Not Good Enough

• 
  
  Newsweek says Koran desecration report is wrong


• 
  
  Incendiary Koran claim may be false, editor admits


• 
  
  Newsweek Apologizes for Quran Story Errors


• 
  
  Newsweek backtracks over Koran report


• 
  
  Newsweek says erred in Koran desecration report

The error, according to the

Washington Post, happened in this way:

"We regret that we got any part of our story wrong, and extend our
sympathies to victims of the violence and to the U.S. soldiers caught in its
midst," Newsweek Editor Mark Whitaker wrote in a note to readers.  In an
issue dated May 9, the magazine reported that U.S. military investigators had
found evidence that interrogators placed copies of Islam's holy book in
washrooms and had flushed one down the toilet to get inmates to talk.

Whitaker wrote that the magazine's information came from "a knowledgeable
U.S. government source," and before publishing the item, writers Michael
Isikoff and John Barry sought comment from two Defense Department officials.
One declined to respond, and the other challenged another part of the story
but did not dispute the Quran charge, Whitaker said.

But on Friday, a top Pentagon spokesman told the magazine that a review of
the military's investigation concluded "it was never meant to look into
charges of Quran desecration. The spokesman also said the Pentagon had
investigated other desecration charges by detainees and found them 'not
credible.'" Also, Whitaker added, the magazine's original source later said he
could not be sure he read about the alleged Quran incident in the report
Newsweek cited, and that it might have been in another document.

Many ordinary bloggers, especially those with connections to the military, or
those who have stumbled across significant open source information, self-censor
themselves out of a sense of decency and caution whenever they come across
information which may cause the loss of life. And they don't even make money
from blogs, apart from a few bucks a month which go into expenses, the purchase
of a few books or subscription to online information services. But not
Newsweek, which is a professional and prestigious publication. Newsweek
is admitting to starting an international political firestorm, which got actual
people killed, caused civil disturbances, endangered the lives of American
troops and significantly set back US efforts in the war on terror because they
ran a story from an anonymous source who cannot even remember if he told them
what they said he told them. Their efforts at  "confirmation" yielded a
denial and a non-denial from Defense officials, but no confirmation. In
predicate calculus, Newsweek asserted P. Their attempts at
confirmation yielded ~P and Null. Hence they concluded P,
which is wrong, wrong and wrong. It is wrong from the pont of view of elementary
logic. It would be wrong anywhere, even in the Andromeda Galaxy. But apparently
it is right at Newsweek.

Newsweek magazine should forthwith compensate the Afghans who died as
a result of their baseless, and I mean baseless, story. Even if it turns out, as
result of further investigation, that a Quran has somewhere, somehow been
flushed down a toilet by somebody, it will not alter the fact that as matters
stand, their Guantanamo story hasn't got a leg to stand on.

Update

I agree with some of the commenters who say this Newsweek incident
should not pass unpunished, though I am at a loss to see how retribution will be
forthcoming. Lawyers would be in a better position to see what avenues of
redress are open to those who have been substantially hurt by this pathetic and
irresponsible reporting. The most obvious victims are those died in riots which
were sparked by the Newsweek story. But there are probably still others who
have not yet paid the price for this bungling, most notably US and allied troops
in the field. Greater damage still is the ill-will that has wrongfully spread by
this "news" magazine, which may indirectly cause or prevent the frustration of a
future terrorist incident. The so-called apology offered by Newsweek,
with its unreprentant undertones, falls far short of controlling the damage they
themselves are responsible for; not merely to their reputation, of which there
is little left to save, but to the lives that have been shattered and will yet be.

The Acme Blogger Kit

Glenn
Reynolds is designing the 'Acme Blogger Reporter' kit, for guys who want to
be citizen reporters, just as an intellectual exercise of indicating what they should have. His kit includes a laptop, digital camera and video
editing software. It's a good, capable suite, but somewhat expensive and heavy.
Although good for covering press conferences, hosted events and meetings, it is
less than ideal for events in which the blogger's physical mobility and
inconspicuousness are  essential. For example, I can't imagine myself
carrying a laptop and a long-lens camera around in West Africa, although I admit
that's a somewhat extreme example. An alternative setup, which might be dubbed the "Caveman Blogging Kit" would consist of the following:

• a 4-5 megapixel point and shoot digital camera that will fit in your shirt
  pocket. It should take AA batteries and have some video and sound capture
  capabilities. With a half gig memory card this ought to cost about $400.


• a one gig USB storage key. Cost, about $100, maybe less.


• access to online file storage where you can dump files via FTP. Cost may
  vary. Say $10 a month.

For computers I would live off the land using internet cafes and
coin-operated type arrangements because the real constraint on the road isn't
finding a computer but finding one with a broadband connection. You can download
stuff from the camera onto your USB key via adapters, so that in a pinch all you
need to carry around is the USB key. You can empty the USB onto your domain
subdirectory. This suite is unnecessarily unwieldy for covering conferences and
similar events. You have almost no image processing capability. No video editing
capabilty. But if you can make arrangements with someone at home base to process
the stuff you leave in your online storage, the image editing limitations can be
solved. In fact, there might a small business opportunity in processing
dropped-off images and video.

Update

One of the readers recommends using a Treo
600 for the Cavemen Blogger role. It has a built-in QWERTY keyboard.

Matdador 2

The Associated
Press has this report originating from across the Syrian border on Operation
Matador.

From their rooftops, Syrians in frontier towns watched airstrikes and
battles on the other side of the Iraqi border, where U.S. forces are fighting
insurgents in an offensive raging uncomfortably close to Syria's doorstep.
Rawaf Hamad, a farmer in the village of Showaiyeh, said he was shaken awake at
3 a.m. Thursday by shelling about a mile away in the Iraqi town of al-Qaim.
He heard the sound of warplanes. ''There was heavy gunfire that lasted until 6
a.m today,'' the 24-year-old said.

Readers will recall that Matador opened on Sunday. The report above is
datelined Thursday recounting events at a local time of 3 a.m.

In Abu Kamal , a town of 70,000 about three miles from the border,
residents could feel the ground shake from the fighting across the border.
People took to rooftops to watch U.S. fighter jets and helicopter gunships
bombard insurgents hiding in houses in al-Qaim. The Syrians said they could
hear small arms fire from the ground, apparently insurgents returning fire.
Heavy fighting broke out in the area at about midday Wednesday and continued
through daybreak Thursday before it tapered off to sporadic exchanges in the
afternoon.

The fighting has been going on for five days. A number of reports have
suggested that the Marines have hit an empty sack and that the insurgents had
escaped prior to the assault, leaving only those who chose martyrdom to stand
and fight. The duration and intensity of the combat suggests otherwise. The
Syrian townsfolk report US heavy weapons use (fixed wing, helicopter gunships
and probably artillery) and return fire. This type of fire is significant,
because heavy weapons are typically used against entrenched enemy fighters.
Fixed-wing ordnance is often used to attack positions that cannot be harmed by
helicopter missiles because the targets are too strongly built. The fact that
many fires are delivered by night is also suggestive, because it recalls Marine
tactics in Fallujah, when US forces exploited their superior night vision and
surveillance capabilities to maneuver while the enemy was blinded. That in turn
implies that the level of enemy resistance is such that individual positions
have to be reduced by maneuver and destruction. Reports of return fire from
enemy fighters imply they have prepared positions or ammunition caches because
it is hard to keep shooting if they only started out with the ammunition in
their personal bandoliers. The balance of probability is a significant number of
enemy combatants have been caught up in Matador; that the area itself is
liberally supplied with defensive positions and the enemy are fighting to the
death.

Matador

Due to problems with my image server, the maps will be down

I can't do much better than refer readers to Chester,
who has carefully plotted all the known incidents of Operation Matador on a map,
together with a chronology of when each happened. The enemy delivered mortar
fire as the assault began on Sunday and delivered a night-time combined arms
counterattack on Monday and made various attempts to escape by boat or vehicle
on Tuesday. The list of incidents and chronology belie the assertion that the
enemy was gone before the Marines arrived. Chester's map is reproduced below.

One gets the sense that the fluid part of the battle ended on Tuesday morning
and that whatever enemy survived the initial confused hours have now hunkered
down to sell their lives dearly. The use of AT mines, armor piercing ammunition,
mortars plus the provision of enemy troops with body armor suggest the presence
of above-average combatants. Chester concludes:

Analysis: The terrorists are dug in and fighting, or at this point, fought,
in Ubaydi and Rammanah. The number of attacks on Hwy 12 leading to Al Q'aim
suggests that terrorists fleeing to Syria are attacking and being attacked by
an increased Marine presence on the Hwy. Those that escape this force must
then make it past Camp Gannon to withdraw to Syria. All of these attacks are
on the south side of the river, which may not be what was expected.

Fortunately, the Keyhole
company has added a new dataset to their mapbase which allows for greater
resolution of some of the key areas. If we focus on Rammanah, which is in the
bight of the river above, we get the image below. You can clearly see the road
as it departs from the marked GIS blue road line and goes into the village,
which is apparently built on a low scarp overlooking the fields. The houses are
white dots. One possible reason the Euphrates was bridged south was because the
enemy probably anticipated an attack from the north, along the existing road.
Note also that if Chester's plot is correct, the fierce fight in Ubaydi
(approximately where the blue line forks) represents a defense of the crossroads
and the northern road approach into the town. Visually at least it is hard to
see how resistance can be prolonged very long in a place like this.

  

There are only sparse clusters of houses between Rammanah and
Qaim/Qusabayah and that may explain the dumb-bell shape of the pattern of
engagements, although the plotted incidents on Chester's map may not be
precisely located. The second image is of the actual border town of Qaim/Qusabayah.
It is quite an extensive, nearly urban place and it is easy to understand why
insurgents should flee toward the border. Even if they could not actually cross
into Syria, there was probably some expectation of being able to hide in the
bigger town compared to fighting it out in a farming village like Rammanah
above. Clearing the hundreds or thousands of houses in the area of suspects will
take time and soak up the efforts of the Marines.

Hearts and Minds

Bill
Roggio and Chester
have come up with a refined map of what they believe to have happened in
Operation Matador. Their map reflects their common scenario, whose general
characteristics, although speculative, are probably correct based on the
terrain. In general, they believe the Marines have swept west along both sides
of the Euphrates river, along the axis of the river, with blocking positions in
the east. The purpose of these deployments is to basically trap enemy forces
between a hammer and an anvil, the hammer being the forces sweeping west and the
anvil being the blocking forces preventing escape.

For readers who may not have seen military map symbols before, the following
guide to unit types and sizes may prove useful. Thus, in Bill and Chester's
joint map, they believe a cavalry or recon platoon is on the ridge northwest of
the area of operations and it is represented as a diagonally crossed box with
three circles above it.

Cavalry. An oval in the box means mechanized.
Infantry. An oval in the box means mechanized.
Squad	o
Section	oo
Platoon	ooo
Company	I
Battalion	II
Regiment	III

Just a few comments. Both sides have been fighting for control of this border
area from the beginning of OIF.  As described in this very old Belmont
Club post (April, 2004), it was a high intensity battleground even before
the Marines took over from the 82nd Airborne. Opinion may differ over the
relative importance of foreign support to the insurgency flowing along the
Euphrates River line (see The
Western Road and the River
War). However, the fact that Operation Matador is taking place at all and is
being fiercely resisted strongly suggests that both the Coalition and the
insurgents regard controlling access to the Syrian border important. That it is
contested is an empirical fact, but the really fascinating question is why
should this be so. My own belief (speculation alert) is that the single most
important requirement of the insurgency is not vast quantities of weapons but a
supply of trained fighters and money. There is very little prospect of moving
very large quantities of munitions and materiel into Iraq from Syria. Camp
Gannon at Qusabayah has closed the road for some time now. But this is
unimportant because there are huge amounts of loose explosive and weaponry lying
around Iraq and the absolute quantities of these needed to wage a terrorist war
is very low. But what is needed, above all, is a steady supply of trainers who
will teach locals to build ever more sophisticated weapons from any available
material; men who are absolutely committed, unwavering and ruthless; and who are
well supplied with money to pay their way. It may be impossible to infiltrate
trucks of materiel through the Syrian border, but it is perfectly feasible to
trickle in terrorist technicians and pedagogues. Cash and small groups of men
are easy to hide. The Counterterrorism
Blog argues that the most important input of the Iraqi insurgency is
trained militants; and that moreover, its most important output is
trained militants as well.

Nowadays, Zarqawi's "martyrdom" volunteers aggressively prowl the
streets of Iraq in dump trucks, fire engines, and even police cars laden with
tons (literally) of makeshift explosives. Rather than striking at targets of
opportunity, the suicide bombers are often used to kickoff coordinated attacks
on major targets, as seen in recent Al-Qaida operations on the Al-Sadeer Hotel
in Baghdad, Abu Ghraib prison west of Baghdad, Camp Gannon in far western
Iraq, a U.S. intelligence base in Tikrit, and (most recently) the
"Battles of Omar Hadeed and Mohammed Jassem al-Issawi". Many of
these attacks are recorded and subsequently distributed by Zarqawi's Media
Wing; some of them are filmed from several different angles and at close
enough range for the cameraman to be knocked down by the resulting blast. ...
There are few tallies of precisely how many foreign fighters have joined the
insurgency in Iraq since 2003, but the estimated number may now exceed 10,000.
...

While many of these men are quickly "martyred" in local combat
operations (as has undoubtedly occurred frequently in Iraq), the survivors
develop advanced combat experience in an urban environment. They learn in
detail the arts of sabotage, assassinations, suicide bombings, and downing
commercial aircraft with missiles. Eventually, the local conflict comes to an
inexorable end, and the majority of the foreign mujahideen are forced to
exfiltrate the area and return to their countries of origin--Saudi Arabia,
Turkey, Morocco, Algeria, Jordan, Syria, Yemen, Kuwait, and even France and
Italy.

The insurgency becomes a kind of interest-bearing machine in the investment
of militants. That endows Zarqawi with a tremendous operational flexibility.
Logistically, all he has to move is men and money, because the right kind of men
provided by funds, can make weapons anywhere, especially in Iraq. The Euphrates
River ratlines, are above all, a mechanism for moving men and disseminating
deadly learning. For that reason the Syrian border and its approaches are
vitally important to him and he will fight for them. (BTW in historical
campaigns terrorists purposely killed far more local Muslims than their
direct enemies. For example, in Algeria, terrorists killed almost 20 Algerians
for every Frenchman. Terrorists learned that as long as they can maintain a hold
on the population by intimidation it is actually not necessary to
militarily defeat the army of the primary enemy. One point which I think the
Counterterrorism Blog does not discuss is that the Iraqi insurgency is also a
foundry for American militants of a different kind. It creates a mirror cohort
of American experts who have fought Islamic terrorism and learned from it. The
effect of hundreds of thousands of returning veterans whose views and careers
will have been changed by the Global War on Terror is something whose effect has
not yet been measured.)

The US military would at first glance appear to be at a tremendous
disadvantage. Unlike Zarqawi's terrorist force, they must move uniformed men and
vast quantities of materiel and must seem helpless against the Al Qaeda meme
dissemination machine. But in reality it is not so. The US military forms the
counterbackground against which its real maneuver assets, which are intelligence
assets, can operate. Just as Zarqawi's terrorists move in a civilian sea from
which they can improvise weapons, US intelligence assets maneuver in a
battlespace dominated by the uniformed armed forces. In their own way, US
intelligence assets can match Zarqawi's men for flexibility: once they find
Zarqawi's men the American dominated battlespace can quickly kill them. They
have a nimbleness of a different kind. From the US perspective, the Euphrates
River ratlines are a human infrastructure to be disrupted, infiltrated and
turned. For different, but equivalent reasons, the Syrian border and its
approaches are an opportunity to bankrupt Zarqawi's investment in militants.
Some indication the nature of the contest between US intelligence and Zarqawi's
army of zombies, and the role of the uniformed military, which delivers the
actual blow, can be seen in this statement
by Col Bob Chase, operations officer of the 2nd Marine division. "The
enemy, as you expect, once you hit them hard they have a tendency to go to
ground ... There are some locations that we are waiting for the timing to be
correct." From that it is reasonable to infer that we are not witnessing an
isolated operation, but part of a campaign. In the coming months, both sides
will probably attack and counterattack not only in geographical breadth, but in
along the depth of each other's echelons.

Bandwidth Low

I've used up about 8 of the 12 GB in bandwidth available to host the map
images. That should be enough to last today. I've ordered more bandwidth so things should be OK.

Battle on the Syrian Border

Due to problems with my image server, the maps will be down

The Marine Battle on the Syrian border at which nearly 100 enemy have been
reported killed now turns out to be a heavily fortified area. The Los
Angeles Times has correspondent Solomon Moore approximately 4 km northwest (Rabit)
from where fighting is taking place referred to in accounts as the Ramana-Obeidi
area. (The first map below from Microsoft Encarta shows variations of the place names) It is in the
cultivated zone right on the edge of the Al Jazira desert, about 5 km from the
Syrian border. From the LA Times account, the Marines approached on the south
side of the river, and took mortar fire from towns on the north side of the
Euphrates. The Marines crossed the river, using bridging and assaulted into the
town.

In nearby Sabah, New Ubaydi, and Karabilah, insurgents fired mortar rounds
at Marine convoys along the river's southern edge. Marines who pursued
attackers in those towns took part in house-to-house combat against dozens of
well-armed insurgents. One Marine was walking into a house when an insurgent
hiding in the basement fired through a floor grate, killing him. Another
Marine, who was retrieving a wounded comrade inside a house, suffered shrapnel
wounds when an insurgent threw a grenade through a window.

The area is a few kilometers to the south of Qaim/Qusabayah, where a Marine
border post has been the subject of repeated attacks. The Chicago
Tribune and The Associated Press have more details on the degree of
fortification of the towns in which fighting is now taking place.

At the vanguard of the assault, Marines who swept into the Euphrates River
town of Obeidi confronted an enemy they had not expected to find — and one
that attacked in surprising ways. As they pushed from house to house in early
fighting, trying to flush out the insurgents who had attacked their column
with mortar fire, they ran into sandbagged emplacements behind garden walls.
They found a house where insurgents were crouching in the basement, firing
upward through slits hacked at ankle height in the ground-floor walls, aiming
at spots that the Marines' body armor did not cover

The situation described by the Los Angeles Times is plotted in the Keyhole map below. The
Marines appear to have a blocking force in the desert between the towns and the
Syrian border and are conducting operations against enemy in towns on the
northern bank of the Euphrates.

(My apologies for having mislabeled Rabit as 'Ribat')

Update

Bill
Roggio has many more details. The operation is codenamed Matador. Donald
Sensing has some additional stuff.

Search Box

In response to requests by readers for a search box, its probably good to point out that there's already a search box on the top left hand corner of this blog.

Shorts

• A mapgame
  by Thomas P.M. Barnett, author of The Pentagon's New Map.


• The Private
  Military Industry by P. W. Singer of Brookings.


• Preventing
  a War Over Taiwan, a Clinton-era Senior Director for Asia on the staff
  of the National Security Council.

Hat tip: the incomparable MIG

Cries and Whispers

Bizarre news from Sweden. (Hat tip: M.S.) A preacher in Stockholm is under
police protection after being threatened with death for calling the prophet
Mohammed a pedophile. The newspaper Aftenposten
reports:

Celebrity Pentecostal preacher Runar Søgaard is under protection by
Swedish police after receiving death threats. A high-profile sermon where
Sögaard called the prophet Mohammed "a confused pedophile" has
triggered fears of religious war. ... "Even if I see Runar while he has
major police protection I will shoot him to death," a radical Islamist
told Swedish newspaper Expressen. Persons connected to the Kurdish group Ansar
al-Islam claim to have received a fatwa, a decree from a Muslim religious
leader, to kill Søgaard.

Swedish experts claim that Søgaard is at fault.

Islam expert Jan Hjärpe at the University of Lund told Expressen that such
an assassination is a real risk, and he wondered if conflict was the motive
for the sermon. ... "It was a statement from an odd man in an odd sect but the effect is stronger antagonism between different groups. It becomes a pure religious polemic and is extremely unpleasant," Hjärpe told the newspaper.
Hjärpe saw the incident as a type of beginning of a religious war in Sweden. "It (Sögaard's sermon) has power and influence. It seems to have been Runar's intention to provoke and promote antagonism," Hjärpe said.

Blogger The
Fjordman takes a different view. He regard's the Søgaard incident as part
of a wider breakdown in the civility between Muslim immigrants and native
Swedes. He paints a bleak picture.

Rock throwing and attacks against buses and trains are increasing problems
in some suburbs. In Malmö the bus lines in the area of Rosengård have been
cancelled. In Stockholm, the authorities went even further and stopped both
the bus traffic in the Tensta suburb and the train to Nynäshamn. Head of the
bus company in the city of Uppsala, Claes-Göran Alm, is considering doing the
same, as the harassment is costing too much money and is putting their
employees at risk. Benny Persson is selling window glass in the areas south of
Stockholm. According to him, they sometimes have to jump into the car and
leave the spot, as they are met with the harassment that some of the bus
companies in the suburbs are experiencing: Stone throwing and threats. The
same thing is reported from Gothenburg, Sweden’s second largest city. The
company Hemglass are now attempting to run double crews in their cars to face
the problems, but they still have had to completely abandon an area outside
Södertälje. If you get stuck in an elevator outside Stockholm, you risk
staying there for a long time. The repair personnel now demand security guards
present when they arrive, since several of their employees have been
physically attacked. The most serious problem, however, is the delay of
ambulances and the fire department. According to the Emergency Central,
attacks against them have become commonplace in the cities. Every Saturday, at
least five to ten times emergency personnel are asking for police escort to be
able to do their job.

Quoting a New York academic now living in Sweden, The Fjordman
believes part of the problem is that Swedish public figures have been studiously
avoiding noticing the elephant in the living room. "No debate about
immigration polices is possible, the subject is simply avoided. Sweden has such
a close connection between the various powerful groups, politicians,
journalists, etc. The political class is closed, isolated."

These are powerful accusations. Part of the challenge facing the new Internet
media is to find a robust method for collaterally confirming such reports, which
are sparsely covered in the regular media. The Fjordman's post is
liberally sprinkled with links (many of which are unfortunately, for me at
least, in Swedish) so there is little doubt that many of the individual
incidents he refers to are true. So it's a good start. But in order to really
gauge the magnitude and severity of the situation there is really a need for
more investigative blogging. It's a fair bet that the MSM, which still provides
the bulk of primary reporting, has gaps in its coverage and there are some --
such as this one -- which are too important to miss.

Freedom for the Bali Bomber?

American
Expat in Southeast Asia reports that Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, the spiritual head
of the Jemaah Islamiyah, may be released early -- before the end of the year --
as a consequence of increasing domestic pressure to absolve him of culpability.

Back on 3 March 2005 CNN reported that Abu Bakar Ba'asyir would recieved a
jail term of 30 months for his involvement in the bombing. What they didn't
cover or tell you then were the details of the case and what led to such a
lenient sentence including captured members of Jemaah Islamiyah retracting
statements and the testimony of an American citizen. ... by the name of Fred
Burks who had been working as a translator for the State Department and had
attended a meeting together with the CIA and the NSA at the residence of
Indonesia's president Megawati Sukarnoputri.

This seems to be the same Fred Burks who authored a glowing review in Al
Jazeerah of the BBC documentary The Power of Nightmares. Burks wrote:

This revealing BBC documentary digs deep into the roots of the war on
terror, only to find that much of the widespread fear in the post 9/11 world
has been fabricated by those in power for their own interests. The intrepid
BBC team presents highly informative interviews with top officials and experts
in combating terrorism who raise serious questions about who is behind all of
the fear-mongering.

This eye-opening documentary shows that, especially after 9/11, fear has
been used to manipulate the public into giving up civil liberties and turning
over ever more power to elite groups with their own hidden agendas.

In my own experience as an interpreter for US and foreign presidents, I
have personally witnessed some of the manipulations mentioned in the above
documentary. Having worked as an Indonesian interpreter with the US Department
of State for over 18 years, I recently testified to this in the widely
publicized trial of Indonesian Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Ba'asyir. Among other
things, Mr. Ba'asyir is accused by US authorities of being the mastermind
behind JI (Jemaah Islamiah), which is alleged to be a sister organization of
Al Qaeda. Many Indonesians are quite skeptical of these allegations. Like me
and the BBC video, they question whether JI was largely fabricated by powerful
elite groups with hidden agendas.

At the trial, I testified about a Sept. 2002 secret meeting at which I
interpreted for President of Indonesia Megawati Soekarnoputri, US Ambassador
Ralph Boyce, National Security Council representative Karen Brooks, and a
special assistant sent personally by President Bush (who revealed privately to
me that she was a CIA agent). The "special assistant" pressured
President Megawati to secretly capture and turn over Abu Bakar Ba'asyir to the
United States. Yet US authorities have continually denied ever putting any
pressure on Jakarta to act against Ba'asyir.

The Man Who Knew Too Much

Paul Volcker has asked the UN to instruct a former investigator probing the
Oil For Food Program not to comply with a Senate subpoena to provide it with
information on the Oil for Food program . Fox
News reports:

Volcker said Friday that Congress has to restrain itself from requiring
certain acts and information from current or former IIC members as it conducts
hearings into Oil-for-Food. "It is essential that it also protect the
integrity and the confidentiality of the independent investigating
committee," Volcker told reporters in New York, saying the probe involved
"highly sensitive matters."

"Lives of certain witnesses are at stake," he added. "We're
not playing games here, we are dealing, and let me just emphasize this, in
some cases, with lives." In a later question-and-answer session, Volcker
did not elaborate too much on who may be threatened if too much information
about who has cooperated is publicized, saying, "I couldn't tell you
specifically who was threatening witnesses."

The two reports so far issued by Paul Volcker have dealt with the formal
remit of the Oil For Food Program; the procedures under which bids were let; the
dubious relationship between Kojo Annan and Cotecna and the possible but
isolated malfeasance of Benon Sevan. By his own account, Vocker found ineptitude
but not criminality. While he cannot exonerate the Secretary General, nothing in
the Volcker reports so far can put a smoking gun in Kofi Annan's hands. So far,
it has been a story of incompetence without a crime or a criminal mastermind; of
people who resemble conspirators without being members of a conspiracy.

Volcker's implicaton that the "lives of certain witnesses are at
stake", though he would not name who specifically "was threatening
witnesses" clearly indicates that despite his first two reports, something
criminal, indeed murderous lies within the Oil for Food
universe. Something that could get people killed. Having excluded the
possibility of a criminal conspiracy in his first two reports, Volcker now wants
to prevent former investigator Robert Parton from divulging certain undisclosed
details to the US Congress because he fears that the "lives of certain
witnesses are at stake". That which was denied is now invoked.

There are two possible scenarios at this juncture. The first is that Volcker
himself intended to uncover the criminal elements he now warns against in his
final report and fears that Parton will jeopardize his careful strategy. The
second is that Volcker considered these criminally-related aspects irrelevant to
investigation.

Volcker's appeal to the United Nations to prevent the Parton from testifying
does not look good since he is asking Kofi Annan, the very man under
investigation to prevent the release of information that is part of the probe.
Was not the very purpose of the IIC to uncover possible criminal activity in the
Oil for Food Program? The UN has only accepted the charge of incompetence, but not
criminality in the management of the Oil For Food Program. At a UN
press conference following the second Volcker report, Kofi Annan's chief of
staff Mark Malloch Brown had this exchange with journalists, after Annan had
left the room.

Question: Since you keep raising the “he’s-no-crook” defence, let me
ask you about management. By now, the guy that he handpicked to run
oil-for-food was found totally discredited; his Chief of Staff was cited in
this latest report for doing something that the report finds not credible --
his explanation is not credible; the head of OIOS was found to be lacking in
his investigation of oil-for-food; his son was found to be lacking; and his
relatives were found to be lacking. Is the circle closing, and is it time --
is Mr. Annan, indeed, as Richard asked, the man to lead this huge undertaking
of reform at the UN?

Mr. Malloch Brown: Let’s first agree: I’ll answer the question “Is
the circle closing?” if you’ll answer the question “Has the ground
moved?” Are you giving up on what I would characterize as the “he’s-innocent-so-lay-off”
defence? He’s not a crook.

Question: That’s what Richard Nixon said, too.

Mr. Malloch Brown: Well, that’s why I’m saying -- in other words, let’s
first agree that the story has probably moved decisively on today, from
probably a final slaying of the ghosts on “there was corruption in this by
the Secretary-General” to a second issue, which is, was the management
effective enough? And on that, he’s the first to acknowledge it evidently
wasn’t. A number of individuals have now been cited in ways which are
enormously damaging to the Organization and to all of us who work for it.

But hence, again, the important bit of Volcker, which is the
forward-looking bit of Volcker, which is, having disposed of any charges of
criminality and corruption against the system as a whole and against the
Secretary-General, but having pinpointed failings by others, how do we,
moving forward, put in place the management reforms that address that? And I
would argue, the kind of things we’re doing on more open, high-quality
selection of senior staff, the reform of procurement and audit, the
strengthening of OIOS going forward -- all of these issues are a very serious
response to the issues raised and show that the Secretary-General takes this
very seriously.

We have Annan's and Malloch Brown's categorical assurance on that Volcker
found nothing criminal in combing through the UN system. What is there in
Parton's box of documents that may be worth killing witnesses for?

Yalta

The United States has apologized for several of its Second World War actions,
most notably the internment of Japanese-Americans. However, George Bush's
apology for the 'sellout' at Yalta is bound to rekindle debate over one of the
foundational moments of the post-war world. ABC
news reports:

Second-guessing Franklin D. Roosevelt, President Bush said Saturday the
United States played a role in Europe's painful division after World War II a
decision that helped cause "one of the greatest wrongs of history"
when the Soviet Union imposed its harsh rule across Central and Eastern
Europe. ...  "Certainly it goes further than any president has
gone," historian Alan Brinkley said from the U.S. "This has been a
very common view of the far right for many years that Yalta was a betrayal of
freedom, that Roosevelt betrayed the hopes of generations." Bush said the
Yalta agreement, also signed by Britain's Winston Churchill and the Soviet
Union's Joseph Stalin, followed in the "unjust tradition" of other
infamous war pacts that carved up the continent and left millions in
oppression. The Yalta accord gave Stalin control of the whole of Eastern
Europe, leading to criticism that Roosevelt had delivered millions of people
to communist domination. "Once again, when powerful governments
negotiated, the freedom of small nations was somehow expendable," the
president said. "Yet this attempt to sacrifice freedom for the sake of
stability left a continent divided and unstable."

Yalta marked the moment from when Winston Churchill first openly called the
Soviet Union a menace to the Free World. With Nazi Germany clearly dying, Stalin
had replaced Hitler as the principal menace to Britain. Interestingly enough,
the United Nations was created at Yalta. It is the only one of the four major
conference decisions whose writ history has not yet rescinded or made moot. The four
decisions were:

• divide Germany into four ‘zones’, which Britain, France, the USA and
  the USSR would occupy after the war.


• hold elections in the countries of eastern Europe.


• set up a government in Poland which would contain both Communists and
  non-Communists.


• set up the United Nations.

Roosevelt was to die shortly afterward and Churchill would be evicted from
office by Britain weary of war. Yet Stalin remained. But from his position as a
private person, Churchill had one final word of warning to utter. At a speech
in Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, Churchill said:

"From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an "iron
curtain" has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the
capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin,
Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous
cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet
sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet
influence but to a very high and in some cases increasing measure of control
from Moscow."

When the Yalta conference was held, US forces were still West of the Rhine.
Roosevelt was extremely sick. Britain all but exhausted. Yet so was the Soviet
Union. And the United States was soon to be the sole possessor of the atomic
bomb. Whether it was possible to prevent Stalin from taking over Eastern
Europe without devastating it will always be an open question. In one sense, it
is always futile to apologize for history. But George Bush's apology is really
addressed toward his perception of American historical intent. He seems to be
saying 'yes my predecessor intended to carve up the world with Josef Stalin. He
had no right to deliver people into bondage and we will never do it again.' It
is a moral apology, no less futile than regrets over slavery or the
dispossession of the Indian tribes.

Back to the Future

Max Boot describes on vision of 21st century US forces: the 19th century
British Army. In Foreign
Affairs article (hat tip: MIG), Boot argues that while Iraq has shown US
forces to be masters at blitzkrieg, they were less than adept at handling
guerilla war. To remedy that, he suggests looking to the past.

Whether or not the United States is an "empire" today, it is a
country with interests to protect and enemies to fight all over the world.
There is no finer example of how to do this cheaply and effectively than the
British Empire. In 1898, it maintained only 331,000 soldiers and sailors and
spent only 2.4 percent of its GDP on defense, considerably less than the 3.9
percent the United States spends today. This puny investment was enough to
safeguard an empire that covered 25 percent of the globe. ...

The old British Army, he says enjoyed four advantages: a technological edge
over their native opponents; an army optimized for colonial fighting; a system
of native auxiliaries; and "an unparalleled group of colonial
administrators, intelligence agents, and soldiers--many of whom would, in their
spare time, double as linguists, archaeologists, or botanists. Adventurers such
as Richard Francis Burton, Charles "Chinese" Gordon, T. E. Lawrence
("of Arabia"), and Gertrude Bell immersed themselves in local
cultures, operating to advance the empire's interests on their own, with scant
guidance from Whitehall." One way to pay for the transformation, Boot
suggests, is to abandon certain highly expensive weapons programs -- like the
F-22 -- an investing in more and better ground troops and equipment,
understanding that these ground troops will be better not merely as fighters,
but as linguists and nation builders.

The immediate objection that comes to mind is the fate of the 19th century British
Army itself. The splendid colonial force was shredded by its first encounters
with a technologically equal enemy as it went to war against the Boers at the
turn of the century, then later against the Germans in the First and Second
World Wars. The British Army could not in the end prepare itself to fight
against opposite ends of the spectrum with equal success. The close order
tactics developed in the colonial wars (for force protection) were to spell
their doom when confronted by the Mauser rifles and automatic cannon of the
Boers. The real challenge is to transform the US military in ways that will make
it effective both against terrorist tactics and a conventional threat, like
China's, where an F-22 may have some worth.

Egypt

Egyptian Special Operations have arrested four leaders of the Muslim
Brotherhood in Cairo. According to the Washington
Post:

Abdel Moneim Mahmoud, a senior Brotherhood member, said police arrested
Essam el-Erian, one of the organization's most senior members, and three other
leaders during raids on several homes in Cairo. "They took them to police
cars waiting outside surrounded by masked members of the Egyptian special
operations forces," Mahmoud said. Police also detained more than 130
Brotherhood members in Cairo and outside the capital, said Abdel-Galil el-Sharnoubi,
editor of the group's Web site. ... Although banned since 1954, the Muslim
Brotherhood is probably Egypt's largest opposition movement and the government
tolerates some of its activities. Fifteen Brotherhood members hold seats in
parliament, having been elected as independents.

The question is why. Ha'aretz
suggests the arrests are not necessarily extraordinary: just a roundup of the
usual suspects over the occasional political difference.

The Muslim Brotherhood, established in 1928 and banned since 1954, is used
to intermittent government crackdowns. Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said
in an interview with Egyptian television last month that he would not allow
any religious group to become a political party but added that he would not
object to Muslim Brotherhood members joining political parties.

But News24
and the BBC are more specific: they suggest that Mubarak is eliminating any
roadblocks to an uncontested Presidential election. 

The banned Muslim Brotherhood has been in open confrontation with Egyptian
authorities for the first time in 24 years with its wave of protests demanding
an end to President Hosni Mubarak's "dictatorship". ... Under
growing domestic and international pressure, the 77-year-old Mubarak agreed
last February to amend the constitution to allow multi-candidate elections for
the first time in Egypt's history. The amendment is to be discussed in a
parliament plenary session on May 10, but Mubarak has yet to announce whether
he will run for a fifth six-year term in presidential elections in September.
Under the proposed changes, a candidate would need the support of 10% of
lawmakers and other members of regional and local councils, all bodies which
are dominated by Mubarak's National Democratic Party (NDP). "The Muslim
Brotherhood is using foreign pressure on the Egyptian regime to improve its
own political and legal standing," said political analyst Nabil Abdel
Fattah.

The BBC
reports that it will be hard for the Muslim Brotherhood, or any other opposition
party, to get the 10% support to field a candidate to run against Mubarak,
though perhaps the Egyptian leader is not taking any chances.

Under the planned law an independent candidate would need to be endorsed by
65 of the 444 members of parliament. Correspondents say an independent is
unlikely to get such backing as the ruling party has an overwhelming majority
in parliament. Independents - including supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood -
make up the most vigorous opposition in Egypt, but number fewer than the 65
needed to endorse an independent candidate.

But at any rate, the opposition may see this as their chance to unseat
Mubarak. If so, the Muslim Brotherhood is ironically banking on the US-driven
"Arab Spring" to obtain its share of power. Fouad Adjami in his recent
Foreign Affairs article, The Autumn of the Autocrats
argues that in general, the Arab dictators can no longer hold the line. (Hat
tip: DL) The powerlessness of the Middle Eastern President's Club was ironically
established first in Iraq and then Lebanon, when no one rode to Saddam's rescue
or to Assad's. Who then will ride to Mubarak's?

Cairo will not intercede on behalf of Damascus. If the Egyptians attempt
it, their intervention will come without conviction. U.S. policy owes no
deference to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. If anything, the Bush
administration's new emphasis on reform and liberty only highlights the
inadequacy of Mubarak's own regime. ...

But suddenly it seems like the autumn of the dictators. Something different
has been injected into this fight. The United States -- a great foreign power
that once upheld the Arab autocrats, fearing what mass politics would bring --
now braves the storm. It has signaled its willingness to gamble on the young,
the new, and the unknown. Autocracy was once deemed tolerable, but terrorists,
nurtured in the shadow of such rule, attacked the United States on September
11, 2001. Now the Arabs, grasping for a new world, and the Americans, who have
helped usher in this unprecedented moment, together ride this storm wave of
freedom.

The price of reaching for the prize of liberating the Middle East is the
acceptance of the attendant dangers. That does not mean the goal is not worth
striving for, only that in advancing, the sword and shield must be held at
guard. The American wave that swept Saddam from power will logically shake the
foundations in Cairo and Riyadh. In more ways than one, Iraq was a surprisingly
decisive campaign; though what the decision will be, history has yet to reveal.

by Susan Herzog, Information Literacy Librarian @ Eastern Connecticut State UniversityLast update: January 2007Due to time constraints and the explosion of articles about blogs, this blog will no longer be updated.Part 2: Articles & Interviews About BlogsPart 3: BlogBib: Blogging @Your LibraryPart 4: BlogBib: Blogging ToolsPart 5: BlogBib: Select Librarian/Library BlogsPart 6: BlogBib: Books on