Just Foreign Policy News November 6, 2006 No War with Iran: Petition Nearly 3400 people have signed the Just Foreign Policy/Peace Action petition through Just Foreign Policy's website. Please sign/circulate if you have yet to do so: http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/involved/iranpetition.html
Get Local: the Just Foreign Policy NorthEast Tour If there's an event in your area, try to come. If not, pass the info to folks you know who live near upcoming events; we'll try to drop by your neighborhood soon. http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/tour/index.html Just Foreign Policy News daily podcast: http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/podcasts/podcast_howto.html Summary: U.S./Top News Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega appeared win the presidency in Nicaragua, according to preliminary results released this morning. He garnered 38.5 percent of the vote, well above the 35-percent total and five-point margin over the second-place finisher needed to avoid a runoff, according to a quick count carried out by a respected civic organization. The Bush administration told a federal judge terrorism suspects held in CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the "alternative interrogation methods" their captors used to get them to talk, the Washington Post reported Saturday. One attorney said "the executive is attempting to misuse its classification authority . . . to conceal illegal or embarrassing executive conduct." Another said the prisoners "can't even say what our government did to these guys to elicit the statements that are the basis for them being held. Kafka-esque doesn't do it justice. This is 'Alice in Wonderland.' " Writing in the Nation on October 18, Tom Engelhardt asked, "Why hasn't the mainstream media connected the dots between the Saddam's judgment day and the midterm elections?" With casualty numbers on the rise in Iraq, soldiers are showing a keen interest in this week's elections, McClatchy News Service reports. An undercover investigation by ABC News revealed some Army recruiters told students that if they enlisted, their chances of going to Iraq would be small. In an exchange videotaped by a hidden camera, a student asked a recruiter, "Nobody is going over to Iraq anymore?" The reply: "No, we're bringing people back." One recruiter told a student that just quitting the Army was an option if military service didn't suit the new recruit. "It's called a 'Failure to Adapt' discharge," the recruiter said. "It'll just be like it never happened." The Iraq war's neoconservative boosters have turned sharply on the Bush administration, charging their grand designs have been undermined by White House incompetence, David Rose writes for Vanity Fair. "Prince of Darkness" Richard Perle says if he had to do it over, he would not have advocated an invasion of Iraq. A Democratic takeover of Congress would put two of the most outspoken critics of the Iraq war, Robert Byrd and David Obey, in charge of dispensing the money President Bush will seek for combat, Reuters reports. Even without withholding a penny for the war, appropriations committees could flex their muscles, one analyst notes. "There are a whole variety of things the secretary of defense wants and needs from the Appropriations Committee that has nothing to do with the support of troops in field," said Scott Lilly, of the Center for American Progress. Congressional appropriators control funds for everything from Rumsfeld's government limousine to Pentagon office computers and pet Defense Department projects. US Vice President Dick Cheney said he would likely refuse to testify before Congress if he is faced with a subpoena from the opposition Democratic party, AFP reports. Iran The Iranian Foreign Ministry said Sunday that Iraqi officials had asked Iran to hold talks with the US and that it would consider doing so if the US made an official request, the New York Times reports. As the Bush administration struggles to rally international pressure on Iran to halt its nuclear program, China and Russia are working to take the military option off the table, the Washington Post reports. This article, by Colum Lynch, reports as fact without attribution the canard that the Iranian government has "threatened to wipe Israel off the map." The article leads by quoting approvingly Patrick Clawson of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, referring to him as a "researcher" and "analyst." Clawson is a prominent advocate for US military confrontation in the Middle East. WINEP's founding director, Martin Indyk, was research director of AIPAC, the main lobby in support of confrontational US and Israeli government Middle East policies in Washington. (See the Center for Media and Democracy's "Source Watch," http://www.sourcewatch.org/wiki.phtml?title=Washington_Institute_for_Near_East_Policy.) This article evokes Judith Miller's reporting on Iraq in the run-up to the U.S. invasion. IAEA inspectors visited Iran's second network of centrifuges at its Natanz uranium enrichment facility, the official IRNA news agency reported. Iraq A series of secret U.S. war games in 1999 indicated an invasion and post-war administration of Iraq would require 400,000 troops, nearly three times the number there now, AP reports. And even then, the games showed, the country still had a chance of dissolving into chaos. Iraqis were jolted Friday morning by the news that Sgt. Santos Cardona, viewed as one of the villains of Abu Ghraib, has been ordered back to the country, Time magazine reports. The reaction was total outrage. Afghanistan A recent CIA assessment found the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, had been significantly weakened by rising popular frustration with his American-backed government, the New York Times reports. Pakistan Almost all of the 80 victims of last week's airstrike on an Islamic school in a tribal region near the Afghan border were children or teenagers according to Pakistan's largest Islamic opposition party reported, the Los Angeles Times reports. The government has described the religious school as a terrorist training camp. But a list published by the Jamaat-i-Islami party indicated 13 of the victims were younger than 12 and the youngest was 7. Mexico Thousands of anti-government demonstrators marched through Oaxaca Sunday, demanding federal police leave the city, AP reports. "They don't guarantee security; to the contrary, they scare us and are rude," said a local businessman. Contents: U.S./Top News 1) Ortega appears to be winner in Nicaragua Nancy San Martin, Miami Herald, Monday, November 6, 2006 http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/15943009.htm Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega appeared to slide into presidential victory on his third attempt at regaining the power he once wielded, according to preliminary results released this morning. The former revolutionary garnered 38.5 percent of the vote, well above the 35-percent total and five-point margin over the second-place finisher needed to avoid a runoff, according to a quick count carried out by a respected civic organization. U.S.-educated banker Eduardo Montealegre received 29.5 percent of the vote, according to the count by Ethics and Transparency. Former vice president and coffee grower José Rizo received 24 percent of the vote. Lagging far behind were economist Edmundo Jarquín and Edén Pastora, both of whom broke with Ortega's Sandinista National Liberation Front. The quick count was based on results from a representative sampling of polling stations and had a margin of error of 1.7 percentage points. Official results in the most competitive presidential race in this country's history were expected to be released this afternoon by the Supreme Electoral Tribunal. 2) U.S. Seeks Silence on CIA Prisons Court Is Asked to Bar Detainees From Talking About Interrogations Carol D. Leonnig & Eric Rich, Washington Post, Saturday, November 4, 2006; A01 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/03/AR2006110301793.html The Bush administration has told a federal judge terrorism suspects held in secret CIA prisons should not be allowed to reveal details of the "alternative interrogation methods" that their captors used to get them to talk. The government says in new court filings that those interrogation methods are now among the nation's most sensitive national security secrets and that their release - even to the detainees' own attorneys - "could reasonably be expected to cause extremely grave damage." Terrorists could use the information to train in counter-interrogation techniques and foil government efforts to elicit information about their methods and plots, according to government documents submitted to U.S. District Judge Walton. The battle over legal rights for terrorism suspects detained for years in CIA prisons centers on Majid Khan, who was one of 14 high-value detainees transferred in September from the "black" sites to the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. A lawyer with the Center for Constitutional Rights, which represents many detainees at Guantanamo, is seeking emergency access to him. The government, in trying to block lawyers' access to the 14 detainees, effectively asserts that the detainees' experiences are a secret that should never be shared with the public. Gitanjali Gutierrez, an attorney for Khan's family, responded in a court document yesterday that there is no evidence that Khan had top-secret information. "Rather," she said, "the executive is attempting to misuse its classification authority . . . to conceal illegal or embarrassing executive conduct." Joseph Margulies, a Northwestern University law professor who has represented several detainees at Guantanamo, said the prisoners "can't even say what our government did to these guys to elicit the statements that are the basis for them being held. Kafka-esque doesn't do it justice. This is 'Alice in Wonderland.' " 3) November Surprise? Why Hasn't Mainstream Media Connected the Dots Between Saddam's Judgment Day and the Midterm Elections? Tom Engelhardt, The Nation, Wednesday, October 18, 2006 http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1018-23.htm The US-backed special tribunal in Baghdad signalled Monday that it will likely delay a verdict in the first trial of Saddam Hussein to November 5. Why hasn't the mainstream media connected the dots between the Saddam's judgment day and the midterm elections? A possible death-sentence for Saddam and his top lieutenants on November 5? Now, shouldn't that raise a few eyebrows somewhere? If you happen to have a calendar close at hand, pull it over and take a quick look. That verdict would then come, curiously enough, just two days before the midterm elections. It's the sort of thing that-you would think-that any reporter with knowledge of the US election cycle would at least note in an article. But no, you can search high and low without finding a reference to this in the mainstream media. Scott Horton is an adjunct professor at the Columbia University Law School, as well as chairman of the International Law Committee at the New York City Bar Association. He makes frequent trips to Iraq, working as an attorney "representing arrested local-hire reporters of US media." I asked whether he thought Karl Rove might have anything to do with this: "For sure. That November 5 date is designed to show some progress in Iraq. This is the last full news-cycle day in the US before the elections. It'll be Monday. And the American public will see Saddam condemned to death and see it as a positive thing. "When you look at polling figures," Horton said," there have been three significant spike points. One was the date on which Saddam was captured. The second was the purple fingers election. The third was Zarqawi being killed. Based on those three, it's easy to project that they will get a mild bump out of this. "After all, almost every newspaper reserves space for Iraq reporting every day. This just assures that they will have a positive news story to feature. I find it amazing not that journalists don't editorialize on this, but that they report the story without even noting that this is right before the midterm elections." 4) Soldiers display a strong interest in elections With casualty numbers on the rise in Iraq, soldiers are showing a keen interest in this week's elections. McClatchy News Service, Mon, Nov. 06, 2006 http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/nation/15939846.htm Soldiers from Fort Bragg to Baghdad are showing more interest than ever in voting this election, and some experts predict the military may not back Republicans as much as they have in recent elections. In Fort Bragg's home of Fayetteville, N.C., Chief Warrant Officer Jill Spohn, who is helping soldiers get ballots, said the interest is driven at least partly by the rising casualty numbers in Iraq. Military personnel election turnout - 42 percent in 2002 and 79 percent in 2004 - usually matches or exceeds that of civilians, according to the Pentagon. But the Pentagon has boosted its efforts to make voting easier, and some soldiers say their personal stake in the war is inspiring them to vote. "A lot of soldiers are worried we're fighting for a lost cause," said Pfc. Joseph Wells, a 26-year-old paratrooper. 5) Recruiters dishonest about Iraq Chicago Tribune, November 5, 2006 http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0611050364nov05,1,540347.story An undercover investigation by ABC News revealed some Army recruiters told students that if they enlisted, their chances of going to Iraq would be small. In an exchange videotaped by a hidden camera, a student asked a recruiter, "Nobody is going over to Iraq anymore?" The reply: "No, we're bringing people back." ABC News said Friday that it and New York affiliate WABC provided 10 students with hidden cameras and sent them to recruiters in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. One recruiter told a student that just quitting the Army was an option if military service didn't suit the new recruit. "It's called a 'Failure to Adapt' discharge," the recruiter said. "It'll just be like it never happened." But Col. Robert Manning, in charge of Army recruiting for the Northeast, said it wouldn't be that easy, according to ABC. He told the network that new recruits were likely to go to Iraq: "We are a nation and Army at war still." "It's hard to believe some of the things [recruiters] are telling prospective applicants," Manning said after seeing the ABC News tapes. 6) Neo Culpa: Now They Tell Us David Rose, Vanity Fair, November 3, 2006 http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2006/12/neocons200612 As Iraq slips further into chaos, the war's neoconservative boosters have turned sharply on the Bush administration, charging that their grand designs have been undermined by White House incompetence. In a series of exclusive interviews, Richard Perle, Kenneth Adelman, David Frum, and others play the blame game with shocking frankness. Target No. 1: the president himself. Perle is unrecognizable as the confident hawk who, as chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee, had invited the exiled Iraqi dissident Ahmad Chalabi to its first meeting after 9/11. "The levels of brutality that we've seen are truly horrifying, and I have to say, I underestimated the depravity," Perle says now, adding that total defeat-an American withdrawal that leaves Iraq as an anarchic "failed state"-is not yet inevitable but is becoming more likely. "And then," says Perle, "you'll get all the mayhem that the world is capable of creating." According to Perle, who left the Defense Policy Board in 2004, this unfolding catastrophe has a central cause: devastating dysfunction within the administration of President Bush. Perle says, "The decisions did not get made that should have been. They didn't get made in a timely fashion, and the differences were argued out endlessly.… At the end of the day, you have to hold the president responsible.… I don't think he realized the extent of the opposition within his own administration, and the disloyalty." Perle goes so far as to say that, if he had his time over, he would not have advocated an invasion of Iraq: "I think if I had been delphic, and had seen where we are today, and people had said, 'Should we go into Iraq?,' I think now I probably would have said, 'No, let's consider other strategies for dealing with the thing that concerns us most, which is Saddam supplying weapons of mass destruction to terrorists.' … I don't say that because I no longer believe that Saddam had the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction, or that he was not in contact with terrorists. I believe those two premises were both correct. Could we have managed that threat by means other than a direct military intervention? Well, maybe we could have." 7) Iraq foes would head Democrat war-spending panels Richard Cowan, Reuters, Sunday, November 5, 2006; 9:14 AM http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/05/AR2006110500250.html A Democratic takeover of the U.S. Congress would put two of the most outspoken critics of the Iraq war in charge of dispensing the money President Bush will seek for combat, adding pressure for a new approach to the increasingly unpopular war. In the House of Representatives, Rep. David Obey of Wisconsin would rise to Appropriations Committee chairman if Democrats win this week. At every opportunity, the scrappy Obey reminds fellow lawmakers of his opposition to the Iraq war, calling it the "dumbest war since the War of 1812." Across Capitol Hill, Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, now 88, would head the Senate Appropriations panel. Just before the start of the war in March 2003, Byrd accused Bush of flaunting "our superpower status with arrogance." Of the coming U.S. invasion, he said, "Today I weep for my country." With either Obey or Byrd in charge of the committees that pay the $8-billion-a-month Iraq war tab, experts said Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld would have to do far more explaining of how the money was being spent. That could open the door for Congress to pressure the administration to work to work with it and with outside experts on a fresh, rigorous assessment of Iraq's political problems and how to deal with them so American troops can leave the country. In the run-up to this year's election, Democratic Party leaders have tried to assure the country they would not turn their backs on American troops fighting in Iraq. But without withholding a penny for the Iraq war, the appropriations committees could flex their muscles, said Scott Lilly, who spent about three decades as a high-level aide to Democrats in Congress, much of that time with the House Appropriations Committee. "There are a whole variety of things the secretary of defense wants and needs from the Appropriations Committee that has nothing to do with the support of troops in field," said Lilly, who now works the Center for American Progress. Congressional appropriators control funds for everything from Rumsfeld's government limousine to Pentagon office computers and pet Defense Department projects. "You put your foot down and make clear there is a very unpleasant price if (information) is not provided," Lilly said.
From their appropriations committee seats, Byrd and Obey have backed
combat troop funding, if not the war itself, by supporting the more than $500 billion allocated so far for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The bulk of that money has been spent in Iraq and it contrasts with the $50 billion or so some administration officials predicted before the war. Sitting behind Obey and Byrd as chairmen of key defense spending subcommittees could be Rep. John Murtha of Pennsylvania, the ex-Marine who a year ago called for withdrawing troops from Iraq, and Sen. Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, who lost an arm fighting in World War Two and has voted for withdrawing troops by next July. 8) Cheney Says Unlikely He Would Comply with Congress Subpoena Agence France Presse, Monday, November 6, 2006 http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/1105-02.htm US Vice President Dick Cheney said he would likely refuse to testify before Congress if he is faced with a subpoena from the opposition Democratic party. The Democrats say if they prevail in Tuesday's legislative elections they may launch investigations into past actions taken by President George W. Bush's administration, possibly even issuing subpoenas to compel prominent officials to testify. Asked in a television interview if he would testify before Congress if he received a subpoena from lawmakers however, Cheney said it was unlikely he would comply, as it would break with American political tradition. Iran 9) Iraq Asks Iran to Meet U.S. New York Times, November 6, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/06/world/middleeast/06iran.html The Iranian Foreign Ministry said Sunday that Iraqi officials had asked Iran to hold talks with the US and that it would consider doing so if the US made an official request. Such talks were agreed to in March, but tensions between the countries over Iran's nuclear program began escalating and final arrangements were never made. Many of Iraq's Shiite leaders lived in Iran when Saddam Hussein was in power in Iraq, and some American military commanders have accused Iran of training and equipping violent Shiite groups in Iraq. "If we receive an official request over regional issues, we will consider it," said a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Muhammad Ali Hosseini, during a weekly news conference. 10) Dissent Grows at U.N. Over Iran China, Russia Object to Including U.S.-Backed Military Option Colum Lynch, Washington Post, Sunday, November 5, 2006; A25 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/04/AR2006110400959.html As the Bush administration struggles to rally international pressure on Iran to halt its nuclear program, China and Russia are working to take the most powerful diplomatic weapon off the table: the military option. Moscow and Beijing insist that a U.N. sanctions resolution under negotiation in New York should avoid language that could be used as a pretext for a military strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. They have received the tacit backing of the US' key European partners, Britain, France and Germany. But analysts say the 15-nation Security Council's refusal to preserve the possibility - however remote - of military action has weakened its hand as it confronts one of the most significant challenges of the 21st century: the possible emergence of a radical Middle East government with nuclear weapons. "What means of enforcement is credible if you start out by saying in the beginning that 'oh, by the way, we're not going to do the one thing that you're most afraid of?' " said Patrick Clawson, deputy director for research at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He said the council should "have the military option on the table" in the event that the government that threatened to wipe Israel off the map does develop nuclear weapons. [If the Washington Post has evidence that the government of Iran "threatened to wipe Israel off the map," they should provide it. Otherwise they should retract the claim. Clawson is more partisan hawk than "analyst." By citing him in this way the Washington Post beats the drums of war. - JFP.] The effort to constrain the US underscores lingering distrust over the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq in March 2003 without explicit Security Council approval, analysts said. It follows a similar push to prevent the US from adopting U.N. resolutions that one day may be used to punish Sudan and North Korea with stronger sanctions or military force. "People are afraid it's a slippery slope; that if they agree to sanctions today, they give the authority for military intervention tomorrow," said Edward C. Luck, a Columbia University historian who studies the UN. He said the political dispute over the use of force has eroded the council's credibility. "It is a sign of weakness and division," Luck said. The U.N. debate over the use of force in Iran coincides with a realignment of power in the region that is already diminishing the prospects for U.S. military action against Iran, analysts say. U.S. and NATO military setbacks in Iraq and Afghanistan are eroding public support in the US for military action in the region. And the US' European allies are firmly opposed to any U.S. military action in Iran. The Bush administration maintains that though it never takes the military option off the table, its diplomatic campaign to rally support for sanctions against Iran and North Korea is not a cover for launching new conflicts. But Russian and Chinese diplomats note that the US insisted it was committed to diplomacy in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq. When the US and Britain failed to secure U.N. backing for a more forceful response, they turned to a 12-year-old resolution as the legal basis for the invasion. "We learned our lesson from what happened in Iraq and that's why we want to be very clear," said a Chinese diplomat. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, Moscow's former ambassador to the UN, told reporters in March that the debate over Iran reminded him of the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion. "That looks so deja vu," Lavrov said. "I don't believe that we should engage in something which might become a self-fulfilling prophecy. We are convinced that there is no military solution to this crisis." The U.N. debate over the use of force in Iran and North Korea has focused on Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter, a provision that has traditionally been used to enforce U.N. demands through the threat of economic sanctions or military action. Russia and China have refused to support the provision, arguing that it could be used to justify future military action. 11) U.N. Inspectors Visit Iran Enrichment Cascades Reuters, November 5, 2006, Filed at 6:07 p.m. ET http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-nuclear-iran-inspectors.html A group of U.N. nuclear watchdog inspectors has visited Iran's second network of centrifuges at its Natanz uranium enrichment facility, the official IRNA news agency quoted an official as saying on Sunday. Despite U.N. Security Council demands that it halt nuclear fuel production work, Iran announced last month that it had started up a second group of 164 centrifuges, which spin at supersonic speeds to enrich uranium. The networks of centrifuges are known as cascades. Iran says Natanz will eventually house tens of thousands of the machines but that it will only use them to enrich uranium to a level suitable for use in atomic power reactors and not to the much higher level needed to make atom bombs. "They have visited the second cascade and the Isfahan uranium conversion facility," the unnamed official told IRNA. The inspectors who arrived in Iran on Friday will stay in the country for four days to collect information for International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) chief Mohamed ElBaradei's November report to the watchdog, IRNA said. "Their activities in Iran are based on theNon-Proliferation Treaty and the IAEA's safeguards," the official said, calling the visit a routine part of Iran's commitment to international treaties. Iran ended snap inspections of its nuclear facilities in February after its case was referred to the Security Council. The US is pushing the council to toughen a draft resolution drawn up by Britain, France and Germany for sanctions against Iran over its nuclear program. Russia and China, both veto-holding members of the council, want extensive changes to soften and shorten the resolution. Iran insists sanctions will not deter it and has threatened to take counter measures, such as curtailing IAEA inspections altogether, if the Security Council does take action against it. Experts say Iran would need thousands of centrifuges spinning non-stop for months to produce enough highly enriched uranium for one atom bomb. Iran says it will install 3,000 centrifuges by March 2007. Iraq 12) War simulation in 1999 pointed out Iraq invasion problems Associated Press, November 4, 2006 http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/meast/11/04/war.games.ap/ A series of secret U.S. war games in 1999 showed that an invasion and post-war administration of Iraq would require 400,000 troops, nearly three times the number there now. And even then, the games showed, the country still had a chance of dissolving into chaos. In the simulation, called Desert Crossing, 70 military, diplomatic and intelligence participants concluded the high troop levels would be needed to keep order, seal borders and take care of other security needs. The documents came to light Saturday through a Freedom of Information Act request by George Washington University's National Security Archive, an independent research institute and library. "The conventional wisdom is the U.S. mistake in Iraq was not enough troops," said Thomas Blanton, the archive's director. "But the Desert Crossing war game in 1999 suggests we would have ended up with a failed state even with 400,000 troops on the ground." There are about 144,000 U.S. troops in Iraq, down from a peak in January of about 160,000. 13) Shock and Anger in Baghdad Greet the Abu Ghraib News Iraqis on the street and in the halls of power view the possible return of a man convicted for his role in the prisoner abuse scandal as another example of U.S. arrogance and insensitivity Aparisim Ghosh, Time, Friday, Nov. 3, 2006 http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1554399,00.html Iraqis were jolted by a Friday morning bombshell: the news that Sgt. Santos Cardona, viewed here as one of the villains of Abu Ghraib, has been ordered back to the country. Although Iraqi and Arab media have been slow to pick up on the story, many in Baghdad read about it online, and word quickly spread. The reaction was predictable: total outrage. "This is America spitting in our face," said Imad al-Hashimi, a Baghdad paediatrician. "The sheer arrogance of it is unbelievable." It wasn't until midday that the news began to circulate in the Green Zone, the Baghdad enclave that includes many key government offices, including that of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. There, it was greeted with incredulity - and warnings of a backlash. "The reaction in the street will be very bad," warns Maryam al-Rais, a member of the Iraqi parliament. "This is just the latest in a long list of insults to Iraqi dignity by the Americans." Officials said that the Iraqi government was not consulted on Sgt. Cardona's new posting. "He was sent without the knowledge of the Iraqi government," says Said Fadil al-Shara'a, internal affairs advisor to Nuri al-Maliki. "Nobody who has abused Iraqis should be allowed into this country, whether or not he has been convicted." One Western official in the Green Zone told TIME he had received several angry calls from political figures, expressing "a cold fury" at what they interpreted as American arrogance and insensitivity. "To them, the fact that [U.S. Ambassador] Khalilzad didn't pick up the phone and tell [Prime Minister] al-Maliki shows the Americans simply don't care about Iraqi opinion," says the diplomat. "If Abu Ghraib was a p.r. calamity, then this is Part II-another disaster." The U.S. Embassy declined TIME's request for a comment, saying questions about Sgt. Cardona were "military matters and issues." The U.S. military in Baghdad has yet to respond to TIME's questions. But Friday morning, in an apparent response to the publication of TIME's story, the Pentagon issued a statement saying that Cardona's transfer is being "evaluated" and that his movement with his unit into Iraq from a staging area in Kuwait has been "stopped." Iraqis contacted by TIME said it was especially galling that Sgt. Cardona should be involved in training police. To political analyst Tahseen al-Sheekli, it suggests "that America wants to build a police force that doesn't believe in human rights." Afghanistan 14) C.I.A. Review Highlights Afghan Leader's Woes David Rohde & James Risen, New York Times, November 5, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/05/world/asia/05afghan.html A recent CIA assessment found that the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, had been significantly weakened by rising popular frustration with his American-backed government, American officials say. The assessment found Karzai's government and security forces continued to struggle to exert authority beyond Kabul, said a senior American official. The assessment also found that increasing numbers of Afghans viewed Karzai's government as corrupt, failing to deliver promised reconstruction and too weak to protect the country from rising Taliban attacks. "The ability to project out into the countryside, perceptions of corruption in the government," said the official, listing Afghan complaints. "The failure to deliver the services." The assessment, which was conducted before Karzai's visit to Washington in late September, echoes the frustration that has gathered force in Afghanistan since the spring, and American officials in Washington and Kabul are expressing increasingly dire warnings regarding the situation here. Ronald E. Neumann, the American ambassador in Kabul, said in a recent interview that the US faced "stark choices" in Afghanistan. Averting failure, he said, would take "multiple years" and "multiple billions." Pakistan 15) Airstrike victims said to be children Los Angeles Times, November 6, 2006 http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-briefs6.1nov06,1,6020374.story Almost all of the 80 victims of last week's airstrike on an Islamic school in a tribal region near the Afghan border were children or teenagers, Pakistan's largest Islamic opposition party reported. The government has described the religious school, or madrasa, in the Bajur tribal district as a terrorist training camp. But a published list drawn up by the Jamaat-i-Islami party indicated that 13 of the victims were younger than 12 and the youngest was 7. Mexico 16) Protesters March in Oaxaca and Order Police to Pull Up Stakes Associated Press, November 6, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/06/world/americas/06mexico.html Thousands of anti-government demonstrators marched through Oaxaca Sunday, demanding security forces abandon positions set up last week to end a five-month protest. Masked police officers clutching automatic weapons watched from rooftops as the protesters marched to a plaza about a block away from their encampments, yelling, "Get out federal police!" The leaders formed a human chain to keep the crowd of an estimated 20,000 people from confronting the police, but about 400 people broke through and attacked the officers with stones and bottles. Some of the police officers lobbed rocks back, while officers on rooftops used slingshots to shoot marbles at those trying to confront the police. A radio station at Oaxaca's university, where the leftists had set up their base last week, reported that gunmen had fired at some protesters near the university earlier Sunday, wounding a 21-year-old student, who was taken to a public hospital. The hospital confirmed that a student had been brought in with a bullet wound. About 4,000 federal police moved into the city on Oct. 29 to restore order following a five-month protest that had rattled President Vicente Fox's administration, scared tourists out of Oaxaca and left more than a dozen people dead, mostly protesters shot by armed gangs. After being chased out of the city center, the demonstrators moved to the university. The police surrounded the campus last week and battled hundreds of protesters. The protests began in May when teachers went on strike for better pay and conditions in Oaxaca, one of Mexico's poorest states. When the police violently broke up one of their demonstrations in June, protesters expanded their demands to include the ouster of the state governor, Ulises Ruiz, whom they accuse of rigging the 2004 election that brought him to power. Now the demonstrators also want the federal police to leave. "They don't guarantee security; to the contrary, they scare us and are rude," said Jesús Velasco, 60, a businessman who was marching Sunday. - Robert Naiman Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org Just Foreign Policy is a membership organization devoted to reforming U.S. foreign policy so it reflects the values and interests of the majority of Americans.
