And your friends, baby, they treat you like a guest

When the truth is found to be lies

And all the joy within you dies

Don't you want somebody to love

Don't you need somebody to love

Wouldn't you love somebody to love

You better find somebody to love

-- Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane

In the West, we describe something as Machiavellian when it is full of intrigue. Machiavelli was as devious as Mr. Rogers compared to the masters of court of the Middle East.

The following must be read with that in mind, and at face value. And for entertainment, not prescient or insightful political science. More inciteful than insightful, perhaps. Time will tell.

I have taken the piece apart (and extracted) and rearranged it so as to put its own caveats upfront.

The ‘top secret’ Muslim Brotherhood

Proof of this is yet to come, I cannot predict in what form, but come, eventually, it will.

(P.S. – The above article, according to some reports, was is sarcasm. If you do not believe it was is, the author would like to sell the Pyramids to you – at a discount, seeing as it is Ramadan.)

Over the past few weeks, since the ouster of former Egyptian president Mohammed Mursi, there has been something of a sea change in the identification of political actors and public figures.

To begin with, the binary choice in public discourse was clear: pro-Mursi and anti-Mursi. Due to research completed by the most distinguished journalists in the Egyptian media, it appears that there is a separate, previously unheard of group. Now, it seems that there is a growing third option in the public arena: pro-Mursi, anti-Mursi and secretly pro-Muslim Brotherhood.

Their cover story is something we never quite imagined: liberalism. This “top secret" Muslim Brotherhood is an interesting outfit.

One of the members of this ultra-secret group is none other than the famous Google executive that was part of the uprising in 2011 that led to the resignation of then president Hosni Mubarak.

Amr Hamzawy, the founder of the ‘Free Egypt’ party, and prominent member of the National Salvation Front, is another one of these conniving individuals. His cover was blown when he insisted that the complete exclusion of the Brotherhood from Egyptian politics was unjustifiable. His audacity in promoting this idea, which ostensibly is in line with a rational, liberal, and legal approach, only proves his deftness in abusing liberalism to justify the continued existence of the Muslim Brotherhood. That, in itself, shows how truly loyal he is to the top-secret core of the Muslim Brotherhood.

It pains me to say this but Bassem Youssef, the noted political satirist who is highly popular in Egypt, is also a member of the secret-secret Muslim Brotherhood. No one could be left in any doubt, after he called for an independent investigation into the killings of unarmed pro-Mursi protesters at the Republican Guard sit-in.

Alas, my friends, we have one more person that has now been outed. Ladies and gentlemen: Vice President Mohammed el-Baradei is not only a member of this cell. He is, in reality, the true General Guide of the “secret-secret" Muslim Brotherhood.

Be forewarned, friends. Do not be fooled. All of these voices are not supporters of a genuinely pluralistic and progressive Egypt – they are its worst enemies.

With one exception, the author – as a Brit, is in fact an undercover imperialist spy.

Guambat wants very much to roar with laughter, so clever is this piece. But he's shivering too much to do so. Western humor is too slapstick, too Vaudevillian rather than Machiavellian, to appreciate -- or understand -- the seven veils of Middle Eastern humor. Guambat worries it is maybe meant to be unsettling as a substitute for humor.

Generally, old generals never die

Iran attack decision nears, Israeli elite locks down

This inner sanctum at the end of a corridor between Netanyahu's private room and the office of his top military adviser, is where one of the decade's most momentous military decisions could soon be taken: to launch an Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear program.

Time for that decision is fast running out and the mood in Jerusalem is hardening.

Adding to the international pressure, U.S. ambassador to Israel Daniel Shapiro said this week American military plans to strike Iran were "ready" and the option was "fully available".

Experts say that within a few months, much of Iran's nuclear program will have been moved deep underground beneath the Fordow mountain, making a successful military strike much more difficult.

Iran's nuclear program - regarded by Netanyahu as an existential threat to the state of Israel - will soon be buried deep enough underground to render an Israeli attack impossible. The Jewish state's options are narrowing.

"I think they've gone into lockdown mode now," the senior Western diplomat said. "Whatever happens next, whatever they decide, we will not find out until it happens."

As the deadline for a decision draws nearer, the public pronouncements of Israel's top officials and military have changed. After hawkish warnings about a possible strike earlier this year, their language of late has been more guarded and clues to their intentions more difficult to discern.

"The top of the government has gone into lockdown," one official said. "Nobody is saying anything publicly. That in itself tells you a lot about where things stand."

Netanyahu, those who know him say, is determined to avoid going down in history as the man who did not shirk his opportunity to stop Iran going nuclear.

US Israeli relations reach a settlement

US: No breakthrough expected soon

An American official has played down the prospects of any immediate progress in US envoy George Mitchell’s efforts to resume peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians. President Shimon Peres assured Mitchell on Friday that Israel was committed to peace.

Bad Faith in the Holy City

Since 1967, virtually every time a U.S. envoy has arrived to discuss the fate of the West Bank or Gaza, the Israeli government of the day has bluntly shown who is really boss, usually with a carefully timed unilateral expansion of Israel’s presence in the occupied territories. Since the 1970s, Israel has illegally settled close to half a million of its citizens in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, not to mention building a barrier mainly inside the West Bank on Arab-owned land that is longer and taller than the Berlin Wall.

Given that for a year the Obama administration has sought a settlement freeze in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, it is impossible to interpret the latest announcement of settlement expansion in the city as anything but a provocation.

U.S.-Israeli Ties: What’s Really Happening?

Essentially, there have been three causes of the crisis. First, the change in U.S. administrations....

Second, ... the election of Feb. 10, 2009, which brought Binyamin Netanyahu to power.

Third, and perhaps most important, the unwise settlement policies of Mr. Netanyahu, especially his policy of construction in Jerusalem that over the last few years has become the most sensitive issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This is getting Syrious

"Syria's Major-General Amin Suleiman said American attacks into Syria had killed at least two border guards, wounded several more and prompted an official complaint to the US embassy in Damascus. The charge follows leaks in Washington that the US has already engaged in military raids into Syria and is contemplating special forces operations in Syria to eliminate insurgent networks before they reach Iraq.

"No one in the Administration has any problem with acting tough on Syria. It's the one thing they all agree on," said Edward Walker, a former US ambassador to Egypt and Israel and now head of the Middle East Institute think tank. "I've heard there have been some cross-border activities, and it certainly makes sense as a warning to Syria that if they don't take care of the problem, the US will step up itself."

"But he warned that the increased blurring of battle lines between Iraq and Syria could turn a diplomatic stand-off between the two nations into a fully fledged military confrontation. "It could escalate. With Syrian border guards getting shot, it could turn into a major issue."
http://www.theage.com.au/news/world/syria-accuses-us-of-military-raids/2005/10/30/1130607151924.html

Related post: http://guambatstew.blogspot.com/2005/10/it-was-never-ists-it-was-always-ism.html

Bad Saddam. Bad Kofi. And shame on the rest of youse, too

Oil-for-food. That's gotta be bad for your cholesterol.

"More than 4,500 companies took part in the U.N. oil-for-food program and more than half of them paid illegal surcharges and kickbacks to Saddam Hussein, the committee investigating the program is to report. The country with the most companies involved in the program was Russia, followed by France, the committee says in a report to be released Thursday US time. The inquiry was led by Paul A. Volcker, former chairman of the U.S Federal Reserve Board.

"In my mind," he said, "this part of our investigation, looking at the manipulation of the program outside the U.N., strongly reinforces the case that the U.N. itself carries a large part of this responsibility and needs reform. "Even though we are looking at it from the outside, it kind of screams out at you, 'Why didn't somebody blow a whistle?"

"Those manipulating the program ranged from established trading companies to front companies set up for the purpose, and included some companies of international reputation as well as many well known in their home countries, the investigators said.

"Saddam received $1.8 billion in illicit income from surcharges and kickbacks on the sales of oil and humanitarian goods during 1996-2003, when the program ran, the committee concluded in its last report in September.

"Earlier Volcker committee reports summarising the year and a half of inquiries have examined the activities of the United Nations, finding the institution's management inept and corrupt, and providing evidence that the program's former director, Benon V. Sevan, received kickbacks himself. He has denied any wrongdoing. The $64 billion program was set up by the Security Council to help ease the effects of U.N. sanctions on the 27 million Iraqis by supplying food and medicines in exchange for letting the Saddam government export oil." (http://smh.com.au/news/world/report-names-top-firms-that-bribed-saddam/2005/10/27/1130400311224.html)

"The final report from the Independent Inquiry Committee aims to show how companies all over the world, as well as individuals and governments, rorted the program on a grand scale, sabotaging diplomatic efforts to bring Saddam under control. The country with the most companies involved was Russia, followed by France, the report is expected to reveal. The surcharges on oil were finally stopped in 2001 by the United States and Britain in the UN Security Council." (http://www.heraldsun.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5478,17056405%255E663,00.html.)

"Among companies the report names in connection with a variety of illicit payment schemes are DaimlerChrysler, French carmaker Renault and some of the world's biggest pharmaceutical companies, including Glaxo Wellcome, SmithKline Beecham and Eli Lilly.

"[The report] says the Iraqis received a total of nearly $643,000 in "service fees" when they made four purchases of medical equipment totalling $7.6 million from [Minnesota based] St. Jude's Austrian subsidiary. St. Jude is a global leader in making and selling heart valves and other cardiac devices.
St. Jude issued a statement saying only: "We are studying the report."

"[Minnesota based] Cargill's Malaysia subsidiary sold the Iraqis $1.2 million in palm oil -- vegetable oil used for cooking -- in two contracts in 2000 and 2001, it said. Lori Johnson, a spokeswoman for the privately held agribusiness giant, said company officials were "surprised by the report.

"Cargill's U.S. operations also sold $19.5 million in wheat to Iraq, and its French subsidiary sold $27.4 million in sugar and wheat to Saddam's government, the report said, but it listed no Iraqi records of improper fees in connection with those sales." (http://www.startribune.com/stories/722/5693747.html)

"Australian wheat exporter AWB is defending its role in the Iraqi oil-for-food program after adverse findings from a United Nations (UN) inquiry. The report found no evidence to show AWB knew of the kickbacks, but suggests it should have realised. After the first Gulf War, AWB became the single largest provider of goods to Iraq under the United Nations oil-for-food program.

"In the final report, the now privatised AWB has been found to have paid more than $200 million for transport services that went straight back to the Iraqi regime instead. AWB managing director Andrew Lindberg rejects the inquiry committee's suggestions that at least some AWB employees should have picked up on the illicit activity. "We were an unwitting participant in an elaborate scheme of deception devised by the regime." Mr Lindberg says there were good reasons for not questioning the sharp increase in transport costs for its wheat. AWB says at no time did it know that the money it paid to a Jordanian trucking company was being diverted to the Iraqi Government.

"But the president of the Iraqi Islamic Council of Australia, Dr Mohamad Taha Al-Salami, has rejected the AWB's defence. "If it was a matter of a hundred dollars or $200 you know I would accept that, but when it is millions of dollars they have to justify it and it's naive, a naive defence in my opinion," he said.

"[Australian Prime Minister John Howard said,] "My dealings with the people in the AWB in the past have always been such that I've found them a very straight up and down group of people and I can't imagine for a moment that they would have knowingly been involved in anything improper." Trade Minister Mark Vaile has also defended AWB. "I wouldn't imagine for a moment that any of the management or the board of AWB would have knowingly been involved," he said. Mr Vaile says the AWB followed all UN guidelines while taking part in the program. Mr Vaile has blamed the United Nations, saying it oversaw the contract." (http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200510/s1492749.htm)

Personal observation: I've had a wee bit of experience in shipping commodities in bulk, and that small portal on the industry taught me that, generally, most shippers, especially the large ones, know every cent involved in the transport of the product and how it is justified and do a major job heavying the carriers to get costs down. But I have no knowledge of AWB or how it has operated and cast no aspersions, implicitly or explicitly.

"Tariq Aziz, who at the time was Iraq's deputy prime minister, told investigators that beneficiaries received oil barrel allocations based on their level of opposition to the sanctions. The report is filled with records of transactions kept by Iraqi officials who demanded special surcharges. DaimlerChrysler is listed as paying $7,000 for a $70,000 contract, while Volvo Construction Equipment in Brussels paid $317,000 in extra fees for a $6.4 million contract.

"The report also cited Banque Nationale de Paris, or B.N.P., for playing a double role in handling the oil-for-food escrow account, but not revealing knowledge about certain financial relationships that enabled the payment of illegal surcharges. B.N.P., however, issued a company statement that the illicit surcharges were detected only through the "enormous investigative efforts" of the Volcker committee and the C.I.A.. The bank called it "unjustified" to suggest that "alleged deficiencies in its screening of payments contributed to illicit surcharges."

"One-third of the oil exported from Iraq through the program ended up in the hands of Russian companies, the report said. Russia had argued for lifting the sanctions. An Iraqi document accompanying the report contended that Russian companies including Lukoil, the country's largest private energy company, and TNK, now merged in a joint venture with BP, paid surcharges in cash to the Iraqi Embassy in Moscow. The embassy accepted $52 million between March 2002 and December 2002, the report contended. The money was packed in red canvas diplomatic bags sealed with wax and sent by diplomatic courier, the report said. Each bag could hold $1.5 million in $100 bills.

"The report said that three Siemens companies Siemens-France, Siemens-Turkey and Osram Middle East knowingly paid kickbacks of at least $1.6 million. There was no response from Siemens in the report.

"Weir Group, an engineering services company based in Scotland, made about $4.5 million in illicit payments to the Iraqi government, the report said. The report said that when Iraq's regular customers balked in late 2000 at buying oil with surcharges, four oil traders merged to dominate the market.Bayoil Supply & Trading Limited from the Bahamas, Glencore International from Switzerland, the Vitol Group from the Netherlands and the Taurus Group from New Zealand employed intermediaries in Italy, Liechtenstein, Malaysia and Switzerland to purchase 60 percent of Iraqi oil until the overthrow of Mr. Hussein in 2003.

"Afiliates of other American companies were listed in the report, including Coastal Corporation and NuCoastal Corporation. "This was a report that came out with a conclusion they set out to come up with," said Catherine Recker, a lawyer for Bayoil U.S.A. Incorporated, a Houston-based oil trading company named as a defendant in an indictment brought by the United States attorney in New York. The company has pleaded not guilty.

"Oscar S. Wyatt, a Texas oilman who was also named in the report and owns NuCoastal, was indicted Friday on charges that he paid millions of dollars in kickbacks to obtain rights to sell Iraqi oil. He pleaded not guilty Thursday in Federal District Court in Manhattan." (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/international/28companies.html)

"The individuals named as having profited from contracts with Iraq ranged from recognizable politicians like Vladimir V. Zhirinovsky, leader of the Liberal Democratic Party in Russia, and Charles Pasqua, a former French interior minister, to unfamiliar names like the Rev. Jean-Marie Benjamin, a Swiss priest who put his profits in his Vatican bank account.

"The abuses were geographically widespread. Kickbacks on humanitarian goods were traced to companies or individuals from 66 countries, while payments of surcharges were made by entities from 40 countries.

"At the center of this activity, according to the report, was Tariq Aziz, the former deputy prime minister who was Mr. Hussein's chief diplomatic emissary. Mr. Aziz now awaits trial in Baghdad, but during the program's life, from 1996 to 2003, he wooed friends for Iraq with profitable oil allocations.

"Among the people he dealt with, identified as "political beneficiaries" in the Volcker report, was Roberto Formigoni, president of the Lombardy region in Italy and onetime under secretary to the Ministry of the Environment. He was a longtime supporter of Iraq and an opponent of penalties, and Mr. Aziz arranged for him to receive 27 million barrels, recording it under "special requests for Italy," the committee said. Mr. Formigoni denied the charge.

"Claude Kaspereit, a businessman and son of a French member of Parliament, flew French men and women opposed to penalties on Baghdad and expressed solidarity with Mr. Hussein, and afterwards received allocations, the committee said. The report said he secretly sold oil rights for 4 million barrels to the financier Marc Rich, who is now a fugitive. The report reproduced a letter of credit from the transaction stamped with the words "Marc Rich and Co. Investment AG whose name must not be mentioned."

"Mr. Aziz was also the contact point for Father Benjamin, an antiwar activist who founded the Benjamin Committee for Iraq in 1999. The report says the priest facilitated an oil deal for a Swiss trader friend by introducing him to Mr. Aziz. The priest received what he called a donation of $140,000, and the committee said his Vatican bank account showed a $90,000 deposit the same day. Father Benjamin told the committee he had no idea of the source of the funds.

"Mr. Aziz also worked with George Galloway, a British member of Parliament, who was accused of receiving more than 18 million barrels of oil in his name or the name of a Jordanian associate, Fawaz Abdullah Zureikat. A portion of the profits went to Mr. Galloway's wife, Amineh Abu-Zayyad, a Palestinian biologist. In his letter denying the allegations, Mr. Galloway noted that his wife had announced on the front page of the Sunday Times of London in May that she was divorcing him.

"According to the report, companies often disguised surcharge payments by funneling them through offshore bank accounts or labeling them as legitimate oil-related expenses. One example the report gave was the substitution of the words "loading fees" for "commission" on payments of the Taurus Group, a large oil trader.

"The report said that putting disclaimers in contracts that no surcharges had been paid did little to lessen trade. "In one instance an agent for BayOil admitted to fabricating an after-the-fact disclaimer to help disguise the payment of surcharges," the report said in discussing a Houston oil trader.

"The committee said that companies it contacted to explain premiums they paid for oil often passed them off as the result of ordinary market forces.
Kickbacks were paid on contracts and disguised as "inland transportation fees" or "after-sales service fees." Contractors would then inflate prices and recover from the United Nations escrow account the money they had secretly paid to Iraq.

"The committee said companies confronted with evidence of illicit payments generally offered one of four justifications. Some said they had been unaware of side payments or the payments had been made by employees in Iraq without authorization; some said they thought inland transportation and after-sales service fees were legitimate expenses; some challenged the committee's evidence as untrustworthy because it came from Iraq; some admitted paying kickbacks, saying they understood it to be part of doing business in Iraq."
(http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/28/international/middleeast/28food.html)

"Since Saddam was toppled in April, Iraq has paid out $1.8bn in reparations to the United Nations Compensation Commission (UNCC), the Geneva-based quasi tribunal that assesses claims and disburses awards. Of those payments, $37m have gone to Britain and $32.8m have gone to the United States. That's right: in the past 18 months, Iraq's occupiers have collected $69.8m in reparation payments from the desperate people they have been occupying. But it gets worse: the vast majority of those payments, 78%, have gone to multinational corporations, according to statistics on the UNCC website.Away from media scrutiny, this has been going on for years. Of course there are many legitimate claims for losses that have come before the UNCC: payments have gone to Kuwaitis who have lost loved ones, limbs, and property to Saddam's forces. But much larger awards have gone to corporations: of the total amount the UNCC has awarded in Gulf war reparations, $21.5bn has gone to the oil industry alone. Jean-Claude Aimé, the UN diplomat who headed the UNCC until December 2000, publicly questioned the practice. "This is the first time as far as I know that the UN is engaged in retrieving lost corporate assets and profits," he told the Wall Street Journal in 1997, and then mused: "I often wonder at the correctness of that."But the UNCC's corporate handouts only accelerated. Here is a small sample of who has been getting "reparation" awards from Iraq: Halliburton ($18m), Bechtel ($7m), Mobil ($2.3m), Shell ($1.6m), Nestlé ($2.6m), Pepsi ($3.8m), Philip Morris ($1.3m), Sheraton ($11m), Kentucky Fried Chicken ($321,000) and Toys R Us ($189,449). In the vast majority of cases, these corporations did not claim that Saddam's forces damaged their property in Kuwait - only that they "lost profits" or, in the case of American Express, experienced a "decline in business" because of the invasion and occupation of Kuwait. One of the biggest winners has been Texaco, which was awarded $505m in 1999. According to a UNCC spokesperson, only 12% of that reparation award has been paid, which means hundreds of millions more will have to come out of the coffers of post-Saddam Iraq." (http://babaklayeghi.blogspot.com/2004/10/why-is-war-torn-iraq-giving-190000-to.html)

" U.N. documents show that Halliburton's affiliates have had controversial dealings with the Iraqi regime during Cheney's tenure at the company and played a part in helping Saddam Hussein illegally pocket billions of dollars under the U.N.'s oil-for-food program. The Clinton administration blocked one deal Halliburton was trying to push through sale because it was "not authorized under the oil-for-food deal," according to U.N. documents. That deal, between Halliburton subsidiary Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co. and Iraq, included agreements by the firm to sell nearly $1 million in spare parts, compressors and firefighting equipment to refurbish an offshore oil terminal, Khor al Amaya. Still, Halliburton used one of foreign subsidiaries to sell Iraq the equipment it needed so the country could pump more oil, according to a report in the Washington Post in June 2001.The Halliburton subsidiaries, Dresser-Rand and Ingersoll Dresser Pump Co., sold water and sewage treatment pumps, spare parts for oil facilities and pipeline equipment to Baghdad through French affiliates from the first half of 1997 to the summer of 2000, U.N. records show. Ingersoll Dresser Pump also signed contracts -- later blocked by the United States -- according to the Post, to help repair an Iraqi oil terminal that U.S.-led military forces destroyed in the Gulf War years earlier."
(http://babaklayeghi.blogspot.com/2004/10/under-cheney-halliburton-helped-saddam.html)

An historical up-close-and-personal look at the program,"ground zero": http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/09/30/sproject.irq.sanctions/

Oily bird gets the word

"NEW YORK, Oct 20 (Reuters, By Jeanne King) - A Virginia oil trading company pleaded guilty on Thursday to charges of scheming to pay more than [US]$400,000 in kickbacks to Iraq for oil purchases made as part of the defunct U.N. oil-for-food program for Iraq. Midway Trading, a Reston, Virginia-based firm, agreed to pay a $250,000 fine in a plea deal, according to the Manhattan district attorney's office. The kickback scheme also involved one of its trading partners, Bulf Oil, the office said. But it provided no details on Bulf Oil.

"The case grew out of an investigation into the scandal-ridden $64 billion oil-for-food program launched by District Attorney Robert Morgenthau's office this year. Also investigating corruption in the program, which was shut down in 2003 after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, are the federal U.S. Attorney's office in the Southern District of New York, several congressional committees and a U.N.-appointed commission led by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul
Volcker. Morgenthau's office said the case against Midway began as a result of cooperation with Volcker's Independent Inquiry Committee, which is expected to issue its final report this month, on companies around the world who benefited from the U.N. program.

"Morgenthau has also opened a criminal investigation of Benon Sevan, the U.N. official who headed the U.N. program. The Volcker inquiry has accused Sevan, a Cypriot and veteran U.N. senior staff member, of getting about [US]$150,000 in kickbacks from an oil trading firm while he was in charge of the program. Sevan has denied the charges, but has fled to his native Cyprus which has no extradition agreement with the United States.

"The oil-for-food program began in December 1996 and allowed former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to sell oil to buy civilian goods to ease the impact of U.N. economic sanctions on ordinary Iraqis. The sanctions were imposed after Iraq's 1991 invasion of Kuwait."

((IRAQ-UN-OIL; Reporting by Jeanne King; editing by Doina
Chiacu; un.newsroom@news.reuters.com; Reuters Messaging:
irwin.arieff.reuters.com@reuters.net; +1 212 355-6053, fax +1
212 355-0143)) Friday 21 October 2005 02:44:36 AEST

Pots and kettles

"BAGHDAD, Oct 20 (Reuters, by Claudia Parsons) - More than 300 foreign fighters have been captured in Iraq by U.S.-led [foreign] troops and Iraqi security forces since April and their nationalities include Israeli, Irish and British, a senior U.S. commander said on Thursday. Most came from other Arab states, however, Major General Rick Lynch said....

"Terrorists and foreign fighters" were responsible for some of the worst insurgent attacks, such as suicide car bombings, Lynch said. [Other foreign fighters were believed responsible for the killing of other civilians, but those figures were not discussed.] But he said U.S.-led [foreign] forces had foiled several attacks by arresting or killing many of them in recent months. He told a news briefing 376 foreign fighters had been captured this year, of whom 311 were detained since the start of April. No comparable figures for the total number of guerrilla suspects captured were available, although some 12,000 are currently held in jail, most of those Iraqis.

"The countries of origin most represented were Egypt (78), Syria (66), Sudan (41) and Saudi Arabia (32). The list included several other Middle Eastern countries and a number of European states such as France (1) and Denmark (1) as well as two Indians and an American. Lynch declined to give any further details about the one Israeli on the list, or the suspect from Ireland and two from Britain."

It was never the ISTs; it was always the ISM

What a bunch of silly gooses we are. We thought that the whole response to 9-11 and the other attacks both before and after the attacks on New York was to get the terrorists who were doing this. Bush told us he was going to get 'em, dead or alive.

But, as it is now emerging, that was never the plan, and the number of ways we have been lied to is just staggering. I suppose, if that had been the plan -- to get the guys what done us wrong -- they may have actually implemented it. There might have even been a mission accomplished by now.

After the attacks, it is fair to say the governments of the West had a bit of license to hunt down the killers and deal with them. But, under the guise of doing that, they have had something else in mind. Something that has never been openly debated in any hall of any congress. Something that is so broad, so challenging, so uncertain, so different to the ways things had been done in the past that you would think usual democratic principles would demand a debate and a specific democratically arrived at authority. It is the kind of major initiative that you think ought to emerge only after the people have been asked about it and given their approval.

What the Coalition of the Willing has had it in mind to do from the very beginning was to re-jig the very foundations of the ancient societies throughout the Middle East. The goal is to tear down all the halls of "oppression" wherever they might be and replace them with an American led "democratic" putsch. Presumeably, that would mean replacing all the Kings and Princeses and Emirates and Sultans and Mullahs and Ayatollas and other tribal leaders with duly constituted, freely and popularly elected peoples' representatives and institutions. Even, perhaps especially, the Saudis.

Because, they assert, only a democratic society can eliminate terrorism. (The corollary being, terrorism cannot exist in a democratic society -- so why are we having all these anti-democratic terror laws being enacted?)

Here it is, straight from the horse's (US Secretary of State Rice) mouth:

"But the fact of the matter is that when we were attacked on September 11, we had a choice to make. We could decide that the proximate cause was al-Qaeda and the people who flew those planes into buildings and, therefore, we would go after al-Qaeda and perhaps after the Taliban and then our work would be done and we would try to defend ourselves.

"Or we could take a bolder approach, which was to say that we had to go after the root causes of the kind of terrorism that was produced there, and that meant a different kind of Middle East [not Iraq, not Afghanistan, the whole bloody Middle East]. And there is no one who could have imagined a different kind of Middle East with Saddam Hussein still in power. I know it's difficult, but we have ahead of us the prospect, and I think the very good prospect of a foundation for a democratic and prosperous Iraq that can solve its differences by politics and compromise, that becomes an anchor for a Middle East that is changing.

"If you look at Lebanon and you look at the Palestinian territories and you look at what is going on in Egypt, this is a Middle East that is in transformation to something far better than we have experienced for the last 60 years when we thought that we could ignore democracy and get stability and, in fact, we got neither. So yes, it's long, and yes, it's hard, but if we quit now, we are not only going to condemn generations of people of the Middle East to despair, we are going to condemn generations of Americans to continued fear and insecurity....

"What we are focused on is getting the Syrian regime to change its behavior. The Syrian regime is out of step with what is going on in the region.... They are stirring up difficulties in the Palestinian camps in Lebanon, which is a problem for the Palestinian territories and the work that Mahmoud Abbas is trying to do in bringing a Palestinian state to bear. And, yes, they are permitting the use of Syrian territory for terrorists to cross Syrian territory. And by the way, in many cases they're coming through Damascus airport. This isn't crawling across the border as they do in Pakistan or Afghanistan. And so, yes, they're using--that territory is being used to kill innocent Iraqis, innocent men, women and children, because suicide bombers are coming through there.
So this is about Syrian behavior...."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9684807/

For more on ists and isms, see http://guambatstew.blogspot.com/2005/10/crusader-rabbit-and-other-hair-brained.html

Iraq's constitution - a unifying farce

Paul McGeough, the SMH's redoubtable Middle East expert writes, "The result of Saturday's national referendum won't be known before Thursday but it appears a new constitution has been endorsed. Not that it's going to make much difference. It will give hope to American diehards who will claim the process and the document are proof of democracy at work. But, sadly, the reverse is the case.

"This is a Clayton's constitution - a conflicted, contradictory unity bill for a country tearing itself apart, accepted in a vote dictated by the fault lines of Iraqi history. Here are some of the elements of the constitution that mock notions of national unity and invite civil war.

"The regions (read Kurdish, Shiite and Sunni) are to have their own military forces; existing oilfields will be managed federally but all new fields are to be controlled by the regions; the built-in religious conflict is a time bomb - Islam is to be a basic "source" of legislation; and no law "may contradict the established provisions of Islam".

"The Kurds have negotiated to have themselves put beyond the reach of the Iraqi Supreme Court; women in the north will have different rights to those in the south; and issues of divorce and inheritance are to be a religious and geographic lucky dip.

"Laid out in its separate parts, this is a document that denies the very notion of Iraqi citizenship.

"As the Sunnis continue to have difficulty accepting what it means to be a minority in the land they have ruled for decades, there is a growing view among analysts that the Kurds and the Shiites are humouring the Americans by going through this process. At the same time they are very clear about the power that is theirs.

"In the wake of the 2003 invasion, the Americans insisted on a timetable of rapid-fire elections in the new Iraq, each staged six months or a year after each other and the next - a national election on December 15 - only weeks after Saturday's vote. Even in a peaceable community new to democracy, that's not enough time between outings for sensible debate. So the forces that are pulling the country apart become the default electoral mind sets - religious, ethnic and tribal.

"The risk this week is that as Iraq's former Sunni overlords sit back to contemplate, as they will see it, how they have been dudded by democracy, more might turn to an insurgency that shows no sign of going away despite repeated US claims of "victory".
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/iraqi-experiment-splitting-at-the-seams/2005/10/17/1129401197205.html

There are those who have all along said the ancient fault lines will split the British gerrymandered Iraq into three parts once the brute force of either a Saddam or an occupation army turns loose of control. If that is to be the case, we can hope that this constitutional process, while not creating a democratic Iraq, at least gave the country the time, structure and process to gradually move apart without further civil war.

To my way of seeing things, that is the best result the ill-fated invasion can hope to accomplish, and, by golly, I have to hope for a satisfactory result nothwithstanding the disaster that got us this far; it would be too cruel to hope for less than a satisfactory result for all those people trying to salvage lives and community from the mess that has been made. So, if it goes without too much more bloodshed, it will have to suffice as a satisfactory solution. Of course, it will look nothing like what we were told we would get. And of course, an unsatisfactory result is still a possibility, god forbid.

Addendum
The complexity of the Iraq situation is perhaps oversimplified by the "three regions" approach of Paul McGeough (see, Tribal Ignorance: What you think you know about Iraq's factions is all wrong, http://politics.slate.msn.com/id/2128193/), but, apart from appreciating the nuance, you have to wonder what analytical gains you get by trying to model the population in too many different dimensions.

A crafty constitution -- and coincidence

The Bush insistance on crafting an Iraqi constitution looks like suddenly getting somewhere. All of a sudden the Sunni side of the street is prepared to cross over and embrace the Shia side. What an uncanny break through: http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/sunnis-may-come-in-from-the-cold/2005/10/12/1128796590176.html

And what a coincidence that that is exactly what the doctor (al-Zawahiri) ordered. You DID read his instructions, didn't you? http://guambatstew.blogspot.com/2005/10/marching-orders.html
Come on, you gotta pay attention here.