Shadowland Mail: The Miller Case

Some of the mail about the Shadowland column "Burning Questions" about the controversy surrounding Judy Miller's reporting on Iraq before, during and after the invasion:

From Norman Ravitch
Savannah, GA
10/18/2005 6:34
If Ms. Miller is as nutty as you suggest why don't you just say so,
without concealment?

From Paula Stout
10/18/2005 10:08 PM
Excellent job holding the magnifying glass up to the fourth estate and reminding us all that humans are human---they make mistakes and are sometimes victims of their own sloppiness.... but, even more important than that...thank you for doing your part to combat the essence of the problem encased in RFK, JR. quote... we are the least-informed people...but, with reporters like you, perhaps, one day, we'll remember that we also have the opportunity to become the best-informed people. thanks again. paula.

From Rick Reeder
Boca Raton, Florida
10/18/2005 8:24

Dear Mr. Dickey,
I read with great interest your piece on Judy Miller and understand much more about the personality she is. I don't know if she is star struck by the folks she is suppose to view with a critical eye, or just hurried and careless. But your insight on her is most valuable.
In spite of what has to be genuine frustration within the journalistic world over the short attention spans of most Americans, please know that the work you do is critically important to all of us. We can all disagree about how we as a country are to proceed in a political and policy based world, but the failure to extract the honest truth about what we are being told and what we are not being told goes to the root of our existence.
We truly need to work that you do in spite of our differences and
indifference. Kind Regards, Rick Reeder

From Vince Treacy

10/18/2005 6:11

The short answer is that Miller is not a reporter.
Miller learned from Libby about Wilson's trip to Niger, but no one has asked why she didn't go to Wilson and get his side of the story.
I thought that any good reporter sought to check facts at the source.
We have seen a million stories with the note that phone calls, emails, requests for interviews with X were not returned or refused.
Is there a difference between a reporter and a conduit?
Vince Treacy

From Nat Irvin
Winston-Salem, NC
10/19/2005 10:20

..Very insightful, poetic even.
You remain a favorite writer in a sea of hot air..
Nat Irvin, II

From Clarice L. Kesler
North Dakota
10/19/2005 9:37

I really enjoyed your article. Unfortunately "a lack of standards" not only exists among several jourmalists in your profession, but seems to permeate society these days. And we accept it. More articles like this one may, and the unstable nature of what is going on in this country today, may make all of us do a little soul searching to start demanding not only more from our government and our media, but from ourselves.

Name Chris Bradley
Upton, MA
10/19/2005 10:48

Give this man a raise and more prominence. These sentences are the best thing I've heard on this whole sordid affair, "Burning Judy won't light the way to better journalistic standards and ethics in a media marketplace that long ago concluded having access to power is more important than speaking truth to it. Worst of all, there's very little public demand from the public for solid, prize-winning, and oh-so-expensive investigative reporting from the ground up."

From John Pilon
Neenah, WI
10/18/2005 10:41
Judy Miller may have started as a legit reporter but she slipped on the banana peel of careerism and became a shill for the Bush Administration...for that she has our undying disdain.

From Jim Picard
Madison, WI
0/19/2005 9:52
Mr. Dickey: Thanks so much for your column on the Judy Miller matter. As we endure double speak and deception from most of our elected officials, raised to an art form by the current Administration's mastery of misinformation, it has been distressing to see so little true investigative journalism -- down-and-dirty digging up of facts. With very few exceptions, investigative journalists seem to have disappeared and been replaced by 'reporters' flocking to state the obvious, ... "this City is flooded".
My favorite law professor lectured on the public's constitutional "right to know" what our government was up to. This right is a central component in our democracy, and effective investigative journalism a critical element in protecting that right.
Blogs and letters to opinion pages by average 'civilians' like me seem to suggest many share my question: where are our investigative journalists when we need them most? Jim Picard

Foresight: Breaking up Iraq ... and More

Note the date:

The Mideast After Saddam
Fault lines: In pondering his next step, Bush must weigh the idea that war would be good for the Middle East
By Christopher Dickey
Newsweek International
Updated: 10:42 a.m. ET Dec. 5, 2002
Issues 2003 - As George W. Bush looks at the Middle East, powerful voices in and around his administration tell him the status quo is unsalvageable. They say Arabs are just waiting for a visionary American president to clear away the corruption and dictatorship that curse the region, starting with Saddam Hussein. Apocalyptic optimists like Joshua Muravchik at the American Enterprise Institute suggest the invasion of Iraq will “unleash a tsunami across the Islamic world,” a tidal wave of democracy and modernization.
BUT THE REAL CHOICE Bush faces—and he certainly knows this—is not between Saddam and democracy; it is between the risks of trying to sustain a shaky status quo and the risks of provoking disorder that might be impossible to control. “Ultimately, he will have to decide,” says Rachel Bronson of the Council on Foreign Relations. “Is chaos good or bad for the region?”
Theoretical social engineering is dangerous. Disarming Saddam is a necessary—and limited—goal that might be achieved in many different ways. Not so the propagation of popular democracy through military occupation. There’s just no good precedent for that in the Arab and Islamic realms, or anywhere in the developing world. The models cited by some advocates of invasion are occupied Germany and Japan after World War II. But as the Carnegie Foundation recently pointed out, the problematic experiences of Haiti, Afghanistan and the Balkans are more recent and more relevant.
The Haitian invasion of 1994 and subsequent reconstruction have given us “political chaos, renewed repression and dismal U.S.-Haiti relations,” Carnegie says. In the Afghan case, “the [Bush] administration’s failure to back up its promises” for reconstruction bodes ill for its commitment to Iraq. In Bosnia, there’s “only a tenuous political equilibrium that even six years later would collapse if international forces pulled out.” The voices of caution in the administration, mostly in the State Department and the CIA, warn that the Middle East, like the Balkans, is a mass of fault lines, and tremors of chaos spread much faster than any new sort of order.
In a worst-case, but not least likely, scenario, it’s easy to imagine Iraq’s coming apart during and after the invasion. The whole Middle East becomes massively unstable, its regimes morphing, its frontiers drawn and redrawn. Turkey and Iran, which have restive Kurdish populations of their own, would feel pressure to impose order on swaths of Kurdish northern Iraq just to preserve their internal stability. Patchwork efforts to establish order would result in compromise countries: junk states that meet some of the demands of national identity but not all the requirements of sovereignty, like Kosovo in the Balkans, the present Kurdish entity in northern Iraq and the Palestinian Authority in the occupied territories.
Traditional divisions may prove an unreliable guide to the fracturing Middle East. Urbanization over the last 50 years throws the calculations off. As we learned during the siege of Sarajevo, immigration to cities can create multiethnic urban centers that greatly complicate the process of breaking up. Today, Lebanon, Iraq—yes, Iraq—Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar and Kuwait all have more than 80 percent of their population living in urban centers, and in most of the rest of the Arab world the ratio is above 50 percent.
Still, the basic fault lines of the Middle East are well known. In Iraq, the breakup likely would trace the three governorates that existed under the Ottoman Empire before World War I: Mosul, which is largely Kurdish; Baghdad, which is largely Sunni Arab, and Basra, which is largely Shiite Arab...
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3069554/

Shadowland: The Miller Affair

Burning Questions
The Cannibalistic media frenzy over Judy Miller ignores the lessons we should be learning from here case
By Christopher Dickey
Judith Miller takes good notes, but she doesn’t always know where they come from. That was one of the first lessons I learned about her when we were both based in Cairo 20 years ago, she for The New York Times and I for The Washington Post. As often happens in the field, we were competitors who spent a lot of time working with and against each other, in a friendly sort of way. And so it was that in August 1985 we wound up on the same trip to visit the front lines of a half-forgotten war in the Western Sahara. (Late summer in an African desert where the sun burns the rocks black: I remember Judy proudly volunteering the personal detail, “I don’t sweat. I never sweat.”) ...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9742110/site/newsweek/

Iraq: Hollywood on the Tiber

This from the BBC:

Spider-Man star Kirsten Dunst is to play US aid worker Marla Ruzicka, who died in a suicide bombing in Baghdad, in a new Hollywood movie about the Iraq war.
It will be made for Paramount Pictures after it acquired the rights last year, says industry newspaper Daily Variety.
Ruzicka, 28, worked in Afghanistan and Iraq trying to document the number of civilians killed or hurt by US forces.
The movie follows a glut of Hollywood films depicting the war in Iraq due to open over the coming months.
Films set for the big screen include No True Glory: The Battle for Fallujah, starring Harrison Ford, and Jarhead, starring Jamie Foxx and Jake Gyllenhaal. ...

For more on Marla as she was before Hollywood got a hold of her, see:

Shadowland: Angel of Mercy, 19 April 2005
Marla Ruzicka was one of a kind. The Baghdad death of the unorthodox young aid worker has devastated those who knew her. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7561275/site/newsweek/

and this from October 2003:

Shadowland: War by the Numbers. The United States may spend a billion dollars to find phantom weapons. What about laying to rest the ghosts of Iraqi civilians?
http://www.msnbc.com/news/975627.asp?0cv=KB10

Immigrants: Knocking on Heaven's Door

Newsweek Int'l: Immigration: At The Gates, 16 Oct 2005
As the European Union expands, it's come face to face with a new world.

By Christopher Dickey, with Eric Pape and Tracy McNicoll in Paris, Jenny Barchfield in Madrid, Jacopo Barigazzi in Milan, and Stefan Theil in Berlin

Oct. 24, 2005 issue - The Africans had walked for days from the vast Sahara to reach those high fences topped with razor wire that are all that separates their world from two tiny outposts of Europe on the southern shore of the Mediterranean. They came from Senegal, from Mali, from Mauritania—from countries they wouldn't name, whose papers they had destroyed—and hid deep in Morocco's coastal forest, waiting.
When the moment came, they used cell phones to coordinate their assaults on the fences, rushing forward like human avalanches, hundreds of men at a time, some carrying ladders, some with gloves and loose clothes, cascading against the barriers erected around the Spanish enclaves called Ceuta and Melilla. Starting in late September, as Spanish authorities set about methodically raising the fence from three meters to six, wave upon wave of would-be immigrants made desperate attempts to clamber over. Spanish security forces, greatly outnumbered, haven't been able to hold all of them back. Moroccan security forces, first diffident, then excessive, have twice opened fire. At least 14 of the climbers have been killed. But if these tragedies have inspired pity and fear all over the European Union, it's not just because of the drama of the moment; it's because they are omens of greater troubles to come...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9711923/site/newsweek/

Syria: The Kanaan Conundrum

From our Newsweek article: Buried With Secrets, 16 Oct 2005
Ghazi Kanaan shot himself in the mouth -- or not. :

Did he kill himself or was he killed? Had he blown the whistle on massive corruption, or did he just get too greedy? Could he have been the man behind the sensational murder of a former Lebanese prime minister, or was he going to rat out the real killer? Damascus is an Orwellian wonderland of rewritten histories and untrue facts, so when the regime there announced last week that Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan had taken his own life, there were very few points on which intelligence analysts, diplomats and politicians could agree. Except one: Kanaan knew too much. ...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9711806/site/newsweek/

Saudi View: Time-Out, America

My friend the Saudi essayist is still in California, still thinking about where the Middle East and the United States are headed, and although he doesn't say it here, I believe between the lines he's pondering Washington's plans for Syria when he suggests it's time for the USA to take a time out:

It has not been plain sailing for America these past years, whether internationally or domestically. America’s foreign engagements and her relations with the rest of the world could certainly be doing better. Domestically, polls, economic figures and the course of political battles could also be more positive. With all these roadblocks America has not had the time to reconsider its positions or to take a step back from it all. It is time for America to take a real time-out for a little introspection.

Of late, America has taken on too many battles, too many commitments, too many challenges. The many engagements of the war on terrorism, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, the loss of international trust and support, and the imperial concept of pre-emption have sapped America’s strength abroad and at home. Rushing into huge tax cuts, the reform of Medicare and Social Security, “No Child Left Behind,” and the appointment of controversial figures and Supreme Court judges has compounded this problem at home, creating both confusion and disappointment.

It is sad to see a country with so much potential, such great people and such great previous achievements in such a state of suspense and bewilderment. But I have tremendous faith in the ability of Americans to get to work and confidently set out to resolve the problems that they have themselves created as well as those which were caused by nature or by the bad intentions of others.

As America looks inward, they will have the time to look at their own failures or mistakes as well as those of others. The political process and the principles to which Americans adhere are strong enough to get to the bottom of this and to remedy it; they have certainly done so in the past. This time-out has become absolutely essential, as rapidly succeeding setbacks and challenges are slipping out of America’s hands. Losing more time or accumulating more commitments could yet have far more damaging effects.

The fact that America still seems to be split down the middle between Republicans and Democrats is not a healthy or an encouraging sign. But I believe that the weight of the problems to be faced will bring Americans together to look for solutions and compromises. It will do America good to take this time to resolve within themselves the issues which have been created not by bad intentions, but by poor information, insufficient planning and analysis, and by certain officials choosing to play the part of ideologues rather than being realistic policy-makers.

Like hurricanes, facing these various storms may be painful, destructive and require a lot of courage, but once the storms have been overcome a new life can start, fields can grow afresh, and a stronger consciousness, more aware of its abilities and its limitations will emerge. America has shown that it can weather its storms, now it is time for a new life, a new policy, a new direction. We are all waiting confidently to see it happen.

Patriotism: George Washington's View

Thanks to my friend David Goldenberg for posting George Washington's level-headed view of patriotism while in winter quarters at Valley Forge:

George Washington to John Banister, April 21, 1778

I do not mean to exclude altogether the idea of patriotism. I know it exists, and I know it has done much in the present contest. But I will venture to assert, that a great and lasting war can never be supported on this principle alone. It must be aided by a prospect of interest, or some reward.

Bush: The Play's the Thing

Bush Teleconference with Soldiers Staged
By Deb Riechmann, Associated Press Writer

... Paul Rieckhoff, director of the New York-based Operation Truth, an advocacy group for U.S. veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan, denounced the event as "a carefully scripted publicity stunt." Five of the 10 U.S. troops involved were officers, he said.
"If he wants the real opinions of the troops, he can't do it in a nationally televised teleconference," Rieckhoff said. "He needs to be talking to the boots on the ground and that's not a bunch of captains."

Surely no one can be surprised that Bush's globally broadcast chat with soldiers was rehearsed. (By the way, remember when he used to go to Iraq himself for these staged events?) But I like the conclusion of Riechmann's article, excerpted above, because it fits so well with what John Dunne wrote about.

There's also this, from a young friend who's an officer in the U.S. Navy:

Chris, I have jetlag to thank for allowing me to wake up extra-early to watch the President address the troops in Tikrit via teleconference.
It might have been the most cringe-worthy, staged media event I have ever seen. Even more offensive than party conventions, since they suckered troops into it.
Did you catch this exchange? (There was an Iraqi master sergeant sitting among the Americans).
THE PRESIDENT: Yes. Sergeant Akeel, thanks for joining us. I appreciate -- appreciate your service. You've got something to say, Akeel?
SERGEANT AKEEL: Good morning, Mr. President. Thank you for everything. Thank very much for everything.
THE PRESIDENT: Yes, you're welcome.
SERGEANT AKEEL: I like you. (Laughter.)
THE PRESIDENT: Well, I appreciate that.

Shadowland: The Podcast

The latest Shadowland column, "Wars of Hate," is now available as an MP3 audio file and Podcast .

Shadowland Mail: Wars of Hate

Some of the responses to the most recent Shadowland column about war, patriotism and John Gregory Dunne:

From Dennis Stenftenagel
Ferdinand, Indiana
10/12/2005 8:48 I will never forget seeing lyndon johnson visiting the troops in '67. We were urged to turn out [read ordered] for his visit. What hit home for me that he was unable to make eye contact with any of us in the sea of green and kaki and the fact few of us wanted to be there. I am seeing the same thing from our leader today but the military types and the public are not where [yet] they were back in '67 but that too is changing. We are again in the wrong war for the wrong reasons.
10/13/2005 11:49 .......I took pictures of the event and I have one of Johnson taken from 10 feet away from his limo and he actually has his hand positioned next to his face like he was trying to hide from the crowd of those who turned out to see him. I wish I knew what was going through his mind at the time.......As to George the second; he is so shielded from reality by himself and others that reality will never eat away at him like it did for Johnson in my humble opinion.........BE WELL.........dennis

From Doug Parkinson
Arcata, CA
10/12/2005 12:41
There have been exceptions to the rule. I cannot be to vocal about my resistance to this choreographed war on terror to parents whose children (teenagers with automatic weapons)are "over there". I recognize the concern for their children by the unspoken fear in their eyes as we talk. Also unspoken, " why are not your military aged children not there? Doug Parkinson LRRP/Rangers 1st Cav Division Vietnam, 67-68


From Meg Greene
10/12/2005 8:42 AM
Well said... on behalf of your friend John Gregory Dunne. Thank you. I bet he would thank you, too. Meg Greene

From John Kirk
10/11/2005 8:02 PM
Mr. Dickey, You article on patriotism and Mr. Dunne was very important and the reason I am writing to you. Like John Dunne, my father "fought the Korean War in Germany." He was a Harvard Educated lawyer in the JAG on the defense side and threw up from nerves before each trial - but he won them all. I wonder what he would have thought of Abu Graib and Gitmo. He died of Alzheimer's so we will never know. I have a bumper sticker on my car which reads "If You Support The War in Iraq Volunteer To Fight In IT". People like your son need help. The reaction from Bush supporters when they see it is fascinating. We are a patriotic family. Irish Americans. Fighters in our way. Through our ethnic and historical prism we know something of what an occupation can do to both sides. I think you will like the song "The Earnest Soldier" and you will appreciate "Extraordinary Rendition." "Heaven Help Me" - maybe you can tell me what its about. Its just a conversation between a father and son in music as far as we are concerned. But I think it may have some relevance to Mr. Dunne and you and your son and my father and my son and how we communicate our ideas and ideals to each other in this country. John

From Dan Brekke
Berkeley, CA
10/12/2005 2:24
Chris, this can only be the beginning of the discussion. I think Dunne's sense of this issue, and yours, is spot on as far as it goes. Sacrifices must be shared. We must not fight wars to which we're not fully committed (though bear in mind that that standard kept us out of World War I for nearly three years and, absent Pearl Harbor, probably would have kept us out of World War II indefinitely). But what do we do with that knowledge? Do we get behind people like John Conyers and Charles Rangel and demand the draft be reinstated?. There's an attractive school of thought that a universal draft -- if one were started, I'd hope that women would be conscripted, too -- would give everyone a personal stake in the war in Iraq and make the civilians who launched this thing more accountable. I'm not sure I buy that -- more than half the Americans who died in Vietnam were killed *after* the Tet offensive, when the anti-war movement was already rolling along. Yet, a fair draft, perhaps with a national service alternative, *could* democratize the war and perhaps counter a tendency, which Bush encourages with no shame or sense of irony, to lionize the warriors, cozen up to them, and cast those who don't support his military adventure as fifth columnists. But here's the thing: I have two draft-age sons. I don't know how I'd sleep if they and their friends were under arms now and their commanders were as casually deceitful and incompetent as the crew we have in charge now. For me, the principle of the thing -- that it's unfair and undemocratic to impose the war sacrifice on a small slice of society, even if they volunteered for service -- is at war with my personal horror at the further ruin of young lives to so little apparent purpose. I also wonder about the equity of codgers like me (my draft number was supposed to come up in 1972, but it was never called) sending the young ones off to kill and be killed. If there's going to be a national sacrifice, all the non-retired generations should be made to play a part beyond our penchant for uttering fine phrases.

From George Kamburoff
Pleasant Hill, CA
10/12/2005 12:22 AM
All the males in my family were WWII veterans, and I was raised with the belief that the price of living in a free society is the active defense of it. When the war of my generation came, I was ready. Already in the Air Force, I volunteered for the war and went over in November, 1967. Being an electronics tech on McNamara's Electronic Battlefield, I was sufficiently close to the war to see its effects on everything we touched, but far enough from the destruction to avoid the irresistible need to justify personal violence. It didn't take long to have my suppositions challenged, my view of who we were, what we were doing threatened by the knowledge of a terrible reality. But admitting it to myself was a long and agonizing experience. Although it started a few months after my arrival in Southeast Asia, it took years to admit and to accept. At last, I had to question the morality of lionizing the military and the pride we have for those willing to serve. I don't wish to degrade the righteousness of those who serve, but to question the morality of a society that would use them for terrible purpose. One day, counting the names of the recent dead, I finally penned a note, as much to myself as the newspaper to which it was sent, where it went unprinted: They talk about "honor" a lot. Their TV ads show young men slaying mythical dragons, climbing walls of fantasy, standing tall in multicolored uniforms. But is that what our country demands of our servicemen? Few decisions are as important as those regarding life and death. Yet we seem to idealize those who cede that decision to others, who perform draconian tasks without reflection. Ultimately we must ask ourselves: Where is the pride in abdicating life's most important decisions to someone else? Where is the honor in killing on command? There will be an enormous price to pay for our self-righteous violence, far worse than letting our sons and daughters be used for hellish purposes, far more than the tens of thousands of physically, emotionally, and morally wounded troops who come home in and out of boxes, more than the billions of dollars wasted. We are losing our humanity, and any soul we might have had.

From Lola
Seattle, WA Sent:
Just found this commentary! I'm sure glad you found John Gregory Dunne's floppy disk. It allowed me a connection with a man I never knew but after reading this felt a deep sense of loss for all the unwritten words. He had so much more to give. This was a wonderful commentary on a friend. You did good!!

From Chris Quimby
Kihei, HI
Sent: 10/13/2005 12:43 AM
Aloha Chris, To say that I am appalled and enraged by our nation's perpetual warmongering is to say the least of how I feel about it. Regards, Chris

From Mark Cannona
Tucson, Arizona
10/12/2005 1:10 AM
I think discussing patriotism right now is absurd. I don't see patriotism being expressed anywhere. Why should Iraq or the war on terror stimulate such a discussion? Let's talk about it when all the countries we have wronged start dropping paratroopers on Dallas or Dayton. Then we can talk about patriotism.

Syria: Was Kanaan Plotting a Coup?

What the French call le telephone arabe is ringing off the hook since the announcement that Syrian Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan killed himself earlier today. Some of the most interesting speculation, as usual, is on Joshua Landis's syriacomment.com:

Was Ghazi Kanaan setting himself up to be Bashar's alternative? Could he have been the Alawite "Musharrif" that some American's and Volker Perthes suggested would take power from the House of Asad and bring Syria back into America's and the West's good graces. I have heard from several people that "high ranking Syrians" have been complaining to people at the National Security Council and elsewhere that they are very distressed by the mistakes Bashar al-Asad has made and the terrible state of US-Syrian relations.
Could Ghazi have been setting himself up as the alternative to Bashar? Could the Syrian government believe he might have been? We don't know, but here goes the possible speculation. He is known to have had good relations with Washington, when he held the Lebanon portfolio. He visited DC. Two of his four sons went to George Washington University in DC.
Kanaan was reported to have been one of the "Old Guard" who spoke out against the extension of Emile Lahoud's presidency in Lebanon, which set the stage for Lebanon's Cedar revolution and the assassination of P.M. Rafiq Hariri. He had been one of the Syrians responsible for cultivating Hariri and building up his position in Lebanon. He was also accused of having significant business relations in Lebanon which tied him to Hariri. It is unlikely that he was involved in Hariri's murder, having been a Hariri and not Lahoud supporter.
His relations with Lahoud were strained, and Lahoud reportedly was one of the people who insisted that he be removed from the Lebanon file and replaced by Rustum Ghazali. (Told me by Nick Blanford of the Christian Science Monitor, who is writing a book on Hariri.)
Since the June Baath Party Conference, it has been rumored that Ghazi would lose his Cabinet position as Minister of Interior, where he had been causing quite a ruckus.
Kanaan was the most senior Alawi official left in government of the Hafiz's generation. He had served as an intelligence chief and minister of interior giving him influence over and knowledge of all branches of the security forces - intelligence and police. If Washington were to turn to anyone to carry out a coup against Bashar, it would have to place Ghazi Kanaan on the top of its list.
Could Kanaan have been assassinated in order to prevent him from challenging Bashar? We may never know, but it is possible.
Bashar al-Asad has been clamping down on all possible rivals. Civil society has been all but silenced since the June Baath Party conference. The Atasi forum shut down. Evidently Anwar al-Bunni, Damascus' leading civil rights lawyer and advocate is presently in hiding so he would be arrested. All emerging political movements have been broken up during the past several months. The Kurds are under intense pressure as are all Islamic organizations. Bashar's strongest suit is that there is not alternative to his rule. Washington must either accept him as president or tempt the fates that Syria will collapse into some form of social chaos. Now that Ghazi Kanaan is no longer alive, it is hard to imagine another Alawi in the government who would have the authority, knowledge, or standing to pull off a coup.

Syria: Kanaan Falls on His Sword

Just out on the wires, this from the BBC:

Syrian minister 'commits suicide'
Syria's Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan has committed suicide, the official news agency in Damascus says.
He was reportedly questioned by a UN investigator last month over the murder of ex-Lebanese PM Rafik Hariri.
For many years Kanaan was Syria's powerful intelligence chief in Lebanon, which was dominated by Syria until its military withdrawal earlier this year.
He returned to Damascus in 2002 as political intelligence chief and joined the cabinet in 2004.
"Interior Minister Brig Gen Ghazi Kanaan committed suicide in his office before noon," the Syrian Arab News Agency (Sana) reported.

Since he gave up the Lebanese dossier in 2002, Kanaan's power in Syria waned as well. He was one of the old guard, not the new crowd among Bashar's siblings and in-laws. As such, in the mafia state that is Syria today, he probably seemed expendable. But there was a time, during the most dangerous years of the Lebanese war, when Kanaan pulled all the strings. This excerpt from an article I wrote for Foreign Affairs in 1987 gives, perhaps, some notion of the way Kanaan and Assad pere operated, as well as the limits of their power at that time:

The pace of abductions was quickening. Soon it appeared to be out of Syrian control. By mid-June 1985 one group of Iranian-backed kidnappers, calling itself Islamic Jihad and linked to the Mousavi clan, had accumulated six American hostages, including a newsman, a hospital director, an academic, two priests and the CIA station chief William Buckley who, by then, was dying. There were also two French diplomats and two French journalists in Jihad's hands. Assad was proffering his good offices, but to no avail. Then on June 14 a related group of Iranian-backed Shi'ites hijacked TWA Flight 847 and 40 new American hostages were flown to Beirut. One was murdered.
Assad maneuvered. His ally, Nabih Berri, intervened and all but four of the Americans were put in the custody of Amal. But it was just at this point that Assad's impotence began to be evident. The four Americans in the hands of the radicals effectively gave them leverage over all the others. Assad negotiated and cajoled, and his spokesman announced that all would be freed. Then, to his considerable embarrassment, the radicals said no, new conditions had to be met. Another day went by before the TWA hostages finally were freed, but the six Americans and four French previously abducted were not.
Washington and Paris were losing confidence in Assad's ability to deliver, and as they did so they turned more and more to direct -- if secret -- negotiations with Iran. The arms-for-hostages deals cut by the Reagan Administration with Tehran eventually sidestepped Assad even as a token participant, and the Iranians moved to squeeze him out of the picture altogether. Meanwhile their militias treated both Syria's professional soldiers and its proxies with growing contempt. Firefights broke out in Baalbek between Syrian troops and Hezbollah militiamen in May 1986. The next month two members of the Damascus-backed Syrian Social Nationalist Party were kidnapped by Shi'ites associated with Hezbollah; their bullet-riddled bodies were found two days later. Five days of fighting followed around the Bekaa Valley town of Mashgara. In October, when the Syrians arrested two members of the militias in Mashgara, the Shi'ite radicals responded by kidnapping four Syrian soldiers. Not until the Syrian army freed its prisoners were the soldiers returned.
Adding to the chaos was the factionalism of the fundamentalists themselves, both in Lebanon and Iran. Mehdi Hashemi and several other Iranians especially committed to exporting their revolution began operating in defiance of sectors of the Iranian government. Syrians got caught up in this feud and in October 1986 Syria's charge d'affairs in Tehran -- said by diplomats there to have an extensive intelligence background -- was abducted and beaten by Hashemi partisans. Hashemi himself was arrested soon afterward, but the stain of the affront endured. {Note: After Hashemi's arrest his associates leaked to a Lebanese magazine the story of U.S. National Security Adviser Robert McFarlane's visit to Tehran. It was reprinted in a pro-Syrian Beirut newspaper, Al-Shiraa, where Western news media picked it up. See "Iran's Quest for Superpower Status," Gary Sick, Foreign Affairs, Spring 1987, pp. 706-708.}
Throughout this period Western diplomats in the region commonly argued that Assad could release the Western hostages if he cared to. His security services were bound to know where many of the hostages were being held and who was holding them. But if some were freed by force, others were likely to be killed. Assad would get little credit for corpses and considerable blame from the West, and meanwhile would have poisoned his already delicate relations with Tehran. He had less room to maneuver than many realized. The hostages were essentially an emotional problem for the United States and France. But for Assad their continued captivity was a direct affront, a constant test of his influence, which he seemed unable to meet.
By November 1986 Assad needed a gesture, a symbol of his strength as well as his goodwill, that would increase his political capital. Syrian intelligence services had been implicated in terrorist attempts in Europe; Britain, the United States and Europe took actions of protest. Perhaps worse from Assad's point of view, he was seen as a man of waning capabilities; news reports often raised the question of his health.
At just that moment came a breakthrough in the hostage situation, resulting, as we now know, from the secret arms shipments from Washington to Tehran: Islamic Jihad released American University Hospital administrator David Jacobsen. Here was an opportunity for Assad to recoup. But instead of sending him out through Damascus -- the route other hostages had gone -- Jihad arranged his liberation in such a way that Syria could take no credit. Far from the profuse thanks to which he was accustomed, Assad was all but ignored.
The affronts to Assad are not always so subtle. In the summer of 1986 Syria deployed about 300 uniformed "advisers" and hundreds more plainclothes agents in West Beirut to help impose a "security plan." But they were barred from entering the city's teeming southern suburbs, where Hezbollah holds sway and is believed to hold most of its Western captives. Meanwhile a new wave of kidnappings began, led by a group calling itself the Revolutionary Justice Organization. With much the same techniques as Islamic Jihad, the new group was picking up new hostages, it seemed, whenever old ones were about to be released.
Hostility between the Hezbollah militiamen and the Syrian advisers continued to mount: in February 1987, in a ludicrous but humiliating confrontation, Syrian soldiers and Lebanese police patrolling West Beirut were surrounded by Hezbollah militiamen, disarmed, beaten and their heads shaved.
It was less than two weeks later that Assad began a full-scale deployment of 7,000 troops in Beirut. On the night of February 24, 1987, his soldiers entered the Basta neighborhood and approached the Fathallah barracks. Most of the Hezbollah fighters headquartered there had pulled out after burning tires inside the building to cover any signs of the prisoners they had held there -- among them, almost certainly, American and European hostages. Scattered shots were heard, and when the Syrians were finished, 23 men and women said to have been partisans of Hezbollah lay dead. By morning, the writing on the walls of the barracks that praised the glories of Islam and "Imam" Khomeini was painted over. Now the writing on the wall praised Syria. The strike at Iran was quick and violent, but fell short of full-scale confrontation. Still Assad did not send his forces into the southern suburbs....

More on the Hariri case and its aftermath this year:

Shadowland: CSI: Beirut, 30 Mar 2005
Syria is playing for time, and the Lebanese investigation into the Hariri assassination is a farce. Meanwhile, chaos is building. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7337270/site/newsweek/

Shadowland: "Spectator Patriotism"

Wars of Hate
America's conflicts are fought mostly by people who have come from the powerless classes.

By Christopher Dickey

Newsweek

Updated: 5:35 p.m. ET Oct. 11, 2005

Oct. 11, 2005 - On or about Dec. 30, 2002, which was a day after we’d had dinner in New York and a year to the day before he died of a heart attack, John Gregory Dunne put a floppy disk in an envelope and dropped it off at the Manhattan apartment where I was staying. As happens, I misplaced it in my travels after that, and only last weekend did I find it and read the digital newspaper clippings he’d pulled together, which he’d talked about with so much excitement at our dinner.
John was interested in patriotism. He was fascinated by the real substance of it, which he saw as diametrically opposed to what he called “the spectator patriotism” exploited by the Bush administration as it went looking for wars. There was something (it took a while for John to put his finger on it) in the fact that several people he knew had children on active duty: historian Doris Kearns had a son, John himself had a nephew, I had a son. We had people we loved in uniform doing what they saw, and we understood, imperfectly perhaps, as their duty to defend the values and the dreams that are the United States of America. But why were there so few from this circle of acquaintances if the cause was so great?...

Iraq: Sorry's Not Enough

Jackson Diehl's Washington Post column is about the bitter disappointment of Kanan Makiya ("Republic of Fear") and Rend Rahim as they look at the results of the war in Iraq that they worked so long and so hard to provoke:
"Both liberal Iraqi intellectuals and eloquent English speakers, they made the case that Saddam Hussein's removal was a cause to be embraced on moral and human rights grounds, and that its result could be the replacement of the Arab world's most brutal dictatorship by its first genuine democracy...
"That's why it was so sobering to encounter Makiya and Rahim again last week -- and to hear them speak with brutal honesty about their 'dashed hopes and broken dreams,' as Makiya put it. The occasion was a conference on Iraq sponsored by the conservative American Enterprise Institute, which did so much to lay the intellectual groundwork for the war. A similar AEI conference three years ago this month resounded with upbeat predictions about the democratic, federal and liberal Iraq that could follow Saddam Hussein. This one, led off by Makiya and Rahim, sounded a lot like its funeral.
"Makiya began with a stark conclusion: 'Instead of the fledgling democracy that back then we said was possible, instead of that dream, we have the reality of a virulent insurgency whose efficiency is only rivaled by the barbarous tactics it uses.' The violence, he said, 'is destroying the very idea or the very possibility of Iraq.' ..."

Thanks to Paul Woodward at The War in Context for bringing this to our attention. - CD

Iran: Explosive Diplomacy, Implosive Economy

How much longer can the mullahs last? So far, they've played the game of politics and diplomacy better than any of their enemies. But the economy is something else, according to the most recent headlines from the Middle East Economic Survey:

Iran’s Oil And Gas Industry Stalemate Worsens
Iran’s oil and gas industry stalemate worsened last week, with the Majlis (parliament) passing new legislation that threatens to remove the most senior and experienced staff from government and state company positions. At the same time the government’s probe into corruption in oil and gas sector contracts continued with further arrests and the likelihood of more to come. These factors, plus the escalation of the level of threat from the international community over Iran’s nuclear program, which saw the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) take a step closer towards referring Iran to the UN Security Council (MEES, 3 October), have combined to undermine confidence among Iran’s private investors, triggering a collapse in share prices on the Tehran Stock Exchange (TSE). ...

Syria: Coup d'Assad?

My colleagues Michael Hirsh and Kevin Peraino have a sharp, disturbing article in the current Newsweek, "Dangers in Damascus," about the disarray in American policy toward Syria:

...If al-Assad's rigidly secular regime were toppled, the nation's mosaic of competing sects and ethnicities could explode into conflict. Islamist radicals—including a group called Soldiers of the Levant—are already gaining influence in Syria, where they were once ruthlessly crushed. This comes as Qaeda-linked groups are trying to spread the jihadist contagion regionally, according to an alleged letter from Qaeda No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahiri last week.
Critics say that the Bush administration isn't encouraging Syria's democrats just now—but neither is it willing to work with Syria's dictator. And in the absence of any cooperation between governments, jihadists are moving across Syria's 310-mile border with Iraq to join the insurgency. Imad Moustapha, the Syrian ambassador to Washington, told NEWSWEEK that Damascus ended all security and intelligence cooperation with America several months ago, and it has not resumed...

For those who want more detail, there are fascinating discussions about the whys, hows and wherefores of coup plotting against Assad on Joshual Landis's syriacomment.com . - CD

Hate-Mail Call: More on "The Suicide Solution"

This from Thomas, who doesn't give his hometown:

'Suicide bombers are morally justified in their actions because they seek to destroy only those persons and societies which illegally and unjustly repress them. George Bush is a mass murderer. All of those persons who voted for George Bush in the 2004 election knew with full certainty what he had done and why, including the lack of any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and therefore lack of any justification to attack Iraq. Therefore, every single person who voted for George Bush in the 2004 is, by definition, a murderer and/or accomplice to murder. They're just not willing to get dirty, they'd rather let some poor kid who joined the Army just so he'd get a college education go out and risk his life.
'I wonder, if they do ever come up with a cure for suicide bombers, will they also come up with a cure for arrogant, self-righteous bastards like yourself. One can only hope.'

People believe what they want to believe, I guess. For the original column, see:
Shadowland: The Suicide Solution, 6 September 2005
What if suicide bombing were a disease? Could we find a cure? Some researchers think so.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9230559/site/newsweek/

The Search for Expert Experts

In this latest missive from my Saudi friend (now enjoying Ramadan in California), he asks, "Are American experts lost?" and argues against the assertion of certainty where none exists:

'When it comes to expert opinion, we have heard just about everything over the past few years: the US economy in full recovery or nearing collapse; a stable $35 barrel of oil or one certain to head above $100; a war in Iraq based on WMD certainties and assured of rapid success or a war justified by innuendo and certain to spread havoc across the Middle East. These are only some examples of expert opinions of those in the know, circulated daily in the American media.
'The cast of characters usually includes those respectable experts from investment houses who, in their grey suits and with unmatched confidence, list their incontrovertible reasons why the US economy is on a full recovery. There are the morally unquestionable reporters, from conservative or liberal newspapers, who deliver compelling inside information removing all doubt that Saddam Hussein is fully armed with WMD and even making plans to use them in attacking the United States. Finally, there are those attractive and very blonde presenters who are able to convince us about anything from the likely outcome of an American football game to the future direction of the stock market....
'It is a mystery how almost every single economic commentator or analyst could continue telling the American public that their economy is doing great and that growth will continue to improve, when they know that this growth is based on an ever more untenable and growing national debt. How could the head of a household truthfully tell his family that they are doing great and will continue to prosper, when he knows that he is unable to repay those he continues to borrow from to keep his house afloat? ...
'These so-called experts exist not only in the United States, but also in Saudi Arabia where God knows how some come up with their predictions on the future of the oil market. Whether they represent vested interests or important clients is a question that must seriously be asked. ...
'The media are competing to attract our attention rather than to add to our knowledge, and government and business interests seem to be taking full advantage of this. Whether it be the mess in Iraq, our unpreparedness in the oil market, or the trials and tribulations of the economy, the experts have only added to the confusion.
'I wonder where that rare expert is who has the wisdom and the nobility to sometimes say that we really cannot know or be sure. Such qualities may be rare, but they are essential in any expert. It seems that, except for a rare few, such experts do not survive for long in the current media environment. We flip channels and see the same pre-packaged experts whose goal it is to keep us happy and to turn us into clones for the benefit of certain interests. We have entered a dangerous blind spot of spin, hype, and real disinformation.
'I may be no expert myself on some of these topics, but I don’t pretend to be one and I can smell a fish when I come across one. The official “experts” who crowd our daily lives have already succeeded in discrediting themselves, be it through their comments on the presence of WMD in Iraq or their chipper predictions for the US economy and the future of the oil market. We must not fall for this and we must make sure that there remains a wide enough access to more modest experts and more objective assessments.'

Travel: Michael Allin's Alex

Michael Allin and I have been friends since long ago and far away when I was at the beginning of my teens and he was at the end of his. He went on to become a screenwriter ("Enter the Dragon") and novelist ("The Christmas Kid"), but found his real metier as a poet-traveler-historian with the book "Zarafa," about a giraffe given by the Pasha of Egypt to the King of France in the early 19th century. Michael retraced the journey of this wild animal with whom everyone seemed to fall in love as she made her way from Sudan up the Nile to Alexandria, across the Mediterranean to Marseilles, and was then walked through France to the Jardin des Plantes in Paris: history as fable, travel as literature. Michael has since wandered along the remotest recesses of the Silk Road, is now exploring South America, and occasionally shares his writing with us on his blog:

"Leaving Africa, from my book ZARAFA:

"At Alexandria the sea is ever changing -- turquoise shallows and purple depths and vast outer blue that turns dark green when the wind roughens it too choppy to reflect the sky, silver gray under clouds and patched with golden columns of sunlight -- constant only in its immensity and, after the snaking current of the Nile, violently alive. Incoming swells explode into rainbows against the limestone fortress of the Mamelukes at the entrance to the harbor. The light, too, is mercurial, moody without the solid heat of the desert. Arabic sounds different here, and faces change as Egypt turns Greek.
"After the overwhelming fact of the Nile -- where the heat and the landscape and fifty centuries of history confirm the irrelevance of any particular life -- Alexandria is a physical and emotional relief, a beautiful and confusing letdown. Body and eyes no longer suffer, and the mind no longer searches in awe for the shelter of a detail -- momentary shade, a drink, some small living touch like the green monkey climbing that other Zarafa's neck [painted in a tomb at Luxor] 3,500 years ago. ..."

Soldier Blog: Sisyphus Today

Sisyphus Today: The Metaphor

"The IED that caused that crater would have taken out my side of the truck and me along with it. But strangely, I had no real reaction to that consideration; no fear, no shock, no feeling of fortune. Nothing except the idea that it signified something.
"It only took me a few more moments to realize what that was. As we were snaking our way through the tight, bush-lined corridor toward the Tigris bridge, I came to understand that the IED blast was a specific, destructive event that had left lasting effects.
"The metaphor began...."

I don't know anything this soldier Dean M. Dorman apart from what's on his blog, but I've got to be intrigued by its too-appropriate title, his chilled prose, and the fact that he lists two works by Aldous Huxley among his three favorite books. I sometimes take an old copy of Huxley's collected essays with me when I travel. "The Doors of Perception" is a fascinating pre-Sixties look at psychedelia. But one of the pieces I find most useful is the essay called "Usually Destroyed." For more on this point, see:
Shadowland: Out of Balance, 5 Jan 2005
The world rarely takes notice of disasters and wars until they cross a mind-boggling threshold of pain. Are Americans starting to feel the same way about U.S. soldiers dying in Iraq? http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6786899/site/newsweek/

Newsweek Article: Kurdish Complications

Friends in the Mountains
Northern Iraq is a stable land where people love America and Americans. So why doesn't the U.S. military make itself at home?

By Babak Dehghanpisheh and Christopher Dickey, with Owen Matthews in Baghdad, Scott Johnson in Haro, Michael Hastings in Mosul, John Barry and Michael Hirsh in Washington, and Sami Kohen in Istanbul

Oct. 17, 2005 issue - For a brief spell last year, small groups of American soldiers fresh off the battlefields of Fallujah and Samarra got a chance to rest and relax at the Jiyan Hotel in the highlands of Iraq. They could swim laps, play tennis, shoot pool and generally just chill as they looked out on the dramatic snow-covered peaks that have always been the refuge of the Kurds. ("We have no friends but the mountains" is a well-known Kurdish proverb.) Kids mobbed the soldiers, asking for candy; adults began every conversation with "My friend." Indeed, there are few places anywhere in the world these days where American troops get a warmer welcome.
When you hear that Iraqis are sick of the U.S. occupation, remember the Kurds. They love the U.S.A. They want these American occupiers, and really do think of them as liberators. Top Kurdish officials have practically begged the U.S. military to make itself at home in their land. "I do not ask that Americans build bases in Kurdistan—I demand it," says Abdel Beg Perwani, a Kurdish member of Iraq's Parliament and deputy head of the defense committee....

Question of the moment: When you've read the whole article, I'd be interested to know how close you think the United States should get to the Kurds.

Audio on Iraq: Dickey, Zakaria, Packer

Audio: Are Kurds in Control of Iraq?
Newsweek On Air
Oct. 9, 2005 - Guests: Christopher Dickey, NEWSWEEK Paris Bureau Chief/Mid-East Regional Editor; Fareed Zakaria, Editor of NEWSWEEK International Editions and Host of Foreign Exchange (PBS); and George Packer, New Yorker Staff Writer, author of “The Assassins’ Gate: America in Iraq.”

Also available as a podcast from Newsweek.

Terror: Crying Wolf, Playing Politics

The War in Context tracks breaking news and adds thoughtful perspective. Along with the David Goldenberg post, it raises some critical questions that ought to concern all of us:

Al Qaeda tells ally in Iraq to strive for global goals
By Douglas Jehl and Thom Shanker, New York Times, October 7, 2005
The second-ranking leader of Al Qaeda has warned the top militant in Iraq that attacks on civilians and videotaped executions committed by his followers threaten to jeopardize the broader extremist cause, a senior United States official said Thursday.The warning, from Ayman al-Zawahiri to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was spelled out in a 6,000-word letter, dated early in July, that was obtained by American forces conducting counterterrorism operations in Iraq, the official said in a briefing.Mr. Zawahiri said that Iraq had become "the place for the greatest battle of Islam in this era," but that Mr. Zarqawi's forces should keep in mind that it was only a stepping stone toward a broader victory for militant Islam across the Middle East."The mujahedeen must not have their mission end with the expulsion of the Americans from Iraq, and then lay down their weapons, and silence the fighting zeal," Mr. Zawahiri said in the letter, according to a partial translation provided by the official, who declined to provide verbatim translations of anything more than three sentences from the document. Under the ground rules for the briefing, the official cannot be identified. [complete article]

Comment -- Do al Qaeda and the Bush administration now have a coordinated communications strategy? I'd have to say that it was a stunning stroke of luck that the Zawahiri treatise came to light the same day that President Bush gave his "major" address on the war on terror. But no! The NYT's stalwart reporters inform us that "the official said the decision to disclose the letter was made independently of the speech." Who could doubt his word?Supposedly we're only being told about the letter's existence because the story had already been leaked to CBS and NBC - this, during the same week that we learned that a suspected spy was working in Dick Cheney's office. Of course in this case the fact that the story was "leaked" is not meant to imply that al Qaeda might have a mole in the White House. It does however beg the question as to how any responsible reporters would blithely repeat the assertion that the release of this news had nothing to do with Bush's speech.

My buddy of many years David Goldenberg, who's found his real vocation in blogging, nailed something that had been bothering me but I hadn't had time to write about:

October 6, 2005
Two Minds with but a Single Thought
A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves.—Edward R Murrow
Bush’s ratings in the polls stink. He gives a speech saying Iraq is the answer to fighting worldwide terrorism to try to bolster some kind of support. Mayor Bloomberg of New York is having political difficulties as he faces re-election. He “had been invited to appear at a mayoral debate Thursday evening, but declined -- a decision that has brought him considerable criticism.”What’s the quickest way to create a diversion and make leadership look solid and in control?
New York City's subway system was put under heightened alert Thursday after officials received information from the FBI about a "specific threat," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.—CNN
And to help with the Iraq connection:
A law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity said the threat was “specific to place, time and method,” which was a bombing. The official said the information resulted from the arrest of al-Qaida operatives in Iraq.—MSNBC
But there is a soft underbelly to this fearmongering:
The Department of Homeland Security said the intelligence community believes the information is of "doubtful" credibility.—Newsday
It’s not as if this scare is a total loss—there is still the undercurrent in the media about bird flu pandemic, which could kill millions. Don’t think Bush hasn’t got some ideas about how to fight bird flu:
A call by President George W. Bush for Congress to give him the power to use the military in law enforcement roles in the event of a bird flu pandemic has been criticized as akin to introducing martial law.Bush said aggressive action would be needed to prevent a potentiallydisastrous U.S. outbreak of the disease that is sweeping through Asian poultry and which experts fear could mutate to pass between humans.—CNN, Bush military bird flu role slammed
What this country needs is a calming assurance from our leaders that will let us all sleep better and build our immune systems so we won’t be so susceptible to all these viruses—and work for common goals, instead of constantly playing “duck and cover.”
That takes courageous leadership, because the consequence of a fearful populace is an easily led one, like sheep, which helps if you’re a fearful leader.

This kind of thing greatly increases the danger that just when the sheep really do need to listen, they'll think their government is crying wolf. - CD

See:
Essential Emmes

Nukes and the Nobel: Where Fuels Rush In

Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency, didn't give many interviews over the last few months. One of those, however, was at the beginning of July when I visited him in Vienna. We talked mainly about Iran, but he kept coming back to the more fundamental issue of "the fuel cycle," since a country that can make its own atomic fuel can also make its own fissile material for an atomic bomb. Since we met, Iran has re-started part of the conversion process that turns uranium into fuel, Tehran's talks with Europe have broken down, and after much wrangling the IAEA has opened the possibility it will refer the matter to the UN Security Council (see the September archive on this site). This morning, ElBaradei and the IAEA won the Nobel Peace Prize. Following are some previously unpublished excerpts from the raw transcript of our hour-long conversation last summer:

ElBaradei: I have been saying, not only vis a vis Iran, but also globally, that dissemination of the fuel cycle could be the Achilles heel of the non-proliferation regime. It’s an issue brought to the surface by Iran, but not only Iran. … We know now better than 30 years ago that if you have the fuel cycle you are nuclear-weapons capable, and we need to limit that number. In fact we need to reduce that number and eventually eliminate nuclear weapons capabilities rather than having 30 or 40 countries who can have nuclear weapons [whenever] they change their security perception.
Dickey: That’s what you’ve called “virtual” weapons states.
ElBaradei: "Virtual" weapons states, "closeted" weapons states. Whatever. I’ve tried in many ways to explain it. But you have the fuel cycle, then you are really like six months away from a nuclear weapon. And if I look at it from a global security perspective, well, that is too precarious. We need to reconcile the need for the use of technology and the need to protect ourselves.... I would like to have a system, not only in Iran but everywhere, that is not simply based on trust. I’d like to have a system that is inherently safe. … Can we assure countries that they will have access to the technology without having to have the whole fuel cycle?
Dickey: This is what’s called the fuel bank.
ElBaradei: Yes. ...
Dickey: What do you think Iran wants out of all this?
ElBaradei: Iran wants to get the best from its own perspective. Obviously it wants to get the maximum technology, and not just nuclear. Reactor technology is key for them. They want IT, all the modern technology, Airbus, Boeing. They need the technology to modernize. And I think they understand that the fuel cycle enables them to be part of the big boys club, and it’s a smart insurance policy, if they can get that, because again it sends a message to their neighbors. Iran wants to be a major player in the whole Middle East which is being reshaped right now. …I don’t want to speak for them, but they also would like to normalize their relationship, ultimately, with the US. Their dialogue with Europe is a bridge toward their ultimate normalization with the US. So these are the things that I guess are on their agenda. But I can’t speak for them.
So, again, when you talk about the nuclear program in Iran you are talking about regional politics, regional security – global politics, global security. So, you will have the European agenda, the American agenda, the Iranian agenda, the neighbors agenda, the Israelis, the Arabs. Everybody is affected by how this dialogue between Europe and Iran will play out. I think everybody understands that it is not just the nuclear issue, it is the whole future of the Middle East, it is the whole future of regional security, global security. That’s why it makes it more difficult, and that’s why it takes time, and that’s why people should be patient. As long as they are talking, I’m comfortable. As long as the fuel cycle is suspended, as long as they are making progress, keep at it.
Dickey: The Europeans are sounding very pessimistic these days. It’s very hard to see in the current environment how the Americans are going to offer security guarantees and a face-saving solution for this Iranian regime.
ElBaradei: The number one threat for the entire world is weapons of mass destruction. I’d rather assure our security first, and then I’ll worry about all the other issues: legitimizing regimes, democracy, human rights. If we do not have global security it might be too late to think about any of these issues. So unless I have defanged all the potential proliferators or terrorists or what have you I will not have a chance to discuss these other issues. It’s a question of priorities.
Dickey: What is the risk that talks will collapse and we’ll be looking at a breakout, Iran just walking away from the table and the treaty.
ElBaradei: I am still hoping that at the end of the day, with all the posturing, nobody can afford a confrontation. Confrontation is a lose-lose proposition. … You might see some hiccups in the process, some delays in the process, but I think we need to keep at it.
Dickey: At the end of the day, do you think Iran will become a virtual weapons state?
ElBaradei: [long sigh] What I’m trying to do is put a stop to this madness…

Also see:
Shadowland: Rita's Revelation, 23 Sep 2005
As oil prices soar, so will demands for atomic energy. Iran knows this and Americans should, too. Why it's time to rethink the global approach to nuclear proliferation.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9454837/site/newsweek/

BBC: White House Denies Divine Mission

I'm sure we're all relieved by this news from London:

'The White House has dismissed as "absurd" allegations made in a BBC TV series that President Bush claimed God told him to invade Iraq.
"He's never made such comments," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.
The comments were attributed to Mr Bush by the Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath in the upcoming TV series Israel and the Arabs: Elusive Peace.
Mr Shaath said that in a 2003 meeting with Mr Bush, the US president said he was "driven with a mission from God".
"President Bush said to all of us: 'I'm driven with a mission from God. God would tell me, George, go and fight those terrorists in Afghanistan. And I did, and then God would tell me, George, go and end the tyranny in Iraq... And I did.
"'And now, again, I feel God's words coming to me, Go get the Palestinians their state and get the Israelis their security, and get peace in the Middle East. And by God I'm gonna do it.'"...'

Anybody who's grown up in the South would know right away from the president's syntax and style, that wasn't God speaking, it was just the good ol' boy in George. - CD

Question of the moment: If you believe in God, whose side do you believe the Almighty has taken?

James Dickey: Firebombings Then and Now

Shawn Pittard of The Great American Pinup has weighed in with the final of three superb essays looking at my father's experience in World War II and how he transformed it into fiction and poetry:

“The sound of the crowd around me was made up of high yells, all you could put up with, but around them all was the low sound, which must have been coming from the whole city. How all those high screams could have added up to that one low tone, like a glacier when it first begins to calve off, was not something I could explain.”
Almost thirty years after writing “The Firebombing,” James Dickey revisited the subject in his novel To the White Sea (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1993). This time, he put an American airman on the ground during the firebombing of Tokyo. We see the chaos, panic, and the intense-heat of a white phosphorus-and-gasoline fire through Sergeant Muldrow’s eyes.
“It was so hot that I kept looking at the arms of the coat I had on to see when they’d take fire. And then it got hotter, goddamn it, and hotter than that. I didn’t think my clothes would catch; I didn’t think that anymore then. I thought I would take fire myself, inside the clothes, and that the clothes, shoes and all, would burn up after I did.”

Also see:
Firebombings: From My Father's Wars to Mine, a lecture I gave at Clemson University, 19 Nov 2003 (PDF), and "Summer of Deliverance: A Memoir of Father and Son."

Bush: An Essential Contradiction

President George W. Bush's attempt yesterday to make his Global War on Terror the moral and military equivalent of the Cold War against the Soviet Union was less than convincing, I think, for anyone who remembers the basic threat of that bygone age: the extermination of all life on the planet. By comparison, subway bombings and even 9/11 are relatively minor concerns. As usual, the administration is playing the terrorist's game, inflating Osama Bin Laden's reputation by likening him to Stalin, describing Al Qaeda's ideology as if it were not just a security problem but an existential threat to the West. He described the terrorists' agenda as if it should be setting ours. A real mistake. Bush is playing politics, of course. He wanted to put Hurricane Katrina behind us and get back to the war president image that used to work so well for him. He wanted to justify Iraq by linking it, as ever, to Osama. But the fundamental contradiction in his approach was evident in the text of the speech:

"Some have also argued that extremism has been strengthened by the actions of our coalition in Iraq, claiming that our presence in that country has somehow caused or triggered the rage of radicals. I would remind them that we were not in Iraq on September the 11th, 2001 -- and al Qaeda attacked us anyway," said the president, which is true, as far as it goes. But a few paragraphs later, Bush boasts that with the help of other governments "we've killed or captured nearly all of those directly responsible for the September the 11th attacks." What he fails to mention is that not one of those terrorists was caught in Iraq, and the great majority were nabbed before the invasion. The threat we face now, such as it is, comes from a new generation of terrorists directly inspired by the Iraq war, and, oh yes, from Osama, the one who got away. - CD

Also see:

Newsweek Article: Jihad Express, 13 Mar 2005
For Islamic militants in Europe, Iraq far outshines Afghanistan as an urban-terrorism training ground. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7169294/site/newsweek/

Shadowland: When Victory Was Ours, 25 September 2003
Nine months ago, Saddam Hussein was contained and Al Qaeda was on the run. But that just wasn’t enough for the Bush administration. No wonder readers are upset
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3087087/

Should the Generals Resign?

The latest post from Col. W. Patrick Lang, a retired officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and the U.S. Army Special Forces who is a voice of reason on military and political events in the Middle East, from his blog Sic Semper Tyrannis 2005:

Is The Military Upset With Me?
Someone asked me if I experience hostility from the US military (active or retired).
The answer is no, not so far. I had a college classmate (a retired officer) write to me early in the Iraq War to say that my presumption in writing on this subject reflected his memory of me as a "smart ass," and that his present (then) employment as a consultant for a DoD contractor company providing hot meals for the troops should make me more sensitive of the fragility of his warlike feelings and morale. Touching.
There a lot of generals out there who are scared silly of Rumsfeld and Bush and would never talk to me in pyblic for fear that Rummy might find out. Warriors? A lot of them are reading this now. My father was a tough old soldier, rather like one of the senior sergeants in "From Here to Eternity." He retired as an officer, but in his heart he was always a sergeant major. He told me often that whenever I might be tempted to trust a general officer I should remember how he "got to be one." There are generals whom I admire. You know who you are, but the craven behavior of present day generals is depressing. Why has no one resigned in the face of stupidity on both the strategic and tactical level? Why?
There are a lot of people out there in "cloud cuckoo land" who would like to "turn Iraq into a glassy parking lot." That would work, but we are not going to do that. The American people will not allow that. That being the case, let us all think positively about solutions for this awful dillemma that we have made for ourselves. Above all, remember that "Specialist Snuffy Smith" of the Arkansas National Guard or "Lance Corporal Jones" of the 1st Marine Regiment were sent there by the government that we elected. They did not pick this war or this enemy and they only volunteered once, when they joined up.
Having said this, I should expect nastiness in the mail. I do
Pat Lang

Time to Lie Low

This from my old friend Andrew Sussman, who's lived in many exotic Muslim lands, and now practices law in exotic Southern California:

Late next week, Yom Kippur and the 9th or 10th day of Ramadan occur on the same day. On that day, all the world's observant Muslims and Jews will be hungry, thirsty, horny, crabby and generally on edge. I predict that it'll be a good day to keep a low profile.

Iraq: No SOFA to Rest On

What's the status of American forces in Iraq? They're targets, they're peacemakers, they're nation builders -- or at least they're trying to be. But are they legal? We do not have now, and never have had, a "status of forces agreement" with any Iraqi government. The United Nations resolution that legitimizes the Coalition's presence expires at the end of this year. (Now there's a timetable for withdrawal...) As I was reading back through transcripts of remarks by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during his visit to Baghdad in July, this passage kind of hit me over the head:

"SEC. RUMSFELD: (Inaudible) -- lawyers working on all of this. They have been for five or six months, and what you need is as you go from the period where the United States is in charge to a period where you have the Iraqi Governing Council, to the period now where they're -- (inaudible) -- many, many months ago -- (inaudible) -- a new constitution, and then ultimately a new government, what you have to do is constantly rearrange your legal circumstance -- (inaudible) -- situation. We've been operating under a U.N. Security Council Resolution. We may very well have, they may decide to extend the resolution in some way, if that's the preference of the Iraqi government. We may end up with a status of forces agreement which we have with dozens and dozens and dozens of countries around the world. We're sorting through those things as to how they're to be arranged."

I was told by a State Department official in 2003 that part of the Pentagon's grand design in the months after the invasion was to get the U.S.-appointed Iraqi governing council to sign off on a SOFA with very favorable terms for a long-term American presence. But that didn't work out, probably because the Ayatollah Sistani wouldn't buy it. That's one reason why last year's U.N. Security Council Resolution 1546, particularly paragraphs 10 and 12, is so important. As Rumsfeld noted, when it expires "we may very well have ... [one has a sense he stopped himself here] ... they may decide to extend the resolution in some way, if that's the preference of the Iraqi government."
In fact, from the earliest days of the occupation it was obvious that the Pentagon design for Iraqis' security forces included their long-term military dependence on U.S. troops. This was still true last year. The approach today may be different, but as we pursue a policy supposedly based on standing up Iraqi forces so we can stand down, we're paying the price of behaving for so long as if we had the country and its government in our pocket. - CD

Also see:
Shadowland: No Way Out?, 18 Nov 2004
Iraq can't defend itself if U.S. troops leave. That's why no one should believe White House promises to bring the soldiers home soon. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6524206/site/newsweek/

Shadowland: Roughest Region, 7 Aug 2003
Why was the Jordanian Embassy bombed in Baghdad? There may never be a specific answer, but the incident underscores just how long America will have to help the New Iraq defend itself from its neighbors
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3068204/

The Blame (Board) Game

A note from singer Marcia Ball, a deep friend in the sometimes shallow heart of Texas:

'Austin has become home to quite a few Katrina and Rita evacuees. Many of the musicians say they’re here temporarily and will return to New Orleans. Many of their wives are looking for houses to buy in Austin. Grassroots efforts are providing housing, jobs and instruments, information and services. Officially, it’s a confusing nightmare – cluster-f*** says my husband, Gordon. So he and his friend Bill turned it into: "The Blame Game."'

According to a column by John Kelso in the Austin American-Statesman, this post-modern version of snakes and ladders costs ten bucks and "when you play the game, it works pretty much the same way things worked for the poor schleps stuck in New Orleans. No matter what you roll, you are screwed." Marcia sees a possible series in the works, including "Pin the Crime on the Crony." It seems Marcia's husband Gordon Fowler and friend Bill Christofferson market these things through a site called zzzingers.com, which also has an array of message t-shirts. (My personal favorites: "When the Rapture comes, can I have your car?"; "God told me he's never talked to this George Bush guy in his life"; and a peace symbol with "Bring it on" written beneath.) Of course we could make up games and t-shirts about Iraq, too. But, ya know, that's really hard to laugh at, even to keep from crying. - CD

Iran's Hit Parade

This intriguing little AFP dispatch showed up in Beirut's Daily Star, London's Guardian and lots of other places:

TEHRAN: Nuclear science may not be considered ideal subject matter for a popular song, but the musical boffins in Iran's state media apparatus think differently. In recent days, Iran's airwaves have been buzzing with two new tunes apparently designed to rally public support for the clerical regime's increasingly tense stand-off with the West over its nuclear ambitions.
The first song is entitled "Oriental Sun, Nuclear Science," and sung to a backdrop of military-style marching music by Ali Tafreshi. The second similarly catchy tune is "Nuclear Know-How" by Reza Shirazi. ...

My question: what's a "boffin"? - CD

Venezuela's Chavez: Semper Fidel

At some point in the not too distant future we'll probably see an updated "Axis of Evil" list. Near the top you can expect Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a Latin American dictator of the old school (caudillo, cacique, populist, Peronist, Fascist, Communist, take your choice). This fresh interview by Newsweek's Lally Weymouth in the current edition of Newsweek International is a revealing and also rather funny sketch of the man who controls the single most important direct source of imported oil for the United States:

'Terrorist Administration'
Chavez attacks Bush, and warns about oil prices.

...Weymouth: Reportedly, one of your best friends is Cuba's Fidel Castro. Is that true?
Chavez: He is one of my best friends.

Why do you admire him?
His valor, his courage, the way he has led the revolution for more than 40 years—in spite of a blockade and an embargo. Fidel is going to be 80 very soon, but this guy is filled with vitality. He is totally devoted to solving people's problems: health, education and work. ... Now, before the hurricane, they [the Bush administration] knew that Katrina was coming, and the government did not evacuate people. In Cuba, when they know a hurricane is coming, chickens, hens and people are all evacuated. ...

Iran: Wheels Within Wheels

A note from the indefatigable and ever-thoughtful Nasrin Alavi, author of "We Are Iran: The Persian Blogs":

Hi Chris,
This is stranger than Ahmadi’nejad’s election victory. Iran's Rafsanjani given more powers. Basically the supreme leader of Iran has transferred some of his powers over to Rafsanjani. It is completely baffling in the light of what’s gone on recently. Has he been given more powers to curb Ahmadi’nejad and the new parliament who want to make a stand on the nuclear issue? Did the threat of Security Council referral work?
Or if I go into my Iranian conspiracy mode… Is Khamanei dying? What has Rafsanjani got on him that made him transfer his power?
Best
N

I don't have the answers, of course. I'm not sure anyone does outside the Iranian Inner Circle, but these are questions well worth asking. One should also consider the source cited by the original AFP dispatch, Mohsen Rezai. He now serves as secretary of the Expediency Council but made his rep, as it were, heading the Islamic Revolution Guard Corps from 1981 to 1997. Rezai is a man with ample ambition of his own, and his remarks about a power shift could be part of his personal strategy. As always, the Inner Circle is all about wheels within wheels. - CD

Cartoon by Nick'Ahang Kowsar, who's a very recently exiled talent, according to Alavi.

Guantanamo: The Saudi Home Front

In America's Shadow
His brother is being held virtually incommunicado in Guantanamo. But Abdullah al-Juaid still has faith in Allah, and (maybe) the U.S. justice system
By Faiza Saleh Ambah, Sunday, October 2, 2005

...The life of Abdullah al-Juaid can be divided into two distinct parts: the period since his brother was taken to Guantanamo Bay in January 2002, and the 31 years before that. The split was sudden, sucking him out of his quiet pastoral life in the mountain city of Taif, pitting him against the world's most powerful nation and placing him in the middle of a major Supreme Court ruling against the U.S. government. ...

A very nuanced article from The Washington Post looking at the case of a Saudi detainee, his family, and the world from which they come, by Faiza Ambah, a woman who is one of the most talented journalists in the Kingdom and the region. - CD

Newsweek Iraq: No More Illusions

Newsweek's team in Baghdad, Basra and Washington just published this very measured, very solid piece about why and how Iraq is coming apart:

No More Illusions
Americans used to dream of building a strong, unified, pluralistic Iraq. Now the possibilities are a very loose federation, or violent disintegration.


By Scott Johnson, Babak Dehghanpisheh and Michael Hastings
Newsweek
Oct. 10, 2005 issue - For more than a decade, Abu Sajad's small convenience store was a fixture in Doura, an industrial neighborhood in south Baghdad. Customers came for friendly service and the ease of buying rice, tea or cigarettes a few blocks from home. Abu Sajad, a 44-year-old with salt-and-pepper hair, would even let regulars—Sunnis, Shiites or Christians—run up a tab. But not long ago, Abu Sajad was found in a pool of his own blood. Sunni insurgents had shot him 11 times with an AK-47. Shortly afterward, his widow and four children left for Karbala, a Shiite town in the south. His brother, Abu Naseer, decided to move to Al Kurayat, a predominantly Shiite neighborhood in eastern Baghdad. The Doura shop was closed, another debris-strewn relic of an Iraq that may no longer exist. "I have no reason or explanation why he was killed except that he was Shiite," says his brother....

For more background see the recent ICG report "Unmaking Iraq," earlier posts on The Shadowland Journal, and my column "Make or Break" from November of last year. - CD

Polemic: RFK Jr. Cuts Loose

The no-holds-barred speech by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. at the Sierra Summit in San Francisco, sponsored by the Sierra Club, is all over the blogosphere. Its focus is the environment, and the depredations wrought by President Bush. But RFK also turns on the generally supine America media and, by implication, on the remarkably passive public:

The [network] news departments have become corporate profit centers. They no longer have any obligation to benefit the public interest; their only obligation is to their shareholders, and they fulfill that obligation by increasing viewership. How do you do that? Not by reporting the news that we need to hear to make rational decisions in our democracy but, rather, by entertaining us, by appealing to the prurient interests that all of us have in the reptilian core of our brain for sex and celebrity gossip. [applause] So they give us Laci Peterson and Michael Jackson and Kobe Bryant, and today we're the best-entertained and the least-informed people on the face of the earth. This is a real threat to American democracy.

I love that line I boldfaced. But there's more:

...We have a negligent and indolent media and press in this country which has absolutely let down American democracy. [applause] All this rightwing propaganda, which is planned and organized and has dominated this country, the political debate for so many years is talking about a liberal media. Well, you know and I know that there is no such thing as a liberal media in the United States of America. There is a rightwing media, and if you look for where most Americans are now getting their news, that's where they're getting it. According to Pew, 30 percent of Americans now say that their primary news source is talk radio, which is 90 percent dominated by the right. Twenty-two percent say their primary news source is Fox News, MSNBC, or CNBC, all dominated by the right, and another 10 percent, Sinclair Network, which is the most rightwing of all. That's the largest television network in our country. It's run by a former pornographer who requires that all 75 of his affiliate television stations -- and this is where Midwesterners get their news, where red-state people get their news -- that all of them have to take a pledge not to report critically about this President or about the war in Iraq.

I am sure many exaggerations and inaccuracies will be found, but the speech sets a standard for Democratic rhetoric that's likely to be with us for a while, and it's worth reading in its entirety: http://www.sierraclub.org/pressroom/rfkspeech/. - CD