BOOKS-US: When Neocons Ruled Washington

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Michael Flynn

GENEVA, Dec 16 (IPS) – In the first two pages of his book on the neoconservative movement, historian Stephen Sniegoski tells us that U.S. Mideast policy during the George W. Bush presidency has been ”colossally erroneous” and ”disastrous to U.S. interests”, that the Iraq War is a ”blunder of colossal proportions”, and that an attack on Iran is a ”highly likely” ”disaster” unless the country ”eschews all elements of the Middle East war policy”.

It is hard to argue with these points. But the book’s relentless, partisan rhetoric serves to confirm what is obvious from its title: ”The Transparent Cabal: The Neoconservative Agenda, War in the Middle East, and the National Interest of Israel” is yet another treatise on the pernicious influence of the neocons on foreign policy.

So many studies have been penned on this subject that the noted international relations scholar Robert Jervis, in a 2005 review of a similar book, wrote that ”one may wonder whether more is needed”.

Sniegoski’s contribution is to thoroughly review the mountain of material already published on the neocons to support a thesis held by many war critics — that neocons, abetted by the 9/11 attacks and their supporters within the administration, were able to ”gain control” of U.S. policy.
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Popularity: 81% [?]

SPECIAL SERIES: Is a U.S.-Iran Deal on the Middle East Possible?

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Gareth Porter*

TEHRAN, Dec 15 (IPS) – Would a negotiated agreement between Iran and the Barack Obama administration be feasible if Obama sent the right signals? The answer one gets from Iranian officials and think tank analysts is, ”Yes, but…”

The Iranian national security establishment has long salivated over the prospect of an agreement with Washington. But there’s a big difference between Iranian and U.S. ideas of what such an accord would look like.

Washington is fixated on what it would take to get Iran to agree to stop enriching uranium. On the other hand, Iranians interviewed here indicate that an agreement would only be possible if it represented a fundamental change in the U.S.-Iran relationship.
Iranian officials and analysts see the problem of U.S.-Iranian relations as a seamless web of issues on which agreement must be reached as a whole. And in addition to the bilateral issues of normal diplomatic and economic relations, they see a new U.S.-Iranian understanding on the Middle East as essential.
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Popularity: 91% [?]

TERRORISM & THE BUSINESS WORLD —AN UPDATE

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO.481

Global Intelligence News

by B. Raman

( A talk delivered at a symposium organised by the Birla Institute of Management Technology at Delhi on December 13,2008)

Terrorists target human beings—combatants and non-combatants (civilians)— as well as capabilities—economic and strategic.

2. Till the 1980s, they focused more on targeting human beings. Targeting of capabilities—-which may or may not cause human fatalities—- came into vogue in the 1980s, when the Irish Republican Army (IRA) carried out explosions in London’s financial district.

3. Targeting of capabilities does not create the same kind of public revulsion against the terrorists as the targeting of human beings does. Whereas the after-effects of the targeting of human beings remain localised in the area where they were targeted, the impact of the targeting of capabilities has a ripple effect far beyond the area where the act of terrorism was carried out.
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Popularity: 90% [?]

RIGHTS-LIBERIA: ‘We Will Use Our Children as Shields’

Global Intelligence News / IPS

By Rebecca Murray

Children play at the Harbel marketplace.

HARBEL, Liberia, Dec 9 (IPS) – “We are not just going to let a bulldozer come in and demolish our land. If possible we will use our children as shields. We will have to do that,” exclaims Eric Lavella, a middle-aged Firestone factory worker living in the heart of Liberia’s largest rubber plantation, 60 kilometres south of the capital Monrovia.

Lavella’s neighbourhood of Firestone contractors, retirees, marketers and squatters — estimated by community leader, Reverend Johnson Flumo, to be around 3,000 — is crowded into breezeblock and corrugated metal shacks haphazardly built in the town of Harbel’s marketplace.

But after more than two decades of selling food, clothing and plastic Chinese goods, the market dwellers’ days are numbered. Firestone intends to shift the vendors to a newly constructed market next month and tear down the old commercial lot. The new location will have over 1000 stalls, but no housing. Both sites are on land Firestone says is theirs until their lease runs out in 2041.
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Popularity: 86% [?]

RIGHTS-NEPAL: ‘Maoists Slow to Return Seized Property’

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Renu Kshetry

KATHMANDU, Dec 9 (IPS) – Tej Bahadur Roila, a member of the Nepal army, is unable to return to his home in the Khotang district of Eastern Nepal because his property, seized by Maoist rebels in the middle of the decade-long civil war they waged against the monarchy, has not been returned.

The political arm of the rebels, the Communist Party of Nepal-Maoist (CPN-M) — which emerged as the largest political party elections held in April following the 2006 peace deal — has done little to fulfil pledges to return property grabbed by cadres from absentee landlords and people who fled the rural areas for safety.

Chances are slim that Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal, still known by his nom de guerre ‘Prachanda’, will be able to fulfil solemn promises made in Parliament on Nov. 10 that seized property will be returned to owners by mid-December.
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Popularity: 87% [?]

PAKISTAN DETAINS LET’S KHALID SHEIKH MOHAMMAD?

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR–PAPER NO. 480

Global Intelligence News

B.RAMAN

Pakistani media and some foreign news agencies, including the Associated Press, reported on December 8,2008, that helicopter-borne Pakistani security forces raided a camp of the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) located at a place called Shawai, on the outskirts of Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK), on December 7 and detained 12 inmates of the camp, including Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, reportedly the operational chief of the LET.

2.Major-Gen.Athar Abbas, a spokesman of the army, while briefing the media, confirmed that the security forces had carried out ” an intelligence-led operation against a banned militant organisation and carried out several arrests” , but he did not identify the organisation as the LET. Nor did he confirm that Lakhvi was among those detained.
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Popularity: 95% [?]

RIGHTS: Bipartisan U.S. Panel Offers Blueprint to Prevent Genocide

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Dec 8 (IPS) – A bipartisan task force of former top national security policymakers is calling on the incoming administration of President-elect Barack Obama to make the prevention of genocide and mass atrocities overseas a top U.S. foreign policy priority.

In a report released here Monday, the group, which was co-chaired by former President Bill Clinton’s Pentagon chief, William Cohen, and secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, argued that mass atrocities threaten core U.S. national interests and that the national security bureaucracy should be reformed to reflect that priority.

Its release came on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the U.N.’s adoption of the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide and the 20th anniversary of its final ratification by the United States.
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Popularity: 90% [?]

INDIA/PAKISTAN: Hoax Call Hyped by Media – Get Hostilities to Brink

Global Intelligence News / IPS

Beena Sarwar

KARACHI, Dec 7 (IPS) – A hoax phone call from India to Pakistan’s President threatening military reprisals in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on Mumbai city, hyped up by media, brought the nuclear-armed neighbours close to conflict.

However, analysts believe that the hostilities arising from the attack and the media hype can still be contained.

The three-day standoff in Mumbai was barely over on Nov. 28 when the late-evening phone call was made, supposedly from India’s External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee, to Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari. Because of the heightened tensions, his staff bypassed routine procedures and transferred the call to Zardari.

The imposter ”directly threatened to take military action if Islamabad failed to immediately act against the supposed perpetrators of the Mumbai killings” according to a report in the daily Dawn, Pakistan of Dec. 6, which reveals that the call was a hoax that sent Pakistan into a state of ‘high alert’ last weekend, ”eyeing India for possible signs of military aggression”.
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Popularity: 100% [?]

MUMBAI: ANSWERS TO READERS’ QUESTIONS

INTERNATIONAL TERRORISM MONITOR—PAPER NO.478

Global Intelligence News

B.RAMAN

(In this article, I will try to answer some of the questions, which I have received from readers of my articles on the Mumbai terrorist strikes)

1.How strong is the evidence of the involvement of Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) ?

It is very strong.The evidence collected till now is partly direct and partly circumstantial. The direct evidence has come from the interrogation of one of the perpetrators (Mohammad Ajmal Amir, son of Mohammad Amir Imam, of village Faridkot in the Okara District of Pakistan’s Punjab), who has been arrested and who is under interrogation. He has given details of the entire conspiracy and the involvement of the LET in it. The circumstantial evidence has come from the interrogation of four Indian Muslims arrested by the Uttar Pradesh Police in February,2008, during their investigation of the terrorist attack on a camp of the Central Reserve Police Force in Rampur on January 1,2008. They had reportedly spoken of the plans of the LET for future terrorist strikes, one of which was planned in Mumbai. One of them, Faheem Ahmed Ansari, was carrying a fake Pakistani passport and a list and maps of nine targets in southern Mumbai, including the Taj Mahal Hotel and other sites attacked on November 26,2008. Some other circumstantial evidence has also come from technical intelligence reportedly collected by the Research & Analysis Wing (R&AW) in September,2008, which spoke of the plans of the LET to launch a sea-borne terrorist strike in Mumbai.
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Popularity: 92% [?]

US-IRAQ: Immunity Recedes for Private Contractors

Global Intelligence News / IPS

William Fisher

NEW YORK, Dec 5 (IPS) – The virtually total impunity from prosecution accorded to private contractors in Iraq may be coming to an end.

Under the new Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) approved by the Iraqi government last week, U.S. contractors will be subject to Iraqi law for the first time. Moreover, some observers believe that Iraq may be able to hold them legally accountable for offences allegedly committed even before the SOFA was approved.

And, at the other end of the U.S-Iraq equation, after months of seeming inactivity — marked by continuing doubts about whether the U.S. even has legal jurisdiction over the contractors — the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) may soon bring charges against three to six contractor-employed security guards for their involvement in the shooting of 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad in September 2007.
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Popularity: 96% [?]

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