News n Notes from the Web

Amnesty blasts U.S., allies in report
By Krishnadev Calamur
Published 5/26/2004 3:52 PM

WASHINGTON, May 26 (UPI) -- The U.S.-led war on terror is "bankrupt of vision and bereft of principle," and has made the world more dangerous, the human rights group Amnesty International said in its latest report Wednesday.

The group's 2004 report criticizes the United States and its allies, along with militant groups worldwide, for what it calls "the most sustained attack on human rights and international humanitarian law in the last 50 years."

Over the past four years, 177 armed groups have operated in 65 countries, which make-up one-third of the world's population, the report said. Fifty-five percent of these groups killed civilians and 20 percent committed rape and other sexual violence. One-third of governments responded to this violence by killing civilians; 36 percent by torturing and ill-treating people; and 28 percent through sexual violence, including rape, the report added. The report comes down heavily on both governments and militant groups. It details torture and ill-treatment in 132 countries, political killings in 47, and detainments without trial or charge in 58 nations. It also detailed killings and attacks by militants in 34 countries, torture or ill treatment in 18, and hostage-takings and abductions in 16.

"This is to say that the war on terror has evolved into a global street brawl with governments and armed groups duking it out, and innocent civilians suffering severely," William Schulz, executive director of Amnesty International USA, at a news conference in Washington.

Amnesty chastised the Bush administration's responses to the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks on New York and Washington that killed nearly 3,000 people. Schulz said the U.S. response to the attacks and the subsequent war on Iraq had exacerbated the security situation around the world. He added the alleged abuse of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison, the killing of civilians in Iraq, the indefinite detention of terrorism-related detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and the USA PATRIOT Act showed the Bush administration was trying to pursue security at all costs.

"But to President Bush's claim that the war on terror is making the world safer, we say that he is sadly mistaken," Schulz said. "The administration's war on terror is bankrupt of vision and bereft of principle, and it has made the world a far more dangerous place."

Schulz said some of the U.S. actions in Iraq may, in fact, constitute war crimes, and called for a full investigation and an appropriate conclusion.

"Amnesty certainly believes that if some of these allegations are substantiated in an appropriate process, that they may very well constitute war crimes," he said. "Amnesty International is not itself an adjudicator of those kinds of decisions, but we certainly believe that there is the profound potential for that."

The report said its own research had shown that since the U.S.-led war on terror began, terror-related violence had increased worldwide. The number of armed groups rose by 17 percent from the two-year period before Sept. 11, 2001, to the two years after it, and the number of militant groups had increased from 132 to 154 in the same period.

"It is clear that the way in which the war on terror is being conducted today is not making us safer," Schulz said. "To put it as simply as possible, it is in fact a failure. It is making the world more dangerous."

Jessica Stern, a lecturer in public policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, said the U.S.-led responses to militancy had caused alienation in much of the Islamic world, causing militants to feed of the anti-Western sentiments and garner more support.

"We must always weigh the consequences in that context of our actions," she said. "If we humiliate people in the Islamic world, we are assisting the terrorists."

Stern said the problem of terrorism was one with which the world would have to live.

"The threat of terrorism is likely to continue to rise," she said at the news conference. " There are no short-term remedies."

The U.S. State Department downplayed the criticisms by the human rights group.

"We work with Amnesty International, we listen to Amnesty International. We have close ties. We talk to them all the time, share information," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said. "That being said, we don't necessarily agree with their views."

He called Amnesty's allegation that Bush's war on terror was "bankrupt of vision and bereft of principle" a "sound bite, but a sound bite we would disagree with."

"This president has enunciated a very clear vision of defending civilization, defending society, defending decency from people who want only destruction," he said.

Boucher denied that the war on terror had lessened the U.S. concern for human rights around the world, especially among its allies, some of who have been accused of harsh crackdowns on dissidents veiled as a fight against terrorism.

"We have raised human rights cases and issues with leaders of governments, including governments that are very close to us in the war on terrorism," he said. "We have made clear that we believe that constructing a healthy society where rights are respected, where people enjoy freedoms and hope and opportunity is an essential part of fighting the war on terrorism. So for those two basic reasons I would reject the overall argument."

Boucher, however, added that the State Department took the Amnesty report seriously.

"We look at what they say," he said. "We look at specific cases they raise and make sure that we are doing what we can for the people who might be hurt by harmful practices around the world."

Copyright © 2001-2004 United Press International
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Global View: Ebbing Tide Of Money
the world economy has been inflated to unstainable levels withj price deflation a looming worry in multiple markets and sectors
by Ian Campbell - Washington (UPI) May 15, 2004

For four years, ever since Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan began to slash interest rates, the tide has been coming in: a relentless tide of money that has lifted stock markets, house prices, bond prices, trade, growth. And not just in the United States but around the world. Houses in Australia, bonds in Moscow, pesos in Mexico: they have all been floating on the rising global pool of money. Now the tide is turning.

The first signs of that turn, of the ebbing of the tide, are there in markets around the globe. Since the Fed announced May 4 that "policy accommodation can be removed at a pace that is likely to be measured," meaning that the target for the short-term Fed funds interest rate would soon be raised, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has fallen by 3 percent and is now 700 points and almost 7 percent down on its early February highs. The yield on the Treasury's 10-year note has jumped to approximately 4.8 per cent, a percentage point above its level in late March and 1.7 percentage points above the lows of only a little over 3 percent touched in June last year. Corporate bonds in the United States and, even more so, emerging markets bonds have felt this move in Treasuries. According to John Bowler, Country Risk Director of The Economist Intelligence Unit in London, "Average spreads on emerging market bonds have already widened by more than 150 basis points from the very low levels reached in January...how much further spreads widen will depend on how aggressively the U.S. Federal Reserve tightens policy."

Currencies have also been on the move. The U.S. dollar has rallied and some of the currencies that had previously strengthened against it have been knocked back. The dollar is now trading at close to $1.19 per euro, as against a level of around $1.28 per euro three months ago -- a rise of 7 percent. The Mexican peso has hit an all-time low. The Australian dollar, meanwhile, has lost 4 percent of its value against the U.S. dollar just since May 4, and a colossal 10 percent since April 1. From the southern hemisphere, too, the tide of money has ebbed.

Are all these trends linked? They are. The world economy is stitched together by flows of trade and flows of capital. Several years of ultra low interest rates in the United States have worked like global warming to raise the levels of what economists call liquidity around the world. The ebbing of the tide began several months ago, as some of the comparisons we make above hinted, when the markets became more optimistic about U.S. growth -- and more fearful about inflation and interest rates. Now we will see what impact the ebb tide will have: what will stay afloat and what will be beached. The U.S. housing market risks being left beached. The Mortgage Bankers Association reported May 12 that its weekly index of mortgage loan applications was down by 5.0 percent on the previous week -- and by 45.2 percent compared with the same week one year earlier. The drop in mortgage applications reflects the rise in mortgage rates. The average interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages, the association found, increased to 6.32 percent from 6.10 percent one week earlier. In June 2003 the average rate for new 30-year mortgages was just 5.1 percent.

In 2003 as a whole the average was 5.7 percent. It was these exceptionally low rates -- which first appeared late in 2002, the first below 6 percent 30 year mortgage rates in decades -- that funded the mortgage financing boom that has now come to an end and the housing market sales and price boom which may be about to come to an end. A new phenomenon in the housing market reflects an attempt by borrowers and lenders to evade rising rates: a shift towards adjustable rate mortgages. According to the MBA, the share of applications for one-year ARMs is now the highest in almost a decade and the rate on these mortgages was just 3.74 percent. These cheap one-year mortgages risk encouraging buyers to buy now, with the housing market inflated, and exposes them to the risk of payments they cannot afford in future if mortgage rates go up. It is also lenders that could be caught out by the receding tide of liquidity. The U.S. mortgage market, like most US capital markets, is bigger and more flexible than any other in the world. Lenders securitize their mortgage loans and sell them on in a market in which the government-sponsored Fannie Mae is a huge player.

But the concern is that when markets are so easy, risk is not assessed properly. How vulnerable are US lenders and investors to a fall in house prices? It does nothing to reassure us that the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight criticized Fannie Mae's accounting a week ago, obliging it to restate its earnings. The U.S. stock market, and stock markets around the world, must also be vulnerable now. In theory, the rise in growth that is threatening higher inflation (and therefore higher interest rates) should bolster them as companies earn more. But this depends on the degree to which abundant money has inflated markets excessively.

And moreover it is growth itself, and therefore earnings, that are vulnerable to higher interest rates. The recovery in the U.S. economy has been achieved through, on the one hand, tax cuts and federal spending increases--generating a $1.4 trillion increase in government debt under the current "it's the people's money" president -- and, on the other hand, very cheap money and a house price boom. Such is the size of its deficit that the government cannot cut tax rates more. And suddenly rising interest rates mean the cost of the debt President George W. Bush is accumulating is going to go up. But the interest rate rise might not last long. Our view is that higher interest rates will be quick to hurt the bubbly stock and housing and bond markets that have helped to lift growth in the United States and elsewhere. It does not help that China, whose rapid growth has fuelled the global economy, also needs to quell its cheap credit and steady its boom.

As soon as 2005 the much vaunted U.S. recovery looks vulnerable. Renewed slowdown could come quickly -- and with it lower interest rates again. But the first question to be answered is this: when recovery has been created by flooding the world with money how many assorted (debt overburdened) around the world are going to be left beached?

All rights reserved. Copyright 2004 by United Press International.
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The Policy of Abuse
Washington Post - Sunday, May 16, 2004; Page B06

Until this month very little was publicly known about the Bush administration's procedures for handling and interrogating foreign detainees. Human rights groups had collected reports of abuses at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and in Afghanistan, reports that the administration dismissed or denied. Spokesmen pointed to President Bush's statement in June of last year that the United States would not violate an international convention against torture and to assurances that detainees in Guantanamo were being treated according to the principles of the Geneva Conventions. In the past two weeks, thanks to the furor over the photographs from Abu Ghraib prison and a series of congressional hearings, a disturbingly different picture has been revealed -- one that in its own way is shocking and damaging to America's place in the world.

What is now known is that official procedures for handling detainees permitted hooding, sleep and dietary deprivation, forced "stress" positions, isolation for more than 30 days and intimidation by dogs, and that these reflected judgments at the highest levels of the Bush administration. These decisions, taken in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001, changed decades of previous U.S. policy and violated or radically reinterpreted existing regulations. Their adoption deeply disturbed legal professionals inside the military, so much so that some secretly took their complaints to outside watchdog organizations. The International Committee of the Red Cross, as well as many independent legal experts, has condemned the resulting questioning techniques as illegal under the Geneva Conventions and the Convention Against Torture. Yet Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld has been saying that the United States considers such treatment of prisoners appropriate and legal -- and, presumably, sanctioned for use against detainees everywhere, including Americans.

On Thursday the U.S. commanding general in Iraq, Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, took a first corrective step by prohibiting the harsh interrogation methods in Iraq. But the Pentagon continues to defend the techniques as legal under international law, and they are still available for use in military and CIA facilities in Guantanamo, Afghanistan and elsewhere. That is a recipe for more unacceptable abuses and more damage to the United States.

How have the procedures been changed since Sept. 11? Official U.S. military regulations on interrogation expressly forbid the "physical and moral coercion" outlawed by the Geneva Conventions. A number of practices are identified in official manuals as illegal physical or mental torture, including "food deprivation," "abnormal sleep deprivation" and "forcing an individual to stand, sit or kneel in abnormal positions for prolonged periods of time." With the encouragement of senior civilian Pentagon officials, these rules have been turned inside out. Sleep deprivation of up to 72 hours, the Pentagon decided, was not "abnormal" and therefore not torture; a forced stress position held for as long as 45 minutes was not "prolonged" and thus also allowed. The list of practices approved for Iraq also included "dietary manipulation" (as distinguished from illegal "food deprivation"), "sensory deprivation" and "change of scenery down" (putting a prisoner in a worse place).

Even harsher methods have been approved for Guantanamo and for facilities in Afghanistan and elsewhere where the Bush administration is holding detainees it says are "unlawful combatants" under the terms of the Geneva Conventions. These methods have not been officially disclosed, but according to reports in The Post and the New York Times, they include questioning detainees while they are naked, withholding their pain medication and submerging them under water so as to simulate drowning. In these cases, the Bush administration's official position is that it is not violating the Convention Against Torture, which it acknowledges covers all detainees, including unlawful combatants. But the administration also interprets that convention as prohibiting any act that would be unlawful under the U.S. Constitution. We hope Mr. Bush does not really believe that submersion in water should be a permissible way to question American citizens arrested domestically -- yet that is the logic of his administration's position.

To effectively deprive prisoners of sleep and otherwise change their scenery "down," the Bush administration decided to violate another longstanding military regulation that separated military police who guard prisoners from intelligence interrogators. According to an Army investigative report, military police were required to "set the conditions" for interrogations -- a procedure that, at least at Abu Ghraib, put them in the position of taking direction from interrogators, including civilians outside the military chain of command.

At first, this procedure, like the harsh interrogation techniques, was used only at Guantanamo. But last September both were introduced to Iraq by Maj. Gen. Geoffrey D. Miller, then the Guantanamo commander and now the commander of Abu Ghraib. The abuses depicted in the photographs took place between October and December.

Army and administration officials say that Mr. Sanchez never authorized specific use of most of the "harsh" techniques in Iraq while they were available. Yet a report by the International Committee of the Red Cross shows that hooding, stress techniques and other harsh methods have been employed systematically by intelligence teams -- not just at Abu Ghraib but around Iraq. Investigations must determine why this happened and why abuses similar to those of Abu Ghraib have also been reported in Afghanistan. But already there is one lesson: Once a government opens the door to abusive treatment of prisoners, it creates a climate in which those abuses are likely to be practiced far more widely and with less exactitude than it intends.

Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita charged in a letter we published yesterday that our concern over whether administration procedures violate international law "puts The Post in the same company as those involved in this despicable behavior." We would respond that unambiguous dedication to the rule of law has distinguished American governments, until now, from those that systematically violate human rights. Perhaps the administration has gained valuable information through its harsh treatment of prisoners, though it has offered no evidence for this. But no gains could possibly justify the abuses that have been exposed or the damage done when an American secretary of defense declares to the world that holding detainees hooded and contorted is in keeping with international law and American values. The only solution is for Mr. Bush to formally forswear the abusive practices his administration has adopted. If he will not, Congress must prohibit their use.
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Don't Discount the Middle

By E. J. Dionne Jr. - Washington Post - Friday, May 14, 2004; Page A25

The conventional wisdom on this presidential election is wrong. It's frequently said that John Kerry is the man in trouble. Yes, Kerry does have a gift for getting in his own way. But President Bush is the candidate with big problems.

It's also said that the country is so polarized there is no moderate vote that matters. On the contrary, there is a very big middle that has shifted back and forth between Kerry and Bush over the past several months. That middle will decide this election. That does not mean the election will be about who can successfully mouth centrist mush. The middle will move on the basis of events and also on judgments about which of these candidates can solve the problems these voters care about -- Iraq, health care, education costs, jobs and wages. The issue is problem solving, not positioning.

The polls over the past week portray a president in trouble. The most recent, the Pew Research Center survey released Wednesday, found that only 44 percent of Americans approved of Bush's handling of his job, down 14 points since early January. In a two-way contest, Kerry led Bush by 50 percent to 45 percent. Even when Ralph Nader was included as a choice, it was Kerry 46 percent, Bush 43 percent. But the poll's details are what should trouble Bush. While Kerry and Bush have overwhelming support among their own partisans, Kerry led Bush among independents by seven points. Many other polls have shown independents moving away from Bush and holding pessimistic views of administration policy.

It's a long way to November, so it's useful to look at voters who say they are sure of where they stand. The Pew poll found 42 percent of registered voters saying they were certain they would vote for Kerry and 36 percent who were certain they'd vote for Bush. The hard core on each side is committed. Among conservative Republicans, 85 percent said they were certain for Bush. Among liberal Democrats, 90 percent were certain for Kerry. But look at the middle. Among moderate and liberal Republicans, only 59 percent were certain for Bush. By contrast, 73 percent of moderate and conservative Democrats were certain for Kerry. And again, independents are a problem for Bush: 40 percent of them were sure for Kerry, only 32 percent sure for Bush.

Bush thus faces the prospect of substantial defections among moderate Republicans and has huge work to do among independents. The central truth about presidential elections is that when an incumbent is on the ballot, the incumbent is the issue unless the challenger is utterly discredited. The Bush campaign has been spending its vast treasury not on making the case for the president but on trying to turn Kerry into an unacceptable alternative. While the Bush side has made some progress in denting Kerry's image, it has not been enough. Hostility to the president is such that, for now, voters are willing to take a chance on Kerry.

Bush's weakness in the middle reflects not only the failures in Iraq but also the president's abandonment of his "compassionate conservative" agenda in favor of a martial presidency that gambled all on the current war. He thereby made himself hostage to events far away. David Winston, a Republican pollster, is passionate in arguing that up to 30 percent of voters are in play this year and that the incessant focus on each party's political base reflects a misunderstanding of who will decide this election. The uncertainties about Bush among independents and moderate Republicans and the big shifts between Bush and Kerry over the past six months suggest he's right. As Winston notes, there is time between now and Election Day for the economy to grow and for the situation in Iraq to improve. And Kerry could keep playing into the stereotype the Bush campaign is creating for him. If Kerry seems to be moving toward the political center in an entirely mechanical way, the very middle to which he's appealing could come to mistrust him. But on the current numbers, Kerry will win if he's simply good enough. Bush's task is harder: to seem a whole lot better than he does now to voters who already know him well.
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General tells Congress army leadership was to blame for mistreatment of Iraqis
By Andrew Buncombe in Washington - Independent.co.uk - 12 May 2004

The US army general whose report into the abuse at Abu Ghraib shocked and repulsed the world has blamed the mistreatment of prisoners on a failure of leadership, poor discipline and an absence of supervision. While he said there was no evidence that soldiers were ordered to abuse and torture prisoners in preparation for their interrogation, Major-General Antonio Taguba told Congress yesterday that junior troops may have thought that was what they were required to do.

"There was a failure of leadership," he said. "Failure in leadership, sir, from the brigade commander on down. Lack of discipline, no training whatsoever, and no supervision. Supervisory omission was rampant. Those are my comments."

Maj-Gen Taguba's testimony before the Senate Armed Forces Committee came as the Bush administration was locked in talks with the congressional leadership about making available more of the photographs and videos of the abuse at the prison west of Baghdad that have sent shockwaves around the world and flung the White House on to the defensive. George Bush has already viewed the images, reacting with "disgust and disbelief", according to his spokesman, and there is pressure to release the remainder of them in a controlled fashion before they leak out.

Maj-Gen Taguba also yesterday left open the possibility that members of the CIA, as well as armed forces personnel and civilian contractors employed at Abu Ghraib, were culpable in the abuse. "A few soldiers and civilians conspired to abuse and conduct egregious acts of violence against detainees and other civilians outside the bounds of international laws and the Geneva Convention," he said.

Despite that, he said that his investigation had uncovered no evidence that there were orders being passed down to the Military Police at the prison to mistreat the prisoners as part of a broader plan, even though control of the facility had been handed over to the army's Military Intelligence (MI). "We did not gain any evidence where it was an overall military intelligence policy of this sort. I think it was a matter of soldiers with their interaction with military intelligence personnel who they perceived or thought to be competent authority that were giving them or influencing their action to set the conditions for successful interrogations operations," he said. Asked directly by West Virginia's Democratic Senator Robert Byrd who had given the orders to "soften up" prisoners, Maj-Gen Taguba replied: "I did not find any evidence of a policy or a direct order given to these soldiers to conduct what they did. I believe that they did it on their own volition. "I believe that they collaborated with several MI interrogators at the lower level, based on the conveyance of that information through interviews and written statements."

The hearings on Capitol Hill are crucial, not only to the likely direction the investigation into the abuse will take, but also the future of the beleaguered Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, who appeared before the committee last week. While Mr Bush has publicly defended his senior official, saying that the US owes him a "debt of gratitude", should senior Republican senators demand Mr Rumsfeld's head as the political price to move on from this scandal, it is difficult to see how the White House could resist. To that end, many on Capitol Hill will be watching the actions of the committee's chairman, Senator John Warner, and John McCain, another senior Republican on the committee.

In regard to Abu Ghraib, a picture has increasingly emerged of control being passed to MI - a decision taken by Major-General Geoffrey Miller, formerly the warden at Guantanamo Bay, who took control of Abu Ghraib late last year with a plan to turn the prison into a hub of interrogation. He placed the military police under the tactical control of the 205th Military Intelligence Brigade.

Maj-Gen Taguba's confirmation of that yesterday led to a clash with Stephen Cambone, the undersecretary of defence for intelligence, who said that authority remained with the military police unit assigned to run the prison. In a further disagreement, Maj-Gen Taguba said it was against army rules for intelligence troops to involve MPs in setting conditions for interrogations. Mr Cambone said he believed it was appropriate for the two groups to collaborate.

Mr Cambone was asked whether he had knowledge of CIA involvement in the abuse at Abu Ghraib. The CIA inspector general is currently conducting inquiries into the deaths of three prisoners that may have involved agency officers or contractors. Mr Cambone said: "There were people brought by agency personnel to that place ... There may have been interrogations conducted by the agency personnel while they were there."
...

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OP-ED: Bush is in deep trouble —Ahmad Faruqui
Pakistan Daily Times - Tuesday May 11, 2004
People are now openly challenging the assertion by the Bush administration that it cannot cut and run from Iraq

The Mexican holiday of Cinco de Mayo is celebrated throughout North America. However, this year’s holiday did not provide much cause for celebration to the Bush administration. Two polls were released showing that Bush’s re-election in November is no longer the slam-dunk it appeared on May 1 of last year when he declared that the mission in Iraq had been accomplished.

One of the two polls, conducted by Gallup, shows that if the election were held now, Bush would be tied with Senator John Kerry at 47 percent of the vote and independent Ralph Nader would receive 3 percent. That’s a six-point swing since mid-April, when Bush led Kerry 50 percent to 44 percent. By 62 percent to 36 percent, those polled said they were dissatisfied with the direction of the country, the most pessimistic reading since 1996.

Since Harry Truman, presidents who have won re-election have had job approval ratings of at least 52 percent at this point in the election campaign. Those who lost had ratings no better than 47 percent. Bush’s approval rating is currently at 49 percent. Since mid-January, it has moved in a narrow range between 53 and 49 percent, a far cry from the value of 90 percent he enjoyed just after the attacks on September 11, 2001.

The Gallup poll shows that 56 percent of Americans disapprove of the way Bush is handling the economy while 41 percent approve of it. That is the highest disapproval number and lowest approval number of the Bush presidency. When asked if they approve of the way Bush is handling the war in Iraq, 55 percent say no and 42 percent say yes. Again, the approval number is the lowest and the disapproval number is the highest of any survey Gallup has taken on the question, dating back to late October 2002.

On foreign affairs, Bush gets 42 percent approval and 53 percent disapproval — again, a record low on approval and a record high on disapproval. By a slim majority of 52 percent, Americans still approve of the way Bush is handling terrorism. But that is the lowest figure since Gallup began asking the question in November 2001, and a 45 percent disapproval rating is the highest such number.

From a Republican perspective, an equally disconcerting trend emerges from the other poll released on Cinco de Mayo. This poll, conducted by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and NBC News, shows that 60 percent of the voters say the American economy is heading for trouble. Ironically, economic data show that the unemployment rate has improved, the US GDP is growing steadily and business investment has picked up. But the threat of inflation, brought on by rising gasoline prices and interest rates, and Federal Reserve Chairman Greenspan’s bearish comments about the impact of chronic budget deficits in the $400 billion-plus range have cast doubts on the economic recovery.

When asked if the events in Iraq have slipped out of US control, 60 percent of American voters say yes. According to Peter Hart, one of the pollsters for the WSJ/NBC News poll, “The president is skating on ice that’s one-half inch thick.”

In the month of April, the US experienced the highest number of casualties in Iraq since the war began in March of last year. In Fallujah, four US contractors were burned alive after their Humvee was ambushed. A mob tied one of the bodies to a car and dragged it around. Two other bodies, one of them decapitated, were hung from a bridge. When the US counter-attacked, they killed almost a thousand Iraqis, most of whom were women and children. This triggered a huge political backlash that prompted a US withdrawal and decision to hand Fallujah over to a hastily contrived Iraqi security force.

Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr continues to be a thorn in the side of the US agenda with his hold on Najaf. Books by Paul O’Neill, Richard Clark and Bob Woodward have further cut into the credibility of the American president. But the visceral pictures that have come out of Abu Ghraib prison have caused the biggest damage to the Bush presidency.

These pictures have acted like a siege engine on the Bush administration, with Congressman Tom Cole of Oklahoma, a Republican, calling the episode, “a political and public relations Pearl Harbour.” Several legislators and newspaper editors have called for the resignation of Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. During his testimony on May 7, Rumsfeld acknowledged that the impact of the pictures was ‘radioactive’. But he has declined to resign, saying that people wanted to make a political issue out of it. However, when asked by Senator Mark Dayton of Minnesota whether his resignation might be the best way to demonstrate the depth of US concern about the atrocities, Rumsfeld responded: “That’s possible.”

People are now openly challenging the assertion by the Bush administration that it cannot “cut and run from” Iraq. Retired General William E Odom has said bluntly, “We have failed. The issue is how high a price we’re going to pay...Less, by getting out sooner, or more, by getting out later?” Odom is no peacenik. An expert in comparative politics who teaches at Georgetown and Yale Universities, Odom is associated with the conservative think tank, Hudson Institute, in Washington, DC and directed the National Security Agency under President Reagan.

The general says the longer the US troops hang around in Iraq, the more isolated America will become across the globe. The US occupation of Iraq has also come in for criticism from Senator Ernest Hollings of South Carolina. He says Bush has used the “war on terror” to justify the invasion of Iraq, when the real reason for the war was to secure Israel.

Rich Bond, who was Republican national chairman during the first President Bush’s re-election campaign, acknowledges that “in the context of a moody economy and a dysfunctional Iraq, this is a tough time for President Bush.”

Interestingly, Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali has waded into the US election campaign by casting his vote for President Bush. This action is unusual given Bush’s low standing in Pakistan. On the same day that the two polls cited casting doubts on Bush’s election prospects were released, Jamali told the Associated Press that he wished Bush would win the elections since all key players in the Bush administration have “a personal relationship with Pakistan.”

Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain is the foreign leader most closely allied to President Bush but even he has not endorsed Bush’s re-election campaign. But then, why would he? Even with all its failings, Britain has a real democracy, unlike the militocracy that has got Pakistan in its grip.

Dr Ahmad Faruqui is an economist and author of “Rethinking the National Security of Pakistan”. He can be reached at faruqui@pacbell.net
***

Red Cross details abuse claims
BBC News - 10 May 2004
Photos of the treatment of Iraqis have shocked the world (AP Photo/ Courtesy of The New Yorker)
A report by the Red Cross (ICRC) on the treatment of Iraqi prisoners by coalition forces has been published on the website of the Wall Street Journal.

The report refers to "serious violations of international humanitarian law" by coalition forces.
It catalogues ill-treatment by coalition soldiers - including some which resulted in deaths of inmates. The confidential report had been given to US and UK officials in February.

The Red Cross inspected jails in Iraq between May and November 2003 and made 29 visits to prison facilities in central and southern Iraq during that time. The report says abuses had been committed at a number of facilities - not just Abu Ghraib prison near Baghdad, which is the focus of allegations against US soldiers. Other facilities where mistreatment allegedly occurred include al-Baghdadi air base, Hubbania camp, Tikrit holding area, the defence ministry and a presidential palace in Baghdad.

The allegations include:

* Prisoners were kept naked in cells, in darkness and without facilities

* Prisoners were held for prolonged solitary confinement in cells with no daylight

* The actions of coalition forces in arresting suspects appeared to go beyond any legitimate use of force

* Prisoners were beaten, in one case leading to death

* Soldiers fired on unarmed prisoners from watchtowers, killing some

* The ill-treatment was widely tolerated, especially with regard to extracting information from Iraqis

* Methods of physical and psychological coercion were used by the military intelligence to gain confessions

The report concludes there have been serious violations of the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of prisoners of war.

Arrests

The report also criticises the way in which arrests were made and says detentions tended to follow a pattern. "Arresting authorities entered houses usually after dark, breaking down doors, waking up residents roughly, yelling orders, forcing family members into one room under military guard while searching the rest of the house and further breaking doors, cabinets and other property," it says. "Sometimes they arrested all adult males present in a house, including elderly, handicapped or sick people," it continues. "Treatment often included pushing people around, insulting, taking aim with rifles, punching and kicking and striking with rifles." The report also says some troops told the Red Cross that 70% to 90% of those detained had been arrested by mistake.

'Lack of supervision'

The 24-page document, confirmed by the ICRC as authentic following its publication in the Wall Street Journal, says the abuses were primarily during the interrogation stage by military intelligence officers. It says once the detainees were moved to regular prison facilities the abuses typically stopped. Some military intelligence personnel told the Red Cross that widespread ill-treatment was due to a lack of supervision by military police. Officers also said it was part of the military intelligence process to hold prisoners naked, in the dark, for prolonged periods, and to use inhumane treatment to try to secure their co-operation.
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End of Empire
By Jim Hoagland, The Washington Post - Sunday, May 9, 2004; Page B07

The idea that quick military triumphs in Afghanistan and Iraq inaugurated an era of American global empire died a quiet death on Capitol Hill on Friday as Congress raked Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over the coals for mishandling the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal. The United States must make do with less grandiose but more meaningful missions abroad.
The photographs of grinning goons in uniform taking pleasure in the sexual humiliation of Arab captives have inflicted "a world of hurt" on America's reputation abroad, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said in a gentle scolding of Rumsfeld. The excuses of "just following orders" from guards or explanations that "the system worked" from the Pentagon's tone-deaf leadership fell as flat on the Hill as they have with foreign audiences.

The tough grilling that Rumsfeld received should do more to heal "the hurt" than the grudging apologies that he and President Bush have issued. This was the American system operating in antithesis to delusions of empire. It took only a sleazy, degrading prison episode to demonstrate that. In an open and competitive political system, failures and problems in the "provinces" immediately sweep back into the capital as domestic politics and controversy. The management of empire -- or perhaps even of extended occupation -- has become impossibly complex. In Iraq, the administration now suffers at home for its willful negligence in failing to put Iraqis in charge of key institutions such as, say, prisons.

Americans face a hard task in separating the sordid aspects of the prison scandal from the military missions the nation has undertaken in Iraq and the greater Middle East. Citizens must look not only at, but also through, the furor of the moment to focus again on the ambitious use of self-defense through preventive war advanced by the Bush administration. The administration cannot now take for granted that a majority of Americans accept its sincerity or its competence in the wake of mounting casualties and its wavering direction on Iraq's political future. The once-domineering White House and Pentagon looked powerless last week when confronted by a scandal that contains a self-sustaining critical mass of sex, violence and morbid sensationalism. As displayed on big movie screens, hand-held video games or digital snapshots, which morph into scabrous front-page news photos, the pornography of war's images shocks and horrifies -- and titillates -- mass audiences.

This is heavy competition for something as abstract as a moral cause. "We grew tired of great causes," F. Scott Fitzgerald has the narrator of "The Great Gatsby" explain of the national flight from reality taken by Americans after World War I. It is possible that Americans in only 18 months have grown "tired" of Bush's vow to implant American forces and values in the breeding grounds of terrorism in the Middle East. The national attention span may have been dramatically shortened in and by the age of instantaneous and unceasing communication. "Are we organized to handle this kind of problem?" Rumsfeld was heard wondering aloud last week at the Pentagon. The fact that he had to ask suggests the answer to his immediate question.

Bureaucracies tip into death spirals at moments such as these. They feel compelled to defend themselves and the versions of reality they have put forward before, when they should be adjusting their practices and expectations as well as their stories. "We can't get inside the news cycle," one frustrated administration official lamented last week. "We have a massive perception-management problem." But it's worse than that. The claims the secretary and his senior uniformed officers made last week not to have fully read the military's own report on the abuses at Abu Ghraib made it seem that they weren't even trying very hard to manage its consequences. And they deflected a question that challenges the claim that the system worked: Were the abuses shown in the photographs truly isolated acts, or were they part of interrogation procedures designed and managed by military intelligence and by the CIA? If it is the latter, this is organized wrongdoing, not freelance misbehavior.

We need to expand Rumsfeld's question: Is the most affluent, developed and fully informed society in history organized to wage an extended modern war that is captured -- in its every phase -- on cameras? "Not yet" is at best the answer. Again the administration deserves blame for not doing more to match goals and capabilities and to explain the path it follows in the Middle East. The announcement last week in mid-uproar that the United States will keep 135,000 troops in Iraq through 2005 provides welcome evidence that Bush still believes in the ambitious cause he has set for the American nation, and can adjust his strategy. But it is only a first step in what must be a focused effort to understand and counter the strategic impatience that is now an American fact of life.
***

Bush privately chides Rumsfeld
Some say Pentagon resisted calls for changes on detainees
By Robin Wright and Bradley Graham - WashingtonPost.com - May 6, 2004

President Bush privately admonished Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld yesterday, as other senior administration officials blamed the Pentagon for failing to act on repeated recommendations to improve conditions for thousands of Iraqi detainees and release those not charged with crimes, U.S. officials said.

Bush is "not satisfied" and "not happy" with the way Rumsfeld informed him about the investigation into abuses by U.S. soldiers at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib prison or the quantity of information Rumsfeld provided, a senior White House official said.

The president was particularly disturbed at having had to learn from news reports this week about the scope of misconduct documented in an Army investigative report completed in March, according to the official, who refused to be named so he could speak more candidly.

Other officials sought to portray Rumsfeld and the Pentagon as resisting appeals in recent months from the State Department and the Coalition Provisional Authority to deal with problems relating to detainees. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell urged action in several White House meetings that included Rumsfeld, the officials said, speaking on the condition of anonymity.


• Prison scandal indicates gap in U.S. chain of command
• More alleged abuses disclosed
• U.S. troop levels in Iraq to remain high
"It's something Powell has raised repeatedly -- to release as many detainees as possible -- and, second, to ensure that those in custody are properly cared for and treated," said a senior State Department official familiar with the discussions.

But the Pentagon repeatedly failed to act on both requests, said U.S. officials, who are privately furious over a human relations disaster that they believe might have been averted if military officials had acted on their requests.

Defense officials sharply disputed suggestions that Rumsfeld or other senior Pentagon authorities turned a deaf ear to the appeals and ignored festering problems at U.S.-run detention centers. They said there were no major differences between the departments of State and Defense over handling of detainees in Iraq, saying top administration officials had generally agreed on the need to reduce the number of prisoners in U.S. military custody and ensure proper management of detention facilities.

"It would be unfair to Secretary Powell to portray the discussions among [national security] principals about this issue in the way some people seem to be trying to portray them," said Lawrence T. DiRita, the Pentagon's chief spokesman. "There was a lot of important activity and interest taken by the principals, including Rumsfeld, to make sure we were doing all that we could."

Rumsfeld also came in for fresh criticism yesterday on Capitol Hill, where Republicans joined Democrats in expressing anger about not having been informed about the details of the prison investigation. Rumsfeld is to appear at Senate Armed Services Committee hearing tomorrow, and some White House officials fear that a Republican lawmaker will ask him whether he is considering resigning. Some Republican aides on Capitol Hill said he might not survive until Election Day. Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. (Del.), ranking Democrat on the Foreign Relations Committee, said Rumsfeld should resign if investigators conclude the chain of responsibility reaches his office.

The defense secretary has deplored the reported abuses at Abu Ghraib prison but defended the Pentagon's response, saying military commanders acted promptly to investigate conditions there after being alerted in January to the misconduct. He also has noted that the Pentagon announced the start of the investigation in January and, in March, reported the filing of charges against six enlisted military police soldiers who served as guards.

'More flexibility'
But the nature of their offenses were not revealed until CBS's "60 Minutes II" aired photographs last week showing naked inmates piled up beside smiling soldiers and the New Yorker magazine days later detailed the findings of the Army's internal report. In the wake of widespread outrage over the misconduct, the Pentagon has moved to tighten oversight of prison operations in Iraq, accelerate release of prisoners and probe conditions at internment centers elsewhere.

State Department officials, however, have been particularly concerned about what they said was the Pentagon's reluctance to heed urgings earlier from the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to improve conditions at Iraqi prisons.

"We've been pressing for more flexibility and openness to the ICRC's needs and suggestions about the detainees," said a U.S. official familiar with the legal issues involved in detentions.

U.S. officials here and former Coalition Provisional Authority officials attributed some of the problem to disarray and poor communication among different branches of the occupation structure in Iraq. But they said the Pentagon's resistance also has been a factor.

"The level of disarticulation between the military and civilian components of our occupation is extraordinary," said Larry Diamond, fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institute who served for several months as an adviser to L. Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. administrator in Iraq, and is now a critic of the U.S. occupation. "We're either serious about human rights and the Geneva Convention or we're not."

Although Bush is giving no consideration to asking to Rumsfeld to resign, the senior White House official said, the president informed Rumsfeld of his dissatisfaction during a meeting in the Oval Office yesterday morning after the two left a National Security Council meeting. Bush was particularly bothered at not having been told that the photos of the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison were in circulation, even though Pentagon officials knew that CBS had obtained them, the senior White House official said.

Asked yesterday by Al Hurra, a television station seen widely in the Arab world that is financed by the U.S. government, Bush replied: "Oh, of course I've got confidence in the secretary of defense, and I've got confidence in the commanders on the ground in Iraq."

Bush aides conceded that Rumsfeld had earlier given Bush a general sense of the investigation of Abu Ghraib during a meeting that included Chief of Staff Andrew H. Card Jr. But White House press secretary Scott McClellan said officials have not been able to pin down the exact date, except that it was after Jan. 16, when the Pentagon issued a release announcing the probe.

Much of the debate within the administration over what to do about Iraqi prisoners has roots in a long-running struggle among the departments of State, Defense and Justice to sort through prisoners at the detention facility at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, officials said. The scandal involving Abu Ghraib prison has cast a fresh spotlight on the administration's general approach to the handling of war prisoners and terrorist suspects since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

Drastic policy shift
Concerns about prison conditions in Iraq were brought up in internal administration deliberations at the beginning of the year by Powell and Bremer, who warned of the potential political fallout, U.S. officials said.

U.S. officials now say the only solution to the crisis over treatment of Iraqi detainees is a drastic policy shift, such as surrendering all control of prisoners or sharing supervision with Iraqis or an international institution such as the ICRC.

Since it is not likely that Iraqis or the wider Islamic world will believe U.S. pledges to deal with the situation, the Bush administration needs some kind of witness or partner in administering the detention centers, U.S. officials said.

In the past, however, the ICRC has not been willing to share control of detainees with another party. So the only option may be some form of joint control with Iraqis or other unspecified forces, the officials said.

Staff writer Mike Allen contributed to this report.
© 2004 The Washington Post Company
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Timeline: Prisoner abuse in Iraq
Key dates in the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal
Aug. 31-Sept. 9, 2003
Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who runs the military prison for terror suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, conducts an inquiry on interrogation and detention procedures in Iraq. He suggests that prison guards can help set conditions for the interrogation of prisoners.
October-December
Many of the alleged abuses at Abu Ghraib take place during this time period.
Oct. 13-Nov. 6
Maj. Gen. Donald Ryder, provost marshal of the Army, investigates conditions of U.S.-run prisons in Iraq, including Abu Ghraib. He finds problems throughout the prisons. Some units, including the 800th Military Police Brigade, did not receive adequate training to guard prisons, he notes. He also says military police (MPs) should not assist in making prisoners more pliable to interrogation, as their job is to keep prisoners safe.
Nov. 19
The 205th Military Intelligence Brigade is given responsibility for Abu Ghraib prison and authority over the 800th Military Police Brigade.
November
Two Iraqi detainees die in separate incidents that involved CIA interrogation officers.
Jan. 13, 2004
Army Spc. Joseph M. Darby, an MP with the 800th at Abu Ghraib, first reports cases of abuse at the prison.
Jan. 16
Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez orders a criminal investigation into reports of abuse at the prison by members of the brigade. The military also announces the investigation publicly.
Jan. 19
Sanchez orders a separate administrative investigation into the 800th MP Brigade. Maj. Gen. Antonio M. Taguba is appointed to conduct that inquiry on Jan. 31.
Late January - early February
President Bush becomes aware of the charges sometime in this time period, according to White House spokesman Scott McClellan, although the spokesman has not pinpointed a date. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld tells Bush of the charges, McClellan has said.
Feb. 23
Seventeen U.S. soldiers suspended from duties pending outcome of investigation.
Feb. 24
International Committee of the Red Cross provides the Coalition Authority with a confidential report on detention in Iraq. Portions of the report are published without ICRC consent by the Wall Street Journal on May 7.
March 3-9
Taguba presents his report to his commanders. He finds widespread abuse of prisoners by military police and military intelligence. He also agrees with Ryder that guards should not play any role in the interrogation of prisoners.
March 20
Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt tells reporters six military personnel have been charged with criminal offenses.
Mid April
Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asks CBS-TV to delay airing photographs it has obtained of abuse at Abu Ghraib. Myers says the photos would exacerbate an intense period of violence under way in Iraq. CBS delays its program for two weeks.
April 28
# Rumsfeld meets with senators in a closed briefing on the war in Iraq. Rumsfeld neglects to mention the issue of prisoner abuse or the coming disclosure of photos.
# CBS “60 Minutes II” airs the photos, setting off an international outcry. Bush first learns about these photos from the television report, his aides say.
Early May
CIA confirms that some of its officers hid Iraqi prisoners from watchdog groups like the Red Cross.
May 1
An article by Seymour Hersh, published on The New Yorker magazine's Web site, reveals contents of Taguba's report.
May 2
Myers admits on ABC’s "This Week" that he has not yet read the Taguba report issued in March.
May 3
Officials say the Army has reprimanded seven soldiers in the abuse of inmates at Abu Ghraib.
May 4
U.S. Army discloses that it is conducting criminal investigations of 10 prisoner deaths in U.S. custody in Afghanistan and Iraq - beyond two already ruled homicides - plus another 10 abuse cases. (The number grows by two on May 5, when the CIA says it is investigating more cases.)
May 5
President Bush appears on two Arab television channels to address the scandal but does not apologize for the abuse of iraqi prisoners by U.S. troops. The following day Bush does apologize.
May 6
# The Washington Post publishes four additional photos.
# President Bush privately admonishes Rumsfeld for not keeping him informed about the issue.
May 7
Rumsfeld testifies before the Senate and House Armed Services Committees on the issue of prisoner abuse in Iraq. Separately, Army Pfc. Lynndie England, shown in photographs smiling and pointing at naked Iraqi prisoners, is charged with assaulting detainees and conspiring to mistreat them.
Source: Associated Press, MSNBC research, NBC News
***

Iraq Shiites Urge Cleric to Desist
New York Times - John F. Burns - May 5, 2004
BAGHDAD, Iraq, May 4 — Representatives of Iraq's most influential Shiite leaders met here on Tuesday and demanded that Moktada al-Sadr, a rebel Shiite cleric, withdraw militia units from the holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, stop turning the mosques there into weapons arsenals and return power to Iraqi police and civil defense units that operate under American control.

The Shiite leaders also called, in speeches and in interviews after the meeting, for a rapid return to the American-led negotiations on Iraq's political future. The negotiations have been sidelined for weeks by the upsurge in violence associated with Mr. Sadr's uprising across central and southern Iraq and the simultaneous fighting in Falluja, the Sunni Muslim city west of Baghdad.

On Tuesday, the Shiite leaders, including a representative of a Shiite clerical group that has close ties to Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, effectively did what the Americans have urged them to do since Mr. Sadr, a 31-year-old firebrand, began his attacks in April: they tied Iraq's future, and that of Shiites in particular, to a renunciation of violence and a return to negotiations.

Their statement repeated warnings to American troops not to enter Najaf and Karbala in pursuit of Mr. Sadr. Although American commanders have hinted at an offensive soon against against Mr. Sadr's force, the Mahdi Army, they have repeatedly said they do not intend to attack Najaf or Karbala. They have not made such a promise about Kufa, a small city six miles northeast of Najaf, where Mr. Sadr appears to have established his headquarters.

Although Shiite leaders have made similar demands of Mr. Sadrbefore, it has never been in such strength. About 150 leaders attended the gathering, representing many of Shiism's most influential political, religious and professional groups. One group, the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, or Sciri, has close ties to Ayatollah Sistani, who is regarded as Iraq's top Shiite cleric and the country's most influential political voice.

It has been several weeks since Mr. Sadr suggested he might heed Shiite leadership.

The Shiite leaders convened in Baghdad on short notice, reflecting their urgency to calm a month's violence sown by Mr. Sadr across much of southern Iraq. Equally disturbing to many Shiites, American occupation officials, faced with the dual challenges from Mr. Sadr and Sunni Muslim insurgents in Falluja, have handed some authority in Falluja to elements of Saddam Hussein's former army, despised by Shiites as an instrument of his repression.

Several Shiite leaders acknowledged that they had delayed issuing their statement until there were clear signs that public opinion among Shiites had moved strongly against Mr. Sadr. Reports in the past two weeks have spoken of a shadowy death squad calling itself the Thulfiqar Army shooting dead at least seven of Mr. Sadr's militiamen in Najaf, and several thousand people attended an anti-Sadr protest meeting outside the Imam Ali shrine in the city on Friday, according to several of the meeting's participants.

Mr. Mahdi, from the Sciri group, which is close to Ayatollah Sistani, was blunt about Mr. Sadr's decline in popularity. "He's 100 percent isolated across most of the southern provinces; he's even isolated in Najaf," he said. "The people there regard him as having taken them hostage." He said Mr. Sadr had also been criticized by his most powerful religious backer, Grand Ayatollah Kazem Hossein Haeri, based in the Iranian city of Qum, who had urged Mr. Sadr to pull his militiamen out of Najaf and Karbala and to stop storing weapons in mosques.

Several speakers implied that the Sunni minority intended to derail the American-led political process, and thus the prospect of a Shiite majority government. On few occasions, if any, since the American invasion last year, have mainstream Shiite leaders spoken so bluntly in public of the political rivalry with the Sunnis, who were referred to repeatedly by speakers as "they" or "the other side," and barely at all by name.

Before joining with other Shiite leaders for the Tuesday meeting here, Shiites on the governing council, including Mr. Mahdi, had a tempestuous meeting with the two top American officials in Iraq, L. Paul Bremer III, the civilian chief of the occupation authority, and Lt. Gen. Ricardo S. Sanchez, the commander of American forces.

At one point, the council members said, they told the Americans they were risking civil war between Iraq's Sunni and Shiite communities by endorsing the Falluja deal with elements of Mr. Hussein's old army.

In near 100-degree heat in the late afternoon, few of the Shiite speakers stirred much enthusiasm. But the strongest murmurings of the meeting came when Taqlif al-Faroun, a tribal leader from Najaf, said Shiites should give the American forces a green light to go after Mr. Sadr in the holy cities. "Najaf is not Mecca," he said. "The Americans don't want to go into the shrines. They want to get rid of criminals and thieves. So what if they enter the city?" Across the roof, dozens of men responded approvingly. "Yes, yes!", they said.
***

The Torture Photos
New York Times - Editorial - May 5, 2004
It seems gloomily possible that in years to come, when people in the Middle East recall the invasion of Iraq, they will speak not of lost American lives or the toppling of a brutal dictator. The most enduring image of the occupation may be those pictures of grinning American soldiers torturing Iraqi prisoners. This is the kind of outcome no one wanted, although one that the Bush administration should have worried about long ago, and taken far more care to avert. Now all the president and his top officials can do is clean up the mess and express the country's deep regrets. So far, they have accomplished neither.

By now, the images of uniformed American men and women gleefully brutalizing prisoners in exactly the manner most horrific to Muslims has been seared into the minds of television viewers around the world. Members of Congress were more than justified yesterday in worrying about the safety of American soldiers. Senators on the Armed Services Committee, furious that a report on the abuses made it to the Internet before Capitol Hill, were right to protest and demand an investigation.

The revelations from the Abu Ghraib prison called for some humility, an apology to the abused men and an immediate, full and public accounting of what happened and who was responsible. Instead, the Bush administration began one of its now-classic defensive maneuvers. President Bush and his top officials portrayed the acts as the aberrant work of a handful of men and women, even as they knew — or should have known — that the Army was conducting criminal investigations into more than 20 different incidents in Iraq and Afghanistan, many involving prisoner deaths.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who clung to euphemisms for what any reasonable person would view as torture, rejected the idea that the government had been covering up the scandal by pointing out that the military had announced the first investigation into the Abu Ghraib case in January. That is true, but no details were made public, even though many were available.

In the subsequent three and a half months, despite opening six investigations, the Pentagon made no further accounting to the public or to Congress. Indeed, a horrifying report commissioned by the Army was classified "secret," although Mr. Rumsfeld had to admit yesterday that he did not know why. Mr. Rumsfeld also said, unbelievably, that he had not yet finished reading the report on the Abu Ghraib prison. At another point he seemed to shrug off the brutal treatment of the prisoners as the sort of thing that can happen in a system that is not "perfect" — a distressing echo of his costly dismissal of the looting in Baghdad last year as the "untidiness" of freedom. With the administration's familiar disdain for public disclosure, the Pentagon did not share the report with Congress until it was forced to do so this week, after the report was described in a New Yorker article. There are still many unanswered questions, about issues like the military's failure to train prison guards properly and the role of military intelligence and private contractors in the abuses.

With each setback and blunder in Iraq, the administration has reacted this way, cheerfully denying that anything happened and sticking to its original plans while international support for the occupation has steadily fallen to its current minimal level. Recovering from this latest horror will require a lot more than that sort of business as usual.
***

More Notes from the Near East
Osama spared as attack could have killed UAE princes - Pakistan Daily Times - 11 April 2004
By Khalid Hasan

WASHINGTON: Osama bin Laden could have been killed in a US air and missile attack but was spared because several senior members of the UAE ruling family were nearby, according to a leading American journalist.

Steve Coll of the Washington Post who has just published a book on Afghanistan told a meeting at the Johns Hopkins University Friday that the US had reliable information in February 1999 that Osama bin Laden had arrived in a desert area south of Qandhar for a bustard shoot organised by some princes of the United Arab Emirates’ ruling house. The decision to bomb and destroy the elaborate camp the royal hunting party had set up in the desert was revoked because of the politically expensive “collateral damage” the US action could create. He said the quality of intelligence that Osama bin Laden was present at the camp was “120 percent sure.” However, another reason that the bombing was not undertaken was the absence of a second independent source confirming bin Laden’s presence at the camp. He said the attack plans had gone so far ahead that US submarines in the Persian Gulf had been put on alert. The attack, had it gone through, would have come both from the air and the sea.

Mr Coll said during this period, both the Saudi and the Pakistani governments were urging the United States to “engage” with the Taliban instead of taking them on, assuring Washington that were such a policy to be adopted, in time the Taliban would become moderate. He said during the war against the Soviets, each American dollar was matched by the Saudis and the money as well as the weapons were funnelled through Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). He said there was a certain “politics of war” in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan as far as Afghanistan was concerned. After the Soviet pullout, Washington decided that there would be no attempt to win the “hearts and minds” of the Afghans and it should just get out.

He said the Pakistan government at the time insisted upon direct dealing with the Afghan mujahideen leadership. The US had no interest after the war to pick up the winners in Afghanistan. During the Afghan war, the primacy of the ISI was well established and that shaped the politics of the region. He said in January 1992, Washington decided that it would engage itself no further in Afghanistan. In the years following, US policy towards the region was characterised by “indifference.” If the Soviet Union was out of Afghanistan, it was argued in Washington, the issue was of “no further interest” to America. It was in that vacuum that the Taliban rose with the help of Pakistan which wanted to gain control and influence in Afghanistan as part of its regional strategy.

Mr Coll said that in an interview Benazir Bhutto accorded to Washington Post editors – he mentioned no year – she said that she had had nothing to do with the rise of the Taliban movement. “She simply lied,” he asserted. She told the newspaper that in her first term as prime minister, she had tried to assert control over the Pakistan army and get involved in its affairs, but it was resisted and that was the reason her government was bundled out. In her second term, she decided, she told the Post, that she would leave the army well alone and not “alienate” it. She said that the Pakistan army had told her that the Taliban were the “answer” to the Afghanistan problem. As for Washington, it almost gave a “blank cheque” to Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, accepting their assurances about the Taliban being good for Afghanistan. Another factor that influenced the American stance was the interest some American companies had shown in an oil/gas pipeline from Central Asia to the Gulf and the subcontinent. He said the US was reluctant to engage with the Taliban directly, opting instead for dealing with them through the good offices of Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Both countries urged Washington to be “patient” with the Taliban. This was acceptable to US bureaucracy that did not want to do anything with Afghanistan anyway.

Mr Coll disclosed that Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal had held negotiations with the Taliban in June 1998 for the handover of Osama bin Laden to the Kingdom. The US was not told of these contacts. In the first meeting, Mullah Omar said yes to the Saudi request as long as he would received “Islamic justice” when and where he was tried before a properly constituted commission. When the Saudi intelligence chief met Mullah Omar in July – an ISI representative was present at the meeting – Mullah Omar’s attitude had changed. He was hostile and denounced the Saudi official. The meeting broke up with Prince Turki telling Mullah Omar, “You will pay a terrible price for it.” Asked in the question-answer session if Mullah Omar was even capable of delivering Osama bin Laden to the Saudis, Mr Coll replied that by 1999 he was perhaps not capable of doing so. To another question, he said that opinion in the State Department as to how to deal with the Taliban was divided, with some arguing with Pakistan that the Taliban should be engaged, while the pressure on them to improve human rights and women’s treatment should continue.
***

Speculation:
Osama fled Pakistan through port - Pakistan Daily Times - 11 April 2004

Lahore, Pakistan: Al Qaeda chief Osama Bin Laden might have escaped from Pakistan through Karachi or Gwadar.
Sources have told Daily Times that US and Pakistani intelligence agencies were investigating a suspect believed to be Bin Laden who travelled from Dera Ismail Khan to Karachi in a truck. “He might have escaped on a private ferry through Karachi or Gwadar port,” the sources said. “Investigations are also underway about his destination. There are equal chances that either he left Pakistan or entered Balochistan. He could have moved into Afghanistan through Balochistan,” the sources added. Sources said that US intelligence received reports some months ago that Bin Laden was staying in Dera Ismail Khan. They said a tall and slim man along with two men with small beards travelled by truck to Karachi.

The sources said Bin Laden and his deputy Ayman Al-Zawahiri lived in Shawal in North Waziristan after they escaped from Afghanistan. Shawal is not very far from Dera Ismail Khan. “Intelligence agencies had proof that Osama was in Shawal till June 2003,” the sources said. “The Osama and Al-Zawahiri videotapes, which were released by Al-Jazeera channel, were also shot in Shawal,” the sources said. The North West Frontier Province governor banned weapons in Shawal in August 2003. Bin Laden left the valley and was reportedly seen in the Pakistani-Afghan border area in the mid-2003, the sources said. —Amir Rana
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Disrupting the Zero-Sum Game Between Palestinians and Israelis
By Serge Schmemann - New York Times - Editorial - May 4, 2004
To its combatants, the Middle East conflict is often perceived as a zero-sum game. Each side thinks, We are the victims; they are the terrorists. When they strike, it is aggression; when we strike, it is just retaliation. To suggest that the other side also has just grievances and just demands becomes a denial of one's own suffering and claims.

Those with longer memories will recall the furious attacks on William Scranton when, as President Richard Nixon's envoy to the Middle East, he called for a more "evenhanded" American approach. It was as if Mr. Scranton had proposed that the United States abandon Israel. Henry Kissinger has described how Golda Meir, the Israeli prime minister, told him she expected the United States to be evenhanded, as long as that meant total agreement with Israel. Every diplomat who has served in the Middle East, and every reporter who has covered the conflict, myself included, knows well the depth of these feelings. When I wrote about a close call with a suicide bombing, Palestinian colleagues assailed me for playing to the Israeli side; when I wrote about the agony of life under occupation, I was criticized by Israelis.

This zero-sum approach has always been central in efforts to negotiate a settlement because any compromise requires each side to surrender a portion of its national narrative. That is why both sides insist that their legitimacy be recognized as part of any agreement. The Israelis demand that the Arabs not only affirm their presence in Palestine, but also their right to a state. For the Palestinians, it is equally critical that any negotiation start with an affirmation of their right to recover territories occupied by Israel in 1967, and of the right of refugees to return to all territories now held by Israelis. Each side knows that it will have to cede a portion of its claim in a final settlement, but it can do so only after the legitimacy of that claim is properly acknowledged.

Those few times when the Israelis and the Palestinians have reached official or unofficial agreements — as with the Oslo accords of 1993 or the unofficial Geneva agreement last year — progress was possible because each side was allowed to declare that its national claims had been vindicated. That's why the "road map" that President George Bush presented in 2003 required the Palestinians to affirm publicly "Israel's right to exist in peace," and why that same plan spoke of ending "the occupation that began in 1967." atisfying the conflicting claims to the Temple Mount/Haram al Sharif in Jerusalem/Al Quds, sacred to both sides, has always required the most creative solutions, like giving Israelis sovereignty over the Temple Mount while leaving Muslims in control of the sanctuaries. The symmetry of these proposals was highly delicate — knocking out any element collapsed the whole. Americans have known this ever since they became the principal mediators in the conflict. Though the United States has been an unwavering supporter of Israel since the 1967 war, American presidents and secretaries of state have recognized that a credible mediating role also requires assuring Palestinians that the United States hears their grievances and will not give Israel a free hand to decide their fate unilaterally.

Tough love has often been needed. In the first Bush administration, Secretary of State James Baker III held up loan guarantees to Israel over the issue of settlements; President Bill Clinton compelled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to withdraw from Hebron. No administration accepted Mrs. Meir's definition of evenhandedness. Until last month, that is, when President Bush signed off on Israeli West Bank settlements and the abrogation of the Palestinians' right of return. He said he was merely recognizing the facts on the ground, and there is an element of truth to that, even if he missed the larger point. Anybody who's been to Ariel or Maale Adumim knows these "settlements" are real cities, just as everyone knows that a skyscraper in Tel Aviv will not revert into a Palestinian's olive grove. But knowing how things should end has never been the problem in the Middle East. It's always been about how to get there, as the vote in Ariel Sharon's Likud Party, rejecting his initiative for Israel to withdraw unilaterally from Gaza, has made so abundantly clear.

It's hard to believe that Mr. Bush failed to realize that by denying critical elements of the Palestinians' national narrative, he was stripping them of negotiating leverage and undermining whatever faith they still had in American mediation. His father could have explained it to him; so could a close reading of his own road map, which held that refugees and borders were issues to be resolved at the negotiating table. Mr. Sharon may find a way around his recalcitrant party, and America will no doubt continue its diplomatic efforts. But that critical illusion of symmetry has become more elusive.
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