and weeks,” he was quoted as saying in a telephone call to Reuters.

He said the Lahore attack was a response to Pakistan’s military campaign against the Taliban in Swat, an area northwest of the capital, which was overrun by militants this year. “We have been looking for a target from the day the military launched the operation in Swat,” [***[he said.

Another Taliban group, the Tehrik-i-Taliban Punjab, also claimed responsibility, saying Thursday in a posting on a Turkish militant Web site that it had staged the assault in Lahore. [***]

The leader of the Pakistani Army, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who was in Lahore on Thursday, said in a statement that the country would not be terrorized and that the army remained committed to defeating insurgents.

The state minister for information, Sumsam Bokhari, said the attacks were a sign of insurgent weakness. “We are winning the war, and that is why they are resorting to these desperate measures,” he said by telephone.

A copy of a preliminary police report on the Lahore bombing, obtained by The New York Times, said six attackers in a white Toyota van had fired at officials in a building that housed an emergency-response unit. Three attackers escaped while the other three detonated the explosives-laden van, the report said, killing themselves. [***]

The first of the triple bombings in Peshawar occurred at 6:30 p.m., at a secondhand electronics market. Minutes later in the same area, a bomb on a motorcycle exploded near an ice cream shop. The two bombs killed 5 people and wounded 73, the authorities said. The bomb disposal squad’s chief, Shafqat Mehmood, said both bombs were on timers.

The police said they chased two men they believed to be responsible and killed them.

Later, a suicide bomber rammed an explosives-packed car into a police checkpoint on the outskirts of the city, killing three police officers and wounding three more.

The police noticed another man advancing suspiciously toward the checkpoint, said Safwat Ghayyur, a police official. “Our men warned the young man approaching the post to stop, and when he did not they fired at him, killing him on the spot,” he said.

In Dera Ismail Khan, a bomb planted in the city’s town hall killed three and wounded seven, Dawn News reported.

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani said “such cowardly acts could not weaken the government’s resolve to stamp out terrorism.”
Ismail Khan reported from Peshawar, and Salman Masood from Islamabad, Pakistan. Waqar Gillani contributed reporting from Lahore, Pakistan; Mark McDonald from Hong Kong; and Alan Cowell from Paris.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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An Ill-Kept Secret: The Site of Obama’s Egypt Speech

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/world/middleeast/28cairo.html
May 28, 2009
An Ill-Kept Secret: The Site of Obama’s Egypt Speech
By MICHAEL SLACKMAN [Egypt] [broader middle east] [northern Africa to horn] [democratization] [Obama’s upcoming speech in Egypt] [either security has been abysmal or the administration wanted it known where Obama was to speak or this is all a feint] [****]
CAIRO — The official word is that nothing has been decided about where President Obama will give his speech when he visits Cairo next Thursday to address the Muslim world.

It is supposed to be a secret.

There are, of course, matters of security for the president of the United States when he comes to visit this crowded, chaotic city on the Nile filled with quite a few people who hold a good deal of animosity for the United States.

But it is not a secret.

“He is speaking in Cairo University,” said Ramadan Abdel Al, 40, who manages a small store that sells men’s shirts on the 26th of July Street. He had stepped onto the street for a cigarette break. “I read it in the paper.”

The newspaper, Al Masry Al Youm, was pleased with itself for getting hold of the presidential itinerary and announcing on its front page that the speech would be given at Cairo University. Of course, there remains the chance that the article was wrong, that President Obama does not plan to speak at Cairo University.

“The whole schedule is not confirmed,” said a spokeswoman from the United States Embassy on Wednesday.

Cairo University is a landmark occupying a large gated area in Giza, part of greater Cairo. It is an important institution that once helped to elevate modern Egypt to the center of Arab learning.

These days its reputation may have sagged, but its walls smell of fresh paint. The grounds have been manicured and the walkways swept clean. The floors have been polished to an unaccustomed shine.

Why the big cleanup?

“We are very proud to host the president of the United States,” said Galila Mukhtar, who works with university public relations, as she stood inside the auditorium building on Wednesday.

So Cairo University it is!

The university has about 200,000 students. But the school will be closed when the president is in town, the faculty will be given the day off and only 15 students from each of 18 colleges will be invited to attend.

That, at least, is what the newspaper said.

“The White House did not put out a schedule yet,” the spokeswoman said. “It is not finalized, and we are still working on it. As far as the White House is concerned, there is no schedule yet.”

That is news to the university.

A spokesman, Sami Abdel Aziz, said that President Obama would speak in the Major Reception Hall.

President Obama has said he chose Cairo to address the Muslim world, not just the Arab world. But while officials at the university and in the government have expressed delight at the president’s visit, people around campus and the city were skeptical that much would change in relations between the West and the Muslim world.

“Just leave us to concentrate on our exams,” said a student who would give only her first name, Dina. “I’m not expecting anything. Americans don’t like us and we don’t like them. They think we’re terrorists, and we don’t like them because of what they’re doing in Iraq.”

Most heads of state coming to Egypt go to the Red Sea resort area of Sharm el Sheik, which is far easier to secure than any venue in the middle of a city of 18 million people. But the consensus here — and in Washington — was that the president needed to be in Cairo if he had any hope of his speech resonating on the street.

It remains a tough audience.

“They are cleaning things they have never cleaned before,” said Amira Abbas, 18, who had just finished a sociology exam. “I don’t understand why he’s visiting. What does he have to say to the Muslim world? He’s new, and he wants to improve the image of the U.S. in the Muslim world.”

Right outside the university’s gates, vendors selling items from small kiosks said they had more pragmatic concerns than international relations. That is often the case in a country where about half the population struggles to survive on less than $2 a day.

“I am trying to get a birth certificate to get a job,” said Samia Abdel Hafiz, 52, as her 9-year-old daughter peddled tissues to students on the street. “Whenever I apply for a job they ask me for the birth certificate. Maybe Obama can help get my paperwork through.”
Samer al-Atrush contributed reporting.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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Backers of Jewish Settlements Put Squeeze on Netanyahu

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/27/AR2009052702587.html
Backers of Jewish Settlements Put Squeeze on Netanyahu
By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 28, 2009 [Israel] [domestic politics intersects foreign policy] [Israeli-Palestinian conflict] followup] [Netanyahu’s recent meeting with Obama] [see yesterday’s govt] [Israel’s frankensteing monster created when they allowed settlement “temporarily” as “bargaining chip”] [mixed metaphors notwithstanding] [now tail wagging the Israeli dog] [***]
JERUSALEM, May 27 -- Supporters of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank are increasing the pressure on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as he steers between a government coalition that supports continued building in the area and

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/27/AR2009052702587.html
Backers of Jewish Settlements Put Squeeze on Netanyahu
By Howard Schneider
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 28, 2009 [Israel] [domestic politics intersects foreign policy] [Israeli-Palestinian conflict] followup] [Netanyahu’s recent meeting with Obama] [see yesterday’s govt] [Israel’s frankensteing monster created when they allowed settlement “temporarily” as “bargaining chip”] [mixed metaphors notwithstanding] [now tail wagging the Israeli dog] [***]
JERUSALEM, May 27 -- Supporters of Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank are increasing the pressure on Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as he steers between a government coalition that supports continued building in the area and President Obama's demand that it stop.

A group of rabbis who support expanding settlements gathered Wednesday in an outpost near Ramallah and issued a statement asking the government "not to destroy settlements while maltreating pioneers." The group, calling itself Rabbis of the Torah and the Land, also declared that Jewish law forbade police and troops from obeying orders to remove settlements.

Harel Cohen, the secretary of the organization, said the meeting was called to debate whether Netanyahu's plan to dismantle about two dozen settlement outposts means that he "has changed his opinions or whether he is just misleading the Americans."

Obama has asked for a complete freeze on construction in more than 100 Jewish settlements housing a total of about 290,000 people on land occupied by Israel in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. In response, the Netanyahu administration has said it would pull down 26 small, unauthorized settlement outposts but would not halt construction in other West Bank communities.

Cohen said the loss of the outposts would be a blow to the settler movement, which maintains that the occupied land belongs to Israel and should not be used to form a Palestinian state.

"They want to throw 2,000 Jews into the street," Cohen said, referring to the small clusters of mobile homes marked for evacuation. "You have to fight for the outposts in order to distance the battles from the larger settlements."

In Washington, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton firmly rejected any half steps on settlements. "The president was very clear when Prime Minister Netanyahu was here," she told reporters Wednesday. "He wants to see a stop to settlements -- not some settlements, not outposts, not natural growth exceptions."

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, en route to Washington for a meeting Thursday with Obama, also called for a full settlement freeze. Palestinians say the settlements will make it harder to draw a final border.

Speaking to Israel's parliament, Netanyahu said he hoped Arab states would begin normalizing ties with Israel as part of Obama's regional peace effort. Netanyahu promised to move ahead with measures to improve the Palestinian economy, which he has said should be a focus of Israel's efforts.

Netanyahu was elected this year on a platform of anti-terrorism and opposition to the establishment of a Palestinian state. In the parliament Tuesday, members of his Likud party organized a conference to discuss alternatives to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Minister of Strategic Affairs Moshe Yaalon said Israelis should "not apply terms like 'solution' in the foreseeable future" but rather should speak of "crisis management" or "coping in the long term."

Tzipi Hotovely, a Likud lawmaker who organized the session, said its purpose was not to threaten Netanyahu with a party rebellion but to "empower" him in his negotiations with the United States.

"We are not saying to the Americans that you are wrong" about settlements, Hotovely said. "We are saying to the prime minister: 'You have a strong coalition that will stand behind you as long as you keep strength in the ideology.' "

As the political debate intensified, Israeli officials continued what has become a sort of cat-and-mouse game with settlers in small tent outposts. Two were taken down late Tuesday, and members of both said they intended to reestablish them and bring in more people, local media reported.

Dror Etkes, coordinator of settlement issues for the Israeli human rights group Yesh Din, said scuffles over the outposts deflect attention from larger issues, including hundreds of unenforced demolition orders against individual settler properties and long delays at the Defense Ministry in clearing unauthorized outposts.

"It is a well-directed drama," Etkes said. "It is a game between the Israeli administration and the U.S. administration."
© 2009 The Washington Post Company

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Hezbollah Says It Is Talking to European Union and I.M.F.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/world/middleeast/28lebanon.html
May 28, 2009
Hezbollah Says It Is Talking to European Union and I.M.F.
By ROBERT F. WORTH [Lebanon] [followup] [is it starting to devolve again in Lebanon?] [upcoming elections and how things turn out with Hezbollah which now shares power with govt] [followup] [US considers terrorist group and Iran proxy] [IMF considers them what?] [****]
BEIRUT, Lebanon — Hezbollah, the Shiite militant group, has talked with the International Monetary Fund and the European Union about continued financial support to Lebanon in the event the group’s political alliance wins the June 7 parliamentary elections, Hezbollah officials said Wednesday.

The talks this month reflected concerns here about a possible drop in international donor and investor confidence should the political alliance led by Hezbollah — considered a terrorist group by the United States and Israel — gain a majority for the first time. Many analysts believe that outcome is likely, though the race is considered too close to call.

Lebanon’s current governing majority, which has tried unsuccessfully to disarm Hezbollah, has depended on heavy financial support from the West and oil-rich Persian Gulf states, especially Saudi Arabia. In Beirut last week, Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. said future American support to Lebanon, which includes military aid, would depend on the elections’ outcome.

European governments have not issued any such veiled threats, and Western leaders have recently shown a greater willingness to engage in political dialogue with Hezbollah’s patrons, Iran and Syria. Britain’s Foreign Office said in March that it would re-establish relations with Hezbollah’s political wing.

The European Union provides about $84 million a year to Lebanon, and the International Monetary Fund provides about $114 million, aid that will be coming up for reauthorization soon.

The monetary fund has not negotiated a possible loan with members or sympathizers of Hezbollah, Simonetta Nardin, a spokeswoman for the fund, said in an e-mail message. But the agency routinely meets with the main political parties in Lebanon and with members of Parliament, Ms. Nardin said. Future loans with the monetary fund were not discussed, she said.

The practical effects of an election victory by Hezbollah and its allies would be limited because they already play important roles in the cabinet, and any new government would almost certainly preserve a “blocking minority” for the opposition.

But a victory would be symbolically important, especially for Arab states concerned about the influence of Iran and Syria. Saudi Arabia has provided at least $2 billion to Lebanon’s central bank since 2006, along with many other aid programs. Lebanon’s public debt is more than $45 billion.

“It depends how people choose to express their political sentiments in financial terms,” said Rami Khouri, the director of the Issam Fares Institute at the American University of Beirut. “Many people don’t like the Chinese government, but choose to invest a lot of money there.”

Lebanon’s centrality in Arab politics could help to mitigate any losses. Qatar, which has good relations with Iran and Syria, has also provided aid to Lebanon, and could afford to increase it.

Another question for donors is the financial and economic priorities of Hezbollah and its allies, which remain relatively unknown, said Nassib Ghobril, the head of research and analysis for Byblos Bank.

Hezbollah’s election platform is more economically populist than the current majority’s, but the group will have fewer seats in Parliament — and, perhaps, less interest in such matters — than its major Christian political partner, the Free Patriotic Movement, whose economic platform is not so different from its electoral opponents’, emphasizing privatization and accountability.
Lebanon’s public debt may limit the options of any future government, Mr. Ghobril said.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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Italy: A Denial in C.I.A. Rendition Trial

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/world/europe/28briefs-webRendition.html
May 28, 2009
World Briefing | Europe
Italy: A Denial in C.I.A. Rendition Trial
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Nicolo Pollari, the former head of Italy’s military intelligence, told a court Wednesday that he had no role in the 2003 kidnapping of an Egyptian terrorism suspect, but said

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/world/europe/28briefs-webRendition.html
May 28, 2009
World Briefing | Europe
Italy: A Denial in C.I.A. Rendition Trial
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Nicolo Pollari, the former head of Italy’s military intelligence, told a court Wednesday that he had no role in the 2003 kidnapping of an Egyptian terrorism suspect, but said that he could not prove his innocence because the evidence was classified. He is among seven Italians and 26 Americans on trial in Milan in the first court case to address the C.I.A.’s so-called rendition program for terrorism suspects. The case centers around the abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, who prosecutors say was whisked off a Milan street, flown to an American air base in Germany and onward to Egypt, where he was tortured, he said. He has since been released in Egypt without charge.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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Bomb Kills G.I. in Baghdad as Attacks Keep Rising

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/world/middleeast/28iraq.html
May 28, 2009
Bomb Kills G.I. in Baghdad as Attacks Keep Rising
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [renewed sectarian tensions and fault lines] [followup] [Saddam continues to preoccupy many –iraqis well after his death] [provincial elections last Saturday] [post-election reports that –ir relatively calm with apparent victories for secular parties over Islamists] [now the US is focused on big elections set for December after which the US intends to drawdown rather quickly] [goings on as June SOFA provisions loom] [***]
BAGHDAD — An American soldier and four Iraqi civilians died Wednesday when a bomb exploded on a Baghdad street as a United States military patrol drove past,

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/world/middleeast/28iraq.html
May 28, 2009
Bomb Kills G.I. in Baghdad as Attacks Keep Rising
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS [-ir] [hydra] [insurgency] [renewed sectarian tensions and fault lines] [followup] [Saddam continues to preoccupy many –iraqis well after his death] [provincial elections last Saturday] [post-election reports that –ir relatively calm with apparent victories for secular parties over Islamists] [now the US is focused on big elections set for December after which the US intends to drawdown rather quickly] [goings on as June SOFA provisions loom] [***]
BAGHDAD — An American soldier and four Iraqi civilians died Wednesday when a bomb exploded on a Baghdad street as a United States military patrol drove past, officials said.

The death of the soldier, whose name was not released, brings to at least 20 the number of American soldiers who have died this month, the most since September 2008, when 25 service members died.

In recent months, there has been an uptick in attacks against Iraqi civilians and United States forces, leading to concerns that insurgents are regrouping before the June 30 deadline for American combat troops to withdraw from Iraqi cities.

The attack on Wednesday occurred about 2 p.m. as an American convoy was passing through the Abu Ghraib district in western Baghdad. As the patrol moved past a roadside market, the explosion occurred, said an Iraqi security official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly. Ten Iraqi civilians were wounded, the official said.

The American military confirmed the death of the soldier in a brief statement on Wednesday, but provided few other details except to say that the attack was under investigation.

Abu Ghraib, once dominated by Sunni insurgents, is the site of the prison where Iraqi detainees were abused by American jailers who also took photographs of their actions. The jail is now called Baghdad Central Prison and is run by Iraqis.

The military also said Wednesday that Cmdr. Duane G. Wolfe of the Navy was one of the three men killed by an explosive device this week near the city of Falluja. Commander Wolfe was assigned to the Army Corps of Engineers, and was in charge of its office in Anbar Province, the military said in a statement.

Also on Wednesday, Iraq’s Commission of Integrity, which monitors government corruption, said only 34 members of Iraq’s 275-member Parliament had submitted their mandatory financial disclosure forms. Parliament and Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki have announced anticorruption campaigns in recent weeks in an effort to curtail what is commonly believed to be widespread corruption in the Iraqi government.

Mr. Maliki, according to the commission’s report, was among the officials who had submitted a disclosure form.

Earlier this week, Mr. Maliki’s trade minister, Abdul Falah al-Sudani, resigned after Parliament summoned him to answer questions about corruption and mismanagement in the ministry. On Wednesday, Mr. Maliki’s office announced it would take over administration of the ministry’s affairs until a new minister was named.

The Trade Ministry oversees the food ration card program, which most Iraqis use to buy heavily subsidized food items like rice, sugar and cooking oil.

In northern Iraq on Wednesday, the semiautonomous Kurdistan Regional Government began exporting crude oil for the first time after reaching a settlement on the issue with the government of Iraq this month. The first exports were to start June 1, but Asim Jihad, a spokesman for Iraq’s Oil Ministry, said Wednesday evening that 10,000 barrels of oil had been pumped from Tawke field in Kurdistan via an Iraqi government-owned pipeline to Turkey, where it would be sold.

The field will eventually produce 50,000 barrels of crude oil a day, Mr. Jihad said. The revenue will go to the Iraqi government, which will divide it among its provinces and regions, including Kurdistan, officials said.

Though the Oil Ministry has granted approval for the exports, it has refused to recognize the roughly two dozen oil contracts that Kurdistan has signed with oil companies, meaning that Kurdistan may have to pay oil companies out of the revenue it receives back from the Iraqi government.
Mohamed Hussein, Anwar J. Ali and Duraid Adnan contributed reporting.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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After Initial Mild Reaction, Kremlin May Consider Tougher Stance on Tests

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/27/AR2009052703231.html
After Initial Mild Reaction, Kremlin May Consider Tougher Stance on Tests
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 28, 2009 [Russsia] [former USSR] [DPRK] [6-way talks] [now all hell is breaking loose with US, China, Russia, and ROK exercised about latest antics: new detonation and declaring armistice meaningless] [neither DPRK’s oldest and most loyal neighbor, China, nor its old friend from the 1950s Russia are coming to its side] [that a rare good sign] [***]
MOSCOW, May 27 -- For years, Russia has appeared to take a back seat in

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/27/AR2009052703231.html
After Initial Mild Reaction, Kremlin May Consider Tougher Stance on Tests
By Philip P. Pan
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 28, 2009 [Russsia] [former USSR] [DPRK] [6-way talks] [now all hell is breaking loose with US, China, Russia, and ROK exercised about latest antics: new detonation and declaring armistice meaningless] [neither DPRK’s oldest and most loyal neighbor, China, nor its old friend from the 1950s Russia are coming to its side] [that a rare good sign] [***]
MOSCOW, May 27 -- For years, Russia has appeared to take a back seat in international efforts to persuade North Korea to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons. It urged diplomacy and resisted tougher sanctions, but usually let China take the lead in relations with Pyongyang.

There are signs, however, that the Kremlin may be considering a more active, tougher stance following Monday's surprise test of a nuclear device by North Korea less than 60 miles from the Russian border. [***]

After an initial, mild expression of "concern" by the Russian foreign minister, the government issued a high-level statement denouncing the underground blast as a "direct violation" of U.N. resolutions.

"Initiators of decisions on nuclear tests bear personal responsibility for them to the world community," said Natalya Timakova, chief spokeswoman for President Dmitry Medvedev, adding that the test "deals a blow to international efforts to strengthen the global regime of nuclear nonproliferation."

Timakova also said North Korea's nuclear program was "linked to the development of rocket technologies" and described the connection as "a source of particular anxiety," according to the Interfax news agency. Russian officials previously played down the threat posed by the North's missile program.

Meanwhile, Russia's ambassador to the United Nations convened an emergency meeting of the Security Council to condemn the test and pledged to support a strong new resolution against North Korea. Russia holds the rotating presidency of the council this month. [***]

“The reaction has been quite serious and quite unusual,” said Alexander Pikayev, a top arms control expert at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations here. “Moscow is really concerned. North Korea most likely has an operational deterrent now with this successful test. So this changes the whole situation.”

Pikayev said the Kremlin generally defers to China on how to manage North Korea because it recognizes that Beijing has greater leverage over Pyongyang. But the government now appears to favor tougher sanctions, he said, and “might try to convince the Chinese to take more serious actions.” [***]

Vasily Mikheev, a senior Asia scholar at the Russian Academy of Sciences, said Medvedev seemed to be driving the more forceful response, perhaps to assert his authority over foreign policy a year after succeeding Vladimir Putin, now the prime minister.

Medvedev may see the issue in the context of his efforts to improve relations with the United States, Mikheev added. "Nonproliferation is one of the most important areas where Russia and America can work together," he said.

The nuclear test came just weeks after Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov traveled to Pyongyang to try to persuade North Korea to return to the six-nation disarmament talks it quit in April.

During the trip, Lavrov presented a proposal to help North Korea launch satellites into space from Russian territory, which analysts said was an early hint of the Kremlin's desire to play a more active role in resolving the nuclear dispute.

But Lavrov was not granted a meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. Russian analysts have interpreted that as a snub and a sign of North Korea's displeasure with Moscow's decision to support a U.N. statement condemning its April 5 launch of a three-stage rocket. North Korea announced it was withdrawing from the six-nation talks in retaliation for the council statement.

Alexander Khramchikhin, a researcher with the Institute of Political and Military Analysis, said that even if the Kremlin wants to assume a leading role in resolving the dispute, it cannot. The Soviet Union once served as North Korea's patron, but Moscow withdrew support after the Soviet Union's collapse, and Beijing took its place.
"You can see some shift in policy perhaps, but I think Russia is simply following China," he said. "Russia just doesn't have the tools to influence North Korea."
© 2009 The Washington Post Company

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S. Koreans Express Fatigue With a Recalcitrant North

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/28/world/asia/28seoul.html
May 28, 2009
S. Koreans Express Fatigue With a Recalcitrant North
By MARTIN FACKLER [DPRK] [6-way talks] [anyone who has watched dear leader’s regime operate knows this is standard-operating procedure] [you’re just sort of stuck with it] [excruciatingly difficult negotiations] [followed by tortured agreements] [followed by West partially fulfilling its side of the deal] [apparently tested yet another weapon] [followup] [now comes the raft of told-you sos that happen no matter what a president has done when it’s DPRK] [Dear Leader’s haggard health may portend a crisis point in DPRK—we’re about to find out] [now all hell is breaking loose with US, China, Russia, and ROK exercised about latest antics: new detonation and declaring armistice meaningless] [***]
PAJU, South Korea — Peering at North Korea in the hazy distance from the demilitarized zone, standing under an upbeat mural trumpeting improved relations between the separated countries, a visitor from South Korea struck a skeptical note.

“We sent them food, fertilizer, factories, more than we give our own poor people,” said the South Korean, Lee Soon-hwan, a 30-year-old office worker. “And all they pay us back with is this nuclear test.”

After years of hope that relations with the North would thaw if the South tried to coax it into engagement, regional experts and others speak of growing disenchantment. Many South Koreans reacted with exasperation and even anger to North Korea’s nuclear test on Monday, uncharacteristically harsh responses in a country that has long been more tolerant of its unruly northern neighbor than have its allies in Washington and Tokyo.

Partly, the reaction reflects the outrage here at the timing of the test, coming as South Korea was in mourning over the suicide of a former president on Saturday.

But there are also signs of fatigue with a recalcitrant North that has responded to the South’s largess by continuing to build up its nuclear arsenal.

“There has been a paradigm shift in how South Koreans view North Korea,” said Jeung Young-tai, a North Korea expert at the Korea Institute for National Unification. “The nuclear test has made people feel that North Korea has gone too far, and it’s high time for us to be tough on North Korea.”

The engagement policy followed years of enforced separation and relentless anti-North propaganda that ignored South Korea’s deep emotional bonds with the other half of the peninsula, forced apart, as they see it, by big-power politics during the cold war. The so-called sunshine policy began in the late 1990s and was broadly popular, even surviving the first North Korean nuclear test in 2006.

But Mr. Jeung said that people now felt no safer after 10 years of engagement and that the latest nuclear test, along with the North’s test-firing of a long-range rocket last month, had driven home to many in South Korea their need to build up their own military, and stick with their traditional ally, the United States.

Such a shift may bring South Korea closer in many ways to Washington. A sign came Tuesday, when President Lee Myung-bak announced that South Korea would belatedly join the Proliferation Security Initiative, an American-led program to intercept ships suspected of carrying unconventional weapons. The South had refrained from joining for fear of angering the North. [DPRK has habit of chasing its few friends away] [they typically end up in the embrace of US] [***]

At the same time, fundamental differences with the United States remain. While Washington has in the past spoken of blockades and further isolating North Korea, few South Koreans are talking about cutting off aid and economic relations completely.

Instead, the South Korean public appears ready to accept continued engagement, but with new demands that North Korea also show good faith, particularly by curtailing its weapons program.

Still, even talk of imposing conditions on aid suggests a shift in attitudes for South Koreans, who have long viewed the North as a proud but poor cousin that should be tolerated and led toward eventually peaceful reunification. Such sentiments guided South Korean policy for a decade, as Seoul opened an industrial park and a mountain resort in the North, and extended it hundreds of millions of dollars in aid.

Those ties began to sour after the election last year of Mr. Lee, a conservative who said aid should be offered only if the North ended its nuclear program. Weariness with the North has also grown over the past year, after the North responded to Mr. Lee’s tougher stance by temporarily closing access to the Kaesong industrial park, detaining a South Korean accused of slandering the North Korean government, and test-firing a long-range rocket in April.

“South Koreans are feeling frustration and fatigue with the North Korea relationship,” said Daniel Pinkston, North East Asia deputy project director at International Crisis Group, an nonprofit organization that tries to prevent deadly conflicts. “They want more reciprocity.”

While there have been no recent public opinion polls, the shift has begun emerging in online chat rooms and newspaper opinion articles, like one in JoongAng Ilbo on Wednesday entitled “Stop Being Suckers for Kim Jong-il.”

The tougher attitudes were also apparent in more than a dozen recent street interviews with South Koreans at places like the Unification Observatory in Paju, an hour northwest of Seoul overlooking the demilitarized zone.

Many of those interviewed said they were frustrated that North Korea seemed to be pushing their country around, although the South was the one opening its pocketbook. And while no one called for cutting off the North outright, most agreed that South Korea should get more benefits, and more respect, for its money.

“I’m tired of the whole relationship,” said Kim Bong-jin, 52, who owns a machinery factory nearby. “The past administrations have supported North Korea too excessively, and the result is nuclear weapons.”

His friend, Lim Jae-hyung, 52, a technician, said, “We have the money, we should be getting more from it.”

From the observatory, the vastly different levels of wealth between the Koreas were plainly visible. In the North Korean town of Maegol, people could be seen walking along dirt roads between gray buildings with no vehicles in sight. By contrast, a busy six-lane highway cut through Paju, a popular tourist area with a go-kart track, a drive-in theater and rows of gaudy “love” hotels.

While conservatives have always taken a hard line toward the North, many on the left who supported the sunshine policy also say they are fed up with the North Koreans. This was particularly evident among supporters of former President Roh Moo-hyun, who jumped to his death on Saturday. A suicide note suggested that he was despondent about a corruption investigation.

Mr. Roh had pursued friendly engagement with the North, and many of those who mourned him at makeshift altars on Wednesday expressed anger at the North over the nuclear test, which they called an unforgivable show of callous disregard.
“It is unbelievable that they would do this at such a sad and sensitive time,” said one mourner, Kang Han-seung.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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Anger May Help Bring New U.N. Sanctions

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/27/AR2009052702353.html
Anger May Help Bring New U.N. Sanctions
By Ariana Eunjung Cha and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 28, 2009 [China] [PRC] [DPRK] [6-way talks] [now all hell is breaking loose with US, China, Russia, and ROK exercised about latest antics: new detonation and declaring armistice meaningless] [neither DPRK’s oldest and most loyal neighbor, China, nor its old friend from the 1950s Russia are coming to its side] [that a rare good sign] [***]
BEIJING, May 27 -- China's leaders have shown their anger over North Korea's nuclear and missile tests this week through unusually critical statements and harsh coverage in

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/27/AR2009052702353.html
Anger May Help Bring New U.N. Sanctions
By Ariana Eunjung Cha and Glenn Kessler
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 28, 2009 [China] [PRC] [DPRK] [6-way talks] [now all hell is breaking loose with US, China, Russia, and ROK exercised about latest antics: new detonation and declaring armistice meaningless] [neither DPRK’s oldest and most loyal neighbor, China, nor its old friend from the 1950s Russia are coming to its side] [that a rare good sign] [***]
BEIJING, May 27 -- China's leaders have shown their anger over North Korea's nuclear and missile tests this week through unusually critical statements and harsh coverage in China's state media. [***]Now, U.S. officials hope the sharp rhetoric will translate into support in the U.N. Security Council for new sanctions on North Korea.

The Chinese Foreign Ministry has admonished North Korea, saying it is "resolutely opposed" to the tests. Official news reports have proclaimed that China is "shocked" by its neighbor's defiance and that it "demands" an end to "any activity that might worsen the situation."

Since North Korea conducted a second underground nuclear test on Monday and fired five short-range missiles into the waters off its east coast on Monday and Tuesday, academics at Chinese think tanks and other research centers affiliated with the Chinese government have begun to discuss publicly what had previously been unthinkable: cutting off food or fuel aid to North Korea and supporting other harsh sanctions at the United Nations.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has "gone too far," said Zhang Liangui, a professor at the Institute of Strategy at the Central Party School in Beijing. [***]

“The nuclear test conducted by North Korea offended the core interests of China,” Zhang said in an interview. “Since Kim Jong Il doesn’t attach importance to China, it’s hard to say if China will continue to keep a friendly relationship with North Korea in the future.” [****] [DPRK made China its bi**ch] [punked them]

The United States has long sought help from China, North Korea's largest trading partner, in pressuring North Korea's reclusive leaders to give up their nuclear ambitions. But China has tried to win North Korea's cooperation through favors, such as construction of a glass factory, and has blocked sanctions pushed by Washington. The United States failed to win tougher international penalties after North Korea's first nuclear test, in 2006, in part because of Chinese resistance.

U.S. officials say they sense a different tone in China's response this time. But China has not yet made clear what position it will take in the U.N. Security Council, where negotiations are underway on a possible resolution against North Korea. "The Chinese are deeply exasperated, but we have to see what they are prepared to do," an Obama administration official said.

"We will see if it results in a substantive difference in New York," another U.S. official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic considerations.

Details of the proposed sanctions have not been made public. But some Chinese analysts said the U.N. resolution could take aim at North Korea's military.

The events of the past few days are probably "the most serious crisis since China and North Korea set up diplomatic relations," Zhang said. "Without military sanctions, North Korea is afraid of nothing. So, this time, military sanctions should be regarded as one option."

Wang Fan, an international security expert at China Foreign Affairs University, told the official China Daily that at this point, China "cannot oppose" possible U.N. sanctions against North Korea. And the Global Times, which has close ties to the Chinese Communist Party, said this week that it had surveyed 20 international relations experts in China and that half supported tough sanctions.

Even before Monday's nuclear test, there were signs that Beijing was losing patience with Pyongyang. In recent months, China increased the number of troops along its border with North Korea, made it more difficult for North Koreans to get Chinese visas and cracked down on illicit activities by North Koreans in China. [***]

Some experts contend, however, that China's tough talk is probably a scare tactic and that it is unlikely China will support tough U.N. sanctions.

Liu Jiangyong, a professor of Northeast Asia studies at Tsinghua University, predicts no real change in China's policy. If China joins other nations in coming down harshly on North Korea, he said, "the role of China will be changed from a contact man to the enemy of North Korea." It is in everybody's interest for China to keep a steady relationship with North Korea, he added, because otherwise no country will have regular contact with Pyongyang.
Kessler reported from Washington. Researcher Zhang Jie contributed to this report.
© 2009 The Washington Post Company

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South Korea and U.S. Raise Alert Level

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/world/asia/29korea.html
May 29, 2009
South Korea and U.S. Raise Alert Level
By CHOE SANG-HUN [DPRK] [6-way talks] [anyone who has watched dear leader’s regime operate knows this is standard-operating procedure] [you’re just sort of stuck with it] [excruciatingly difficult negotiations] [followed by tortured agreements] [followed by West partially fulfilling its side of the deal] [apparently tested yet another weapon] [followup] [now comes the raft of told-you sos that happen no matter what a president has done when it’s DPRK] [Dear Leader’s haggard health may portend a crisis point in DPRK—we’re about to find out] [now all hell is breaking loose with US, China, Russia, and ROK exercised about latest antics: new detonation and declaring armistice meaningless] [***]
SEOUL, South Korea — One day after North Korea warned of a possible attack against

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/world/asia/29korea.html
May 29, 2009
South Korea and U.S. Raise Alert Level
By CHOE SANG-HUN [DPRK] [6-way talks] [anyone who has watched dear leader’s regime operate knows this is standard-operating procedure] [you’re just sort of stuck with it] [excruciatingly difficult negotiations] [followed by tortured agreements] [followed by West partially fulfilling its side of the deal] [apparently tested yet another weapon] [followup] [now comes the raft of told-you sos that happen no matter what a president has done when it’s DPRK] [Dear Leader’s haggard health may portend a crisis point in DPRK—we’re about to find out] [now all hell is breaking loose with US, China, Russia, and ROK exercised about latest antics: new detonation and declaring armistice meaningless] [***]
SEOUL, South Korea — One day after North Korea warned of a possible attack against the South, the United States and South Korea ordered their forces here to their highest alert for three years, increasing surveillance flights and satellite reconnaissance to counter what officials termed a “grave threat.” [****]

The move was the latest sign of escalating tensions on the Korean peninsula after North Korea conducted its second nuclear test on Monday, sparking a confrontation with South Korea and the international community that has built into ever more bellicose rhetoric. North Korea reinforced its menacing language by test-firing six short-range missiles earlier in the week.

The South Korean Defense Ministry said allied troops, including, 28,000 U.S. soldiers based in South Korea, raised their Watch Condition, or Watchcon, to the second-highest level from Watchcon 3 to Watchcon 2. [***]

South Korea has put its military on such a high level of alert only five times since hostilities in the three-year Korean War ended in an armistice in 1953, most recently when North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in October 2006.

The upgraded alert provides for a significant increase in the use of reconnaissance planes and spy satellites, as well as a more vigorous gathering and analysis of electronic signals from the North, [***]ministry officials said.

The Defense Ministry declined to confirm South Korean news reports that its military has moved or planned to move warships and artillery to islands near the western sea border with North Korea. But a South Korean military official said that in recent months, North Korea has increased training exercises among its coastal artillery units opposite the South Korean islands.

The North’s state-controlled media warned on Thursday that “even a minor accidental clash could lead to nuclear war.” [that god they’re acting responsibly!] [not] [***]

“It’s a matter of time when a fuse for war is triggered,” the North Korean government’s official newspaper, Minju Joseon, said in a commentary carried by the state-run news agency KCNA.

As the South Korean government urged its people to remain calm, there was no sign of anxiety among villagers along the border. In Seoul, with a population of 10.4 million and just 35 miles from the border, preparations continued for the funeral on Friday of former President Roh Moo-hyun who committed suicide last Saturday.

North Korea intensified its threats against South Korea and the United States on Wednesday with warnings of a “powerful military strike” if any North Korean ships were stopped or searched as part of an American-led operation to intercept vessels suspected of carrying unconventional weapons.

South Korea agreed to join the operation after North Korea’s nuclear test on Monday. The North had earlier warned the South not to participate in the operation, known as the Proliferation Security Initiative.

In their Wednesday statement, the North Koreans also said that they “no longer feel bound” by the 1953 armistice. Technically, the two Koreas have remained at war for more than 50 years, because the 1953 armistice was never replaced with a final peace treaty. The North Koreans had previously called the armistice a “useless piece of paper” and declared that they no longer felt bound by it. Washington and Seoul consider such North Korean statements a gambit to raise tension and draw the United States to bilateral talks.

In Washington, Secretary of state Hillary Rodham Clinton said, “North Korea continues to act in a provocative and belligerent manner toward its neighbors.” [***]

“There are consequences to such actions,” she said, adding that discussions were under way at the United Nations “to add to the consequences North Korea will face.”

Diplomats said American and Japanese officials were drafting a Security Council resolution that would concentrate on five or six ways to flesh out existing sanctions against North Korea that had never been enforced. Although China supports the idea of sanctions, it wants to work slowly and to bolster measures first passed in 2006 rather than creating new ones, they said.

The proposals include banning imports and exports of all arms — only heavy weapons are restricted now. “We want to dry out their resources for the military,” said a senior Western diplomat, speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the negotiations.

Since inter-Korean relations began deteriorating a year ago, analysts at government-run and private policy institutes in South Korea have often warned of a possible naval skirmish. In interviews in recent weeks, they have said that if South Korea joined the global interdiction program, the chances of a North Korean provocation would increase.

The analysts said North Korea might stage a limited armed provocation along the disputed western sea border, where the two navies clashed in skirmishes in June 1999 and June 2002 during the crabbing season. Any clash between the Koreas would probably be on a similarly limited scale, [***]the analysts said.

South Korea’s president, Lee Myung-bak, lauded his people on Wednesday for their “mature response” to the North’s behavior. He noted that the North’s nuclear test and its subsequent missile launchings did not affect stock indexes and foreign exchange markets beyond initial jitters.

Seoul, the South Korean capital, with a population of 10.4 million, is just 35 miles from the North Korean border and well within the range of North Korean missiles and artillery. [***] But most South Koreans and foreign investors here are accustomed to threats from the North.

Meanwhile, analysts said, South Korea’s decision to join the antiproliferation initiative — a global effort that seeks to interrupt air and sea deliveries of nuclear and other unconventional weapons, missile parts and delivery systems — is largely symbolic. Seoul has said that it will stop only suspicious ships in its own territorial waters, a sovereign right it already has. In addition, the chance that the North would send ships carrying such materials into South Korean waters is low.
Reporting was contributed by Mark McDonald from Hong Kong, Thom Shanker from
Washington, and Neil MacFarquhar from the United Nations. Alan Cowell contributed from Paris.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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29 Militants Killed in Afghanistan

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/world/asia/29afghan.html
May 29, 2009
29 Militants Killed in Afghanistan
By ABDUL WAHEED WAFA and ALAN COWELL [Afghanistan] [hydra] [Pakistan became the clear staging area for operations into Afghanistan during 2007] [AfPak] [incredible cockup from way back in early Bush 43 first term] [signs of this year’s spring offensive underway] [followup] [large quantities of US armaments falling into Taliban hands?] [more on the most recent incident with serious collateral damamge] [meanwhile, additional situations that turn the hearst and minds away from the coalition’s efforts] [use psc469b] [***]
KABUL, Afghanistan — American and Afghan forces backed by airstrikes engaged in a “fierce firefight” with Taliban insurgents in a remote and mountainous region of eastern Afghanistan on Thursday, killing at least 29 militants in an effort to capture one of their leaders, according to a joint military statement.

But, American officials said, the leader — identified only as Sangeen — had not been captured and it was not known whether he was among the dead or had escaped. The battle was part of a widening war that the Obama administration has made a priority in its effort to crush Taliban and Al Qaeda insurgents in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The intensifying conflict has led to Afghan claims that civilian casualties caused by American airstrikes are undermining public support for the war.

The joint statement on Thursday insisted that “no noncombatants were injured during this operation” and said that the 29 dead were all militants. They included six insurgents who blew themselves up with suicide vests without causing coalition fatalities, the statement said.

As depicted in the statement, coalition forces advanced under a hail of fire from militants on higher ground. There was no immediate comment from the Taliban and the number of insurgent fatalities could not be independently verified.

“Dozens of well-armed militants immediately began firing on the combined force to repel the assault,” the statement said. “Afghan and coalition forces returned fire, engaging multiple enemies situated both in heavily fortified positions and inside structures on the compound.” [***]

The fighting took place about 100 miles southwest of the eastern city of Khost along the border with Pakistan. Afghan and American forces had been directed by intelligence reports to a remote militant encampment used as a staging area for attacks in Afghanistan’s Paktika Province, the statement said.

It accused the commander identified as Sangeen of helping senior leaders of Al Qaeda and “hundreds of foreign fighters” infiltrate Afghanistan from Pakistan. [**]

Hamidullah Zhuak, a spokesman for the governor of Paktika, said officials had counted the bodies of 34 insurgents, most of them from Arab countries and Pakistan, after the fighting. The battle took place far from populated areas, reducing the risk of civilian casualties, he said.

The fighting came less than a month after a battle in Afghanistan’s western Farah Province when the Afghan government said American warplanes killed 140 civilians. The American military rejected the claim, but acknowledged that 20 or 30 civilians may have died along with 60 to 65 Taliban fighters in the fighting on May 4..
Abdul Waheed Wafa reported from Kabul, Afghanistan, and Alan Cowell from Paris.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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Taliban Claim Pakistan Bomb Attack

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/29/world/asia/29pstan.html
May 29, 2009
Taliban Claim Pakistan Bomb Attack
By SALMAN MASOOD AND MARK McDONALD [Pakistan] [hydra] [Pakistan became the clear staging area for operations into Afghanistan during 2007] [AfPak] [additional indications that offensive is on: Taliban getting bolder in their stronghold] [hard to know where the insurgency ends and common criminality begins] [Swat and other accomodations] [followup] [use psci469b] [Taliban and jihadis move closer to Islamabad] [general populace has fleed Talibanization] [use psci469b] [***]
LAHORE, Pakistan — Hours after the Pakistani government placed bounties on 21 insurgent leaders it blamed for a suicide car bomb attack here, Taliban groups claimed responsibility Thursday for the assault that killed at least two dozen people and wounded nearly 300. [Taliban has now claimed it] [***]

In telephone calls to Reuters and The Associated Press, a Pakistani insurgent commander, Hakimullah Mehsud, said, “We have achieved our target. We were looking for this target for a long time.”

He also said the attack in Lahore on Wednesday was “a reaction to the Swat operation,” [**] a reference to the Pakistani Army’s campaign against Taliban militants in the northwestern Swat Valley. The government claims it has killed more than 1,000 insurgents in the current offensive.

In the Lahore attack, gunmen and suicide bombers struck a police emergency-response unit in one of the city’s busiest districts, ramming a car laden with explosives into the squad’s building.

The attack may also have been directed at a nearby command center of the Directorate of Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, Pakistan’s intelligence agency, according to army and intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief reporters.

Mr. Mehsud, who is known to be aligned with the Pakistani Taliban leader, Baitullah Mehsud, did not give his location, and it was unclear if he was linked to another Taliban group that claimed responsibility for the attack. [***]

A group calling itself Tehreek-i-Taliban Punjab, [***]in a posting on a Turkish militant Web site, said Thursday that it had staged the assault.

In his phone call, the news agencies reported, Mr. Mehsud warned of further violent attacks.

“We want the people of Lahore, Rawalpindi, Islamabad and Multan to leave those cities, as we plan major attacks against government facilities in coming days and weeks,” [***]he said in the call to Reuters.

Separately, two bombs exploded on Thursday in a crowded market area of the northwestern Pakistani city of Peshawar, inflicting casualties, wire services reported.

Initial reports indicated that at least five people were killed and 30 injured.

“We have shifted five dead bodies to the hospital trauma centre and about 30 wounded are now in the emergency room,” Zulfiqar Ahmed, an official with the Ehdi Rescue Centre, told Reuters.

The assault on Wednesday was the third attack in three months in or near Lahore, the principal city of Punjab, Pakistan’s most populous and affluent province.

The previous attacks — against the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team and a police academy — led officials to worry that Taliban insurgents might be teaming up with local militants, including Lashkar-e-Taiba, the group suspected of conducting the attacks in Mumbai, India, in November that killed at least 163 people.

The government announced its bounties in newspaper advertisements on Thursday, with rewards starting at $12,400, according to The A.P. Heading the most wanted list was Maulana Fazlullah, the Taliban leader in the Swat district, with a bounty of $62,000.
Salman Masood reported from Lahore, Pakistan, and Mark McDonald reported from Hong Kong.
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/27/AR2009052700248.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/27/AR2009052700248.html
Up to 30 Killed In Pakistan Blast
Police, Intelligence Officers Among Dead
By Griff Witte and Shaiq Hussain
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, May 28, 2009 [Pakistan] [hydra] [Pakistan became the clear staging area for operations into Afghanistan during 2007] [AfPak] [additional indications that offensive is on: Taliban getting bolder in their stronghold] [hard to know where the insurgency ends and common criminality begins] [Swat and other accomodations] [followup] [use psci469b] [Taliban and jihadis move closer to Islamabad] [general populace has fleed Talibanization] [use psci469b] [***]
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, May 27 -- The powerful car bomb that tore the walls off an office of Pakistan's elite intelligence service, ravaged a police facility and killed as many as 30 people Wednesday morning is the latest reminder that insurgents are able to strike almost anywhere in this country as they wage war against the state. [yesterday ISI HQ was putative target] [today it appears fait accompli] [****]

The attack occurred in the eastern city of Lahore, far from the conflict-ridden northwest and on a block that bristles with security. It came as Pakistan's army appears to be gaining ground in its battle with Taliban insurgents in the northwest's Swat Valley, and Interior Minister Rehman Malik said it was probably carried out by the Taliban or its Islamist allies in retaliation for the military offensive, which began this month.

The blast was the third major terrorist attack in Lahore in as many months, and analysts said the choice of the location may indicate a desire by insurgents to strike back at the government on its turf. Lahore is the capital of Punjab, [***]the nation's most populous province and the one that most top military commanders call home.

"This was an attempt to deter Pakistani authorities from taking action," said Hasan-Askari Rizvi, a Lahore-based analyst. "They thought that if they could demoralize the people here, that would have a lot of impact and be a restraining influence on the military."

Malik insisted that such a strategy would not succeed, telling reporters that insurgents had declared war on the state and that the government was determined to fight back.

"I believe that anti-Pakistan elements, who want to destabilize our country and see defeat in Swat, have now turned to our cities," he said.

Public opinion in the country has shifted over the past month toward greater support for the battle against the Taliban. It was unclear whether Wednesday's attack, which injured about 250 people, will increase that support or put pressure on the military to curtail its campaign.

The United States has leaned heavily on Pakistan to intensify its efforts against militancy, and Gen. David H. Petraeus, leader of U.S. Central Command, was in the capital, Islamabad, this week to meet with Pakistani officials. He told Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty on Tuesday that he was encouraged by Pakistan's renewed efforts in Swat. [***]

On Wednesday, the army reported progress in regaining control of the valley, predicting that Mingora, Swat's main city, would be back in government hands within three days. The Taliban has controlled Swat off and on since late 2007. The army's offensive there has left more than 1,100 insurgents and about 100 police officers and soldiers dead, [**] according to the military. The battle has also caused more than 2 million civilians to flee.

Although the Taliban insurgency is rooted in northwestern Pakistan, along the border with Afghanistan, Islamist extremism is not confined to that area, and security remains a major problem across the country.

Wednesday's attack, one of the deadliest in Pakistan this year, occurred in front of two police buildings and an office of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, or ISI. The buildings are located on Mall Road, the busiest thoroughfare in a city known as a vibrant cultural hub. It was not clear which building was the intended target. The ISI has had a complicated relationship with militant groups in Pakistan; it once armed and nurtured them, but in recent years it has officially turned against them.

The attack began when gunmen crashed a car through a security barrier. Some got out and started firing at the ISI office, officials said. Security forces returned fire, and after a brief gun battle, the explosives-packed car blew up. The assailants continued to fire and hurled grenades for 10 to 15 minutes after the blast.

The blast collapsed one of the police buildings, an emergency response center known as Rescue 15, trapping people in the debris. It also sheared walls off the ISI office and brought down the ceilings of operating rooms in a nearby hospital, injuring 20 people. Officials estimated the size of the bomb at more than 200 pounds.

The explosion left an eight-foot-deep crater, with rubble spread across an area the size of a city block. Nine of the dead were police officers, and several intelligence officers were killed, officials said. Most of the injured were civilians who had been making their way through morning traffic. At least two suspects were arrested.

Lahore, once considered removed from the insurgents' violence elsewhere in the country, has become a target this spring. In March, four gunmen hurled grenades and opened fire on officers at a police training center on the city's outskirts, killing eight people and themselves. Only days before, assailants had attacked a bus carrying the visiting Sri Lankan cricket team, killing six police officers escorting the bus and a driver.

There was no immediate assertion of responsibility for the latest strike. But the army released Wednesday what it said was the transcript of an intercepted telephone conversation between Muslim Khan, a spokesman for Taliban fighters in Swat, and two other insurgents, apparently in the tribal area of Waziristan.

In it, Khan asks the others to attack "generals or colonels from Punjab so that they know the pain, or at the houses of army people so that their children also get killed."
"Yes, you are right," one of the others replies. "I will convey your message." [ISI targeted] [***]
© 2009 The Washington Post Company

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A Single-Minded Focus on Dual Wars

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/14/AR2009051404450.html
A Single-Minded Focus on Dual Wars
Defense Secretary Is Reorienting the Military to Meet U.S. Troops' Needs Now
By Greg Jaffe
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 15, 2009 [Obama administration] [111th congress, 1st session] [SecDef Gates as war-time consigliere] [use psci-469] [use psci355, 455] [a little bit of individual, a bit of role] [govt too] [****]
On a rainy night in March, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates traveled to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to witness the military's ritual for welcoming home its war dead.

In a small building next to the tarmac, an officer briefed the defense secretary on the four deceased troops arriving that evening. They had been driving along a rutted road near Jalalabad, Afghanistan, when their Humvee hit a powerful roadside bomb.

Gates flashed with anger, according to people with him that day. He had spent most of his tenure in the Pentagon pushing to replace Humvees in Afghanistan and Iraq with Mine Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicles, built to withstand such blasts. "Find out why they hadn't gotten their goddamn MRAPs yet," he snapped at his staff. [****]

Clad in the black suit he had worn to work that morning in the Pentagon, Gates climbed into the cargo hold of the white 747 bearing the remains. From the ground, troops could see the defense secretary as he knelt, alone, by the flag-draped transfer cases. Five minutes passed.

Then Gates, a small man with white hair neatly combed across his head, appeared in the plane's door and summoned the chaplain and the honor guard to begin the 17-minute welcome-home ritual.

A few days later, he was asked at a Pentagon news conference if he would talk about his visit. He started to answer the question but stopped. "Actually, no," he said. "I will tell you it was very difficult."

Gates's experience at Dover offers a window into what is driving him as he seeks to remake Washington's biggest and most ponderous bureaucracy. For decades, the Pentagon's focus has been on building expensive, high-tech weapons programs for conventional wars. Gates has embarked on an ambitious effort to force the department to focus more of its energy on developing arms and equipment that can help troops on the ground as they battle insurgencies in Afghanistan and Iraq. [changing the role of SoD back to what it was once] [***]

His push to refocus the department comes as the war in Afghanistan appears in stalemate and violence against U.S. troops and Afghan forces is on the rise. In neighboring Pakistan, where the Taliban and al-Qaeda have carved out a haven from which they can launch attacks on U.S. troops, the government's hold on power throughout the country has grown shakier.

Last week, Gates fired the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan. The new commanders will be responsible for fighting the war and implementing President Obama's new strategy. Gates sees his job as making sure they have the tools they need.
An Emphasis on Now
The deteriorating conditions in the two countries seem to have sharpened the secretary's sense of urgency. His 2010 defense budget, introduced this month, proposes to cut or curtail a spate of large-scale weapons programs.

"Listening to our troops and commanders, unvarnished and unscripted, has from the moment I took this job been the greatest single source of ideas on what the department needs to do," he told lawmakers Wednesday. When some lawmakers questioned whether he had done the rigorous analysis to justify his budget cuts, Gates responded in his flat Kansas twang that the Pentagon is "drowning in analysis." Most of the changes he'd made were "kind of no-brainers," he said. Gates declined to be interviewed for this article.

Gates's critics, including some active-duty generals and many of the senior officials he has fired, say his intense focus on Afghanistan and Iraq threatens to turn the vaunted U.S. military into an army of occupiers and nation-builders. "I am sure the North Koreans fear the MRAP and the Iranians are cringing in their boots about the threat from our stability forces," former Air Force secretary Michael W. Wynne, who was dismissed last year, wrote in an online column. "Our national interests are being reduced to becoming the armed custodians in two nations, Afghanistan and Iraq." [entitled to his opinion] [but he strikes me as typical old school] [if the US doesn’t have the cutting edge everthing every two-bit country in world will challenge US] [history simply does not bear it out] [the US is so qualitiatively-quantitatively ahead, China could not catch us in 30 years if it made concerted effort] [****\

Last year, the four-star generals who run the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps formally "non-concurred" with the classified version of Gates's National Defense Strategy, which called for "taking additional, acceptable risk" in the area of conventional war so that the military could improve its ability to fight irregular wars. Gates met with all of the chiefs to listen to their objections. He then concluded that their concerns were "not compelling," said a senior Pentagon official involved in the process, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

The defense secretary has since described the strategy document as the foundation for the shift he's making in the Pentagon.
When He Arrived

Gates, who is 65, didn't come to the Pentagon to make major changes. With only two years left in George W. Bush's presidency, his mandate was a narrow one: fix the war in Iraq. Arriving from the presidency of Texas A&M University, Gates brought no aides with him, choosing to retain even the confidential assistant and chief of staff to his predecessor, Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Even Gates's detractors concede that he is a ruthlessly effective manager of the Pentagon bureaucracy. He demands that all briefing slides from his staff and military commanders reach his office the day before the meeting in which they will be discussed. With the slides in hand, he plots how he wants to drive the discussion. If slides arrive after the deadline, the meeting will be canceled or postponed, [***]Pentagon officials said.

In contrast with Rumsfeld, who allowed debates over weapons programs to drag on for months or years, Gates sets deadlines of weeks or even days. Meetings with top generals rarely run more than 45 minutes. "The natural propensity of a bureaucracy is not to decide," he has often said. "It will just chew the cud until there is no taste at all."

Gates also has moved quickly to demand accountability for mistakes from his senior leadership. [***]Just three months into his tenure, he fired Army Secretary Francis J. Harvey after articles in The Washington Post exposed appalling living conditions at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Harvey wasn't dismissed for the conditions at the hospital, defense officials said. Gates relieved him for failing to acknowledge the severity of the problems and fix them swiftly.

The Army secretary was visiting troops at Fort Benning, Ga., when he got an unexpected call from Gates's chief of staff ordering him to return immediately to the Pentagon. After Gates told him that he was fired, Harvey tried to argue his case, insisting that Gates and his staff had approved every move he had made in response to the failures at the hospital.

Gates, who colleagues describe as consistent and self-controlled, often grows quiet when he disagrees with someone. "It was like arguing with a stone," Harvey recalled. "The meeting lasted maybe 90 seconds."

A few days later, Gates asked through an intermediary if he could attend the goodbye ceremony that the Army was holding for Harvey. It was Gates's attempt to show respect for the office, said a defense official. Harvey sent word back that Gates wasn't welcome. "It was astounding to me that he'd even ask," Harvey recalled.
The Secretary's Vision

Since the early days of his tenure, Gates's vision for remaking the military has been shaped more by the daily frustrations of running the vast Pentagon bureaucracy than grand ideas about future war. Those frustrations came to a head in early 2008 when commanders in Iraq and Afghanistan were clamoring for more intelligence equipment, particularly Predator unmanned surveillance aircraft.

The field commanders estimated that they needed more than 40 Predator combat air patrols in the two war zones, defense officials said. At the time, the Air Force was able to maintain 12. When Gates asked the Air Force to find more surveillance planes, senior officials replied that they could provide four more patrols. Some Air Force officials also questioned whether the wartime commanders needed so many surveillance planes.

"The bureaucracy's first impulse was to deny that the demand really existed," said Brad Berkson, who served as director of program analysis and evaluation in the defense secretary's office.

In the weeks that followed, Gates pulled together a special task force, made up of his immediate staff and some military officers, to find more surveillance planes, both manned and unmanned. "We literally counted every tail in the fleet," said one Pentagon official involved in the effort. The results were stunning: Less than 25 percent of the military's arsenal of surveillance aircraft, which included Air Force Predators, Army Shadows and Navy P-3 Orion planes, was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan, the task force found. [***]

The deficiencies in Iraq and Afghanistan were a result of a shortage of Air Force control stations, from which pilots fly the unmanned aircraft. The Air Force also hadn't trained enough pilots to operate all of the Predators in its rapidly expanding arsenal.

Gates's team went to extreme lengths to get more hours out of the available ground control stations and pilots. The task force arranged for experienced pilots to use stations normally set aside for training to fly combat missions during off hours. Because the Predators are controlled using satellite links, pilots can operate aircraft flying in Afghanistan and Iraq from bases in the United States.

The Air Force also lost a few hours of flying time each day because Predator pilots controlling planes from Creech Air Force Base, Nev., had to make an hour-long drive into town to buy lunch, visit the bank or pick up their children from day care. Gates set aside money to build a cafeteria, child-care facilities and other amenities at Creech. "We decided the pilots' time was extremely valuable," Berkson said. "We didn't even want them to have to stand in line at the bank."

Some Air Force officials complained bitterly that the defense secretary's staffers were micromanaging commanders at Creech. In one case, a member of Gates's staff called one of the base's commanders to ask him why his pilots were working shorter hours than Army pilots flying similar unmanned aircraft. [that’s management not microcommanding] [***]"I was having to justify my organization down to the gnat's ass just about every week," an Air Force officer recalled, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to talk freely about his superiors. "It became a distraction."
Results on Predators

By early 2009, the task force's efforts had produced results: The number of U.S. military Predators in the air over Afghanistan and Iraq had increased almost three-fold, to 31 from 12. In a speech last year at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Ala., Gates compared the effort to "pulling teeth."

In the months since he was asked by Obama to stay on as defense secretary as the Cabinet's lone holdover, Gates's top priority has been incorporating the lessons of the task force and similar initiatives into the 2010 defense budget. "His engagement on this budget has been orders of magnitude greater than any other secretary of defense that I can recall," said Adm. Michael Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in an interview. "There is a certainty about what he wants, and you can't get around it." [***]

The current budget, for example, sets aside $2 billion so the Air Force will be able to keep as many as 50 unmanned surveillance planes in the air by 2011. Gates also carved out $500 million to increase the number of helicopters in Afghanistan and Iraq, which have been in short supply since 2003. As with the Predators, the helicopter shortfall was caused by a lack of crews to maintain and fly the aircraft. The Pentagon has 6,000 helicopters in its fleet, but about 800 of them are deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan, Mullen said.
'We . . . Must Do Better'

Last week, Gates flew to Afghanistan, where he asked for the resignation of the top American general in charge of the war. He had chosen Gen. David D. McKiernan for the post 11 months earlier but had become convinced that a new commander was needed to arrest the decline in the country. [***]"We can and must do better," he later told reporters at a Pentagon news conference.

During his trip, Gates flew to a sprawling American base being built in southern Afghanistan to accommodate thousands of new U.S. troops now arriving in the country. He met four Marines who showed him their charred and dented MRAP. A few days earlier, as they patrolled the desert surrounding the base, a roadside bomb had detonated under the vehicle.

One of the Marines inside had broken his arm. The other three emerged with minor scratches and bruises.
Gates looked pleased. He shook their hands, struggled to make small talk and thanked them for their service.
© 2009 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:50 PM | Permalink

As Cheney Seizes Spotlight, Many Republicans Wince

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/13/AR2009051303789.html
As Cheney Seizes Spotlight, Many Republicans Wince
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 14, 2009 [Obama white house] [former Bush white house] [former veep Cheney] [shoots off his mouth on as Senate Armed Service Committee report on detainee treatment released—not coincidental!] [enhanced-interrogation techniques] [it’s counterproductive as we can never—no court will allow testimony—prosecute the SOBs for what they did] [almost certainly info has come from “torture”] [but that’s quite different than saying it works] [Cheney strikes me as tough-kid wannabe who ducked military service but still wants to show how tough] [it just rings hollow] [use psci355, 455, 362, 469b] [among the truly scary civilians who wanted military muscle for every challenge] [followup from yesterday] [use this as the two other Veep Cheney pieces in this month’s role-individual for psci355, 455] [use role theory] [archive in societal too] [****]
As vice president, Richard B. Cheney famously spent much of the past eight years in

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/13/AR2009051303789.html
As Cheney Seizes Spotlight, Many Republicans Wince
By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 14, 2009 [Obama white house] [former Bush white house] [former veep Cheney] [shoots off his mouth on as Senate Armed Service Committee report on detainee treatment released—not coincidental!] [enhanced-interrogation techniques] [it’s counterproductive as we can never—no court will allow testimony—prosecute the SOBs for what they did] [almost certainly info has come from “torture”] [but that’s quite different than saying it works] [Cheney strikes me as tough-kid wannabe who ducked military service but still wants to show how tough] [it just rings hollow] [use psci355, 455, 362, 469b] [among the truly scary civilians who wanted military muscle for every challenge] [followup from yesterday] [use this as the two other Veep Cheney pieces in this month’s role-individual for psci355, 455] [use role theory] [archive in societal too] [****]
As vice president, Richard B. Cheney famously spent much of the past eight years in undisclosed locations and offering private advice to President George W. Bush. But past was not prologue.

Today Cheney is the most visible -- and controversial -- critic of President Obama's national security policies and, to the alarm of many people in the Republican Party, the most forceful and uncompromising defender of the Bush administration's record. His running argument with the new administration has spawned a noisy side debate all its own: By leading the criticism, is Cheney doing more harm than good to the causes he has taken up and to the political well-being of his party? [****]

His defenders believe he has sparked a discussion of vital importance to the safety of the country, and they hold up Obama's reversal of a decision to release photos of detainee abuse as a sign that Cheney is having an effect. But there is a potential political price that his party may pay in having one of the highest officials in an administration repudiated in the last election continue to argue his case long after the voters have rendered their decision.

Cheney entered the arena this winter in a politically weak position after that election. His personal favorability ratings were and are still low. A Gallup poll in late March found that 30 percent of respondents gave him a favorable rating, while 63 percent rated him unfavorably.

That is why his high-profile defense of controversial Bush administration policies has caused queasiness among Republican political strategists. But Cheney remains powerful enough that most of his GOP critics are not willing to take him on in public. "The fact that most people want to talk [without attribution] shows what a problem it continues to be," said one Republican strategist who spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to be candid. "Cheney continues to be a force among many members of our base, and while he is entirely unhelpful, no one has the standing to show him the door." [***]

What drives a man who stayed out of the spotlight as vice president, who passed up an opportunity to run for the White House in his own right in 2008, to emerge in such a prominent role after the election?

Mary Matalin, who was a spokeswoman for Cheney during the early years of the Bush presidency, believes her former boss is motivated mainly by his principles. Had Obama not moved so precipitously to undo the Bush policies about which he feels so strongly, she believes, Cheney would have held his fire. [tough] [elections have consequences and Cheney cannot simply decide to alter wholesale Veep role because he doesn’t like how his team has been portrayed] [not without serious consequences] [***]

"If Barack Obama had come in and done what he said he was going to do and look at the stuff and see what is working, then Cheney would have continued to do what he was doing -- working on memoirs, finishing his house," she said. "He's got a good life. He's got stuff going on. He doesn't care about being on TV. There's no more politics there. He's not settling any scores. He just wants people to understand."

"This isn't about partisan politics, it's about what's right for the country," said Liz Cheney, the former vice president's daughter and a former State Department official. "Every American, whether you're a Republican, Democrat or independent, would agree that before critical decisions are made about national security of the nation, we ought to have a full and fair debate."

Cheney's daughter was among those who pointed to yesterday's White House reversal on the detainee photos as evidence that a vocal, public debate over the new administration's policies can make a difference.

Another GOP strategist, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity, pointed out the conundrum for Republicans over the former vice president's current role. "Even if he's right, he's absolutely the wrong messenger," this strategist said. His main worry, he added, is that Cheney keeps the public focused on the past, rather than the future. "We want Bush to be a very distant memory in the next election. The more Cheney is on the front burner, the more difficult it's going to be." [***]

"He's perfectly entitled to make his case, and given that Dick Cheney is as popular as Britney Spears at a Sunday school teacher convention, we hope he continues to be the face of the Republican Party," said Hari Sevugan, national press secretary for the Democratic National Committee. "His continued presence reminds people that the GOP is unwilling to put forward new ideas or leadership, and so long as he continues to be the voice of the Republican cause, he ensures that the Republican Party will remain the party of the past."

Liz Cheney strongly disagreed with the claim that her father's vocal defense of Bush administration policies has caused significant unrest within the GOP. She said he has received phone calls, e-mails and letters from people around the country, from officials in government and from members of the military and their families, thanking him for standing up and speaking out. "He's got hundreds of people coming to him saying, 'Please keep doing what you're doing,' " she said.

Since leaving the White House in January, Cheney has accused Obama of making the country less safe, disagreed with orders to close the detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, defended the Bush administration's harsh interrogation techniques and called for a public airing of classified information on the controversial program. [***]On Sunday, he said he would pick Rush Limbaugh over former secretary of state Colin L. Powell as a model for the Republican Party and virtually wrote his onetime colleague out of the GOP. [he’s come off as petty and personal] [arrogance incredible—how dare those new whipper snappers not show due deference to our 8 years?] [****]

Cheney has made clear that part of his motivation is to defend against possible legal action against Bush officials who authorized or carried out the controversial interrogation policies. He recently told Stephen F. Hayes of the Weekly Standard that he remembers how, during the Iran-contra scandal in the Reagan administration, senior officials often ran for cover, leaving "the little guys out to dry." He said he is determined to defend those people now. "I don't know whether anybody else will, but I sure as hell will," he told Hayes.

Cheney has filled a vacuum within the Republican Party at a time when there are few other leaders who can command such attention. Bush has chosen to stay silent during his first months out of office, as have some other high-ranking members of his administration.

Republicans who defend Cheney take issue with the argument that it is inappropriate for a former vice president to challenge an incumbent administration. They point to former vice president Al Gore, who took on Bush over the war in Iraq, and to former president Jimmy Carter, who has repeatedly challenged Republican presidents.

Rarely has an official from one administration moved so quickly and aggressively to criticize a new president. Most vice presidents in the past century have sought the White House as presidential candidates, putting themselves before the country and accepting the judgment of the voters. Those who were defeated went quietly to the sidelines, at least for some time.

Matalin said she believes that Cheney does not buy the argument that his outspoken critique of the administration will have long-term implications for the GOP. He has been in politics long enough, she said, to remember when the Republican Party was on its back, only to rebound and prosper. "He says he's been through several of these cycles where the only thing that brings you back is to stand on your principles and apply those principles to the issues of the day."

But she added that Cheney is "not trying to be the party spokesman. It's not political to him. It's a policy thing, and you cannot deny that the debate is engaged and engaged on principle." [I take issue with it] [I think Cheney is arrogant enough to believe he’s arguing principle when he’s actually arguing personal-political] [****]
© 2009 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:49 PM | Permalink | TrackBacks (0)

A General Steps From the Shadows

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/world/asia/13commander.html
May 13, 2009
Man in the News
A General Steps From the Shadows
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and MARK MAZZETTI [Obama white house] [national-security team] [NSC princiaps and bureaucracy] [gsave and Patraeus counterinsurgency strategy in AfPak] [obama has apparently bought in all the way] [now comes the house cleaning to put the right parts in place] [my gut tells me Patraeus was principally responsible for McChrystal’s supplantation of McKeirnan] [McChrustal has special ops and those special military units (SMUs) all over him] [he appears to thrive as square peg in round hole] [archive in individual-role] [****]
WASHINGTON — Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the ascetic who is set to become the new top American commander in Afghanistan, usually eats just one meal a day, in the

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/13/world/asia/13commander.html
May 13, 2009
Man in the News
A General Steps From the Shadows
By ELISABETH BUMILLER and MARK MAZZETTI [Obama white house] [national-security team] [NSC princiaps and bureaucracy] [gsave and Patraeus counterinsurgency strategy in AfPak] [obama has apparently bought in all the way] [now comes the house cleaning to put the right parts in place] [my gut tells me Patraeus was principally responsible for McChrystal’s supplantation of McKeirnan] [McChrustal has special ops and those special military units (SMUs) all over him] [he appears to thrive as square peg in round hole] [archive in individual-role] [****]
WASHINGTON — Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the ascetic who is set to become the new top American commander in Afghanistan, usually eats just one meal a day, in the evening, to avoid sluggishness.

He is known for operating on a few hours’ sleep and for running to and from work while listening to audio books on an iPod. In Iraq, where he oversaw secret commando operations for five years, former intelligence officials say that he had an encyclopedic, even obsessive, knowledge about the lives of terrorists, and that he pushed his ranks aggressively to kill as many of them as possible. [***]

But General McChrystal has also moved easily from the dark world to the light. Fellow officers on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where he is director, and former colleagues at the Council on Foreign Relations describe him as a warrior-scholar, comfortable with diplomats, politicians and the military man who would help promote him to his new job. [sounds like the sort Patraeus usually likes] [***]

“He’s lanky, smart, tough, a sneaky stealth soldier,” said Maj. Gen. William Nash, a retired officer. “He’s got all the Special Ops attributes, plus an intellect.”

If General McChrystal is confirmed by the Senate, as expected, he will take over the post held by Gen. David D. McKiernan, who was forced out on Monday. Obama administration officials have described the shakeup as a way to bring a bolder and more creative approach to the faltering war in Afghanistan.

Most of what General McChrystal has done over a 33-year career remains classified, [***] including service between 2003 and 2008 as commander of the Joint Special Operations Command, an elite unit so clandestine that the Pentagon for years refused to acknowledge its existence. But former C.I.A. officials say that General McChrystal was among those who, with the C.I.A., pushed hard for a secret joint operation in the tribal region of Pakistan in 2005 aimed at capturing or killing Ayman al-Zawahri, Osama bin Laden’s deputy. [****]

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld canceled the operation at the last minute, saying it was too risky and was based on what he considered questionable intelligence, a move that former intelligence officials say General McChrystal found maddening.

When General McChrystal took over the Joint Special Operations Command in 2003, he inherited an insular, shadowy commando force with a reputation for spurning partnerships with other military and intelligence organizations. But over the next five years he worked hard, his colleagues say, to build close relationships with the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. He won praise from C.I.A. officers, many of whom had stormy relationships with commanders running the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“He knows intelligence, he knows covert action and he knows the value of partnerships,” said Henry Crumpton, who ran the C.I.A.’s covert war in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11 attacks. [***]

As head of the command, which oversees the elite Delta Force and units of the Navy Seals, General McChrystal was based at Fort Bragg, N.C. But he spent much of his time in Iraq commanding secret missions. Most of his operations were conducted at night, but General McChrystal, described nearly universally as a driven workaholic, was up for most of the day as well. His wife and grown son remained back in the United States.

General McChrystal was born Aug. 14, 1954, into a military family. His father, Maj. Gen. Herbert J. McChrystal Jr., served in Germany during the American occupation after World War II and later at the Pentagon. General Stanley McChrystal was the fourth child in a family of five boys and one girl; all of them grew up to serve in the military or marry into it.

“They’re all pretty intense,” said Judy McChrystal, one of General McChrystal’s sisters-in-law, who is married to the eldest child, Herbert J. McChrystal III, a former chaplain at the United States Military Academy at West Point.

General McChrystal graduated from West Point in 1976 and spent the next three decades ascending through conventional and Special Operations command positions as well as taking postings at Harvard and the Council on Foreign Relations. He was a commander of a Green Beret team in 1979 and 1980, and he did several tours in the Army Rangers as a staff officer and a battalion commander, including service in the Persian Gulf war of 1991.

One blot on his otherwise impressive military record occurred in 2007, when a Pentagon investigation into the accidental shooting death in 2004 of Cpl. Pat Tillman by fellow Army Rangers in Afghanistan held General McChrystal accountable for inaccurate information provided by Corporal Tillman’s unit in recommending him for a Silver Star. [***] The information wrongly suggested that Corporal Tillman had been killed by enemy fire.

At the Joint Staff at the Pentagon, where General McChrystal directs the 1,200-member group, he has instituted a daily 6:30 a.m. classified meeting among 25 top officers and, by video, military commanders around the world. In half an hour, the group races through military developments and problems over the past 24 hours.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, brought General McChrystal back to Washington to be his director last August, and the physical proximity served General McChrystal well, Defense officials said. In recent weeks, Admiral Mullen recommended General McChrystal to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates as a replacement for General McKiernan. [***]

One other thing to know about General McChrystal: when he was a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in 2000, he ran a dozen miles each morning to the council’s offices from his quarters at Fort Hamilton on the southwestern tip of Brooklyn.

“If you asked me the first thing that comes to mind about General McChrystal,” said Leslie H. Gelb, the president emeritus of the council, “I think of no body fat.”
Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

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Manhunter To Take On a Wider Mission

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/12/AR2009051203679.html
Manhunter To Take On a Wider Mission
Gen. McChrystal Faces Raft Of Issues in Afghanistan
By Ann Scott Tyson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Lt. Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, the former Special Operations chief who is President Obama's new choice to lead the war in Afghanistan, rose to military prominence because of his single-minded success in a narrow but critical mission: manhunting.

As commander of the military's secretive Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) for nearly five years starting in 2003, McChrystal masterminded a campaign to perfect the art of tracking down enemies, and then capturing or killing them. He built a sophisticated network of soldiers and intelligence operatives who proceeded to decapitate the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq and kill its most notorious leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He has also led the hunt for Osama bin Laden and other al-Qaeda leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

To succeed in the more expansive and varied Afghanistan mission, military officials and analysts said, McChrystal will have to transcend the perception that he is, at his core, an Army Ranger, an elite practitioner of rapid-fire raids intended to "find, fix, finish" the enemy.

Instead, he will have to embrace the more unwieldy work of building Afghan security forces from disparate tribes, extending governance and cultivating diplomatic skills -- as well as a thirst for endless cups of tea -- that goes along with leading a counterinsurgency campaign.

"McChrystal kills people. Has he ever worked in the counterinsurgency environment? Not really," said Roger Carstens, a senior nonresident fellow at the Center for a New American Security and a former Special Forces officer.

"People will ask, what message are we sending when our high-value-target hunter is sent to lead in Afghanistan?" said a senior military officer at the Pentagon, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

But McChrystal's demonstrated drive and intellect, as well as his abilities in team-building and problem-solving, have won him many admirers. "Without a doubt, Lieutenant General McChrystal is one of the five best generals in the Army today. He is the perfect man for the job and will be Afghanistan's Petraeus, if anyone can be," said an Army general who served in Iraq with him. He too spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly.

McChrystal, a 1976 West Point graduate who regularly runs to and from work, is known for tackling assignments with intensity and exhaustive energy, according to military peers who know him well. As a young commander in the 1980s, he "was big into road marching in the Rangers -- he expanded it exponentially," said one officer. McChrystal served as an operations officer for the JSOC in the Persian Gulf War and was chief of staff for an Army task force during operations to overthrow the Taliban government in Afghanistan.

McChrystal shuns an armchair style of commanding, and even as a three-star general he often joins his men on operations, officers said. As the JSOC commander overseeing Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, McChrystal spent the vast majority of his time overseas, rather than at his Fort Bragg, N.C., headquarters.

Military experts and officers point out that one of McChrystal's most important contributions in Iraq was to reach well beyond military circles to build personal relationships with a wide range of civilian officials -- bringing together expertise in intelligence, forensics, finances and other fields in an interagency task force that strengthened his campaign against the insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq.

In this ad hoc way, McChrystal was able to break through bureaucratic obstacles and eventually create a more enduring organization, filled with experienced officials who repeatedly rotated into Iraq. "McChrystal's strength is in part his Rolodex and how he leverages the interagency," Carstens said.

The Afghanistan campaign -- with its complex military command structure, patchwork of NATO and non-NATO forces, and large international civilian presence -- presents a similar challenge but on a far larger scale, analysts said. "Afghanistan is the toughest team" to build, said a senior military officer.

One of the first steps McChrystal is likely to take is to winnow down the military staff in Afghanistan, analysts and officers said.

As a manager, McChrystal favors flatter, faster organizations and is known for preferring a small staff that is overworked rather than a large one that has time to grow unfocused, according to officers who have worked under him.

Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, tapped McChrystal to become director of the Joint Staff last year. McChrystal's confirmation in that post was delayed by the Senate Armed Services Committee, some members of which voiced concern about his oversight of detention facilities where abuses occurred. The committee also looked into McChrystal's role in the Army's handling of the friendly-fire death of Ranger Cpl. Pat Tillman in Afghanistan.

After McChrystal was confirmed, Mullen gave him the assignment of making the Joint Staff a more responsive organization. McChrystal immediately instituted a regimen of 6 a.m. video teleconferences from around the world. Mullen "is a big fan of McChrystal. He's been positively delighted by his performance," said a Joint Staff official.

One critical task for McChrystal, military officers said, will be to more closely integrate the efforts of the growing number of conventional troops and Special Operations forces in Afghanistan, where 47,000 U.S. and 33,000 non-U.S. troops now serve. That will require balancing the mission of killing and capturing Taliban insurgents with the broader work of protecting the population.

Lt. Gen. Dennis Hejlik, commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Force, who served with McChrystal in Iraq, said yesterday that McChrystal "understands the value of high-value targets" as well as "having the small unit on the ground" to provide better security for Afghans. McChrystal "really does understand that you're not going to win the war by killing all the enemy," he said, adding, "He did that in Iraq for five years."
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
© 2009 The Washington Post Company

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Obama Enlists Biden's Expertise About High Court

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/10/AR2009051002129.html
Obama Enlists Biden's Expertise About High Court
By Michael A. Fletcher
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 11, 2009 [individual-role] [veep Biden] [his years on judiciary and his expertise on grilling supreme nominees over the years] [it was something I admit I thought very little about when he was announced as Obama running mate] [overall, most of these factors have augered well for continuation of Vice President Cheney’s role-shattering tenure as veep] [not that Biden will replicate that but I think—and I argued it in my NSC book—we are in for a newly active veep in future NSC principals] [this will eventually affect how candidates select veep picks] [use role theory] [*****]
The person in the White House most knowledgeable about Supreme Court nominations sits in the vice president’s office.

With President Obama filling his first high court vacancy with the retirement of Justice David H. Souter, Vice President Biden finds himself regularly consulting with the president and fielding queries from the White House counsel and others for insights on the process.

“The president is basically taking advantage of my experiences by asking me nuanced questions about both individuals and timing,” Biden said in an interview Friday. “We’ve gone through specific nominees, which we’re burrowing in on.” [****]

A former head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Biden chaired half a dozen Supreme Court confirmation hearings and voted on every sitting justice with the exception of John Paul Stevens. [it would be unnatural not to rely on his experience and thinking] [not to say they don’t discount some of it as “Joe” but] [****] His feel for the personalities, complexities and sensitivities of the process has been forged during some of the most explosive confirmation battles, including those of Justice Clarence Thomas and Judge Robert H. Bork, the conservative legal scholar who was rejected by the Senate.

Although Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel is leading the search, which is being run through the White House counsel's office, Biden and the president have gone over lists of potential nominees, discussed the best ways to approach senators about a prospective pick, and talked about when it would be best to announce a choice. [****]

For Biden, the consultative role is part of his expanding portfolio as Obama's all-purpose adviser, globe-trotting emissary and political handyman. [****] [role theory] [had Cheney not shattered role,, even Biden’s tremendous experience would probably languish greatly] [****]

After a 36-year career of being his own boss in the Senate, Biden is adjusting to what it means to work for someone else, be it on the issue of the Supreme Court or foreign policy.

With ethnic tensions again flaring in the Balkans, Biden, who helped encourage the U.S. military intervention there in the 1990s, is being dispatched to the region later this month. Even before they were sworn in, Obama sent Biden to Iraq and Afghanistan to get a firsthand look at the war efforts.

He traveled to Europe more than a month ahead of Obama to signal the administration's intention to recalibrate its transatlantic relationships. Biden was also dispatched to Latin America on a scouting mission before Obama visited Mexico and attended a meeting of Caribbean and South American leaders in Trinidad and Tobago last month.

"He has traveled more than any vice president" at the start of an administration, said Ronald A. Klain, Biden's chief of staff. "Having a vice president who can do that kind of work has been a large asset to the president."

When longtime Republican Sen. Arlen Specter (Pa.) announced late last month that he would become a Democrat, Biden was credited with playing a lead role in coaxing his old friend into crossing over.

Biden also has been put in charge of the administration's $787 billion economic stimulus plan. He has traveled the country to tout the legislation's merits, rubbed shoulders with union members, met with educators and talked to local officials. Biden also heads the president's "middle-class" task force, which is looking at ways to reverse economic trends that in the past eight years have left many workers struggling as the costs of health care, education and other essentials have risen faster than their incomes.

"My greatest value to the president is that I have a lot of experience. I have been to a lot of places before, and I don't just mean geographically," Biden said. "He never has to worry whether or not I'm going to tell him something." [****]

Unlike his predecessor, Richard B. Cheney, Biden has not attempted to develop his own power center in the White House. Instead, he and his staff consult closely with the president's team, attending daily meetings with their West Wing colleagues. He also hosts a weekly breakfast with Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, at which they plot foreign policy strategy.

Biden has amassed substantial influence despite a well-earned reputation for verbal gaffes, a tendency that is sharply at odds with the cool, controlled style of the president. The vice president veered far off message when asked in a recent television interview what advice he would give a family member planning to travel to Mexico, the source of the global swine flu outbreak. [****]

"I wouldn't go anywhere in confined places now," Biden said, contradicting a message of calm caution carefully put forth by Obama. "It's not going to Mexico, you're in a confined aircraft when one person sneezes it goes all the way through the aircraft. That's me. I would not be, at this point, if they had another way of transportation, suggesting they ride the subway."

The episode offered more evidence for an observation frequently made about the vice president: that his enthusiasm and plain-spoken candor are simultaneously his greatest political strengths and his greatest weaknesses.

"The beginning of wisdom about Joe Biden is that he is an enthusiast," said Ross Baker, a Rutgers University political scientist who has worked in the Senate. "The flip side of that enthusiasm is that he sometimes gets carried away. With all the goodwill and ebullience, you're buying a certain potential for indiscretion." [****]

So far, Obama seems willing to take the bad with the good.

With the White House working with a list of fewer than 10 potential court candidates, many observers expect Obama to announce his choice by June.

"I think we have plenty of time, meaning between now and early summer," Biden said, adding it would be best to have the justice confirmed before the Senate's August recess. "Our expectation is that we may be able to move more rapidly."

Given the strong Democratic majority in the Senate, many conservative activists have conceded that they would have a hard time derailing most any candidate Obama nominates. Still, Biden said, it would be best to avoid an ideological fight by picking a justice with stellar credentials, a mainstream legal view and "an understanding that decisions on the close calls affect individuals."

"When you pick someone in that genre, there usually is not a holy war," Biden said. "That's the inclination of the president. So I expect things to go rather smoothly."
Staff writer Scott Wilson contributed to this report.
© 2009 The Washington Post Company

Posted by Kent Bolton at 04:42 PM | Permalink

In Frenetic White House, A Low-Key 'Outsider'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/06/AR2009050604134.html
In Frenetic White House, A Low-Key 'Outsider'
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, May 7, 2009 [Obama administration] [Obama’s national-security team] [Dennis Blair as DNI] [Panetta as CIA director] [Gen (retired) James Jones as NSC adviser] [individual-role sources of USFP in Obama administration] [finally some info on General Jones] [clearly, qui bono is question in terms of leaks] [use psci355, 455] [***]
President Obama's national security adviser, James L. Jones, looks for rare opportunities to ride his bike from his McLean home to work at the White House. On occasion, he has pedaled back across the Potomac River for lunch. He tries to end his workday at 7 p.m.

In recent weeks, Jones has been portrayed in foreign policy articles and blogs as too measured and low-key to keep pace with the hard chargers working late hours in the West Wing. Some senior White House officials questioned early on whether Jones, 65, a retired four-star Marine general who barely knew Obama before the election, would succeed among younger staffers [***] [he does need a personal relationship to be effective—at least past experience suggests so] [***] whose relationships with the president were forged during the long and arduous campaign.

"He's not very visible," said I.M. Destler, co-author of a recent book on national security advisers. "I'm a skeptic on whether Jones has the sort of flexibility and ability" required by Obama, Destler said.

White House officials who cited early misgivings, more stylistic than substantive, insisted they have now disappeared. But Jones acknowledges that the road has not always been smooth, and he appears more comfortable than some of his administration colleagues in saying they still have some distance to travel.

It is "absolutely" fair to say that it has taken some time for him and his colleagues to get used to each other, Jones said in an interview Tuesday. "From this West Wing, in particular, because this is Obama Nation, right? True? This is where the Obama election campaign came, landed, en masse."

Jones, reserved and ramrod straight, with a steady, blue-eyed stare, is the unquestioned odd man out at the White House in both background and personality. Rahm Emanuel, Obama's chief of staff, is known as hyperactive and hyperbolic. On the National Security Council (NSC), chief of staff Mark Lippert and strategic communications director Denis McDonough are intense, stay-late-at-the-office foreign policy experts whose ties to Obama are long and deep. Deputy national security adviser Thomas E. Donilon has an extensive history with the Democratic Party and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. [****]

"I'm not only an outsider, butI'm a 20-years-older-than-anybody-around outsider," Jones said. "I'm a former general. And it took me a while to get the president to call me by my first name. Now, I'm 'Hey, you,' " he said with a laugh.

"But there is a generational thing here. There is a process thing here. I'm used to staffs, and I'm used to a certain order. I'm used to people having certain roles. And so there's a very natural adjustment period." [***]

"My calculus was that it would take six months," Jones said. "We're about halfway there, and I think every week gets a little better."

Despite early predictions that Obama's "team of rivals" would clash, Jones by all accounts has facilitated smooth relations among high-profile Cabinet members. [***]

In the White House, Jones said he has had to adjust to the relatively free flow of advice that Obama encourages. "When I first went into the Oval Office, I didn't expect six other people from the NSC to go with me," he said. Now, he said, "I think the president and I are very comfortable with the fact that I don't have to be the shadow. I don't have to be there all the time. I really have great people. I want them to be trusted." [being there every second is a sign of exerting control and he may well be confident enough that he needn’t do that] [on the other hand, he had better be the one the president ultimately bounces things off of whether he was in the original meeting or not!] [***]

Jones has a distinguished résumé: Marine Corps commandant, supreme allied commander in Europe and, after his military retirement, a Bush administration envoy on Israeli-Palestinian security issues.

He has appeared at Obama's side during trips overseas -- and was instrumental, according to European officials, in resolving a potential blow-up during last month's NATO summit over appointment of the new secretary general.

He regularly chairs meetings of the national security "principals," [****] which include the secretaries of state and defense. Yesterday, he conducted an unusual on-camera briefing for reporters after Obama's meetings with Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari and Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Although the administration is barely more than 100 days old, Jones has launched an ambitious restructuring of the White House national security apparatus so it can focus on modern issues such as energy and climate change. He has emphasized the "bottom up" approach to decision-making that both he and Obama favor, Jones said, in which issues are first discussed in working groups, then brought to the "deputies committee" of representatives from Cabinet departments. [***]

"If you want things to go beyond your tenure," Jones said, "you'd better get a lot of buy-in into the big things."

Jones said he feels no hesitation in differing with Cabinet members and offering both solicited and unsolicited advice, with others and privately, to the president.

As Obama was mulling his first major foreign policy decision in February -- whether to increase U.S. military deployments to Afghanistan this year -- Jones said he intervened with questions about the information supplied by the Pentagon.

The numbers were "out of whack," Jones recalled. Beyond the requested 17,000-strong combat force, the military had included additional "enablers" that it said were required for logistical and other support functions. "I understand these ratios and what they ought to look like, and when they seemed a little high, I pushed back on it," he said. The numbers were reduced.

When Obama was under pressure to review the military's "don't ask, don't tell" policy on gay service members, Jones said he went "to see him personally on it" and advised him not to add another controversy to his already-full plate. The president, Jones said, took his advice.

Jones "is not over-excited over sudden crises and problems; he has a sort of steady strategic perspective," said Zbigniew Brzezinski, who served as Jimmy Carter's national security adviser. But Brzezinski questioned whether anyone at the White House can "get the president to exploit what is unique about the presidency, which is the ability to take grand initiatives." [unsurprisingly, Zbig thinks only Zbig could manage that] [***]

Jones said he is "not used to being in the center of these things. . . . But if I'm not living up to other people's views of what the national security adviser should look like he's doing . . . like my hair is on fire all the time," so be it. "I did that in my life, a couple of generations ago, I was a gung ho major, and a gung-ho lieutenant colonel, and I sacrificed my family life for my career."

If he can reform the NSC's structure and process, he said, "then everybody can go home and have dinner with their families. Because they'll have enough depth and robustness so that we can tee up issues -- not constantly in a crisis mode." [seems to be trying to reinvent policy hill from Ike!] [****]
Staff writers Scott Wilson and Glenn Kessler contributed to this report.
© 2009 The Washington Post Company

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