Uh-oh, New Iran Kerfuffle

Actually, I agree with the Iranians on this.

Kofi's Last Act

The senator leading the investigation into the oil-for-food bribe system calls for Annan's resignation. Claudia Rossett has been the best source driving this out into the public. The scale and scope really have no parallel in history. If Annan had a shred of respect for the institution he'd realize that he must step down.

I'm hoping he's obstinate long enough for the world to realize that the UN needs total reformation.

A Sketch of Next for Israel / Palestine

Count on Greg D. over at Belgravia Dispatch to put forward a reasonable view on what could happen with Rice in charge and Arafat dead and gone.

Well, very obviously, there is the fact that Arafat's departure from the scene allows for better conditions by which to kick-start the peace process. But what I'd really like to touch on here today is to toss out my two cents on how Condeleeza Rice might intelligently pursue a resucitation of the peace process with some legs. Not surprisingly, perhaps, I think (much like Arik Sharon desires) that we should stick to the roadmap--in the main. But, and likely unlike Sharon, I believe that just like Israel got to 'jump ahead' and reach informal understandings (ones, it should be noted, with the force of a Presidential declaration) back in April of 2004--Palestinians too (providing elections go off well and moderates are empowered) should get to fast-track forward on some final status issues too

Laugh it up, Furball

Iran's spokesman gets giddy over the nuclear negotiation process. It is almost funny when you think about it...

Hassan Rohani said Iran would never give up its right to nuclear power.

He stressed its freeze in uranium enrichment was only temporary during talks with European countries.

Iran in solidarity with the rest of the world, isolating the US... Right...

The Rise of the Shiites

Two good interpretations of the upcoming elections in Iraq, and what they mean to the Shiite majority. Easy to see why groups of Sunnis are proposing delays. Greg Djerejian at Belgravia Dispatch examines the historical significance from a policy maker point of view. Charles Krauthammer calls it a civil war, with mostly good implications.

Everyone knows the outcome will be a historic transfer of power to the Shiites (and, to some extent, the Kurds). We must make it clear that we will be there to support that new government. But we also have to make it clear that we are not there to lead the fight indefinitely. It is their civil war.

What You Missed on Thanksgiving

Capture of Zarqawi's second-in-command in Iraq. Includes details of progress in the mop-up of Falluja, including finding of chemical weapons and huge caches of arms. Also, an interesting series on Muslim immigrants in Sweden.

There are some neighborhoods Swedish ambulance drivers will not go to without a police escort. Angry crowds have threatened them, telling them which patient to take and which ones to leave behind.

Similar conditions exist in spots in several European countries, including France.

Euro 3 Gettin' Played

By Iran - Nuclear power to be. One week after announcing they would agree to do what they had agreed on several months before, Iran is toying with the Euro negotiators.

More on the Scheuer and the CIA

Michael Scheuer makes a convincing case for more radical reform of the CIA. Not by his arguments, but by his self-contradictory statements in his published works and his recent appearance on television. Stephen Hayes exposes Scheuer's inconsistent views on Iraq and Bin Laden.

Also interesting to note that Scheuer claims he was being used as a tool by the CIA. From his appearance on Tim Russert's show:

And, indeed, once the book was published, it was misunderstood as an attack on President Bush. Mr. Tenet, who was in charge then, and his deputies let me speak about it as long as the book was misunderstood. When I turned the interviews around to show that it was a critique of people who have failed to serve the president well, whether it was Democratic or Republican, they shut me up.

By opening his mouth now, he's inadvertantly giving Porter Goss more ammo in his fight to clear out the agency. More fun here.

Via Cory Dauber's wrap up post on Scheuer.

The Dolphin View on Terror

Did you know the Navy has been using dolphins to protect ships from mines, since the 60s, including the Vietnam war? These days, the dolphins are used by the Navy in the Arabian gulf, doing the same job. I'm surprised that animal protection groups don't raise a stink over this -- (quick googling) -- check that -- of course they have!

PS. The Pentagon also uses: "chickens, dogs, dolphins, pigeons, and sea lions to fight the war against Iraq"

How the CIA Views Bin Laden

People asking for the reform of the CIA don't seem to really have the stomach for it. However, if Michael Scheuer's views are indicative, then it's no wonder that the CIA failed so miserably over the last 15 years in understanding terrorism. Scheuer, late of the CIA, recall, was the anonymous author of a book entitled Imperial Hubris - How the West is Losing the War on Terror. Here's some of the transcript from his appearance on Tim Russert's show this weekend.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you think Osama is still fully in control of al-Qaeda?

MR. SCHEUER: I think it's wishful thinking to think that he isn't, sir. The one example is the tremendous sophistication and spontaneity of his media machine. There has to be some command and control there. And to imagine that it doesn't--that he's unable to do it is just absolutely incorrect. He's really a remarkable man, a great man in many ways, without the connotation positive or negative. He's changed the course of history. You just have to try to take your fourth-graders' class to the White House visitors' center...

MR. RUSSERT: When you say "great man," people cringe.

MR. SCHEUER: Yes, sir. Absolutely they cringe, but a great man is someone--a great individual is someone who changes the course of history. And certainly in the last five or six years, America has changed dramatically in the way we behave, in the way we travel. Certainly he's bleeding us to death in terms of money. Look at the budget deficit now. Much of that goes against Osama bin Laden.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you see him as a very formidable enemy?

MR. SCHEUER: Tremendously formidable enemy, sir, an admirable man. If he was on our side, he would be dining at the White House. He would be a freedom fighter, a resistance fighter. It's--and again, that's not to praise him, but it is to say that until we take the measure of the man and the power of his words, we're very much going to be on the short end of the stick.

If this isn't bad enough, earlier in the show he claims the US should appease Bin Laden by weakening our support of Israel. He then admits that doing so wouldn't change Bin Laden's agenda, however. Let's get behind the idea of removing delusional appeasers like Scheuer from the CIA.

The Blogs on NoKo

Something's happening there, what it is ain't exactly clear.

North Korea's situation - learn about it from blogs, days before you'll read anything in the major papers. Roger Simon is a good place to start - his comments have links to more details.

Looking at Google News, there are some southeast Asian based stories on Kim Jong-Il, but little coverage from the big guys.

Down with the Ship

Claudia Rossett, who has led all reporting on the UN Oil for Food scam convincingly indicts Kofi Annan.

Once Mr. Annan became secretary-general, he lost little time in getting deeply involved with Oil for Food. In October 1997, just 10 months into the job, he transformed what had begun as an ad hoc, temporary relief measure into the Office of the Iraq Program, an entrenched U.N. department, which reported to him directly--and was eliminated only after the U.S.-led coalition, against Mr. Annan's wishes, deposed Saddam.

As Oil for Food was not only designed but expanded, embellished upon and run for more than six years under Mr. Annan's stewardship, it became not so much a supervisory operation, but a business deal with Saddam, in which the U.N. in effect provided money laundering services, the Secretariat collected a percentage fee from Saddam--and somewhere in there, between the kickbacks, surcharges, importation of oil equipment and smuggling out of oil, they jointly ran a storefront relief operation.

Read the whole thing. If you believe in the UN, you've got to hope that Annan is pushed out soon.

Original Thinkers Debate Terror

A must-read "symposium" with a great set of contributors. They examine the basics of the terror war in a historical context, and cover more new ground on how to approach Islamist terror than anything I've seen in a while. Some samples below:

Clashing is what civilizations DO. It's their inherent mission. There is no example in history of adjacent civilizations cooperating constructively over an extended period.

What can be done to reduce the dangers? Intelligence should be greatly improved, Western counter propaganda is virtually non-existent, political use should be made of the mistakes of the terrorists. But democracies will find it exceedingly difficult to act effectively for reasons which need not be elaborated in detail. This will change only following terrorist attacks in which weapons of mass destruction are used and it is probably unwise if governments are moving too far ahead of public opinion.

During the last six years of my other life, as a Romanian intelligence general, the main task of the Soviet bloc espionage community was to transform Yasser Arafat’s war against Israel and its main supporter, the United States, into an armed doctrine of the whole Islamic world.

Democracy is not a panacea for several reasons:

• You needn’t be a democracy to oppose terrorism – e.g. Morocco, Jordan, China, Russia.


• In most Arab countries democracy will produce an Islamist state as it nearly did in Algeria.


• In the Islamist Middle East, absent a background of civil liberties and religious freedom, democracy is not in the cards.

Adesnik en Fuego

Bloggin' like a madman, David Adesnik at oxblog gives me a chuckle at the expense of the French.

If the French get chased out out of Cote D'Ivoire, maybe they can stop off in Iraq on the way home to share their expert advice about nation-building.

Just one in a sequence of very good posts.

"It's what the Europeans were looking for."

While getting Iran to agree to suspending enrichment sounds good, it's not quite progress. Read the whole article, thru this passage:

Iran suspended uranium enrichment last year but has repeatedly refused to stop other related activities such as reprocessing uranium or building centrifuges, insisting its program is intended purely for the production of fuel for nuclear power generation.

So they've negotiated back to where they were last year. Iran still has the tempo.

What the Internet Can Do

Check out this tour-de-force round-up page on Falluja at Winds Of Change. It's stunning what people can do with the internet. Has anyone in history ever had access to so many primary sources, analysis, maps and real-time information?

The answer to that rhetorical question is simply "No".

Cognitive Difference

Not Dissonance. The Iranian mullah-ocracy is so far from actually negotiating with Europe, that they really have a totally different way of thinking about things. When a regime wants to stall, there really are no carrots or sticks that will work.

"If the Europeans show wisdom and don't make excessive demands, I think the way is open and we can reach an agreement," said Rafsanjani, a senior parliamentary official. "If they resist, they will give in one day but at a higher price."
-- former Iranian President Hashemi Rafsanjani

Face it, it's strongly in their national interest to develop nukes. They're gonna string out the IAEA, the EURO-3, and the UNSC until they're done. That's where the arrogance comes from.

Any Counter-Arguments?

Now that Arafat is dead, there are hopes for progress in Israel / Palestine relations. Is there any evidence out there that Arab leaders truly support a 2-state solution? Arafat clearly didn't. Most Arab nations use the Israelis as scapegoats, and solving the Palestine issue would hurt their ability to do that.

Arafat's Failure

Two views on Arafat. The New York Times: "The Man Who Refused to Say Yes" and the Wall St. Journal: "A Gangster With Politics". Both are worth reading while the world prepares to celebrate his death.

BTW, in honor of James Taranto, one must add: Arafat won a Nobel Peace Prize in 1994.

Terrorism Not Correlated to Poverty

An associate professor at Harvard apparently has examined domestic and international terror incidents and has this to say about the data:

"In the past, we heard people refer to the strong link between terrorism and poverty, but in fact when you look at the data, it's not there. This is true not only for events of international terrorism, as previous studies have shown, but perhaps more surprisingly also for the overall level of terrorism, both of domestic and of foreign origin," Abadie said.

Unfortunately, the article in the Harvard Gazette doesn't have a link to his research or the data.

Why the UN doesn't work

Even if it weren't corrupt, the ability of the UN to solve international problems is non-existent. Iran gets backing from China. Economic interests win every time, and that means the UN can't solve any issue.

“There is no reason to send the issue to the Security Council,” Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing said in a press conference with his Iranian counterpart, Kamal Kharazi.

“It would only make the issue more complicated and difficult to work out,” Li said, contradicting Washington by saying “the Iranian government is having a very positive attitude in its cooperation” with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Terrorism vs Gay Marriage

The media rationalization that Bush primarily won due to voters concerned with "morals" is examined by Univ. of Virginia professior Paul Freedman at Slate. He believes, as do I, that terrorism was far more important.

So, if you want to understand why Bush was re-elected, stop obsessing about the morality gap and start looking at the terrorism gap.

Nuclear Blast Map

At this rather sobering application of GIS mapping (combined with some marketing of a book on nuclear terror), you can type in a zip code and see how a 10-kiloton nuclear bomb would affect the surrounding area.