SISMI's War in Iraq: The Iranian Connection

Translation edited for errors and omissions. Republished on November 5, 2005.--Nur

Carlo Bonini and Giuseppi d'Avanzo are at it again. Another three-part blockbuster exposé on the involvement of Italian Military intelligence inside Iraq.

Part I: From Chelabi to Iranian Agents--SISMI's War in Iraq
A strategic summit in Rome with the Pentagon.

ROME: He’s another politico-military intelligence chief. He’s a SISMI man. He races down the narrow hallway of the bar at the Hotel Eden in via Ludovisi but stops to admire the sky and the attractive skyline of Rome in the April sun (it is 22 April 2003) through the hotel’s large windows. He looks elegant in his Chairman's Committee [of the Council of Ministers] grisaille. [Berlusconi is Chairman of the Council of Ministers--Nur]. He selects a table at the center of the terrace. The waiter walks over and solicitously takes his order. The gentleman orders a freshly-squeezed orange juice and a double espresso. The Anglo-American invasion of Iraq began on the night of 19-20 March, thirty-three days earlier.

Today, as Silvio Berlusconi reveals that he never supported the military intervention in Iraq, it is fitting to tell the story of how our country, Italy, although allegedly opposed to war as our Premier now claims, was an active protagonist in war preparations and operations.

We will reveal the different arrangements and plans of action, as well as who planned them and with whom they were planned.

For us Italians, recounts the high-ranking SISMI official to La Repubblica, the war on Iraq was already underway in the days before Christmans, 2002. He smiles. He is animated with a glint of excitement in his eyes and for once seems seems to have no qualms about letting his personal satisfaction slip from behind a frozen mask.

Our man is too disciplined to crow about his successes and too stubborn to be discouraged by defeat. He tells us: It was a novelty, a revolution for our intelligence services. Never before in its history has SISMI been so prominently involved in military ground operations and a major role in planning a war campaign, to boot. The Italian Government? Of course our work was authorized by the Italian Government—are you joking? It was real war, not an exercise! The twenty men we sent to Iraq were risking their lives. He pauses. The espresso arrives. He sips it slowly, his eyes half-closed with satisfaction.

He continues. Twenty men from three SISMI departments were involved: Intelligence, Operations and Counterterrorism. They were divided into small groups which were to operate in and around the areas of Kirkuk, Baghdad and Basrah using very imaginative cover. Each unit was unaware of the identities and the mission of the others. Each unit was ordered to operate within a sector of territory and to work with intelligence “assets” who had already been selected and trained. The objectives were twofold: To identify Iraqi defenses and to evaluate the readiness of the Iraqi armed forces.

If combat was less intense than expected, it is due to the job we did—and naturally, we didn’t do it alone. If the war was won before firing a shot, it was due to our success at infiltration and intelligence-gathering.

The story of Italian military intervention in Iraq begins when the resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Michael Ledeen, who is sponsored by Defense Minister Antonio Martino, debarks in Rome with Pentagon men in tow to meet a handful of “Iranian exiles.” The meeting is organized by SISMI. In an Agency “safe house” near Piazza di Spagna (however, other sources have told us it was a reserved room in the Parco dei Principi Hotel).

Twenty-five men are gathered around a large table, covered by maps of Iraq, Iran and Syria. The big cheese are Lawrence Franklin and Harold Rhode of the Office of Special Plans, Michael Ledeen of the AIE, a SISMI center director accompanied by his assistant (the former is a balding man between 46 and 48 years of age; the latter is younger, around 38, with a listening device in his teeth) and some mysterious Iranians.

Pollari confirms the meeting to La Repubblica: When [Defense Minister Martino] asked me to organize the meeting, I became curious. But it was my job and I wasn’t born yesterday. It’s true—my men were also present at the meeting. I wanted to know what was cooking. It’s also true that there were maps of Iraq and Iran on the table. I can tell you those Iranians were not exactly “exiles”. The came and went from Tehran with their passports with no difficulty whatsoever as if they were transparent to the eyes of the Pasdaran....

So the Iranians are not exiles. They are not opponents to the regime of the ayatollahs. These men are members of the regime--delegates sent by Tehran. If Washington were asked what the devil the Iranians were doing in Rome on the eve of the invasion, elbow-to-elbow with people from the Pentagon, you would get some solid information. But to make some sense out of the confusion, you have to listen to an American intelligence source, who has requested anonymity. He tells us: You Italians have always underestimated the work of contamination carried out Ahmed Chalabi, the Chairman of the Iraqi National Congress. You tend to omit this chapter from your side of the story because you think Ahmed concerns only the Americans. But that’s not the way it is: he is also your business, ar beyond anything you currently believe or imagine.

So what do we know about Ahmed Chalabi? The darling of the Neocons, Chalabi has been charged by the "hawks" in the Pentagon to pass intel on WMD proliferation to European intelligence agencies supposedly garnered from presumed scientists, who have defected from Baghdad. The person charged with “intelligence gathering” and story invention is Aras Habib Karim, Chalabi’s personal intelligence man.

Aras is a key player. He coordinates the Intelligence Collection Programme. He supervises and fabricates the “output” of the dissidents. He is a Shi’ite Kurd just under 50, extremely clever, consumately evil and a magician of double-cross and document forgery. But there is something peculiar about him. The CIA has long considered him an “Iranian agent.” A second key player is an American, Francis Brooke.

The bogus Italian dossier on the Niger uranium turns up--and we don’t know precisely why--in the hands of Chalabi. Brooke is responsible for liaison with Condoleezza Rice and Paul Wolfowitz and between the Pentagon and the Iraqi National Congress. He is more heeded in Tehran than Chalabi.

Our US intelligence source continues: Ahmed Chalabi and his right-hand men, Karim and Brooke, travel with the Pentagon and American Enterprise Institute teams. Here’s an example to better understand what's going on: The three men who alternate in 2004 in Baghdad at Chalabi’s side as “liaison officers” with the Pentagon are Michael Rubin, Chairman of the American Enterprise Institute; Harold Rhode, aide to Douglas Feith at the Office of Special Plans and “Islamic Affairs Advisor” to Paul Wolfowitz. They were already serving in such a capacity in Italy on the eve of the invasion.

The meetings called in Rome assemble the representatives of all the teams: Michael A. Ledeen of the American Enterprise Institute, Larry Franklin and Harold Rhode of the Office of Special Plans, the colonels of the Iraqi National Congress and in addition, the Iraqi Shi’ites of the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) and of course, the Guardians of the Revolution. All these actors gathered in Rome. Wouldn’t you say that’s interesting? Yes, very interesting, indeed.

***

We discover that the trump card played in the conflict in terms of the involvement of Iran in post-9/11 planning is Shi’ite. Tehran decides to get involved “to reasonably preserve Iranian strategic interests in the region”. The pragmatic Americans must realize the extent of the Iranian influence on the Shi’a community in Iraq (65% of the population). The ayatollahs have a vested national interest in regime change in Baghdad. An Iraq liberated from Sunni power means major political influence by Tehran and good prospects for the handover of the government to the Shi’a of the Supreme Revolutionary Council led by Ayatollah Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim, who is both supported and protected by Iran, together with its military wing, the [B]adr Brigades (7 to 15 thousand militiamen). It is no surprise that Chalabi’s team (no matter who they are—the colonels or the Iranian agents) is welcomed in Tehran as dignitaries and is feted with ceremony usually reserved for foreign diplomatic delegations.

It is in this political context in which SCIRI is able to collaborate with the Bush Administration in the fabrication of the pretext for war. Together with the Intelligence Collection Programme, Aras Habib Karim organizes the information from the Iraqi defectors. SCIRI offers the Pentagon a confirmation of their seemingly “independent” revelations which are, in reality, agreed with Chalabi’s group under the guidance of Tehran’s intelligence services.

A defector deployed by the Iraqi National Congress in London would say that Saddam Hussein is preparing develop a new type of chemical weapon. But when Abdalaziz al-Hakim, the chief of the military wing of the Badr Brigades travels to Washington, he hands over to US officials an Iranian intelligence document showing that the dictator has ordered regional commanders to use chemical and biological weapons against the Shi’ite resistance should the Americans invade.

We had come to be quite familiar with the disinformation scheme. However, some protagonists have cropped up who, beyond our knowledge, had made all the calculations concerning the lay of the land in Italy on the eve of war. We now see them side by side at the meeting in Rome. Planning by Michael A. Ledeen for the Office of Special Plans, political sponsorship (according to Pollari) by Defense Minister Antonio Martino and technical coordination by SISMI.

***

The lies that were pandered concerning this meeting! First it was said that the meeting was called to save human lives in Afghanistan. Then its purpose was to plan, with the involvement of Iranian exiles, assistance to the Iranian masses, yearning for an uprising sufficiently widespread to overthrow the ayatollahs. Next it was said that the meeting was called to identify Iranian interests in Afghanistan. Finally, as one reads in a SISMI bulletin, it was to obtain information on presumed links between al-Qaeda and certain Middle Eastern governments fostering international terrorism.

In each and every one of these interchangeable frames for the meeting, Manusher Ghorbanifar claims he played the leading role. Iranian by birth and residing as far as we know between Paris and Geneva, Ghorbanifar does not have a good reputation. For some, he is an arms trafficker. For others, an expert in forgery. For civilian Italian intelligence, Ghorbanifar is a secret agent for Tehran. For a certain US intelligence agency, he is a Mossad agent. For yet others he is a clever bullshitter. And for still others, he is all those things. But the truth is that he is a minor character, or so it seems.

Ghorbanifar is the decoy planted by the organizers of the meeting to keep busybodies off the scent and away from the scene of the crime and above all, far removed from the motive. An American source tells La Repubblica: Manusher Ghorbanifar says he has a London source who is able, it appears, to identify where in Baghdad Saddam’s stockpile of enriched uranium is located. Ledeen then embellishes the tale by adding that Ghorbanifar’s contact knows of an effort by Iran to acquire uranium and that radiation emitted from Saddam's stockpile of radioactive material has contaminated a few Iraqi technicians, whose identities were known to him.

After some back-and-forth between the CIA and the Pentagon, Ghorbanifar’s London source is brought to Baghdad at the expense of the Agency to assist in the identificatoon of the site where the uranium has been stockpiled. After leading the men of Langley on a wild goose chase, the source demands $50 thousand to refresh his memory on just who in Baghdad would be in a position to help in the search. Naturally, the buffoon is dismissed with a kick in the pants.

So, forget about Manusher Ghorbanifar. In the Rome meeting held at the Parco dei Principi Hotel or in the safe house in Piazza di Spagna—but probably in both locations--the paths of three intelligence networks will cross: Nicolò Pollari’s SISMI, Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress and the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq and the [B]adr Brigades led by Muhammad and Abdalaziz al-Hakim. The integration of the “processing” and “output” of the three “networks” will provide essential information to the Anglo-American war planners and above all, a concrete estimation of Saddam’s defenses, from the willingness to fight of his generals to the arsenal of weaponry at their disposal, in addition to the influence operations. Each of the three intelligence networks has an ace in the hole which will be useful to the Pentagon.

SISMI boasts of its excellent contacts within the Iraqi officer corps which had trained in Italy during 1980’s. Over time they have become informers and moles. Meanwhile, Iraqi National Congress relies on defectors from the regime. Before his assassination on March 18, 2003, Muhammad Baqir al-Hakim told La Repubblica that the [B]adr Brigades, thanks to is independent militias in Baghdad, in Iraqi Kurdistan and in the Iranian south, is able to keep the country under constant surveillance. From Karbala and Najaf to Basrah, down to the Faw Peninsula and on to the Kuwaiti border, nothing escapes the Shi'ite underground intelligence networks active in no-fly zones south of the 33rd parallel, key territory for any invader.

The Pentagon’s operations planning ensure that warfare on the ground is "oriented" towards information which intelligence teams will snatch behind the lines. The data will be collected by the Anglo-American Joint Command in real time, cross-checked and processed, then transformed into instructions to combat units. The idea is very simple: To “illuminate” from inside the country enemy targets, defensive military positions and the counterattack capabilities of its irregular units embedded among the civilian populace. There is also a secondary aim which is possibly more important.

Behind the lines, the infiltrated agents must prepare the groundwork for a “secret pact” (safqa in Arabic) for the surrender of the country. The pact provides for a bundle of safe-conducts for the commanders of the Republican Guard, the Ba’ath Party militias and Saddam’s Fedayeen. Later, the Americans begin to have second thoughts about the lavish payouts, the offers of residency in the United States, and above all, to play high-profile in liaising between certain factions of the opposition, in particular the Iraqi National Congress.

Alongside SCIRI and Chelabi’s men, Italy is able to lend a hand in the horsetrading with regime figures that goes on in Baghdad and in Basrah, places well familiar to Italian military counterespionage. Moreover, the first phase of the Mesopotamian adventure (up to the moment of Bush’s Mission Accomplished speech) was nothing other than a question of simple corruption within a crumbing bureaucracy whose officials had sold out en masse to the CIA. SISMI agents now get down to business. And moment has come to return to the terrace of the Eden hotel, to hear the rest of what our SISMI man has to say.

End of Part I. To be continued...

Iraqi Air Force Veterans Targeted by Death Squads

From the October 26th online edition of L'Orient-Le Jour:

Former Iraqi Air Force Pilots Targeted in Manhunts

Former pilots who served in Saddam Hussein’s Air Force are victims of a manhunt by armed militias which has cost the lives of dozens of veterans since the fall of the former regime in April 2003.

I never leave the house out of fear of assassination, says Rabih Ahmad al-Taï, who held the rank of general in Saddam Hussein’s Air Force, echoing the fears of his comrades-in-arms who live under continual threat of assassination. At least 23 pilot-officers have been murdered by Iraqi groups linked to Iran, which wants to take vengeance on the pilots, continues al-Taï, who originates from Tikrit—the fief of Saddam Hussein. Al-Tai fought in the eight year-long Iran-Iraq war between 1980 and 1988 during which the regime used chemical weapons on Iranian troops. Pilots who had the means to leave the country have left while others remain cloistered in their homes, with fear in their stomach, shrugs a resigned al-Tai. A thousand former military officers formed a delegation two weeks ago to visit President Talabani, a Kurd, to request his intervention against the acts of vengeance. Acknowledging his own impotence in protecting lives in the current turbulent atmosphere, Talabani invited the group to settle in Kurdistan: The pilots have no responsibility for the policies of the former regime and merely carried out criminal orders. If they had refused, they would have faced summary execution, Talabani told the delegation, while promising them a safe and secure life in Kurdistan, regardless of political affiliation. But he has been unable to deliver on the promise.

This week two former officers were shot dead in the holy Shi’ite city of Karbala, including former Air Force Commandant Rajab Abdel Wahed al-Jaberi. Pilot-officer Mazen Jalal al-Salaami, who lives in the Dour neighborhood in north Baghdad, accuses police death squads for their involvement in the kidnapping, torture and murder of former Air Force officers. Sunni religious and political leaders denounce the infiltration of the security forces by Shi’ite militiamen, particularly the Badr Brigades, who were trained in Iran. These acts of revenge are causing a terrible loss for our country because they are killing off professionals who could have made a subtantial contribution to the new Iraqi military, regretted al-Salaami.

Ahmed Sattam al-Joubouri, who participated in bombing missions against Iran, Kuwait (1991) and Kurdistan, was assassinated by Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in August 2004, says his brother Ayed. After the fall of the Ba’athist regime, he remained in his village south of Mosul, where Kurdish militiamen murdered him to avenge the victims of the former regime. Ayed doubts President Talabani’s sincerity. He sought to calm the fears of the pilots so they would not join the insurgency, says Ayed, emphasizing that the government recently announced the dismantling of a “Salafist” network, whose leader was a former Iraqi Air Force general.

Shorter Nigergate

Editorial opinion in today's Repubblica:

...It is evident that it is not SISMI which is at the crux of this affair. Nicolò Pollari, like CIA Director George Tenet, provided his "boss" with what he wanted: manipulated intelligence. At the crux of this affair are the actions of a government which, four years down the road after the first report on the Made in Rome forgeries (15 October 2001), now denies its role in a travesty which has led to the death of 20 thousand Iraqis, 2,000 American troops and 33 members of Italian contingent in Nassiriya.

This is Nigergate--a political scandal. It is not the work of the hoax-peddling snake oil salemen of the "Italian Job" nor a squabble among institutions (as former minister Francesco Cossiga and the center-Left would have us to believe), nor the misguided initiative of an intelligence agency director....

The Twilight of the Vulcans

The horsemen of the pre-emptive strike and their squires believed they were invulnerable and omnipotent. When the 2003 investigation into the outing of a covert CIA agent began, they laughed, saying that the affair was a “NadaGate”, a “nothingburger” and an air-fried meatball. They were the NeoCons, the liberators of the planet, the justice brigade, the Vulcans (as the invincible race of warriors from Star Trek were known) and were prepared to crush anyone who dared to stand in their path.

Today their point man inside the White House, the protégé of Dick Cheney and the star pupil of Paul Wolfowitz, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, faces five charges and a possible 30 years in prison and has turned in his resignation. Many others, including Vice President Cheney, are spending many a sleepless night as they contemplate the doings which might be revealed and negotiated to avoid a prison sentence. “Nadagate", the scandal arising out of thin air, just like the “nothing” behind the Watergate break-in, Irangate and Sexgate. A meatball poisoned with the usual toxin: the arrogance of power.

The demise of the leader of the Vulcans began on Saturday 6 July 2003 with a 1,400-word article. When a copy of the New York Times landed on the desks of the White House that Saturday, the gates of prosecution hell, which had dispatched US politics into the nightmare of Watergate, Irangate and Monicagate, reopened to swallow up yet another administration into the abyss of its own arrogance and fear.

On the penultimate page of the most respected and vilified newspaper in America, the New York Times' Op-Ed page, an ambassador without embassy, a nobody on the stage of US power, Joseph C. Wilson wrote an article, What I Didn't Find in Africa that included this phrase: I have little choice but to conclude (following his mission to Niger) that some of the intelligence related to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.

For the audience of readers, it was a midsummer’s morning like any other. But for the White House and the protector of the Neocons, Dick Cheney and his right-hand man, Lewis Libby, known as “Scooter” (because as an infant he was a speed crawler), the news was a blared warning of the stripping away the invulnerabilty, the hubris and the prideful arrogance which had inspired and blinded them.

The occupation of Iraq to prevent the smoking gun from taking on the form of a mushroom cloud, as the President and his spokesman had insisted for months, was entering its fifth month and 204th US casualty, not to mention the legions of unknown Iraqi civilians, soldiers and guerrillas.

US media and public opinion were still psychologically embedded--wrapped up inside the cocoon of patriotism spun from the shock of 9-11—and only the first doubts on that terrifying imaginary arsenal began to ripple through the substantial consensus built up around Bush. But Cheney and his man Scooter, who is now facing 30 year for 5 charges of perjury and obstruction of justice, and the rest of the Vulcans understood what the rest of us merely suspected: that the entire dossier on Saddam was built out of exaggeration, stunts, conclusions and threats concocted, as Paul Wolfowitz divulged in an interview, for reasons of bureaucratic consensus—something to convince the objectors to the war such as Colin Powell in the Department of State and George Tenant (a Clinton holdover) at the CIA.

The answer of the war hawks was proportional to the terror which the ambassador’s revelations struck in their hearts—that in those words was the thread of truth which would unravel the entire fabric of lies and exaggerations. We now know, thanks to the capable and unsparing independent prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, that at the highest levels of government--inside the office of the Vice President--a preemptive strike was prepared for Wilson and above all, his wife, Valerie Plame, a CIA agent with No Official Cover carrying a delicate brief, who sent her husband to Niger to unmask the subterfuge behind the yellowcake story—the uranium sought by Saddam.

And here is the key to understanding the new “-gate”, the new imbroglio which is stinging the band of hawks with their hand on the tiller of America. The fact that the purchase of uranium never took place, that the Italian documents were shoddy forgeries and that Saddam Hussein never possessed nuclear weapons (although he desired them ardently) was admitted by the White House when mention of yellowcake was removed from the President’s State of the Union Address six months prior to Wilson’s revelations. Officials even admitted that the Sixteen Words pronounced by Bush citing intelligence received by the British should not have been found in the text of the speech.

Why, then, did Cheney, the Darth Vader of the war on Iraq, Libby, his right arm, and possibly others launch a campaign to destroy the ambassador and to take down his CIA agent wife, when their “revelations” were not particularly hostile? Because exactly like 30 years before--during the Nixon Administration--the moment had come for a final showdown between warring gangs and agencies in Washington.

In its half-hearted scoop, the New York Times reports that the Vulcans saw signs of possible open war with the CIA, opposed to the war and unwilling to furnish the “evidence” sought be Cheney and Wolfowitz to “sell” the invasion of Iraq. They perceived the threat of a mutiny of dissidents within the State Department and the Agency against the Pentagon and the White House and issued a Mafia warning, as we say in Italy--the kneecapping of a minor official, Plame, as a warning to others—but which the CIA has used to bring charges againt “persons unknown” responsible for the outing of their employee.

A gang war. According to the investigating arm of the US Judiciary, it was Cheney himself, the “enforcer” of this presidency and the bellwether of the Neocons who gave his man Libby the name and the position of the ambassador’s wife which were then passed to reporters “off the record.”

The inexorable law of US political scandals entered into force thanks to a tenacious judiciary which has so far succeeded in remaining independent from the current shift on duty in the White House. It isn’t what you did, but what you did to hide what you did that causes the “-gates” to open. And it confirms the existence of the most deadly weapon of self-destruction of all: a guilty conscience.

--Vittorio Zucconi, La Repubblica, Rome, 29 October 2005.

Perbacco, Berlusconi Says He's a Peacenik!

Berlusconi. Wah! They should call him Burlesque-phony. His ass and that of his party, the Freedom House-backed Casa Della Libertà, is history. They have lost every local and regional election in the last four years. So today war fanboy Berlusconi is backpeddling furiously on the rodent wheel.

I was never convinced that a war against Iraq was the best means to democratize a country or to rescue it from a bloody dictator. I tried to find alternate paths and solutions, even through the mediation of Ghedaffi. We just could not convince [Bush] and military intervention occurred. I always believed that we should have avoided a military confrontation.

However, let's check the bugia-o-meter:

17 February 03: PM Berlusconi urges the European Union to war during summit of the European Union.

23 February 03: If [Saddam Hussein] does not disarm, the International community, the international community sends the clear message that it will do it.

30 March 03: Thousands of US paratroopers dropped over northern Iraq on 26 March 2005 departed from an airbase in Northern Italy with the permission of PM Silvio Berlusconi.

Other quotes:

Bush's war on Saddam Hussein was a stroke of genius.

We are delighted to have been on the right side of history.

If [Saddam Hussein] does not disarm, the International community, the international community sends the clear message that it will do it.

A Battle in Cheney's War on the CIA

Prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald has unsealed the indictment of Vice President Cheney's Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby, who led the Hawk Army Charge on the CIA at the battle of Plame Hill.

Le Monde's Washington correspondent Eric Leser directs our attention to backdrop: Dick Cheney's decades-old war on the CIA. The bleeding, staggering CIA thrust one last dagger into Cheney by deploying Wilson to write a NYT editorial revealing the false intelligence on which the war on Iraq was waged.

But we are now in a situation of fait accompli, both on the ground in Iraq and in Langley. Iraq is occupied by US forces and Langley is being put to the sack by Bush's henchman, Porter Goss. A new agency, the National Clandestine Service, is being built from the ground up by a Bush field marshall, John Negroponte, at last realizing Cheney's long-dreamed goal: to finish off the CIA once and for all. The sacrifice of a general, Scooter Libby, was a small price to pay.

The Iraqi conflict, the stakes of a long secret war on the CIA led by the Vice President and the hawks of the Bush Administration.

The backdrop to the affair of Valerie Plame, the CIA agent whose identity was unveiled to the press by members of the US Administration, is the years-long war fought between the Vice President, Dick Cheney, and the Central Intelligence Agency.

In March 2003, Cheney attempted to force the CIA into inflating the size of Saddam Hussein’s arsenal of WMD to justify the invasion of Iraq. In the end, blame was pinned on the Agency when it was revealed that Saddam’s WMD were non-existent. For Vice Presidential Chief-of-Staff I. Lewis Libby, the attacks launched by ex-Ambassador Joseph Wilson (husband of Valerie Plame) in the New York Times on July 6, 2003, denouncing the use of false intelligence of uranium purchases from Niger by Saddam Hussein, bore hallmark of the CIA.

The agency had sought to defend itself and to extract revenge. The fact that Valerie Plame was a CIA agent and that it was she who suggested that her husband be dispatched to Niger to verify the intelligence claim was sufficient in the eyes of Scooter Libby to demonstrate that the CIA was behind Joe Wilson’s attacks. According to the statements of Judith Miller, a reporter for the New York Times made to the grand jury, which will issue indictments in the affair, Lewis Libby was in a rage against the CIA, holding it responsible for erroneous estimates of Iraq’s WMD and for the inaccuracies included in George W. Bush's speeches before the invasion. [The infamous Sixteen Words--Nur].

Dick Cheney is long-time adversary of the CIA. As Secretary of Defense during the administration of Bush père and as Vice President since 2001, he has never missed a chance to denounce the failings and shortcomings of the Agency. Cheney's criticism began at the end of the 1980s, when the CIA failed to foresee the fall of the Soviet Union. When Saddam invades Kuwait in August 1990, Mr. Cheney, then Secretary of Defense, notices with stupefaction the lack of intelligence available to the United States on the Iraqi arsenal. Lewis Libby, who was already working with Cheney, is charged with the mission of investigating the biological warfare capabilities of the Iraqi army.

Just after the 2001 inauguration of George W. Bush, Mr. Cheney created a powerful intelligence center inside Vice President’s office—a parallel national security council. Mr. Cheney not only received the daily presidential briefings issued by the CIA but he attended nearly every meeting on national security at which the President was present.

During preparations for the invasion of Iraq, Dick Cheney made dozens of visits to the CIA headquarters in Langley (Virginia). No Vice President had done such a thing in the past. He continually posed the same questions to the experts on weapons of mass destruction and on links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda intending, when the reply was unsatisfactory, to get answers elsewhere. There is no doubt that Saddam is amassing weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt that he intends to use them against our friends, our allies and on us, declared Dick Cheney in an August 2002 speech to Korean War veterans.

In his war on the CIA, the Vice President had powerful allies, including Don Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense, and his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, both long-standing enemies of the CIA. Paul Wolfowitz was a member of the B-Team, created to monitor the work of experts considered “too soft” on the USSR during the 1970s during George Bush Sr.'s term as CIA director. The alarmist reports published by the B-Team were behind President Ronald Reagan’s rearmament and Star Wars programs.

As to Don Rumsfeld, he headed a 1998 Congressional commission on “rogue states”. The commission concluded that the CIA was incapable of gathering intelligence on these new threats. On the day following 9-11, the Office of Special Plans was created inside the Pentagon. This back-office, placed under the authority of Paul Wolfowitz and managed by his Under Secretary of Defense, Douglas Feith, was to analyze data supplied by the CIA and military intelligence and to report its conclusions to the White House. Working from assertions by Iraqi exiles close to the Iraqi National Congress and its chairman, Ahmed Chalabi, the bureau inflated the Iraqi WMD threat. The office has since been shut down.

Beginning in 2003, after US troops in Iraq were unsuccessful in finding the slightest proof of recent WMD programs, fear began to overpower the Administration. The CIA was about to reveal to the public the pressure to which it had been subjected. The attacks on Joseph Wilson were just a start. It became necessary at all costs to destroy Wilson's credibility in order to discourage further criticism.

Bonini and D'Avanzo

We should probably find out who these guys are.

The prizewinning pair are investigative journalists on the "Big Crime" beat, covering spectacular Mafia murders, judicial corruption, official blackmail and, well, apparently illegal war, too.

Carlo Bonini, born in Rome in 1967, is special correspondent for the Rome daily, La Repubblica, which he joined after having worked for the Milanese newspaper Il Corriere della Sera, where he reported on the courts and the judiciary. Bonini has written or co-authored several non-fiction books, including:

Guantanamo. Usa, a Journey to the War on Terror Prison, Einaudi (2004)
One Country, One Cooperative, One Man, Mucchi (2002)
The Red Robe, Tropea (1998)
The Flower of Evil, Tropea (1999)

Giuseppe D'Avanzo is La Repubblica's top investigative reporter, teamed recently with Bonini. D'Avanzo has published as well:
Rostagno: A Crime Among Friends, Mondadori (1996)
Justice Is Cosa Nostra, Mondadori (1996)
The Days of the Gladio Conspiracy, Sperling & Kupfer (1991)
The Capo of Capos: The Life and Criminal Career of Totò Riina, Mondadori

Below is an exerpt from Bonini's book on Guantanamo, pictured above.

Inside the cage, someone decides to end it all. Forever. And in the only way possible--by hanging. Or rather, by trying to hang himself. This has happened thirty two times. With twenty-seven different injuries. Because some attempt hanging more than once. It is a changeable statistic which fluctuates as the months go by and sometimes inflates when collective desperation sets in. The same death scene is performed again and again. The victim knots a piece cloth and hangs it from the highest point on the wall of the cage where the steel wire of the mesh meets the cement roof of the cell. A noose is made at one end of the cloth. The victim slips his head in and lets himself slide down using the weight of the chest and pelvis. The body remains angular, sometimes in a jackknife position, other times bent at the knees. The hanging attempt causes tremendous convulsions, they tell me. Because in a space as restricted as that of the cage, with such a low roof, suffocation is never final. In the excitement of the shouts for help in the detention unit, the limbs of those who fail at the attempt begin to thrash in all directions governed by reflex. The cyanotic body is cerebrally and physically damaged. I talked to one of the suicide survivors on the other side of the windbreak protecting the cots of the "Detention Hospital”, a structure said to be for medical use at the western edge of Camp Delta. The air-conditioned tent reeking of lysoform with a spotless greenish linoleum floor has a several 20-bed wards and a staff of ninety-three doctors and nurses pulling teeth, amputating arms and legs, setting bones and sometimes treating chronic, debilitating illnesses such as tuberculosis. Those who visited the hospital in the weeks prior to my arrival reported seeing a man holding onto life thanks to a resuscitation machine. Fed through a system of tubes surgically inserted into the stomach. In a permanent vegetative state. Non-reversible. He’s recovering. We’re very pleased about that, says Capt. Kelleher. He’s started to talk and can move a bit. Of course, he still has trouble holding a cup. As in the detention units, here in the hospital the prisoners are addressed by number, never by name. By the number of the cell in which hanging was attempted. And every night, his body is chained to the cot in which he lies, as with anyone else who is treated there.

Cartaccia

The the Italian pejorative for paper is, "cartaccia", meaning ugly, meaningless, useless and possibly copious amounts of marks on rag.

La Repubblica writes today that Berlusconi's government is claiming that the FBI has closed the case on Italian involvement in Nigergate through the issue of a piece of cartaccia: a July 20, 2005 letter from the Director of the FBI officially informing them that its investigation of the forgeries forwarded from the magazine Panorama to the US Embassy in Rome on October 9 2002 clear Italy of any involvement.

Neat and tidy, huh?

Stonewalling Italian Style

Epilogue: The Great Italian Yellowcake/Centrifuge Scam

From this evening's Repubblica:

Palazzo Chigi denies everything
Following La Repubblica's investigation into the phony anti-Saddam evidence, the Italian government has issued a denial: The facts as related do no correspond to the truth.

The Executive Branch denies any and all allegations of its involvement in the phony Niger uranium dossier: The story may not be considered trustworthy just because it is well-written.

Palazzo Chigi [the Italian "White House"] terms the story published in La Repubblica on the so-called Nigergate affair—the phony dossier on Niger uranium which permitted Bush to justify his war on Iraq--unfounded and inaccurate.

The related events and content, as well as the circumstantial elements referring to time, place, subject matter and actors, are not only untruthful, but they are a repudiation of prompt and accurate internal reports, all of which are unassailably documented. Palazzo Chigi is carefully evaluating every option for the guardianship of information protected by law.

Palazzo Chigi categorically denies any involvement of the Government or SISMI with respect to any allegation of direct or indirect involvement in the collection and transfer of the forged dossier on Niger uranium. Undoubtedly fascinating in its unfolding and full of revelatory material, the [newspaper’s] investigation goes beyond the limits of responsibility: the baseless and inaccurate story should not be considered trustworthy merely because it is well-written.

Nigergate: The Great Nuclear Centrifuge Scam

Update: A translation of the 12 September 2002 Panorama article entitled, La guerra? è cominciata, cited below can be found here.

English translation cleaned up and republished on 31 October 2005

This Part III of the investigative series by Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo of La Repubblica.

THE INVESTIGATION : Nicolò Pollari knew that the equipment purchased by Saddam Hussein was not destined for nuclear use. But when he is at the White House, he avoids mentioning it.

Nigergate: The Great Nuclear Centrifuge Scam

The bizarre Panorama scoop is accepted as fact and included in the dodgy dossier.

The story of the Italian involvement in [intelligence] manipulations which will provide the justifications for war on Iraq is one of dates on the calendar. We have already looked at of a few of them. And once again, it is a date that unravels and reveals Chapter Two of the Great Scam.

The date is September 9, 2002. On that day, in the chambers of the National Security Council, a very strange (if you believe in the principle of institutional transparency) and secret meeting takes place.

Why is the director of Italian military intelligence meeting a White House Administration official? It would be perfectly natural for Nicolò Pollari to meet with the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency. It would be quite routine if the director of SISMI were to meet with Italian administration officials--but very bizarre indeed if he meets with officials of a foreign government, even if an ally. In this meeting there were Cabinet officials and under-secretaries. So, just what is it that he discusses with Stephen Hadley?

Stephen Hadley is no low-ranking underling in the White House. Today he is National Security Advisor. In 2002, he is deputy to Condoleezza Rice and a node in the parallel intelligence conduit ["Stovepipe"--Nur] desired by Dick Cheney to legitimize a war on Saddam Hussein. He is the man who, among other things, is responsible for the sixteen words pronounced by George W. Bush in his January 28, 2003 State of the Union Address which served as a declaration of war on Iraq.

We know that Hadley, together with Pollari, are concerned with weapons of mass destruction. And it’s reasonable to ask what exactly Pollari knows on the score of the Niger uranium on the 9th of September 2002. As he admits himself, Pollari knows everything. He has been apprised of sordid adventure of Rocco Martino. His own men were up to their necks in it. He is familiar with the actions of SISMI deputy division chief Antonio Nucera, who lends a hand to snake oil salesman Martino. On the day in question, Pollari well-positioned to make a choice: either to tell Rice’s deputy that the White House had better forget about the uranium story, because it’s a hoax and that the Martino-Nucera duo are imposters, or to reinforce the convictions of the American ally, perhaps with a little well-intentioned silence. So what does Pollari choose to do? To find out, we had better take a look at Pollari’s comportment concerning the other topic of conversation with Hadley: the nuclear centrifuge dossier.

Barely 24 hours before, on September 8, 2002, Judith Miller reports on the nuclear threat posed by Baghdad on the front page of the New York Times. In the last 14 months, writes the reporter, Iraq has sought to acquire aluminum tubes which, according to US officials, are intended for use as rotor sheathings inside uranium enrichment centrifuges.

On September 9, 2002, seated in front of Stephen Hadley, Pollari has the means to address even this aspect of the issue. As Pollari admits, SISMI is in possession of documentary proof of the acquisition of aluminum tubes by Iraq. But let’s take a look what he’s talking about.

These are 7075-T6 aluminum tubes. This is the preferred material for low-cost missile systems (each tube costs approximately $17.50). There are made with an extremely hard alloy which makes them suitable as rotors inside a centrifuge capable of separating fissile from non-fissile uranium. It is not simple process because thousands of centrifuges (16 thousand) are needed and they must withstand synchronous rotation at extremely high speed.

As we now know, the CIA and the very cautious Secretary of State, Colin Powell, convince themselves that dual use material was meant for Iraq’s nuclear program. Powell draws on all his military experience. He says: I am not an expert in centrifuges, but from the standpoint of a military veteran, ask yourself this this: why are the Iraqis are so busy in acquiring these tubes which, if they were used as rockets, would disintegrate soon after launch?

Incredibly, the objection is left standing even after the scientists at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (where uranium for the US nuclear arsenal is processed by centrifuge enrichment) annihilate Powell’s theory. The Oak Ridge people say that the tubes are too narrow, to heavy, too long and likely tto fracture if used as centrifuge components. They conclude with: Those tubes are used in the manufacture of a specific type of artillery shell.

So on September 8, 2002, Judith Miller portrays the aluminum tubes as “a smoking gun.” The next day, Pollari is seated in front of Stephen Hadley. So what does he tell him? Pollari keeps his mouth shut. He doesn’t reveal what he knows about the aluminum tubes, which are the source of so much concern (or even enthusiasm) within the Bush Administration. The shame is that those 7075-T6 tubes--900 millimeters long, 81 millimeters in diameter, 3.3 millimeters thick--are well-known hardware to the Italian Army. They are 81-mm rocket artillery shells used in the Medusa air-to-ground missile defense system installed on Italian Army and Navy helicopters. In reality, the Iraqis are merely attempting to reproduce weaponry with which they became familiar during the long years of economic, military and nuclear cooperation between Rome and Baghdad. (Iraq’s top army and air force officers trained in Italy during the 1980’s). Saddam’s General Staff needs to duplicate them, so to speak, because their inventory is stockpiled outdoors and is now corroded. That was the reason behind the new anodized aluminum tube purchases.

Why does Pollari not utter a word? If you ask Greg Thielmann, ex-chief of the State Department Intelligence Service, he’ll tell you: But seriously, haven’t you yet understood why the chief of Italian military intelligence did not provide us with any indication that would have allowed us to definitively discard the notion that the tubes would be used in someone’s nuclear program? Well, I have an idea for you. SISMI, like the CIA and the entire Anglo-Saxon intelligence community, is ready and willing to satisfy the hawks in the US Administration. Thielmann’s assertion echoes like a shotgun blast. And the dates will yield solid confirmation.

September 8, 2002: Judith Miller throws a rock thorugh the window.
September 9, 2002: Hadley meets Pollari.
September 11, 2002: Stephen Hadley’s office contacts the CIA for authorization to allow the President of the United States to use the information on the sale of Niger uranium in a public address. Specifically, as the report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence relates, the request made to the CIA at the behest of the National Security Council asks George Tenet in writing if George W. Bush is authorized to say, "Iraq has made several attempts to acquire aluminum tubes for use in its uranium enrichment centrifuges. We also know that over the last few years, Iraq has restarted its attempts to acquire large quantities of uranium oxide, known as yellowcake--the necessary component for enrichment processing." The CIA gives its permission but on October 7th in Cincinnati, Ohio, the authorized words are not found in the President's speech.

The day before the scheduled address, Langley recommends that the statement be expunged. The intelligence is weak. One of the two mines cited by the intelligence source as used for the extraction of uranium is flooded. The other mine is under the control of the French authorities.

What the devil was Pollari up to? The twisted yellowcake affair and now the centrifuges are tangled up around Rocco Martino’s phony documents. Who did what to whom and where and why? Who read the documents and who kept silent on their phony origin? Who believed in their worth and who "distributed" them? The crux of the imbroglio lies not only in answering those questions but in the words which are never spoken. The Italians know that Rocco Martino is a creep. They know very well that the only genuine papers in the dossier are stale intelligence pulled from the files of the SISMI division concerned with WMD. Pollari lets the lie off the leash and permits it trot around the globe. He does not have Rocco Martino “busted” when he knocks on the door of MI6. Instead, Pollari credits Martino as “a reliable source”. He does not put the damper on the enthusiasm of his American friend Michel Ledeen and the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans. He simply sits there in silence as the imbroglio simmers. In fact, when he does open his mouth, he neither extinguishes nor disappoints American expectations. This is what happens to the aluminum tubes. Following a “brilliant operation”, SISMI enters into concrete possession of the tubes. It’s a military intelligence victory. But even the lowest grunt would understand that the tubes must be Italian—they are shells from the Medusa-81 aircraft missile defense system. Naturally, SISMI is well aware of this. Yet on September 9, 2002, Pollari maintains a reserved silence in the presence of Hadley. And he does more than that.

On September 12, 2002, Panorama magazine hits the newsstands. In a lengthy article titled,La guerra? è cominciata, (War with Iraq? It has already started)the magazine make decisive yet unverified revelations on Iraqi nuclear rearmament to the world. So far, no one has started talking about uranium, let alone 500 tons of the ore. It will be Tony Blair to mention it first, but not until September 24, 2002--two weeks following the meeting between Pollari and Hadley and twelve days after Panorama’s "scoop". Inside the 50-page British government document, London affirms that Iraq is seeking to acquire uranium from Africa. Blair maintains that Iraq has attempted to purchase significant quantities of uranium from an African nation despite the fact that he has no civilian nuclear program which would require it. Even today, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw continues to repeat that the “Italian dossier” was not the basis behind Blair’s words and that MI6 is in possession of previously acquired intelligence. Yet such “evidence” has come to light. If it were to come out--a source at Forte Braschi tells La Repubblica with a smile, it would be easily discovered, producing more than a few red faces, that the “evidence” is in fact stale Italian intelligence collected by SISMI at the end of the 1980s and shared with our friend, Hamilton Mac Millan.

There was no excessive talk implicating Italy in the yellowcake affair. It was the silence. We’ve seen how SISMI keeps silent (or is forced to keep silent). But poor SISMI is not alone. Although perfectly informed, none of the protagonists in this sordid affair talks. Panorama clams up. When the editorial board of the magazine, owned by the Italian head of government, is called upon to reconstruct its contacts with Rocco Martino (who tried to sell the hoax to Segrate), it omits the recollection that the information contained in the bogus dossier was already published a month earlier. The weekly's Editor-in-Chief inexplicably shares the documents with the US Embassy in Rome alone--and not with the Italian government or the excellent resources of the Italian intelligence agency to which, as September’s scoop shows, it has access. He has no interest in relating, as a second possible worldwide scoop, that the evidence on which the war is based is false. As you would expect, Palazzo Chigi is also silent. The role of Silvio Berlusconi’s diplomacy advisor, Gianni Castellaneta, has been key in mediating the relations between Italy with the parallel conduit [“Stovepipe”—Nur] that Dick Cheney creates with financing from Ahmed Chelabi’s Iraqi National Congress to funnel "tweaked" intelligence by the Office for Special Plans which is then distributed to the media by the “Iraq Group” (which is also seen in action in the Judith Miller-New York Times affair.) But who has ever heard Castellaneta utter one word? And who within any institution has ever asked Mr. Castellaneta about it?

Also silent is Gianni Letta. When the truth on the bogus Italian dossier surfaces, the Under-Secretary with intelligence clearance, despite what one reads in inaccurate government memos, invokes State secrecy. Letta maintains that no further documentation would be presented to Parliamentary scrutiny because Italian intelligence sources would be compromised. But what sources? Rocco Martino, the bad cop, the crooked spy, the double-crosser? Or would that be Antonio Nucera, the deputy director at the SISMI center in viale Pasteur offices who filches (or is compelled to filch) stale intelligence from the division archives to assemble the package?

Now that the frittata has been turned out of the mould, they obviously have to come up with something after their long silence. Pollari makes his move in the summer of 2004. Once taciturn, he all of a sudden he becomes talkative. He even opens the doors to his modest office in Palazzo Baracchini. We find him in a darkened office behind a desk with papers piled high. Papers here, papers there, papers everywhere. To his left, there is another desk covered with dossiers like so many pebbles on the beach. On August 5th, 2004, he tells La Repubblica: I can’t trust anyone. I have to read all the papers myself! Pollari seems agitated. He feels the hot breath of the reporters from Atlantic Monthly. He’s turns an interview request from CBS Television received through the Italian Embassy in Washington in his hands. He asks us: What do these people want of me? Who’s talking to them? The CIA? The FBI? A CIA leaker? An enemy of the FBI? He knows that Rocco Martino has been contacted by a producer for 60 Minutes and he’s afraid of what Martino might confess in front of the microphones--turing it into a personal catastrophe for him. Pollari has to find an exit from the impasse he’s in and it seems that he’s found one. He tells La Repubblica: It was the French of the Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure who tried to dupe the Americans. We are not involved in any way. He pulls out from a folder an item that looks like it belongs in a Power Point presentation. (It’s yellow, red, purple, blue and green). The document purports to prove the “role of French intelligence in the Niger affair.” But it is not convincing. Today, it falls flat. Time has shown the substantial groundlessness of a connection to the French. That bird has flown the coop. In fact, as the US Senate report shows, two weeks prior to the invasion, on March 4th, 2003, the French informed Washington that that the documents were forged because as it transpired, they were the same documents that Rocco Martin had previously pawned off on Paris.

But no document was every pulled out of an Italian file to put a stop to Dick Cheney’s impetuosity. Like the Italian government, SISMI knows that its intelligence on Iraq was complete hogwash. There is silence as if the entire Italian power establishment has been stricken mute. Silence on the part of [Berlusconi's] majority is understandable but must the opposition be silent in the face of manipulations that led to war? The only act on record is a request by a commission of inquiry presented by L’Unione [Romano Prodi’s leftist coalition--Nur]. But it turns out that it was merely bureaucratic ass-covering, because once issued, it was promptly forgotten. Meanwhile, in the United States, three independent investigations have been launched into CIA-gate, Niger-gate and a conspiracy headed by Larry Franklin, an official inside the Office of Special Plans. But in Italy not even a leaf flutters in the breeze. If you are enterprising enough to arrange a meeting with Rome Public Prosecutor Franco Ionta to discover, just out of curiosity, what ever became of the investigation of Rocco Martino, he’ll tell you: Yes, I investigated Martino. A fraudster. It took me half an hour to take his deposition. But just what did you expect him to tell me? I put in a request to close the case with the Giudice per le indagini preliminare [judge handing the preliminary investigation]. It was just lot of buffoonery. . Yes indeed, but Italian buffoonery that is going to die in silence, ignored by the politicians, the intelligence community and the judiciary. That’s how things work in Italy.

:::End of series:::

Yellowcake Dossier Not the Work of the CIA

Update: A translation of an attempt by Rocco Martino to sell the cooked up yellowcake intelligence to Panorama reporter Elisabetta Burba may be found here.

English translation cleaned up and republished on 30 October 2005--Nur

Part Two of the investigative series by Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo of La Repubblica.

INVESTIGATION / SISMI Director General Nicolò Pollari travels to the States to corroborate the purchase of nuclear material by Saddam Hussein.

Pollari travels to Washington to present his version of "the truth"
The Yellowcake Dossier was not the work of the CIA.

For SISMI Director Nicolò Pollari, the rules of his profession are very clear. He tells La Repubblica: I am an intelligence chief and my only institutional partner in conversation following 9-11 was CIA Director George Tenet in Washington. Obviously, I held my conversations solely with him.... But is it really true that our cloak-and-dagger people worked solely with the CIA? Or did they work as part of the clandestine effort within the parallel intelligence conduit ["Stovepipe"--Nur] created by Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz within the Iraq War Group, the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans and the office of the National Security Advisor—all avidly determined to produce the evidence for “regime change" in Baghdad.

It is a known fact that on the eve of the war on Iraq and under the guidance of Palazzo Chigi Diplomatic Advisor Gianni Castellaneta (today Italian Ambassador to the United States), SISMI chief Pollari organizes his appointment book in Washington with the help of the staff of Condoleezza Rice, who was then serving as National Security Advisor. La Repubblica has documented the dual course pursued by the Italian government and by Italian intelligence. According to intelligence sources, in at least one of the backdoor meetings in which Pollari participated, the the creation of a conduit took place marshalling together government, security agencies and intelligence.

Brief synopsis: Pollari’s SISMI wants to give credence to the story of acquisition of uranium ore for the purpose of building a nuclear bomb. The gameplan is transparent. The “authentic” papers concerning an attempt to acquire uranium in Niger (stale Italian "intelligence" left over from the 80’s) are a legacy of a former SISMI Deputy Chief in Rome, Antonio Nucera. They are bundled up together with other worthless documents hastily forged after a simulated burglary of the Niger Embassy (embassy letterhead and stamps are taken). The documents are exhibited by Pollari’s men to the CIA Station Chief in Rome while SISMI’s "postman", a certain individual by the name of Rocco Martino, delivers a copy to Richard Dearlove’s MI6 in London.

That was the first installment. We’ll now provide the second chapter of the Great Italian Yellowcake Scam orchestrated in Italy to build up the necesary pretext for the invasion of Iraq. We reintroduce Greg Thielmann, former director of the US Department of State's intelligence bureau, who encounters the "Italian" report on the uranium on his desk. He does not recall the precise date.

Thielmann recounts the events of autumn 2001 in generalities. But the precise date may prove noteworthy: it is October 15, 2001. On that date three events are woven together to produce an astounding coincidence: Nicolò Pollari, nominated by the goverment on September 27 after serving as Number Two at CESIS (a coordinating intelligence agency at Palazzo Chigi), assumes control at SISMI. Silvio Berlusconi is finally invited to the White House by George W. Bush. October 15 marks the date of the first CIA report on the evidence in the possession of the Italians. It’s impossible to say if all this is coincidence, but one cannot ignore the context: The Italians have a burning desire to be useful. After his unfortunate outburst on the Clash of Civilizations, Berlusconi is encountering problems in getting an invitation from the White House, under fire from moderate Arab regimes. Pollari is eager to quickly get in step with Premier and the new course of action. The new chief at the SISMI section concerned with WMD, Colonel Alberto Manenti (direct superior of Antonio Nucera), wants to put himself on the same page as the new SISMI director. It is a known fact that Bush shows the West Wing’s Rose Garden to Berlusconi and the CIA acknowledges, as reported by [investigative reporter] Russ Hoyle (who devoted himself to a year-long analysis of the conclusions of the Senate Investigation Committee) that Italian intelligence has some neatly prepackaged information bedecked with a pretty bow: Negotiations (between Niamey and Baghdad) on the purchase of uranium have been ongoing since the start of 1999; the sale [of uranium to Baghdad] was approved by the Niger Supreme Council in 2000. No documentary evidence is offered to show that any shipment of uranium has transpired. CIA analysts consider the report to be “somewhat limited” and “lacking in necessary detail”. Intelligence and Research analysts at the US Department of State qualify the intelligence as “highly suspect.”

The initial contact with the American intelligence community is not particularly gratifying for Pollari but suffice it to say that it is still highly useful. The SISMI director, who is no fool, quickly surveys the landscape and the players of the ongoing behind-the-scenes battle in the US Administration between those who stress caution and pragmatism (the US Department of State and the CIA) and those who are looking for an excuse to start a war (Cheney and the Pentagon), which is already on the drawing board. However, upon returning to Italy, the SISMI director finds a similar battle underway in Rome. Gianni Castellaneta advises Pollari to look in other directions, while Defense Minister Antonio Martino suggests that Pollari arrange an appointment to meet an old friend of Italy. This old friend is Michael A. Ledeen, the old fox of American parallel intelligence conduits, who had once been declared persona non grata by Rome during 1980s. [Likely because of kidnapping of Abu Abbas, orchestrated by Ledeen and Oliver North, and the attempted "extraordinary rendition" of Abbas through Italy--Nur.]

Ledeen is in Rome at the behest of the Office of Special Plans, created at the Pentagon by Paul Wolfowitz to collect intelligence supporting a war on Iraq. A source at Forte Braschi [Italian equivalent to Langley, VA, the headquarters of the CIA--Nur] tells La Repubblica: On the subject of intelligence collected on the uranium purchase, Pollari gets the cold shoulder from CIA Station Chief Jeff Castelli. Apparently, Castelli has dropped the matter entirely. Taking a hint, Pollari discusses the matter with Michael Ledeen.... No one knows what prompts Ledeen to return to Washington but at the beginning of 2002, Paul Wolfowitz convinces Dick Cheney that the uranium trail intercepted by Italian intelligence should be explored in depth. As the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence relates, a a very determined Vice President repeats a request to the CIA to take another look into “the possible acquisition of Niger uranium." During a meeting, Dick Cheney explicitly states that a crucial piece of intelligence is held by “a foreign intelligence agency”.

The parallel intelligence conduit ["Stovepipe"--Nur] over at the Pentagon circulates “new information” according to which there exists an agreement between Niger and Iraq for the supply of 500 tons of uranium per year. The technicians at the Department of State raise an eyebrow at the report--500 tons of uranium! A vastly exaggerated quantity! The report is manifestly devoid of all plausibility. Every independent report ordered following the circulation of the "Italian memorandum" indicates that the Niger uranium mines at Arlit and Akouta can yield at most 300 tons per year. But time is growing short. George Tenet, stung by the intelligence gaps of 9-11, grins and bears it but becomes incredibly unreceptive when State Department intelligence controverts him, recounts Greg Thielmann to La Repubblica, by saying that the intelligence collected in Rome is inconsistent, that the uranium story is phony and that a bunch of things contained in the report are fabricated.

Pollari is a very clever man, they say at Forte Braschi, and so he understands that to pursh the uranium story in Washington he cannot deal with the CIA alone. He must work with, suggest Palazzo Chigi and the Italian Defense Minstry, the Pentagon and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice. The affirmation might have been meant as malicious (in the world of espionage, that's often the case), but we can confirm the "alternate conduit" which Pollari creates in Washington through a snapshot and a meeting.

This is the snapshot. Pollari is in Washington. He arranges a meeting with George Tenet and, as happens frequently, his presentation is to be given in a reserved conference room at a hotel close to Langley. An attendee at the meeting tells La Repubblica: Pollari’s English must not have been very polished, so a female interpreter is placed between him and Tenet. There’s an embarrassing upshot. In the course of exchanging pleasantries, George reveals some information from al-Qaeda concerning Italy which the Agency has gathered from prisoners at Guantanamo. Tenet expects at least a smile or possibly a nod of gratitude. A stone-faced Pollair looks back at him. If at first Tenet found Pollari unpleasant, he now finds him positively untrustworthy. What what strikes everyone seated around the conference table is the absolute sidelining of Pollari's station chief in Washington. The bizarre treatment is intriguing. In 2002, the SISMI station chief in Washington is Admiral Giuseppe Grignolo. He possesses extensive background in WMD, an excellent relationship with the CIA and the respect of CIA Number 2, Jim Pavitt. A source at Forte Braschi recalls: The truth is that we did not want to keep the nose of the CIA out of our business but Pollari distrusted Grignolo, whom he believed was too cozy with Langley—so he blocked Grignolo’s every move. He forced him, so to speak, into the useless task of conductinjg background checks on SISMI new hires, who might have spent some time in the United States.....During those months, the most significant contacts take place elsewhere—through Gianni Castellaneta with Condoleezza Rice and through Ledeen with the Office of Special Plans run by Paul Wolfowitz and Doug Feith. It is Castellaneta who arranges a meeting for Pollari in the offices of the National Security Advisor at the White House. When did they meet and what did they discuss? What did you expect them to be talking about in the summer of 2002? Weapons of mass destruction! When did the meeting take place? That’s my business…but all you have to do is to is check the visitors' roster and archived flight plans between Ciampino [Rome’s military airport--Nur] and Washington.

Here in Rome, it’s difficult for us to access those flight plans. We had better luck in Washington. An Administration official told La Repubblica: I can confirm that on September 9, 2002, General Nicolò Pollari met with Stephen Hadley, deputy to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice.

As was the case for October 15, 2001, September 9, 2002 was a day marked by several coincidences. On that day, the Italian magazine Panorama was coming up on the editorial deadline for its 12-19 September issue. As one might expect from Rocco Martino (the SISMI "postman" in the Yellowcake Affair), he contacts a woman reporter from the magazine (Carlo Rossella was Editor-in-Chief at the time) in October to sell her the documents inside the phony dossier. No one cares to recall that in the 12-19 September 2002 issue of Panorama, coinciding with Pollari’s secret meeting with Hadley, the magazine published a international scoop entitled, War with Iraq? It has already started. The Panorama article mentions “a delivery of a half-ton of uranium”: The men of Mukhabarat, the Iraqi intelligence agency, acquired the ore through a Jordanian middleman in far-away Nigeria, where a few traders succeeded in smuggling it after a heist from a nuclear depot in a republic of the former USSR. The cargo containing 500 kilograms of uranium was then docked at Amman and afterwards shipped overland in a 7-hour journey to its final destination: the al-Rashidiyah plant 20 km north of Baghdad, recognized as a site for the production and processing of fissile material. And further along in the article: The alarm concerns Germany, where in the past Iraq had attempted to purchase technology and industrial parts from the firm, Leycochem....and even the much sought-after aluminum tubes for gas centrifuges.

Although there is a discrepancy in the location (Nigeria and not Niger—a lapsus calami?) and the story is somewhat of a fairy-tale (contraband from the USSR is transported all the way to Africa by truck), what is essential here is to notice that in the Panorama article, the recipe (so to speak) has all the right ingredients needed for war: the 500 tons of uranium which make its way from Africa to Baghdad, and the aluminum tubes for nuclear centrifuges. One could accurately superimpose the story churned in Italy on the allegations made in the CIA-gate/New York Times affair. The government asks, the intelligence service produces, the media spreads the story and the goverment confirms what's in the media. It’s an old disinformation technique from the Cold War. Exaggerate the danger posed by the enemy. Terrorize and convince the public--and this time Italy is involved as an accessory. The magazine that spreads the poisonous disinformation is owned by PM Silvio Berlusconi, who has intelligence oversight in Italy and who wants to become and to be seen as the close ally of George W. Bush, impatient to declare war.

You could say that with the terrain prepared in advance, Pollari is able concentrate on another essential aspect of the operation: the promotion of himself and SISMI by cashing in on a year’s worth of cloak-and-dagger work, pulling the wool over the eyes of Parliament using carefully manipulated information and revelations which should have been subject to careful reconstruction accompanied by corroborating documentation--and not the wall of silence of the State (imposed by Gianni Letta on July 16, 2003).

Back from his secret meeting with Hadley, Pollari was debriefed by an Italian Parliamentary intelligence oversight committee. They summon him twice. In the first session, the SISMI director maintains: We do not have documentary proof, only information that a central African country sold uranium ore to Baghdad. Thirty days later, Pollari says: We had documentary proof of the acquisition by Iraq of uranium ore from a republice in central Africa. We also know of an Iraqi attempt to purchase centrifuges for uranium enrichment from German and possibly Italian manufacturers. Once out of the maw of Parliament, Pollari is still confronted with the problem of conveying the phony dossier to Washington without leaving fingerprints. Pollari stumbles into a lucky break. SISMI “postman” Rocco Martino, who has already left a package on the doorstep of MI6, contacts Panorama reporter Elisabetta Burba and attempts to sell her the dossier. But is it the snakeoil salesman’s idea —or that of Antonio Nucera— or is someone else behind it? Mrs. Burba rightly double-checks the information in Niger. She concocts a cover of an investigation dinosaur tracks—from Oranosaurus nigeriensis to Afrovenator abakensis.

In the meantime, she is approached by a reliable source. Elisabetta does what a reporter has to do—with rigor and tenacity. She concludes that the story is baseless and refrains from publishing a single sentence. But in reality her efforts were after-the-fact, because the magazine’s Editor-in-Chief, Carlo Rossella, entralled with the possibly having found—as he tells his staff--a smoking gun, has forwarded the documents to the US Embassy in Rome, which he regards as "the highest source of confirmation". Does Pollari notify Berlusconi’s publication, Panorama, which is patting itself on the back over the uranium scoop, that the information is bogus? It seems that he did not. And this is how Jeff Castelli and the CIA came to find on their plate the half-baked frittata of which they'd been refusing to partake for nearly a year. The documents are such crude forgeries that they must be hidden from scrutiny lest they rain on Dick Cheney’s parade. The arrival of the documents in Washington occurs by stealth. They are distributed on October 16, 2002, to the various intelligence agencies by State Department officials during a routine meeting at which four CIA officials were in attendance. Not one of those present at the meeting is able to recall actually taking the dossier into their possession. Mysteriously, the "Italian papers" are “misplaced” at Langley for three months and it is only after an internal audit ordered by the Inspector-General that they are found inside a safe in the Counterproliferation Section. This is the first Italian lunge-and-parry. The uranium hoax inflated with the aluminum tube chicanery. But that is another story.

To be continued...

Berlusconi Behind Fake Yellowcake Dossier

Edited for errors and omissions and republished on 14 November 2005.

Update 2 Nov 05: View the crude forgeries here.

La Repubblica's Carlo Bonini and Giuseppe d'Avanzo have been bird-dogging the phony yellowcake documents and they now have the goods on Silvio Berlusconi, who instructed Italian Military Intelligence to plant the evidence implicating Saddam in a bogus uranium deal with Niger. This is their story, printed in yesterday's on-line edition and translated by your friendly little blog owner.

All the Italians behind Nigergate were doublecrossers and dilletantes.

The military intervention in Iraq was justified by two revelations: (1)Saddam Hussein attempted to acquire unprocessed uranium (yellowcake) in Niger for enrichment with centrifuges built with aluminum tubes imported from Europe;(2)The fabricators of the twin hoaxes (there was never any trace in Iraq of unprocessed uranium or of centrifuges) were the Italian Government and Italian military intelligence. La Repubblica has attempted to reconstruct the who, where and why of the manufacture and handover of the dodgy dossier for war to British and American intelligence.

They are the same two hoaxes that Judith Miller, the reporter who betrayed her newspaper, published (together with Michael Gordon) on September 8, 2002. In a lengthy investigative piece for the New York Times, Miller reported that Saddam could have built an atomic weapon with those aluminum tubes. These were the goods that the hawks in the Bush administration were expecting.

The "war dance" which followed Judith Miller’s scoop seemed like "carefully-prepared theater” to an attentive media-watcher, Roberto Reale of Ultime Notizie (The Latest News). [Note: Roberto Reale is a TV news commentator for RAI-3 and a professor of Language and Media at the University of Padua--Nur]

Condoleezza Rice, who was then White House Security Advisor, said on CNN: We don’t want the smoking gun to look like a mushroom cloud. A menacing Dick Cheney delivers a bolus injection on Meet the Press that We know with absolute certainty that Saddam is using his technical and commercial capabilities to acquire the material necessary to enrich uranium needed build a nuclear weapon. This was the beginning of an escalation of fear.

26 September 2002: Colin Powell warns the Senate: The Iraqi attempt to acquire uranium is proof of its nuclear ambitions.

19 December 2002: The information on Niger and the uranium is included in the three-page President’s Daily Briefing prepared each day by the CIA and the Department of State for George W. Bush. The ambassador to the United Nations, John Negroponte, added his stamp of approval: Why is Iraq dissimulating its purchase of Niger uranium?

28 January 2003: George W. Bush pronounced the 16 words, which amountd to a declaration of war. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

The beans in that bag are Roman.
In the general haze of events which precede the invasion of Iraq, Italian involvement is prefigured by a single, grotesque protagonist: Rocco Martino, son of Raffaele and America Ventrici, born in Tropea (Province of Catanzaro) on September 20, 1938.

Unmasked by the British press (The Financial Times, The Sunday Times) in the summer of 2004, Rocco Martino spills the beans: It’s true, I had a hand in the dissemination of those (Niger uranium) documents, but I was duped. Both Americans and Italians were involved behind the scenes. It was a disinformation operation.

An incomplete confession but close to the truth.
Martino conceals the identify of the architects behind the “operation” and appears to be merely a pawn, like his partners in crime. So who is the puppeteer pulling the strings in their sordid adventure? To find out, we’ll start with that funny-looking fellow who came to Rome from Tropea...

Rocco Martino is a dishonest cop and a double-crossing spy. He’s got the aura of a rogue about him even if you are not familiar with his background. A captain of politico-military intelligence between 1976 and 1977, he was let go for unethical behavior. In 1985, he was arrested for extortion in Italy. In 1993, he was arrested in Germany in possession of stolen checks. Nevertheless, according to a Defense Ministry official, Martino worked for SISMI until 1999 as a double agent.

Martino rents a place at No. 3 rue Hoehl in Sandweiler, Luxemburg. He gets a fixed stipend from French intelligence and uses a consulting firm as cover: Security Development Organization. In other words, he also works for French intelligence. Serving two masters, Rocco tries his best. He sells information on the Italians to the French and information on the French to the Italians. That’s my job. I sell information.

In 1999, the pleasure-seeking Rocco is running out of cash. When he’s down to his last dime, he hatches a plot of his own. He's convinced that he’s got a brilliant and risk-free idea. What illuminates the light bulb is the problem the French are encountering in Niger.

In brief, between 1999 and 2000 the French realize that someone is working abandoned mines to generate a brisk clandestine trade in uranium. Who is purchasing the smuggled uranium? The French are looking for an answer and Rocco Martino senses an opportunity.

So he asks for help from an old colleague at SISMI: Antonio Nucera. A Carabinieri (cop) like Rocco, Antonio is the Deputy Chief of the SISMI center in viale Pasteur in Rome. He’s chief of the 1st and the 8th divisions (weapons and technology transfers and WMD counterproliferation, respectively, for Africa and the Middle East).

This section is very busy section at the end of the 1980s tailing the many agents whom Saddam has deployed around the world prior to the invasion of Kuwait. “With some success”, according to an Italian intelligence official who at the time worked for the division. The official recalls: We succeeded in getting our hands on Niger code books and a telex from Ambassador Adamou Chékou to the Niger Foreign Ministry informing Niamey that Wissam al-Zahawie, the Iraqi Ambassador to the Vatican, would be coming to Niger as a representative of Saddam Hussein.

But that wasn’t all. We confiscated maraging steel (ultra-high strength steel) in the port of Trieste. We thought it was destined for a series of centrifuges used to separate uranium. We exchanged information on Iraqi nuclear proliferation at the end of the eighties with the British of MI6—the cream of the crop. A sincere friend of Italy worked there: Hamilton MacMillan. MacMillan mentored Francesco Cossiga [Interior Minister, in charge during the kidnapping and murder of Aldo Moro by the Red Brigades] in Cossiga's introduction to the mysterious ways of espionage when he was "resident" in Rome.

Nucera decided to give a hand to his old friend, Rocco. Rocco quickly briefs him on his predicament. Isn’t there anything you can give me—Info? A good Niger contact? I’ll take anything you have! The French are as dry as trekkers lost in the desert. They want to know who is buying their uranium under the table. I’m prepared to pay well to find out.

In the archives of Nucera’s SISMI division, there are documents that could be useful in pawning off a half-baked frittata and earning some cash. There’s the telex from the Niger ambassador. Further needs might be met at the Niger Embassy at No. 10 via Baiamonte in Rome. SISMI director Nicolò Pollari confirms to La Repubblica: Nucera wanted to help out his friend. He offered him the use of an intelligence asset—no big deal, you understand--one who was still on the books but inactive--to give a hand to Martino. The asset worked at the Niger Embassy in Rome. She was in bad shape. She barely eked out a living in the back of the espionage shop. She didn't get a monthy stipend from Italian intelligence. In other words, she was a contractor.

Information and cash were exchanged. It was only chickenfeed—a few hundred thousand lira notes. But that was a lot of money in 2000, when Martino was really desperate. He was on a slow slide to destitution—nothing to spy on and nothing to sell.

We'll call her, La Signora.
You should have seen her, "La Signora". Sixty years old if she were a day! A face that once was pretty—now it looked a wrinkled prune. You could call her a gofer for the Niger Embassy. She looked like my old auntie. A French accent. A complicit wink. Always spoke in a whisper. Even when she said “hello”, her voice was like a tiny, mysterious flute, ready to reveal a thousand secrets. But even "La Signora" was in need of cash.

Nucera arranged the meeting. Rocco and La Signora don’t take long. He going to get what he came for. But wasn’t Nucera her official contact at SISMI? Then why wasn’t she supposed to know that it was SISMI who wanted the favor? And why was the item useful to the Agency?

With the blessing of Nucera, Rocco and La Signora, a pair of clever snake oil vendors, conclude a bargain. There would be a few sheets of paper available for sale. But the help of a Niger national was needed. La Signora points him to the right man. He’s First Embassy Counselor Zakaria Yaou Maiga. As Pollari told us, that Maiga spent six times more than he earned.

The gang of spendthrift bunglers, short on cash, is ready to go into action. Rocco Martino, La Signora, Zakaria Yaou Maiga. Nucera retreats into the shadows. They wait for the embassy to close its doors for the New Years 2001 holiday. They simulate a break-in and burglary. When on January 2, 2001, bright and early, the Second Secretary for Administrative Affairs Arfou Mounkaila reports the burglary to the Carabinieri of the Trionfale station, he has to admit with a grin that the burglars were half-asleep. A lot of trouble and effort for nothing. Mounkaila is unable to report missing what he doesn’t know is gone: Letterhead, and official stamps. In the hands of the snake oil vendors, useful stuff with which to assemble a dodgy dossier.

In fabricating the dossier, stale documents, such as code books, are extracted from the SISMI's division archives (where Nucera serves as deputy chief of section). To this are added the sheets of stolen letterhead that are used to fabricate letters, contracts and a memorandum of understanding between the Government of Niger and Iraq “concerning the supply of uranium on 5 and 6 July 2000 in Niamey”. The memorandum has a 2-page attachment entitled “Agreement”. Rocco hands over the “package” to agents from the French Direction Générale de la Sécurité Extérieure. They hand him some banknotes which he spends in Nice. Rocco loves the Côte d’Azur.

Up to this point, a caper worthy of Totò, Peppino and La Malafemmina [Translator's Note: The reference is to a 1956 comedy film about three Neapolitan hayseeds on a trip to Milan]. But it's an innocuous swindle. The French take the documents and pitch them in the rubbish. One of the agents remarks, Niger is a French-speaking place and we know how they do things there. But no one would have mistaken one minister for another in they way they did in that useless parcel of garbage.

Case closed, then? No! The burlesque imbroglio is transformed into a very grave matter—along comes September 11th and Bush immediately begins to ponder Iraq and requests proof of Saddam’s involvement in the attacks.

SISMI recalls the via Baiamonti squad to into action. A new director, Nicolò Pollari, arrives at Forte Braschi. And Col. Alberto Manenti, the new man on the job, is placed in charge of WMD. A well-prepared officer but completely incapable of saying "No" to a superior, says a SISMI official who worked with him. Col. Manenti had Nucera on his staff for a time and knew him well. Manenti, who knows that Nucera is about to retire, asks him to stay on as a consultant.

SISMI wants to make itself useful. It's got more room for maneuver than ever before in the history of the Italian republic. Berlusconi asks Pollari for a feat on the international stage which will catapult Italy to the first among US allies. A request along the same lines comes in from the CIA station chief in Rome, Jeff Castelli. News, information, useful scraps of intelligence are needed. Now! On the double! Washington is looking for proof to use against Saddam.

The White House (in particular, Cheney) puts pressure on the CIA to hop to it. The absence of proof isn’t proof of absence, philosophizes Rumsfeld at the Pentagon. In that kind of climate, with their phony dossier, the snake oil salesmen of via Baiamonti, (Rocco Martino and Antonio Nucera) would be useful. So what do they do in the fall of 2001? Rocco Martino describes it this way: At the end of 2001, SISMI handed the yellowcake dossier to the British of MI6.

They hand over a dossier devoid of scrutiny. They claim only that they got it from “a creditable source.” Then they make a small adjustment to their story: SISMI wanted to disseminate the Niger documents to allied intelligence but at the same time it did not want its role in the operation to be disclosed. These are allegations which Palazzao Chigi vehemently denies. But government told a bald-faced lie. After the invasion reveals the WMD chicanery, the Italian Government swears that no uranium dossier was handed over or instructed to be handed over to anyone, either directly or through intermediaries.

The next move was predictable. The Italian Government and SISMI build a dike between Forte Braschi and the tracks of the via Biaimonte squad. But its denial does not hold up. It is a known fact that in fall of 2001, SISMI monitored Rocco Martino’s every move in London. This is confirmed to La Repubblica by SISMI chief Nicolò Pollari. We monitored Martino and photographed his meetings in London. Would you like to see the pictures? So why didn’t Rome put the lie to its ex-agent and snake oil salesman? Especially since the information in the dossier was vouched for by Pollari to Jeff Castelli, CIA Station Chief. It is a known fact that a report on the bogus, made-in-Rome dossier ended up at the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence—in the Office of Strategic, Military and WMD Proliferation Affairs.

Strategic Affairs is not a big place. At the time, 16 analysts worked there under the direction of Greg Thielmann. Thielmann tells La Repubblica: I received the report in fall of 2001. We thought that Langley had acquired it from their field officer in Italy. The agent in the field reports that Italian intelligence permitted him see some papers documenting the attempt by Iraq to acquire 500 tons of uranium ore from Niger. So, SISMI purported the truth of documents it knew to be false to the CIA. There’s a second confirmation. At Langley, Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson is assigned the mission to verify the Italian “tale” of the 500 tons of uranium.

Says Wilson: The report was not very detailed. It’s not clear if the agent who signed the report materially saw the peddled documents or whether he heard it from another source.

We'll have to modify the sequence of events:

Fall 2001: General Pollari’s SISMI is in possession of a phony dossier assembled by Rocco Martino and Antonio Nucera. They show it to the CIA while Rocco Martino delivers it to Sir Richard Dearlove’s MI6. This is only the beginning of the Great Italian Yellowcake Scam.

To be continued...

A court of law is nowhere to carry out diplomacy

Joshua Landis has this to say about the Syria crisis and Saad Hariri's request for an international trial of suspects fingered by the Mehlis Report:

The Syrian regime will not come apart as Washington is hoping. That is what I believe. The Mehlis situation is a big transformation of US-Syrian relations and puts the two in a whole different territory. A court of law is nowhere to carry out diplomacy. Deals cannot be made and compromises cannot be reached once the court is assembled. And for all intents and purposes the court has been assembled. The world has been promised that the perpetrators of the Hariri murder will be punished. President Asad has not been directly implicated, but the rest of his family has been. Trying to separate him from them will require fratricide. He won't do it. He cannot do it.

Iraq, The Project, is Doomed

The fresh shuffle and deal in Iraq.
A chat with Pierre-Jean Luizard, scholar at the Centre National des Recherches Scientifiques and author of the new book, La Question Irakienne (The Iraq Question), published by Fayard.

Q. I am very interested in the negative reaction from Iraq’s neighbors as to the future identity of the country. The federalism embedded in the Constitution worries Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Egypt. The prospect of the victory of the “yes” vote and the decentralization of power favoring the Shi’a and the Kurds are also worrisome. Is the federal model going to threaten stability in Iraq?
Right now, countries in the region are naturally worried--with the exception of Iran. Iran believes that it has assured its lasting influence in Iraq through the Shi’ite community, which is on the threshold of taking power. Arab countries and Turkey, where, as we know, Sunni Islam is the predominant religion, are concerned by the possible partition of Iraq along communal, ethnic and religious lines. If federalism is pushed to its extreme, these countries are convinced that Iraq will become a permanent source of instability and that the chaos will spill over far beyond its borders. In addition to this, I should mention the anti-Shi’ism and the distrust of the Kurds which are prevalent in countries with a Sunni majority, especially in Saudi Arabia, where Wahhabi Islam, officially at the reigns of power, is known for its virulent anti-Shi’ism. Iraq finds itself in double jeopardy: there is the impossibility of building a united country underpinned by its communities, as Iraq is now, and the partition of Iraq along these same community lines which will condemn Iraqi society to endless inter-community wars.

Q. If the new Constitution is accepted by the Iraqi people, what is it going to yield?
First, we have to wait for the results of the referendum to see if they are contested by any part of the populace. The delay insisted upon by the Elections Commission before announcing the results is feeding the fears of Sunni Arabs, who dread widespread manipulation in the majority Sunni Arab Province of Nineveh (Mosul), in order to deprive Sunni Arabs the legal and non-violent possibility of defeating the Constitution. We should remember that a two-thirds “No” vote in three provinces is sufficient to defeat the Constitution. We already know that Al-Anbar Province (Fallujah) and Salah-Aleddin Province (Tikrit) were able to must the two-thirds necessary to reject the Consitution. This makes the results from Mosul the deciding factor on whether or not the Constitution will be adopted. If the Constitution is accepted, then there will be an immediate outcry from the vast majority of Sunni Arabs, who will claim fraud and probably rightly so. They will likely conclude that the possibility of peacefully rejecting the Constitution and the ongoing process was denied to them. When this happens, we can expect to see a return to widespread violence, including by those who were betting on a chance for inclusion in political reconstruction.

Q. What is going to be the fate of the Sunni community in the new Iraq?
According to the Constitution, the fate reserved to Sunni Arabs in Iraq will inevitably be that of a powerless minority without access to natural resources. We know that the Shi’a have set a non-negotiable precondition that at least two provinces will be able to form a super-region similar to Kurdistan if a third of the Provincial Council or ten percent of voters approve. This is the swindle which the Sunnis must confront after publication of the results of the referendum, because they were made to believe that everything would be negotiable after the vote. If the Shi’a and the Kurds forge a unified block, then the Sunnis will find themselves in a situation which the vast majority of them will reject.

Q. We are seeing a small minority still supporting Saddam Husein during his trial. Isn’t there more or less the risk of a military putsch by the different groups and ethnicities in the country?
Today, Saddam Hussein is merely a symbolic figure, even for the insurgency. Sunni Arabs, who formed the social pillar of his régime, also wound up being persecuted by Saddam Hussein, especially the Dulaym and the Joubouri tribes. The only Iraqis today who have some nostalgia for the old régime are limited those in Saddam Hussein’s clan, especially around Tikrit, his hometown. There is no longer any risk of seeing the old dictator return to the political forum, where he would be seen as a figure of the past. The Sunni insurgency demands Islam or a nationalist Arab vision in which there is no room for Saddam Hussein.

The political reconstruction being carried out under US aegis is a Lebanese-style communitarian reconstruction: You take the victims of the old system, founded by the British in the 1920’s (The Shi’a and the Kurds), then you start constructing a new system based on these communities. Contrary to the Arabs in the 1920’s, the Shi’a and the Kurds will very likely find their expectations frustrated when they realize that the new system, in which they appear to be the chief beneficiaries, cannot be stabilized and that, consequently, their power is dependent upon a long-term foreign military presence. You have to remember that what divides the Sunni Arabs from the winners of the last election, the Shi’a and the Kurds, also divides the Shi’a from the Kurds and that the primacy of communitarian concerns has driven Iraqi political actors into making antagonistic demands on one another which in the end will prevent the new system from acquiring the even the most rudimentary stability.

Q. What other basis is there, besides a communitarian one, in a country where the Number One requirement of the population is the recognition of their identity?
Contrary to what you often hear, Iraq is not a mere juxtaposition of communities. The country represents a particularly strong identity, which has revealed itself over the course of history, especially during the 1920 revolution against the British Mandate in which Sunnis and Shi’a stood side-by-side in condemning handover of the country to the British by the League of Nations. However, this identity is above all Arab (80% of the Iraqi population is Arab), represented by the Shi’a majority among whom the resistance movement against European domination has always been guided by the Shi’ite religious authorities, who even welcomed into their midst certain leaders of Baghdad’s patriotic movements during the insurrection, despite the fact that they were Sunni. The only region which really poses a problem is Kurdistan, which was never part of historical Arab Iraq. Kurdistan was annexed by the Hashemite Kingdom of Iraq in 1925 at the insistence of the British after oil was discovered near Kirkuk. (At the time, the Wilayet of Mosul was also claimed by Kemalist Turkey). As we know, the promise of an independent state made to the Kurds by the Allies during World War I was broken. Today, in the current context of Iraq and the region, the Kurds have no other choice but to negotiate a new contract of coexistence with Iraqi Arabs which would protect them from represson and recognize their identity.

Federalism is certainly the best solution for the recognition of identity, but on the condition that it is not based on ethnic criteria which would be used to draw a frontier between Kurd and Arab and which, in petroleum-rich areas, would be the cause of endless war. On the other hand, an affirmation of partnership between Arabs and Kurds at the central government level which would allow Kurds anywhere in Iraq and not just in historic Kurdistan to expect their rights to be respected and recognized, would be the best solution.

As to the Shi’a, the recognition of their majority identity could be achieved by a concordat between the Iraqi state and the Marja'ayya (the Shi’ite religious leadership), somewhat like the Concordat between the Italian state and the Vatican. This way, the recognition of the different Iraqi identities would open up a public space permitting mutual recognition among all Iraqis in the new political system, instead of closing such a space as we see today where the different identities are forced into competition with one another having incompatible community demands.

THE AMERICAN FAILURE

Q. Is the trial of Saddam Hussein, which is about to begin, going to serve any purpose in the reconstruction process?
The vast majority of Iraqis recognize that the trial cannot take place under current circumstances and that it’s a travesty. Today, no one expects a veritable political trial of the former dictator. The reactions vis-à-vis Saddam Hussein are much more the result of a desire for vengeance. In the absence of any expectation of fair trial, which would not occlude the responsibility of the great powers--with the United State the first among them—in all the crimes of which he stands accused, many would prefer expeditious justice which would at least have the merit of being either a recompense for past suffering or a somewhat satisfying quaff for the desire for vengeance, which many Iraqis feel today.

Q. If the United States succeeds in Iraq, then the entire Middle East would slide into the lap of the Washington and would be under its tutelage for at least a century. Iraq is a key gamepiece in the Arab world, because it’s the most developed and the richest. Who controls Iraq controls the Arab world. What do you think?
If you are worried about the possibility of success of the current process under the aegis of the Americans, then let me reassure you. Based on my own analysis, I cannot see how the enterprise could succeed. The Americans believed that they could build an Iraqi state under their aegis, Lebanese-style, by forcing the various Iraqi communities into competition with one another. This is the basis they’ve been using for their reconstructon since it started.

But after having been the arsonists of an Iraqi society, which they have now permanently divided, the Americans have fallen into their own trap because now they cannot disengage from Iraq unless there is a sufficiently stable government with recognized legitimacy to which they can transfer power. As we are witnessing today, the vice of Lebanese-style reconstruction in Iraq is that not only is there always an odd-man-out (Sunni Arabs) but even those who are the chief beneficiaries, or consider themselves to be, will also come to display unreconcilable differences (the Shi’a and the Kurds). The Americans have handed over local power to community forces--the Kurdish parties in Kurdish areas and the Shi’ite militias in Shi’ite area. From that moment forward, the balance of force no longer permits them to find a consensus or to hammer out a compromise with Sunni Arabs. This was illustrated during the Consitutional referendum when the Americans attempted to make Sunni Arabs believe that the Shi’a and the Kurds would allow the Sunni voice to be heard in the ongoing process. The Shi’a officially declared that everything would be subject to renegotiation after the Consitutional referendum but at the same time they announced a non-negotiable demand: the possibility that two or more regions would unite to form a super-region. This made the assurances given to the Sunni Arabs--that renegotiation was possible after the adoption of the Constitution--devoid of all meaning because everything seemed predetermined from the start.

Q. Will the United States be able to hold on to a portion of the Iraqi oil fields after they leave?
In order to pull out from Iraq, the Americans need political stability and a legitimate government recognized by the entire Iraqi population—which will probably never happen. It looks as if they are condemned to remain militarily in Iraq as the occupying power which in turn will continue to feed the fires of communitarianism. The attempts to create a Shi’ite oil emirate in the south of the country in the image of the emirates and petromonarchies of the Gulf will never see the light of day and any profit which the US would derive from its presence in Iraq from a petroleum standpoint risks being reduced to nothing as long as instability and insecurity continue to prevent US companies from investing in Iraqi petroleum--the pricetag will remain prohibitive due to continuing insecurity.

Q. What will the region look like in ten years?
What will happen if the reconstruction attempted by the Americans in Iraq fails? It’s a hard question to answer. But if we believe that failure is inevitable, then perhaps the US will be better off by announcing a schedule for pullout today. Because the longer they put off the announcement, the worse things will get in Iraq—for them and for the Iraqis themselves. And even if the announcement of a pullout may be considered as a victory for al-Qaeda in Iraq, it’s better that it should happen today rather than a few years down the line when a US failure will have far more tragic consequences for the Western nations near the region.

Iraq: The Silly President

Il Corriere della Sera reporter Andrea Nicastro catches feckless Iraqi President Jalal Talabani shirking his duties.

Saddam will go to the gallows, but without my signature. I'm going to take a day of vacation, and the Vice Presidents will sign.
--Jalal Talabani

QALACHWALAN (Iraqi Kurdistan) — As a member of the Socialist International, Jalal Talabani signed the worldwide petition againt the death penalty. As President of Iraq, he faces the dilemma of signing the sentence of death by hanging for Saddam Hussein.

Q. President Talabani, what will you decide to do?
I am not going to sign. Not his death sentence or any other.

Q. Do you mean that Saddam does not have to fear for his life?
I said I would not sign, not that I'm opposed to the sentence.

Q. Excuse me?
I will take a day of vacation. The two Vice Presidents will sign in my place, if they choose to do so. This is what we've done for more than twelve capital offenses. (President Talabani has consented to an interview with Il Corriere della Sera in this military citadel in the mountains. He fought Saddam from here for decades. His Kurdish bodyguards, who protect Jalabani armed to the teeth in Baghdad, are superfluous here in Qalachwalan. A portrait of Talabani hangs in every office; the region has voted as solidly as granite for him. Here he can invite guests to dinner without a tank escort.)

Q. So you don't want to soil your hands by signing? Isn't that somewhat hypocritical?
(Talabani displays a disarming smile.) Are you joking or what? Do you know who we are talking about? A war criminal, a hated dicator, comparable only to Hitler. Your Mussolini was a pussycat by comparison. [Geez, ask any Ethiopian or Italian partigiano or communist, Mr. Talabani! What wilful ignorance--Nur].

Q. But you are a lawyer. How can you accept a trial in which the principal charges are embedded in the Preable of the Constitution? Saddam's death sentence is now in the DNA of the new Iraq.
Saddam isn't just anyone. We have tons of documents implicating him. He's not innocent. When 8,000 Kurds of the Barzani clan were murdered, Saddam went on TV, saying he had sent them to hell. He said that himself--a spontaneous public confession!

Q. So why are your wasting your time?
Even if you are caught in flagrante, you'll still get a trial. Even Saddam has that right. I once asked Saddam about the Kurds he gassed in Halabja. I'm sorry, he answered. If you ask him again, he'll blather something out defense of the nation or patriotic concerns. He'll tell you anything. The tribunal will decide his fate.

Q. The death sentence, then?
A very independent judge is conducting the trial. A Kurd from around here, but a member of a different political party. When someone tried to ask him a favor...he turned away, just like that! He's a man who can be counted upon to guarantee that justice is served. But it's a fact that Saddam is hated by the Iraqis. Even the Sunnis, if they were less afraid, would want him dead.

Q. Do you really believe that? What about the guerrillas?
I disagree. What are the guerrillas, or as one leftist extremist in Europe called them, the Resistance. I was once a guerrilla. I fought the dictator's army in the mountains. But neither I nor the Italian partigiani massacred hundreds of thousands of civilians. Those who are doing the killing today in Iraq, they're terrorists. Of course, well-equipped from abroad, but criminals nonetheless.

Q. Someone is assisting the insurgency? Who is that?
Radical Islamic groups. But also neighboring countries.

Q. Arabs?
I never used that word.

Q. What about Iran? Is it true that it controls the Shi'ite south?
It is certain that Iranian intelligence agencies have deployed thousands of agents to Iraq. But who controls the South? That I don't know. Our Shi'a are different from the Iranians. First, they are Arab and not Persian. Iraqis don't like it when one of their women marries a Persian, even if he is Shi'ite. Second, the Shi'ite ideology is imbued with Arabism. They believe that government should be in the hands of the descendents of the Prophet. Arabs, not Persians! Third, al-Sistani, the Grand Ayatollah of Najaf, is against a government run by clerics like that following the Khomeinist revolution. So, what would Iran expect to control?

Q. You are a leftist, yet Spanish PM Zapatero has abandoned you. And Prodi promises to do the same.
The trouble with the European left is that it is infected with anti-Americanism. I know d'Alema as a reasonable person. But if Prodi wants to abandon us, it's not important, thanks just the same.

Are the Italian troops in Nassiriya there to defend the interests of the Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi (Italian National Hydrocarbon Consortium)?
That's ridiculous. They are there to help us against a terrible dictator. And they're doing it effectively. I've seen only Russian, US, Turkish and Chinese oil companies around. Not one hint of an Italian oil presence.

In order to become President of Iraq, did you have to forget about Kurdish independence?
Irresponsible young people are asking that question. Very well. Let's ask that question. Tomorrow our neighbors will have no need to invade us. They'll simply close their frontiers and we'll die of hunger. Even if we were to have oil to sell, we wouldn't be able to export it. Independence remains a dream, but not autonomy and democracy. They were never material things.

Iraq: The Silly Constitution

L'Irak is in pieces and so is its Constitution by Joseph Yacoub, Professor of Political Science at the Catholic University of Lyon, France.

Article published in Le Monde | 22.10.05

On October 15th Iraqis voted on their Constitution. But what sort of legitimacy and validity can be attributed to this text, which has been amended time and time again in unexplained circumstances, the most recent amendment having been made three days before the vote and another one to take place before the legislative elections on December 15?

The most contradictory speculations on the Constitution have been circulating for months. As soon as a clause was adopted, several days later it had undergone a metamorphosis. After eight months of discussion, often sterile, there is a total lack of vision for a united Iraq. Each faction remained camped on its positions. Ethnic, regional and religious demands won over the national and public interests. The divisions are deep between the Shi’ites and the Kurds. And as to the Sunnis, they are suspicious of both. The Turkmen changed their positioon more than once and the Assyrian and Chaldean Christians are worried and divided.

One has to admit that the text contains everything and its opposite (the pairing of Islam and democracy, for example) and lacks any coherence. Its preamble is confused and omits the suffering of the Assyrian and Chaldean Christians. It’s written that no law may be adopted which is in contradiction with the constants and precepts of Islam and the principles of democracy (Article 2). It is without a plan for building a civil society and possesses no guiding political philosophy because partisan positions and personal rivalries are tremendous.

Kurdish leader Massoud Barzani, who is uncompromising concerning autonomy for his region, set the tone when he addressed Kurdish Parliament: If they want our participation in building the new Iraq, then they must guarantee the rights of our people. He added that the Kurds would never accept an Islamic identity for Iraq nor an Iraq considered part of the Arab nation. But Barzani did not leave the table with all his demands met--the text was amended several times with pressure from Arab countries.

Opposite to what the Kurds did, the Shi’ites of Moqtada Al-Sadr organized demonstrations to oppose federalism, synonymous with division, and defended the unity of the country. On this score, federalism is hard to pin down, vascillating between ethnic federalism and geographical federalism. The powers granted to the federal government over towns and regions are very weak. What’s more, this federalism is limited to a confederation of local powers with controlling influence in every domain, like states within the state. The Kurdish constitution being drafted heads in the same direction.

As to the Sunnis, they continue to resist what they consider to be a Kurdo-Shi’ite diktat. They were granted several concessions, notably on maintaining the unity of the country and on its Arab identity. But they got nothing truly satisfactory given the climate of distrust and political divisions.

But if in the end the Iraqi Parliament approved the text of the Constitution, its litigious points continue to be discussed. Disagreements have piled up and are polarized around twenty points which each faction considered strategic and off limits for compromise or arrangements.

Will the Constitution address the daily needs of the Iraqis in the exceptional climate of violence and fear, increasing criminality, an overwhelming deficiency in security, economic crisis, unemployment, housing shortage, no central government, scant tradition of democracy, no running water, no power and no gas? And under foreign occupation to boot?

Given the stakes and the constitutional challenges represented by the country’s national identity, the church-state relationship, the nature and the structure of the state (federal, unitary, and decentralized) the form of the political system (parliamentary and federal), the balance between its religious, ethic and tribal communities, the status of women, the repartition of governmental posts and administrative positions and the sharing of wealth, this Constitution will change nothing in the lives of Iraqis because its provisions are so amorphous. The path to “cantonization” has been opened up in Iraq.

The Mehlis Report: Crime, as in Gotham City

Turn on the Batbeacon! This is a job for Batman!

The assassination of Rafiq Hariri is looking more like a script for Batman than the Day of the Jackal (the 1973 film about an attempt by French military officers to assassinate DeGaulle because he was willing to give Algeria its independence).

The Mehlis Report has been released and at a first look, it's a narrative of dirty cops, corrupt bosses, and abuse of power and privilege by the insiders to run a lucrative crime syndicate rather than a serious effort to destabilize Lebanon. In other words, the Penguin pulling the strings of the Gotham City Police Commissioner.

Is Syria involved? Syrian actors, certainly, regarded Lebanon as a booty of conquest entitling them to run monopolies, distribute the spoils, and enforce a racket of patronage and corruption. The Syrian crime lords may have had a falling out with Mister Big--Rafiq Hariri--and rubbed him out. But it will be difficult for Condoleezza Rice to nail Bashir al-Assad for a probable rogue crime operation run by corrupt security officials in search of lucre. How high did the corruption go? The Syrian Foreign Minister appears to have attempted some clumsy ass-covering which failed to convince the intended audience--the UN. So far, it's unclear if the actual murder strays beyond the Syrian and Lebanese security establishments.

And speaking of pulling strings and dark conspiracies, may I also point out the shameless hypocrisy of Washington, baying like a hound for Syrian blood. Without mentioning the Iraq debacle, the US only recently had a hand in the kidnapping and sequestering of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

BTW, Helena Cobban has two excellent posts on the Mehlis Report:
Asef Shawkat and Karl Rove
Mehlis Report accusing Syria

...as well as Joshua Landis:
Mehlis Report: Shades of Grey

From Agence France Presse: [Translated from French]

Syria, as well as Lebanon, are implicated in the assassination of Lebanese ex-Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, concludes the report of the UN Independent Commission of Investigation. There is "convergent evidence" which reveals both Lebanese and Syrian involvement in this terrorist act, relates Detlev Mehlis, the head of the commission, in his report submitted on Thursday to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan after four months of investigation and made public Thursday night.

The German magistate emphasizes that the assassination could not have been committed without the knowledge of high-ranking Syrian officials. It is a well-known fact that Syrian military intelligence had a pervasive presence in Lebanon at least until the pullout of Syrian forces in compliance with Resolution 1559. Former high ranking Lebanese security officials had been appointed by [Syrian military intelligence]. Given the infiltration of Lebanese society and institutions by Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services working in tandem, it would be difficult to imagine a scenario whereby such a complex assassination plot could have been carried out without their knowledge, Mehlis added. One can reasonably think that the decision [to assassinate Rafik Hariri] could not have been made without the approval of high-ranking officials inside Syrian intelligence and could not have been orchestrated without the complicity of its counterparts inside Lebanese security, continued Mr. Mehlis. The motive for the assassination was probably political, Mehlis added. However, because the crime was not the work of an individual but of a group having access to perfected means, it is very possible that fraud, corruption and money laundering motivated certain people to participate in the operation, the text continues.

Mr. Mehlis also declared that Syrian officials, including the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Farook al-Shareh, "attempted to put investigators off the trail of the crime." While Syrian authorities, after initial hesitation, cooperated up to a certain point(...), several persons who were questioned attempted to send our investigation down the wrong path, he said. The letter addressed to the Commission by the Foreign Minister of the Syrian Arab Republic was revealed to contain false information, Mehlis accuses. The Commission concluded that after having interviewed witnesses and suspects in Syria and having established that several trails of evidence lead directly to Syrian security officials and implicated them in the assasination, it is incumbant upon the Syrian state to provide clarification to a significant potion of our unanswered questions.

The assassination of Rafiq Hariri and 20 others by a bomb planted in downtown Beirut on 14 February plunged Lebanon into a crisis. Several Lebanese held Syria, a neighboring country which held its smaller neighbor under its tutelage for three decades, responsible for the crime. Damascus has always denied any involvement. The crime also raised cries of indignation throughout the world and accelerated the departure of Syrian forces from Lebanon, which was one of the demands of UN Security Resolution 1559. The Mehlis Report was distributed to the fifteen members of the Security Council as well as to Lebanon, said the UN. In a cover letter, Mr. Annan indicated his intention of asking the Security Council to extend the mandate of the Mehlis Commission until 15 December as requested by the Lebanese government.

An interim report also implicated four Lebanese generals, now in preventative custody, who worked closely with Syrian intelligence Investigators went to Damascus in September where they took depositions from Syrian nationals, including Ghazi Kanaan, Syria's former strongman in Lebanon and Interior Minister who according to Syrian officials committed suicide on October 12 in his office in Damascus.

Burn 'Em Black and Facing Mecca

The Tamurlane School of Public Diplomacy

Special Broadcasting Service (SBS), Australia's multicultural and multilingual public broadcaster, aired an inteview last night betweeen its Dateline program host, George Negus, and freelance photographer Stephen Dupont, who was embedded with the US 173rd Airborne in Gonbaz, southern Afghanistan.

In what is by now the usual contemptuous religious desecration and violation of the Geneva Conventions by American GIs, Dupont witnessed and filmed the paratroopers as they burned corpses of enemy dead. But the insult was further injured when the paratroopers oriented the bodies to face west, deliberately mocking the Islamic requirement to face Mecca during prayers. A US PsyOps unit then broadcast a propaganda message on loudspeakers to Taliban fighters, taunting them to retrieve their dead and fight:

US soldiers have set fire to the bodies of the two Taliban killed the night before. The burning of the corpses and the fact that they've been laid out facing Mecca is a deliberate desecration of Muslim beliefs.

SOLDIER: Wow, look at the blood coming out of the mouth on that one, fucking straight death metal.

SGT JIM BAKER Attention, Taliban, you are all cowardly dogs. You allowed your fighters to be laid down facing west and burned. You are too scared to come down and retrieve their bodies. This just proves you are the lady boys we always believed you to be.

These soldiers have clearly been trained to denigrate and enrage Muslims. Such blatant disrespect for the corpses of their enemy is a breach of the Geneva Convention. It also heightens the perception of local people that the Americans are just as barbarous as the Taliban say they are.

The gruesome episode is explored in text, audio and video here at the SBS Dateline website.

The Uneasy Justice of a Show Trial

Plantu in LeMonde.


Christian Merville of L'Orient-Le Jour considers yesterday's opening day of the trial of Saddam Hussein and discovers an irony:

Victor's Justice

One would not have too many qualms about sending the man, who yesterday stood before the members of the Iraqi Special Tribunal, to the firing squad. I am the President of the Republic he once shouted to US Marines, who twenty-two months ago came to pull him out of the rat’s hole where he had hidden for weeks. He made the same affirmation again several times today—even going so far as to question the Tribunal’s Chief Justice, the Kurd Rizkar Mohammed Amin, who was left speechless: Who are you? I want to know!, without taking the trouble to add, to judge me? Right off the bat, Saddam Hussein let it be know that he wanted his constitutional rights respected, that he recognized neither the authority behind the appointment of his judges nor the legality of the proceedings (“this aggression”) and that everything based on injustice is unjust itself. The executioner transformed into champion of the law, magistrates whose identities are kept secret “out of concern for their security”, the state’s attorney reduced to defendant in the space of an instant—all this gave the impression of being in a B-movie with a script written by Franz Kafka. But what do you expect? It’s hard, even belittling and humiliating for an entire nation to have forgotten that you were once the tyrant who for nearly a quarter-century lived in an ivory tower, besotted by praise, courted by the entire world—and yes, even by the Americans, who today are...—and pampered by his Arab peers.

Hardly had the trial been postponed until November 28th, following a grueling start, when courtroom observers began asking a number of questions. Of all the abominable crimes committed by the Baghdad régime, why choose to begin with the Dujail affair, where, on July 8, 1982 the village, 60 km from the capital, was razed to the ground after an ambush was set for the Presidential convoy of white Mercedes as it passed through the town? After all, there are more than 300 mass graves and nearly 300,000 victims which have produced a mountain of evidence weighing nearly 30 tons. The reason, I’m told, can be found in the fact that the ambush was laid by the men of al-Da‘wa al-Islamiyya, a Shi’ite opposition movement in which the current Iraqi Prime Minister, Ibrahim Jaafari, was a member. But even stranger, is the fact that the Iraqi Special Tribunal was created in 2003 while the country was still under the administration of L. Paul Bremer in virtue of a law issued during the era of Saddam Hussein which provided that the accused may be found guilty if the judges are satisfied of guilt instead of beyond all reasonable doubt as required in the US judicial system—and as Human Rights Watch has pointed out rather opportunely?

As the trial continues, this permits the defense to cite, in addition to the pressures exerted by the current authorities and equally sufficient as justifiable grounds for a motion of mistrial, a statement by Chief of State Jalal Talabani on the massacre of the Kurds during Operation Anfal—during which the chemical attack on Halabja was carried out in 1988—if only for this act, Saddam deserves the death sentence twenty times over. The defense lawyers could also bring up the fact that today’s postponement was motivated by the failure of the prosecution witnesses to show up—too frightened to take the stand—as Rizkar Amin pointed out in the most serious manner, just as Raadi Juhi, the judge hearing the case, spoke of re-summoning the witnesses, a delicate euphemism which barely masked an unspoken reality. But above all, there is the risk of seeing this trial deepen the divide, already enormous, between the Sunnis on once side and the Shi’ites and the Kurds on the other: Saddam is a hero because he fought the United States: his trial cannot begin as long as Iraq is occupied by the US Army. It’s true that this statement comes out of the mouth of a resident of Fallujah, a Sunni city par excellence, which has been standing up to Coalition forces for months. But this view is counterbalanced by countless statements coupled with hushed pressures which are violently hostile to the accused. Both sides cannot be ignored by the government and this should give the Pentagon generals, who are over-inclined to look at things through the wrong end of the telescope, pause to consider.

They tell me that Iraq’s former master loved to compare himself to the Caliph Abu Jaafar al-Mansour, the founder of the capital whose statue, which was blown up the day before the opening of the trial, adorned a square of the same name. Of course, any such comparison could only have existed in the mind of his distant and unworthy successor. It is undesireable, whether by error or by blunder, to make a hero out of someone who, after all, was only a hiccup in history. Too long a hiccup, to be sure, and too bloody.

The Cheney-Rumsfeld Cabal Exposed!

It was merely a brown bag lunch event today at the New America Foundation on Connecticut Avenue in Washington DC. But the speaker, Larry Wilkerson, Former Chief of Staff, State Department, 2002-2005, has lanced bulbous tumor of secrecy and deceit growing out of the Vice President's Office. You can find the audio file here of the earthshaking speech:

What I saw was a cabal between the Vice-President of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made. Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences....

They’ve got every Congressman, every Senator, they got it covered. Now, it’s not to say that they aren’t smart businessmen. They are, and women. They are. But it’s something we should be looking at, something we should be looking at. So you’ve got this collegiality there between the Secretary of Defense and the Vice President. And then you’ve got a President who is not versed in international relations. And not too much interested in them either.

The story has been picked up by Edward Alden, Washington correspondent for the Financial Times, who has written a report with a link to the full written transcript in the FT's October 20th edition. Alden points to three other specific charges made by Wilkerson:

■ The detainee abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere was “a concrete example” of the decision-making problem, with the president and other top officials in effect giving the green light to soldiers to abuse detainees. “You don't have this kind of pervasive attitude out there unless you've condoned it.”

■ Condoleezza Rice, the former national security adviser and now secretary of state, was “part of the problem”. Instead of ensuring that Mr Bush received the best possible advice, “she would side with the president to build her intimacy with the president”.

■ The military, particularly the Army and Marine corps, is overstretched and demoralised. Officers, Mr Wilkerson claimed, “start voting with their feet, as they did in Vietnam. . . and all of a sudden your military begins to unravel”

The worm has turned, friends...

Saddam Hussein on Trial

Update: Trial postponed until 28 November at the request of the defense.

The Iraqi Special Tribunal that is to judge Saddam Hussein on Wednesday 19 October somewhere in Baghdad was created by decree of Paul Bremer, the former proconsul in Iraq, on December 10, 2003. The Iraqi selected to put together the IST —to recruit its staff, bailiffs, judges and magistrates at the expense of the American taxpayer— was a fellow by the name of Salem Chalabi. He is the nephew of Ahmed Chalabi, the businessman sentenced in abstentia to 18 years in prison for fraudulent bankruptcy who today is Iraqi Vice-Premier. Salem Chalabi, a business attorney, is a fugitive at present after an arrest warrant was issued against him for suspected murder.

The IST venue, where an unknown number of international observers and 25 reporters selected at random to witness the initial hearing will be brought, has been kept secret until the last moment. The IST will sit, depending on the security situation, says a US spokesman, in a room in the Green Zone in downtown Baghdad or in a US military base near Baghdad International Airport where the former dictator has been held since his capture on December 13, 2003. The identity of the five judges who will determine the fate of the prisoner will remain secret for reasons of security. The same goes for the forty magistrates responsible for gathering evidence on the crimes against humanity for which the former President stands accused.

Also kept secret are the names of the US investigators of the Regime Crime Liaison Office, a branch of the FBI, which continues to assist the Iraqis in locating evidence although, as Noah Feldman, a former advisor to Paul Bremer, lamented, they neither read nor speak Arabic. As to the team of US investigators, Egyptian-American International Law professor Cherif Bassouni, one of the architects of the International Criminal Court at the Hague, says that confidentiality is necessary to dissimulate the stamp of the US on the trial proceedings.

Initially invited to Washington to participate in the design of the Iraqi Special Tribunal, 60 year-old Bassouni, who prizes his international reputation, withdrew from this absolutely incomprehensible mish-mash, according to a story by Jean-Pierre Krief and published by Arte on September 27th.

Michael Sharf, an American professor of International Law hired by the US Justice Department to train Iraqi magistrates, has described the judicial UFO that is the Iraqi Special Tribunal as a domestic internationalized court and has deplored the public relations stunt of parading Saddam Hussein in front of the television cameras before a judge on July 1, 2004—three days before the transfer of sovereignty to Iyad Allawi’s interim government.

The former Iraqi dictator was twice sent before the IST—on 13 June and 21 July 2005, but only selected images showing a weakened man, were released to the media. Raed Juhi, the 36 year-old judge who presided over the questioning has since beeb demoted to tribunal spokesman after Vice Premier Ahmed Chelabi, who controls the de-Ba’athification Committee put in place by the Americans, attacked him for his handling of the prosecution. Raed Juhi was the same judge who signed the arrest warrant for Salem Chelabi.

Prosecutable on a dozen charges relating to several mass murders, beginning with the massacre of thousands of Kurds in the 1980’s, then thousands of Shi’ites in the 1990’s, Saddam Hussein has to answer only one charge during the current trial: the 1982 execution and the disappearance of 143 Shi’ite civilians in the small town of Doujail, 60 km north of Baghdad.

The incident took place after an assassination attempt on his person. The convoy in which Saddam was traveling was machine-gunned as he rode through town. The next day, 9 July 1982, members of the powerful Republican Guard descended on Doujail and more than 600 people were arrested and tortured.

The survivors who have accepted to serve as witnesses may remain anonymous in the eyes of the public, said Judge Juhi. They will give their testimony behind an opaque glass screen unless Saddam’s lawyer obtains a postponement to a later date after the charges are read against his client.

Patrice Claude, Le Monde Special Correspondent to Baghdad.
LE MONDE | 18.10.05 |

18 October 2005 Events in Iraq

Kirkuk. One Iraqi Army soldier was killed and another three wounded when gunmen ambushed them in the downtown al-Wasiti district of Kirkuk, 250 km (155 miles) north of Baghdad.

Balad. Police said they found the bodies of six poultry factory workers who were members of the Mehdi army, a militia loyal to Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, in a river bed at Balad, about 80 km (50 miles) north of Baghdad. Relatives said the men had disappeared 14 days ago.

Mahaweel. Three civilians were killed and another seven wounded on Monday night when gunmen attacked the Sunni al-Rahman mosque south of Baghdad.

Baghdad. Ayed Abdul Ghani, an adviser to Industry Minister Usama Abdul Aziz al-Najafi, a Sunni Arab, was killed by gunmen outside his home in Baghdad.

Rutba. Two U.S. marines were killed on Monday by small-arms fire near Rutba, 370 km (230 miles) west of Baghdad near the borders with Syria and Jordan. Four insurgents were also killed in the clash.

Baghdad. Iraqi elections officials downplayed accusations of fraud in the popular referendum on the Constitution and said the final vote tally would take time. In Nineveh Province, the Sunnis have accused the Kurkds of stuffing the ballot box to guarantee a "yes" vote which the Kurds deny. Envoy James Jeffrey, Iraq Coordinator for the Department of State, said he was pleased with the referendum process, which displayed fewer irregularities than in January.

New York. UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan predicts that the new Constitution will not end the violence in Iraq.

Baghdad. A carbomb wounds three civilians.

Baghdad. Iraqi authorites observe a very high level of discretion on the trial of Saddam Hussein, which opens tomorrow. Meanwhile, Iran has forwarded charges of its own to Iraqi judicial authorities. Saddam and seven of his lieutenants will be tried tomorrow for the 1982 massacre of 143 Shi'ites in Doujail. They face the penalty of death by hanging. It is expected that Saddam's attorney, Khalil al-Doulaimi, will request a postponement.

Tehran. Iran has forwarded a judicial dossier to Iraq charging Saddam Hussein with bombardment of schools, mosques and homes, the use of chemical weapons, genocide, crimes against humanity and violation of international charters during the Iran-Iraq War, said Iranian Judiciary spokeman Jamal Karimi-Rad.

Stockholm. Former chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix says he belives the trial of Saddam Hussein is "very important" while stating that the fall of the Iraqi dictator was the only advantage gained by the US-led invasion.

Jericho. Two Palestinian activists, both members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade, escaped a prison where they were being held by the Palestinian Authority. Wajdi Tawfiq Akel and Mahmoud Adel Edis of Jenin were arrested and jailed for attacks on Israeli settlers.

23:56 Washington. The US military will investigate if its warplanes and combat helicopters were responsible for the deaths of civilians during a recent operation in Ramadi. The US military claims it killed only "terrorists."

23:54 A young US citizen, accused of participating in a plot to assassinate President George Bush, was whipped and tortured while imprisoned in Saudi Arabia, said a physician. Allen Keller, a physician specializing in the diagnosis and treatement of torture victims, said that Ahmed Abu Ali was tortured while in custody in Saudi Arabia. Meanwhile two other physicians, Dermatologist Robert Katz and Richard Schwartz, contractors to the FBI, said that the marks on Ali's back were caused by "abnormal pigmentation."

23:46 Washington. Security needs in Iraq will require more funding and reconstruction projects will have to be abandoned, said Stuart Bowen, the US special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, in testimony to a House committee. Of the $30 billion earmarked for Iraq, only 7% has not yet been spent and 26% of the funds are being used to protect existing installations.

23:27 Washington. Billions of dollars spent by the US in Iraq on water purification, power generation and sewage treatment projects have been wasted due to untrained Iraqi maintenance workers, said Congressman Henry Waxman. As of June 2005, water purification and sewage treatment projects financed by the USA and costing $52 billion are either out of service or operating at less than normal capacity.

23:22 Beirut. The spokesman for the UN commission investigating the death of Rafiq Hariri has been temporarily evacuated from Lebanon due to threats on his life. The nature of the threats against Tunisian national Nejib Friji have not been revealed.

22:17 The lawyer for Saddam Hussein announced that he would seek a postponement of the trial by at least three months.

21:54 Baghdad. The outlawed Ba'ath Party has urged its members to attack US and Iraqi forces on the opening day of the trial of Saddam Hussein: Let us strike the army and the security forces of the puppet regime, its leaders and its traitors.

21:41 Tikrit. Dozens of supporters of Saddam Hussein demonstrated in Tikrit and in Dour, north of Baghdad.

19:36 Beirut. Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora and Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas expressed concern at the "illegal entry of arms and supplies to Palestinian militias in Lebanon." Abbas said he supported Lebanese efforts to forbid the presence in Lebanon of armed, pro-Syrian organizations but insisted on a the opening of a Palestinian Embassy in Lebanon.

19:18 New York. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice held talks with UN Secretary General Kofi Annan on Syria.

18:51 London. The families of British soldiers killed in Iraq have set up camp in front of the Prime Minister's residence to demand an independent inquiry into the legality of the war. Susan Smith, 44, whose son was killed in Iraq, says the group was inspired by Cindy Sheehan.

18:42 St. Petersburg. The director of the Israeli Cultural Center was beaten and robbed in the street.

17:56 Paris. Lebanese parliamentary majority leader Saad Hariri held talks with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas on armed Palestinian factions in Lebanon. Abbas said the groups were not above Lebanese law.

17:33 Paris. Lebanese parliamentary majority leader Saad Hariri will fly to Cairo where he will hold talks with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak before the pubication of the Mehlis Report at the end of the week. .

17:43 London. NGOs demand a fair trial for Saddam Hussein. Both Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International note irregularities and inadequacies in the Iraqi Special Tribunal.

17:42 New York. Paul Volcker, Chairman of the Oil-for-Food investigation committee, said a culture of laissez-faire within the UN led to oil smuggling and kickbacks despite UN sanctions. Mr. Volcker was careful to avoid the term, culture of corruption, used by Republican Senator Norm Coleman.

16:42 Baghdad. Saddam Hussein's rights have been «violated» in the legal process following his capture, one of his top American lawyers said Tuesday on the eve of the deposed Iraqi leader's trial. Ex-U.S. attorney-general Ramsey Clark also cited reports by international human rights groups, like the U.S.-based Human Rights Watch and the Britain-based Amnesty International, which questioned if Saddam will receive a fair trial.

16:31 Washington. President George W. Bush met with Quartet Special Representative James Wolfensohn at the White House to discuss progress in Gaza following the Israeli evacuation.

16:14 Ahwaz (Iran). Twenty people were arrested in connection with an attempted bombing, two days after twin bombings killed six and wounded hundreds in the Arab province of Khouzistan

16:03 Cairo. Egypt is trying to defuse tension between the United States and Syria, the Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Aboul Gheit. The last thing Egypt wants is to see another point of tension in the region, he said before flying to Moscow for talks with the Russian government, which has long been allied with Syria. Aboul Gheit did not disclose details of the Egyptian initiative, but a top Egyptian diplomat said Cairo wants to avoid a situation like the U.S.-Iraq standoff, which culminated in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein.

16:02 Baghdad. PM Ibrahim Jaafari says no Iraqi will weep for Saddam Hussein.

15:44 Rafah. More than 250 members of Fatah announced that they have left the political movement to protest the lack of internal freedom. In an open letter, 259 Fatah members announced their decision to break with the organization.

15:38 London. Tension continues to mount between London and Tehran, which accuses the UK of involvment in acts of terrorism last weekend in Iran.

15:31 Baghdad. The government of Iraq announced that Abu Moussab al-Zarqawi prefers foreigners to the "soft" Iraqis as emirs within his organization. [Lame attempt at Black Ops--Nur].

15:18 Ramadi. The deputy governor of Anbar province Talib al-Dulaimi was shot dead by gunmen. His bodyguard was also killed in the attack.

15:24 London. Amesty International says it opposes the death penalty for Saddam Hussein.

Abbas Before the Inquisition

The Palestinian leader annointed by Bush will kneel before him on Thursday. Mahmoud Abbas has been summoned by Washington to be informed of the Inquisition's sentence--an auto da fé of unconditional disarmament of Palestinian militants, including those within his own party. The humiliation by Abbas by George W. Bush will have dire consequences. Peace is a dead letter.

Christain Merville of L'Orient-Le Jour (Beirut) does the analysis.

Mahmoud Abbas: Starting today, the calm set to reign over the Territories will mark the beginning of a new era.

Ariel Sharon: For the first time in a long while, the hope exists in the region for a better future for us and for our grandchildren.

Condoleezza Rice: At this moment, optimism is certainly justified....I noticed that the two leaders have understood that it is time to move forward.

Could it be yesterday or back in February? Was it centuries ago? No matter. The Middle East seems to have taken up again with its old demons again. Like last Sunday, when members of the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a paramilitary organization linked to Fattah, shot dead three settlers hitchhiking near the Gush Etzion colony, one of three settlements which the Jewish State has sworn never to abandon in future peace negotiations. A few minutes later, two other settlers were wounded in Eli, also on the west bank of the Jordan, where 245,000 kibbutzniks have settled. This time, there was no massive retaliation—at least not with artillery and combat helicopters. Instead there has been a freeze declared on all contact with the Palestinian Authority, a series of restrictions has been imposed on the West Bank population and security in public places has been reinforced.

The history of this over-promised land offers only a mirage of peace which each time withdraws farther into the distance the closer one approaches it. This was what happened when a general named Sharon, escorted by a cohort of troops, made a fateful visit to the Temple Esplanade, the Haram al-Sharif, and made the solemn vow that the site, sacred to Jews and Muslims, would remain eternally Israeli. We are familiar with the consequences: the outbreak of an Intifada, which swept away hopes for peace. It’s true that those hopes were slim from the outset but now they have been transformed into bloody feuds among brothers-in-arms. An NGO has just reported the sinister toll: Over the first nine months of 2005, fratricidal clashes have claimed 219 victims, versus 218 slain by enemy bullets. As soon as Sunday evening, one of the leaders of the al-Aqsa Brigades, Zakaria Zubeydi, let it be known that he had no intention of respecting the ceasefire as long a Tel-Aviv pursues a policy of liquidating Palestinian military leaders. This bodes ill as the government of Ahmed Qorei as it prepares for legislative elections scheduled for January 25th.

How does one organize general elections without the participation of the extremist movements, which Israel rejects at all costs? And how does one disarm the militias before the start of genuine, constructive talks? We’re back to the eternal story of the chicken and the egg. The parcel of authority enjoyed by Abu Mazen is hotly contested by his own people. It is a seriously weakened man who will have to stand before George W. Bush in another forty-eight hours.

Before arriving in Washington, Abbas will have met with Abdullah of Jordan, followed by Hosni Mubarak, before being received by Jacques Chirac and afterwards flying to Madrid to meet José Luis Zapatero. In total, four warm-up rounds before the final match in Washington, where he plans to hand the White House a shopping list that already knows will be impossible to grant. Let’s take a look at what's on it: The US must pressure Israel to free hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, more Arab territory must be given back and a freeze on settlements must be instituted. During his last visit to Washington in May, the President of the Palestinian Authority wanted to know Israel’s real intentions following the Gaza evacuation. What he heard from the mouth of his American hosts reassured him and restored a semblance of order within the ranks. There is nothing to indicate that the same will happen on Thursday.

At the meeting scheduled last Sunday to examine the reopening of the Rafah crossing (an indispensable measure for the economic recovery of the Gaza Strip), the Israeli negotiators did not show up and informed their counterparts that they will stay away until Hamas and Islamic Jihad are disarmed—a task that will not be possible until normalization of relations begins. The boycott decided early in the week is a Pavlovian response, said former minister Yossi Beilin. The extremists in both camps can now congratulate themselves--Mission Accomplished!

Recent Trials of Heads of State

Reuters carried a nice little dispatch on the fate of recent dictators who lived long enough to be put on trial:

...
The opening in Baghdad of the trial of Saddam Hussein is the most recent in a series of trials of former heads of state judged for their crimes during their years of in power.

PAPADOPOULOS - George Papadopoulos, leader of the Colonels’ Junta (1969-1974) was found guilty and condemned to death in 1975 for high treason. His death sented was commuted to life in prison, where he died in 1999.

ARGENTINIAN DICTATORS: Found guilty of multiple homicide and torture, General Jorge Videla and Admiral Emilio Massera were sentenced to life in prison. General Roberto Viola got 17 years in prison in 1985 at the end of a lengthy trial against the leaders of the 1976-1983 military dictatorship in Argentina during which 30,000 people were murdered or “disappeared”. The generals were all pardoned in 1990.

MENGISTU HAILE MARIAM. In power from 1974 to 1991, Mengistu has been on trial for the last ten years in abstentia for his role in the Red Terror, a period during which the Red Negus (Amharic for emperor) had tens of thousands of Ethiopians executed or "disappeared". He has been in exile in Zimbabwe since the fall of his regime.

CEAUSESCU – Romanian President Nicolae Ceausescu, overthrown in December 1989 after holding absolute power for 24 years, was executed for genocide, destruction of property and destruction of the national economy.

POL POT: Saloth Sar, known as Brother Number One, responsible for the death of nearly two million people during the Khmer Rouge reign of terror in Cambodia(1975-1979), was arrested, tried for treason and sentenced to life in prison by his former comrades during a people’s trial in 1997. He died in April 1998.

MILOSEVIC – Removed from power in October 2000, arrested in Belgrade in April 2001 and transferred to The Hague, former Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic has been on trial since February 2002 before the International Criminal Court for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity durng the conflicts with Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo. He is the first head of state to be tried by the Court.

PINOCHET – Former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet has escaped trial. Charges filed against him in December 2004 for the murder of political opponents during Operation Condor have since been dropped (September 2005). However, his immunity has been lifted for his role in Operation Colombo, the 1975 execution of Chilean Leftist militants.

CHARLES TAYLOR – Liberian ex-President Charles Taylor, exiled to Nigeria in August 2003, has escaped justice. Charged by a special United Nations tribunal in Sierra Leone, Taylor must stand trial for crimes committed during the 1991-2001 civil war which killed 300,000 people. However, despite international pressure, Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo has refused to extradite him.
...

Like Pinochet, many of Saddam's crimes were committed with a wink from if not the support of the United States--and its Arab allies. Last week, I heard King Abdallah of Saudi Arabia refer to the war which we fought in reference to the First Persian Gulf War. The Shi'ites and the Kurds certainly was the death sentence for Saddam because of the persecution of which they were victims. But external political exigencies will likely either lead to his exile or his incarceration for life.

Dial "B" for Assassination

The US Administration is chomping at the bit for a chance to bring more turmoil to Arab countries should the Mehlis report finger Syria in the assassination of former Lebanese PM and construction billionaire Rafiq Hariri. But far away from Damascus, on mainland Europe, in the heart of the NATO alliance, an honest politician was gunned down after going to vote.

Yesterday as he left the voting booth, Francesco Fortugno was shot dead by two assassins. The brazen symbolic murder was a death threat to all politicians associated with L'Unione, the Lefist coalition expected to take power from Berlusconi in April 2006.

The body Francesco Fortugno will lie in state all day tomorrow in the chambers of the Regional Council of Calabria where he served as Deputy Chairman. In addition to his service to the public, Francesco Fortugno was the father of two, a physician, a forensic scientist, a professor of medicine at the Medical Faculty of the Università di Catanzaro and Secretary of the Academy of Medicine of Reggio Calabria.

The fact that assassins dared to act so boldly in broad daylight with no fear whatsoever of the law in a Western country and NATO ally is a warning of a bloody season ahead in Italy. This is a deliberate provocation of the Left, which has the sense to play it cool.

The government of Reggio-Calabria changed political parties when the left was swept into office recently. The new Governor, Agazio Loiero, fired 70 appointees of the former right-wing government placed in positions of controlling the public purse strings. Sadly, the region has become a major center for cocaine trafficking to the point that honest businessmen and professionals are being driven out by the crime syndicate, the 'ndrangheta (Ironically, Greek for heroism and virtue). Last year, there were 323 assaults, murders or acts of intimidation, including carbombings. Favorite scare tactics include death threats delivered with a severed goat's head or an envelope dropped in the mailbox with the victim's photo and the number of slugs the gangs intend to plug him with.

Meanwhile in Rome, Prime Minister Berlusconi goes beyond political rivalry by accusing the Left (mostly middle class people who reflect our progressive sentiments) of everything except baby-roasting. In public and on the airwaves, Berlusconi denounced the Left as commie Islamist traitors and cheats in league with the ghost of Stalin, which, as can be recognized, is an implicit call to violence by wingnuts.

If it were just the 'ndrangheta, it could have struck at home, in the parking lot or at the restaurant. Instead, he was murdered when he went to vote in a Leftist primary. Any and all leftist politicans and supporters of civil society have been threatened by this act. This suggests an alliance of crime and ultra-right.

When the ultras bombed the Bologna Railway Station, the dumbasses hoped to provoke leftist riots which would be followed up by mass arrests of protestors in a government crackdown. This assassination smells of the same stink.

Poor Fortugno was among the last innocent, honest men standing committed to his community, a local who wanted to lift the community out of crime and corruption. The murder was sheer intimidation and suggests a fusion of rightists and 'ndrangheta.

So the USA wants to turn the world upside-down over because of an assassination of some oligarch in a faraway Arab land while democracy and civil society are fed to the sharks in southern Italy?

Jeremy Greenstock's Book Censored

Britain is a No Transparancy Zone.

The Observer can reveal that Sir Jeremy Greenstock, Britain's ambassador to the United Nations during the preparations for war in 2003 and the Prime Minister's envoy to Iraq following the war, has been blocked in his efforts to reveal 'certain truths' about the conflict...But this weekend his publishers in Britain and America were set to pull the plug on the book after the Foreign Office demanded drastic cuts and the removal of references to conversations between Greenstock and the major players in the conflict, including Tony Blair and the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw....Greenstock told The Observer he was considering other ways of getting his story out: 'My personal view is that it might be worth saying what I want to say rather than being censored to blandness.'

Read the account here.

Italy's Religious Left

Nuns vote in today's primary elections for Leftist party leader. Results are in: It's Romano Prodi.

Update: Leftist politician Francesco Fortugno, Vice Chairman of the Reggio Calabria Regional Council, was assassinated today as he exited the polling station in Locri. Fortugno, 54 anni, was married and the father of two children. He was a licensed surgeon and a forensic scientist.

This is going to have major repercussions throughout the country.

Astérix vs. George W. Bush

In 27 countries around the world, the 33rd adventure of Astérix Le Gaulois, The Sky Lands on His Head, hit the bookshelves on Friday October 14th. 78 year-old cartoonist Albert Uderzo still has the moxie to administer some baffes to the Chimperor of Rome on the Potomac: Astérix and Obélix take on George W. Bush and Arnold Schwartzenegger--and beat the crap out of them, by Toutatis! !--PAF! TCHAC!. Easy work for the Gallic duo.

Note: The first image shows a beefy Schwartzenegger clone deployed by the evil Hubs (rearrange the letters) to dominate the helpless Mickey Mouse-like little blue men (you and me) and to take over Planet Earth. Luckily the blue guy has friends in the forests of Amorica. It's from the German version, naturlich.

Trouble in the Heartland

Yesterday in Toledo, Ohio.

Ibero-American Summit Leaders Demand End to US Embargo of Cuba

The city of Salamanca is hosting the XV Iberoamerican Summit and nearly every Latin leader from the Americas is there. This afternoon, the group issued its closing communiqué, condemning the United States for its "blockade" of Cuba and demanding an immediate end. The Summit deliberately chose the word "blockade" over "embargo" for the document. The US Embassy in Madrid delivered a note to the Spanish government conveying its concern at the "incoherence" of the statement.

The Summit also insisted on the extradition to Venezuela from the United States of anti-Castro terrorist Luis Posada Carriles

Mexico's President, Vincete Fox, won't get another invitation to Crawford from Dubya after this: At the end of the day, blockade and embargo mean the same thing. I'm not worried [about Washington's ire]...I never worry when I defend the principles and values which Mexico stands behind internationally. One of those principles is to reject intervention, blockades and embargoes--they are not the way to go.

Quote from El Pais (Madrid)

15 October 2005 Events in Iraq

Guantanamo. US force feeds detainees on hunger strike during the daylight hours of Ramadan. More than 150 prisoners are engaged in a hunger strike. [BTW, in DoD Speak, force-feeding is "involuntary feeding."--Nur]

London. The Times reports that the United States has offered a deal to Syrian President Bashir al-Assad to exit the state of international isolation in which Syria finds itself. The offer, qualified as a Qadafi Bargain, will compel Syria to 1) cooperate with the Mehlis Commission investigating the death of Rafiq Hariri, 2) To punish any Syrian agent involved, 3) cease interference in Lebanon and 4) end the recruitment, financing and training of Iraqi insurgents. A Times source says it is likely that President al-Assad will reject the deal.

Baghdad. 6,200 polling stations will be opened across Iraq for the Constitution referendum. Sunni voters in the provinces of Anbar, Salaheddin, Niniveh, and Diyala are expected to reject the draft Consitutution at the ballot box.

Jerusalem. Vice-Premier Shimon Peres says he expects an agreement to be reached "shortly" for the opening of a border crossing Rafah and Egypt.

Kuwait City. Crown Prince Sheikh Saad al-Abdallah al-Sabah is expected to announce that he will renounce the throne because of health problems. The prince.has been in London since August. His half-brother, Prime Minister Sabah al-Ahmed al-Sabah, is thought likely to ascend the throne.

Amman. Palestinian President Mahmood Abbas is in the Jordanian capital for talks with Jordanian officials before flying to Cairo for talks on Monday with Egyptian President Hosni Moubarak.

Paris. Palestinian Foreign Minister Nasser al-Qidwa, stated his "deep concern" by the participation of French companies in the contruction of a tramway in the occupied West Bank near Jerusalem.

Paris. Palestinian President Mahmood Abbas will make a stop in Paris before continuing on to Washington, where he expected by President Bush on Thursday.

Baghdad. The Palestinian Minister for Civil Affairs, Mohammed Dahlan, in Baghdad to seek treatment for a back problem, denied rumors that he had retired from political life.

Vienna. IAEA non-proliferation representative Olli Heinonen has concluced a three-day mission to Tehran.

New York. In a televised interview, King Abdallah of Arabia told ABC news of his concern over the role of Iran in Iraq. He also reproached the United States for its policies on Palestine and the wars in Afghanistan and in Iraq.

Karbala. Three Iraqi soldiers were killed in a clash with police in an argument over responsibilities.

Baghdad. All air traffic is suspended through Sunday evening.

Ramadi. Voters in al-Anbar Province will be permitted to vote at any polling station of their choosing.

Baghdad. Half the prison population of Abu Ghraib has already voted in the referendum the draft Constitution.

Tehran. Shi'ite dignitary Ayatollah Mohammed Emami Kachani urged Iraqis to vote massively in favor of the draft Constitution.

Baghdad. A Western diplomat in Baghdad said fair turnout was expected in Sunni-dominated provinces such as Anbar, Salaheddin, Niniveh and Diyala, with most voters expected to say "No". Most people in those areas shunned the election in January. "It is conceivable that the constitution will be defeated," he said, predicting that this would not worsen instability.

Moscow. US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has openly clashed with Russia over whether Iran can pursue a nuclear energy programme. In talks with Russian officials in Moscow, Ms Rice said Iran needed to recognise its obligations under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). But her Russian counterpart, Sergei Lavrov, told reporters that Tehran had the right to enrich uranium. Rice had sought clearer Russian support on Saturday for its hard line against Iran's suspected nuclear arms programmes on a surprise trip to Moscow. Rice wanted to press President Vladimir Putin to commit to backing U.S.-led efforts to refer Iran to the U.N. Security Council if it continues to reject talks with European powers and keeps up sensitive nuclear-related activities.

New York. The US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, accused Iran of spending 18 years of trying to develop nuclear weapons.

21:50 Baghdad. Voter turnout was estimated by 61% today in Iraq said National Elections Committe Chairman Abdel Hussein Hindawi

19:00 Abu Ghraib. Insurgents kidnapped 10 members of the Supreme Elections Commission of al-Anbar Province. Another official was wounded in an attack on a polling station in Abu Ghraib. The hostages are from the towns of Jalidiya and al-Jazira on the Syrian frontier.

18:47 Abu Ghraib. Ballot boxes stolen by insurgents.

18:21 Geneva. UN accuses the USA of violations of the Geneva Convention. The US military violated the Geneva Convention by denying food and water to force Iraqis to abandon their towns before launching offensives targeting the insurgency. Official Jean Ziegler calls the violations, "major".

16:08 Baghdad. Polling stations close. UN observers reported few incidents.

16:07 Baghdad. The draft Iraqi Constitution contains 139 articles and stipulated that the country is a federation with a democratically elected parliament with legislative elections every four years. A final article was added at the last minute providing for a commission which will have four months to put forward recommended changes to the document.

16:07 Basrah. Iraqi security forces and British troops cooperate to keep the peace for the referendum.

15:42 Baghdad. The US military announced the arrest of two alleged al-Qaeda members: Walid Mohammad Farhan Jouar al-Zoubaïdi, alias Firas, Abou Zyad, or "Le Barber" and Ibrahim Mohammad Sobhi Khaïri al-Rihawi, aka Abu Khalil.

15:40 Sadr City. Shites danced in the streets to celebrate the referendum. Police and security forces joined in.

12:40 Baghdad. A powerful blast was heard in downtown Baghdad.

07:51 Baquba. Three Iraqi soliders killed by a roadside bomb which targeted their convoy near the Iranian frontier.

07:27 Baghdad. A policeman was injured by an explosion near a polling station.

07:31 Kandahar. Bomb explodes in front of a US base, destroying eight fuel trucks. Two persons were injured.

Black Ops Outtakes and Bloopers

05 MAY 2006: You are probably looking for this. [Via La Repubbica: Video showing Zarqawi in New Balance shoes and a machine gun, said to have been found by the US Military in Yusufiya in April: genuine and un-photoshopped]

There's been a great deal of controversy surrounding a letter purported to be from Ayman al-Zawahri, the No.2 man at al-Qaeda, to guerrilla leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. The letter caused a sensation because al-Zawahri was said to have chastized al-Zarqawi for attacks on mosques and fellow Muslims and suggested a rift within the movement.

The first thought which struck me was, a letter??--and we thought al-Qaeda was high-tech! Now they're writing letters on parchment delivered by donkey-mail!

Juan Cole was the first to smell a rat when he recalled that the two notorious figures were adversaries. Prof. Cole also noticed the bizarre use of a Shi'ite greeting in a letter to a Salafist!

Tonight a Reuters dispatch reports on more unexplained errors anomalies in the text:

US cannot explain suspicious Zawahri letter passage
Reuters 15.10.05 | 01h37

By David Moran

WASHINGTON, Oct 14 (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence officials who released a letter purporting to be from an al Qaeda leader to Iraq insurgency leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi this week said on Friday they could not account for a passage that has raised doubts about the document's authenticity.

The July 9 dated letter, which U.S. officials say was written by al Qaeda's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahri, appears near its close to urge the Iraq insurgent leader to send greetings to himself if visiting the Iraqi city of Falluja. [Do you think this is a little cut-and-paste mistake?--Nur]

"My greetings to all the loved ones and please give me news of Karem and the rest of the folks I know," says an unedited English translation posted at www.dni.gov, the office Web site of U.S. intelligence chief John Negroponte.

"And especially, by God, if by chance you're going to Falluja, send greetings to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi," it states.

Zarqawi is the Jordanian-born leader of al Qaeda in Iraq, the most prominent segment of the deadly Iraq insurgency. His organization has said the letter is a fabrication.

A spokesman for Negroponte, who is the U.S. director of national intelligence, or DNI, acknowledged the greetings passage was confusing but said the intelligence community was confident the letter was addressed to Zarqawi by Zawahri.

"We don't know what to make of it (the passage). It's unclear," the Negroponte spokesman said.

"But we are absolutely confident that it was intended for Mr. Zarqawi, based on a review by multiple agencies over a protracted period of time."

U.S. officials have refused to disclose details of where, when or how authorities came by the letter, or what methods have been used to determine its authenticity. [They don't want to tell whose ass they pulled it out of!--Nur]

Some experts contend the strange passage undermines the letter's credibility.

"This would appear to be conclusive evidence that the DNI was mistaken, and that the letter was written to someone other than Zarqawi," Steven Aftergood of the Federation of American Scientists said on on Friday in his e-mail intelligence newsletter, "Secrecy News."

Aftergood cited an article in the online Slate magazine that called attention to the passage as well as the fact the letter was signed with the name, Abu Muhammad. [The gremlin of cut-and-paste strikes again!--Nur]

Experts have already said the letter depicts Zawahri as making unrealistic admissions involving al Qaeda's need for money, the Pakistan army's hunt for al Qaeda leaders and the May capture of al Qaeda member Abu Faraj al-Liby.

The greetings passage gained little noticed from initial news coverage of the letter's release, which came days before this weekend's constitutional referendum in Iraq.

News coverage concentrated instead on language that suggested rifts between al Qaeda militants, including Zawahri's advice that insurgents avoid the unpopular killing of civilians and begin seeking public support for an Islamic state.

The Last Hours of Ghazi Kanaan

If the reported "suicide" in 2000 of former Syrian Prime Minister Naji al-Otri, accused of corruption, may be considered a precedent, then it is likely that Kanaan was tried in camera and executed for the same, shall we say, unsound moral judgment. [Joshua Landis of Syria Comment (see sidebar) mentions the in camera execution hypothesis]. Three rumors of Kanaan's corruption had been making the rounds: 1) Kanaan's two younger sons attended George Washington University in Washington DC, reportedly with their expenses fully paid by former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri ($35,000 in tuition plus $10,000 room and board for one year.); 2) Million-dollar retainers deposited by Hariri into Mr. Kanaan's offshore bank accounts; and 3)Narcotics production and trafficking in the Bekaa Valley.

Which brings me to an Ah-Ha! moment and speculation of my own. Tycoons are dangerous men because their wealth gives them an all-corrupting tool. When they take to politics and mass media, like Berlusconi or Murdoch or Hearst, they can even subvert nations. Rafiq Hariri entered the ring as a political kingmaker and media magnate as Prime Minister and owner of Lebanon's Future TV. No doubt a clever and resourceful fellow, whose stunning ascent from rags to riches raised eyebrows, he likely had an umbilical to Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. With those two turbines of wealth churning on a hypothetical concerted agenda or even just calling the shots--well, this would certainly be seen as a threat to the nation by many, even in a place of legendary double-dealing, oligarchy and corruption like Lebanon (with all due respect for the Lebanese people). So I wouldn't be surprised if Lebanese political figures were behind the Hariri assassination.

Le Monde's Beirut correspondent Mouna Naïm analyzes the demise and death of Ghazi Kanaan.

The 64 year-old Syrian Interior Minister, Ghazi Kanaan, put an end to his days on Wednesday 12 October 2005 in his office in Damascus.

On Wednesday 12 October, the Syrian government announced that Interior Minister Ghazi Kanaan had shot himself the same day in his ministry office in late morning. Carried by the state information agency, SANA, the laconic announcement of suicide was oddly unseemly for the stature of the former general. Indeed, Ghazi Kanaan was a confidant of late President Hafez Al-Assad and served for twenty years (until 2002) as his personal emissary in Lebanon. In his position as chief of the Syrian Army intelligence services in the Land of Cedars he had his ups and downs.

It was his success in Lebanon which earned him, upon his return to Damascus, the appointment as Chief of the Department of Public Security. In 2004, he rose to become Interior Minister in a country where order and security are the pillars of power—euphemisms for internal politics and the stability of the régime. It was also his omnipotence in Lebanon, were he installed intelligence networks and built the necessary means of coercion—combination of carrot and stick—for bringing the country to heel. This earned General Kanaan the privilege of being one of the Syrian officers questioned by Judge Detlev Melhis, who is heading the international Commission of Inquiry into the February 12th assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Beirut.

Ghazi Kanaan was in any case the best placed person to explain the Syrian decision-making apparatus in Lebanon. A few weeks after the interrogation, Ghazi Kanaan saw his assets in the United States as well as those of his successor in Lebanon, Rostom Ghazali, frozen by the Bush Administration.

For all these reasons and, most important, because of the imminent publication of the report of Commission of Inquiry, speculation, reinforced by the opacity of the Syrian régime, continues brew both in Lebanon and in Syria. Some doubt the story of a suicide and instead suggest an assassination. There is much similarity, they say, to the unconvincing official announcement of the suicide of former Prime Minister Mahmood al-Zohbi in 2000.

Still others talk of rivalry and dissention at the core of Syrian power for which Ghazi Kanaan, along with other personalities, was fingered to pay the price: he was to have been removed from the Interior Ministry for a position more significant in protocol but which was, in reality, a move to put him out to pasture, says one diplomatic source. He had objected to the appointment of his successor in Lebanon whom he believed to be more brutal than necessary. He was also opposed to the September 2004 Syrian demand for the extension of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud's mandate, which set off the Lebanese crisis.

In the absence of any specific information contained in the conclusions of the Hariri assassination investigation, the most contradictory rumors are circulating. For some, Syria is implicated while others insist that no proof of Syrian involvement has been found. Damascus cleaves to the latter. Through the national media, over which it has total control, the Syrian government has been blasting for the last few days any and all Lebanese factions or personalities which might have accused it of complicity. To punish him for remarks which he believes unfriendly, Syrian Prime Minister Naji al-Otri has been refusing to answer phone calls from his Lebanese counterpart, Fuad Siniora.

A totally unheard-of step by a Syrian official has contributed to clouding the mystery concerning the suicide and feeding the rumor mill: On Wednesday morning, Ghazi Kanaan phoned a reporter for La Voix du Liban (Voice of Lebanon), a Lebanese-Christian radio station—a bizarre move given the distrust with which Damascus views this community—to assure the Lebanese of his devotion and to deny allegations broadcast the day before by a Lebanese TV network. According to this story, Kanaan received millions of dollars from the late Rafik Hariri. He asked the reporter to distribute his written remarks to other media outlets and concluded with this phrase: This is probably the last statement which I will be able to make. Some say this was his final testament while others claim it was merely a closing used by an official unused to addressing the public.

Harold Pinter Wins Nobel Prize for Literature

Update: MarkFromIreland was kind enough to paste Pinter's 14 March Op-Ed in The Independent in the comments:

The great poet Wilfred Owen articulated the tragedy, the horror - and indeed the pity - of war in a way no other poet has. Yet we have learnt nothing. Nearly 100 years after his death the world has become more savage, more brutal, more pitiless.

But the "free world" we are told, as embodied in the United States and Great Britain, is different to the rest of the world since our actions are dictated and sanctioned by a moral authority and a moral passion condoned by someone called God. Some people may find this difficult to comprehend but Osama Bin Laden finds it easy.

What would Wilfred Owen make of the invasion of Iraq? A bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of International Law. An arbitrary military action inspired by a series of lies upon lies and gross manipulation of the media and therefore of the public. An act intended to consolidate American military and economic control of the Middle East masquerading - as a last resort (all other justifications having failed to justify themselves) - as liberation. A formidable assertion of military force responsible for the death and mutilation of thousands upon thousands of innocent people.

An independent and totally objective account of the Iraqi civilian dead in the medical magazine The Lancet estimates that the figure approaches 100,000. But neither the US or the UK bother to count the Iraqi dead. As General Tommy Franks of US Central Command memorably said: "We don't do body counts".

We have brought torture, cluster bombs, depleted uranium, innumerable acts of random murder, misery and degradation to the Iraqi people and call it " bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East". But, as we all know, we have not been welcomed with the predicted flowers. What we have unleashed is a ferocious and unremitting resistance, mayhem and chaos.

You may say at this point: what about the Iraqi elections? Well, President Bush himself answered this question when he said: "We cannot accept that there can be free democratic elections in a country under foreign military occupation". I had to read that statement twice before I realised that he was talking about Lebanon and Syria.

What do Bush and Blair actually see when they look at themselves in the mirror?

I believe Wilfred Owen would share our contempt, our revulsion, our nausea and our shame at both the language and the actions of the American and British governments.

Adapted by Harold Pinter from a speech he delivered on winning the Wilfred Owen Award earlier this year.
...........

Do you think the Swedes are telegraphing the USA?

God Bless America

Here they go again,
The Yanks in their armoured parade
Chanting their ballads of joy
As they gallop across the big world
Praising America's God.

The gutters are clogged with the dead
The ones who couldn't join in
The others refusing to sing
The ones who are losing their voice
The ones who've forgotten the tune.

The riders have whips which cut.
Your head rolls onto the sand
Your head is a pool in the dirt
Your head is a stain in the dust
Your eyes have gone out and your nose
Sniffs only the pong of the dead
And all the dead air is alive
With the smell of America's God.

Islamist Revolt in Kabardino-Balkaria

Autonomous Regions indicated in pink.

The revolt has been going on since Monday.

From La Repubblica:

On Monday, in an abandoned factory outside Naltcik in the Autonomous Region of Kabardino-Balkaria, police and security forces found a rebel arsenal containing 500 kg (nearly 1.5 tons) of explosive, rocket launchers and thousands of rounds of ammunition. The next day, Tuesday evening, a group of ten rebels were surrounded by security forces in the village of Belaya Rechka ("White River") and the battle raged all night.

Prior to today's assault on the city, police had battled Islamic extremists through the night. At dawn, rebels quickly took over several administration buildings, including security headquarters. Mortar fire was directed FSB (former KGB) headquarters. Rebels also attempted an assault on the airport. Local schools were evacuated by precaution. Simultaneously, attacks were carried out on border garrisons.

The reported death toll is 12 civilians, 20 police and 50 rebels dead. Several police were taken hostage.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered police and security personnel on the scene to shoot dead all rebels and to prevent them from leaving the city. Deputy State Prosecutor Vladimir Kolesnikov has been dispatched from Moscow.

Meanwhile, authorities say they have killed Anzor Astemirov, a leader of the Yarmuk Jamaat dei Mujaiddeen, the group behind the attack. It is reported that the rebel offensive has been defeated and that a mop-up operation is ungoing.

...
It is very strange that given three days of clashes prior to this morning's assault, especially the raging gunbattles last night, that authorities did not declare martial law or at least call a school holiday today.

Update: Italian Cavinball

Vernet was absolutely right: Bait trap, slip on banana peel, fall into trap!

Parliament voted against the Berlusconi government to ensure that 25% of the Italy's party lists are comprised women after the Opposition introduced the amendment to Berlusconi's drive for a new election law! They are calling this provision, the "pink quota."

Exasperated!

Italian Assembly Speaker painfully deals with parliamentary protesters!

MPs Protest Berlusconi's Election Law

Shame! You're pathetic! You'll lose anyway!

Cry "Genocide!", then Close Your Ears

The easily provoked and pugnacious anti-diplomat John Bolton, currently serving as US Ambassador to the United Nations, moved to block the reading of a report on Darfur before the UN Security Council by the Secretary General's Special Representative Juan Mendez, claiming that the UN spent too much time on palaver. Bolton told the Security Council that members would be better advised "to take action, instead of more talk" on the deteriorating security situation in Darfur.

In blocking the report, Mr. Bolton paradoxically joined sides with Russia, China and Algeria, who have been resisting sterner UN action on the Darfur crisis, including the imposition of effective sanctions on either the Sudanese government or the Janjaweed militias.

He's dumb as a doorbolt, too! It figures that Bush praises him to the heavens.

Calvinball Comes to Italy

The people have failed us. It is time to elect a new people!
--Bertold Brecht.

Silvio Berlusconi, who bashes the communists whenever given the chance, despite the fact that there are very few these days in Italy—has found his inspiration in this ironic advice from the German playwright. If the government can no longer trust the people to cast their vote to return them to power, then it’s time to change the elections law to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. At six months out from national legislative elections, this seems to be the preferred game plan of the Italian Prime Minister.

It so happens that the prospects for Il Cavaliere are not good. Since being returned to office in 2001, Silvio Berlusconi has lost practically every election since then: European, regional and local. Although survey results do not correspond to the vote -–we’ve just seen that validated again in Germany–- opinion polls put the House of Freedoms, his center-right coalition, at 12 to 14 points behind The Union, the centrist alliance of leftists and small communist parties.

The economic situation in Italy is deplorable and the persistence of deficits -- for the fourth consecutive year the budget deficit will surpass the threshhold barrier of 3 per cent GNP-- and the multiplication of scandals --the most recent involves Antonio Fazio, Chairman of the Italian Central Bank, once a haven of virtue in a sea of instability and corruption--, do no augur well for Silvio Berlusconi and his party, Forza Italia (Go Italy!), or his political allies, the Alleanza Nazionale (National Alliance), the Lega Nord (Northern League) and the right-wing Democrazia Cristiana (Christian Democrats).

The ruse is to return to a proportional electoral system with a handicap for the smaller parties and a bonus allotted to the coalition with the least number of political parties. Effectively, this puts The Union at a greater disadvantage than House of Freedoms.

Another provision is crafted to make life difficult for opposition leader Romano Prodi. Even if one raised an eyebrow at his controversial departure to head the European Commission, Prodi remains a formidable adversary for Silvio Berlusconi. According to the draft legislation, the lists of candidates presented to voters for election must be drawn up by the political parties. In other words, in order to lead the opposition into battle, Romano Prodi, who owes his popularity to remaining aloof from politics, either has to form his own political party or join one of the parties within The Union.

Using what might be termed an electoral putsch, the coalition that currently holds power hopes to win the elections which it must reluctantly call or at least to limit the victory of their political adversaries on the left. Should this transpire, it has set a ceiling of 340 seats to go the victorious coalition.

This is not the first time that Silvio Berlusconi has fiddled with the democratic rules of the games. Since he views overt violation of the law as either dishonest or dangerous, he prefers to use his parliamentary majority to change the law in his favor-–including retroactivity if necessary. He has already revised the law to deal with conflicts of interest between his position as head of government and his private affairs, decriminalizing falsified balance sheets and shortening jail time for fiscal fraud.

Il Cavaliere is now revising the electoral rules of the game because they now apppear unfavorable to him after he has enjoyed profit and a false sense of glory in a majority system (which has a dash of proportionality) adopted by popular referendum in the 1990’s and was meant to serve as the basis of what is called the Second Republic. The First Republic was marred with government instability, the reign of political parties, and trasformismo—the passage of miniscule parties from the majority to the opposition and vice-versa following the ambitions of their leaders and without the slightest input from the voters. The introduction of majority rule has not healed all the ills of Italian democracy but at least it has fostered a certain amount of government stability. Silvio Berlusconi prides himself on being the first Italian Premier in decades to have held on to an entire legislature. It also led to the formation of two big coalitions, center-right and center-left, which alternate at the helm of government.

The allies of Silvio Berlusconi have been hesitant to support reform of the elections law. Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini’s party, the National Alliance, is fearful of being marginalized by a centrist coalition. The most enthusiastic supporters of reform are the right-wing Christian Democrats, led by Assembly Speaker Pier Ferdinando Casini. Proportionality gives them the hope of reunification with their estranged brethren on the Left and the possibility of reemerging as a grand Demo-Christian force, the worthy successor to the party which ran every government in the First Republic. The trap which Silvio Berlusconi had set for the Left is likely to snap shut on him. But the prestige of Italy will emerged diminished from his institutional chicanery.

Daniel Vernet in LE MONDE | 11.10.05 | Silvio Berlusconi, "Electoral Putschist".

Iraq: Why have a Popular Constitutional Referendum at All?

The Iraqi Constitution reads like a Kurd and Shi'a wish list. To boot, the flawed document forces Islam and postmodern Western democracy into a shotgun wedding.

As if to underscole the superficiality of the legal fundament of the new Iraqi state, US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad has found the answer to mollify the Sunni population and to allow George W. Bush to save face: An apparent last-minute deal to institute a parliamentary panel following the referendum that will be empowered to undo the entire document.

US Treatment of the Enemy

Abu Ghraib, the secret prisons or Chris Wilson's warporn site, NTFU, simply confirm the US Army tradition. In this 1966 photo by Kyoichi Sawada, GIs drag the body of a Vietnamese whom they slew in combat behind their amphibious vehicle.

African Exodus Puts Pressure on Europe

Le Monde has provided a graphic which illustrates the extraordinary pressures on southern Europe as Africans in search of a better life attempt illegal debarkation in southern Europe. The sheer numbers of desperate human beings smuggled into Europe for a six-month period in 2004 is shocking:

Spain: Last year from January to July, 2004, 7,295 illegal immigrants were arrested: 4,124 in the waters of the Canary Islands and 3,149 in the straits of Gibraltar. In Melilla alone, 38,000 people were turned away.

Italy: Between January and May 2004, 1,753 illegal immigrants landed in Sicily while 4,500 others debarked on the tiny island of Lampedusa. On the mainly, 46,000 illegals have been arrested.

The numbers of hopeful immigrants continues to skyrocket. There isn't a day that goes by without dozens of Africans being plucked out of the waters around Lampedusa.

The Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in Morocco, where the European Union meets Africa, were been the scenes last week of rioting and death as hundreds of African participated in an assault by human tsunami on the gates of the city. Some were trampled and others shot dead by Spanish security forces.

The frightful waste of lives, money and resources on Bush's hopeless War on Terror might have been dedicated to imaginative solutions to African crisis: cities, farms, jobs, schools and opportunities for desperate multitutes beset by desertification, shrinking resources or warlordism in Mali, Nigeria, Cameroon, Liberia, Senegal, Mauritania, Western Sahara, Ivory Coast, Ghana and Somalia instead of senseless, continuing turmoil in Iraq.

The Truth About Shaped Charges

BBC News did some digging into explosives technology today to expose the myth Rumsfeld and Blair have been touting concerning the alleged supply by Iran of the "shaped charges" used by Iraqi guerrillas.

The armor-piercing shaped charge is 19th century technology and capitalizes on the Munroe effect: a partial focussing of blast energy caused by a hollow or void cut into a piece of explosive. In short, a technique used by civil and military engineers alike the world over and not requiring a midnight courier dispatched from the Islamic Republic.

The wallop packed by the shaped charges, writes BBC, is because of the quantity of explosive packed in them:

But US military investigators are said to have found the sheer mass of explosive used - rather than its design - destroyed the vehicle.

And who wasn't guarding the explosives depots in the country they declared war on and occupied, I wonder? Petulant SOB's! So much the idiots' tales spun by our officials.

Don Rumsfeld Bombs Smurf Capital

Today's online Corriere della Sera* reports!

UNICEF-Belgium has launched a series of televised infomercials on the plight of children in wartorn countries to be aired just before the evening news, traumatizing every Belgian child under 8. To make the point, the Smurfs come under missile attack in the wee hours of the morning suggesting March 20, 2003. Belgian kids got to see the Smurfs subjected to something far worse than any of Gargamel's evil schemes--lifeless Smurfs, Smurftown reduced to rubble and a wailing orphan Smurf Baby.

Meanwhile, account manager Julie Lamoureux at ad agency Publicis, said that the sight of Smurfs subjected to war should have included mutilation and decapitation of Smurf characters, for a realistic glimpse into the horror and mayhem of war: We wanted something that was real war -- Smurfs losing arms, or a Smurf losing a head -- but they said no.

View the ad at here. [Click under Video--> Campagne voor oorlogskinderen]

*Article also appears in the online Ottawa Citizen.

Portrait of Mohamed El-Baradei

From Le Monde.

It has been some time now since Mohamed el-Baradei, a shy, high-ranking civil servant, went unnoticed on his trips abroad. As Director of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), he is the second Egyptian to have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize after Anwar el-Sadat. Today he receives media coverage as if he were a head of state. This 63 year-old jurist is the reassuring countenance behind nuclear anti-proliferation, because he prefers persuasion to the use of force. Verification and diplomacy work when they walk hand-in-hand together, he is known to repeat incessantly.

But for a good part of the world, he is above all the man who defied the United States in the Iraq crisis. On March 7, 2003, before the UN Security Council, he demolished the main “proof” offered by the backers of the war with a few words pronounced with a steady voice: the letter concerning the purchase of uranium from Niger by Saddam Hussein’s régime was a clumsy forgery. US Secretary of State Colin Powell went pale. The Swede Hans Blix, Mr. el-Baradei’s predecessor at the head of the IAEA, who at the time had responsibility for verifying that Iraq concealed no chemical or bacteriological weapons, was taken aback: Mohammed didn’t give me any indication, he recalls soberly in his book on the Iraq crisis.

On that day, the Egyptian jurist rose out of the shadow of his mentor, Hans Blix, who had recruited el-Baradei in 1984 as head of the agency’s legal department before creating the post of Deputy Director for International Relations exclusively for him. However, during the long reign of Mr. Blix at the helm of the IAEA (sixteen years), it was Washington which gave the thumb’s up for the promotion of Mr. el-Baradei--Cairo wanted another Egyptian. In the UN universe, the IAEA is the godchild of Americans. It was the USA which brought the agency to the baptismal font and which contributes nearly a quarter of its budget. The head of the AIEA is not appointed by the UN Secretary-General; he is elected by the Council of Governors.

In 1997, the selection of Mr. el-Baradei, born in 1942 in Cairo where he studied law, and trained at NYU where he earned a PhD and taught, represented a geopolitical reorientation: He is a Western spirit with third-world sensibility, said a former US ambassador when he profiled this ideal candidate. The moment had come to remove nuclear oversight from the blind alley of East-West relations. The 1991 discovery of a clandestine nuclear program in Iraq revealed the inadequacies of the verification program run by the Agency and the refusal of Israel to sign the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) became a source of increasing irritation to Arab-Muslim nations.

More introverted than Mr. Blix (Those who ridiculed the paternalism of the Swede, Hans Blix, also make fun of the pharaonic style of Mr. el-Baradei.), the Egyptian head of the IAEA was cautious about his origins: when he traveled to Iraq for talks with members of Saddam Hussein’s régime in the winter of 2002-2003, he was careful never to speak Arabic with them out of fear of being accused of bias. He was disconcerted when, during the campaign led against him by the hawks of the Bush Administration, who were opposed his third term at the IAEA, his telephone conversations with Iranian leaders were monitored and he was accused of hindering an IAEA investigation of Egypt.

But he walked away from the ordeal strengthened. The rhetoric of el-Baradei is welcomed by developing nations, explained a representative of the non-aligned nations in Vienna. El-Baradei believes that non-proliferation is not an end in itself; it also involves obligations by nuclear nations. The head of the IAEA has reminded the USA and its allies that there can be no solution to the current crises without a genuine effort at disarmament. Those to whom el-Baradei addresses his warnings cannot pretend to be deaf forever. Reelected in June 2005, Mohamed el-Baradei will remain in his post beyond George Bush’s eight years.

The Bitches Know No Shame

Federal intelligence analysts also doubted the veracity of the bomb plot because it appeared similar to threats found on militant Islamic Web sites.

Kerik's friends at NYPD and in Gracie Mansion are shameless liars and incompetents who probably never could have earned a GED legitimately. And that goes double for the operatives at DOD. Not only did they surf the net to produce a bogus plot to panic the poor transit riders of New York City with the complicity of the Mayor Blomberg, but now they claim the Muhammedan terror plot would take place on Sunday, when ridership would be next to nothing. I'm sorry, but if I were the terrorist mastermind whom the authorities claim they are tracking...well, Sunday?? Give me a break!

I wonder what they'll cook up for the Christmas shopping season? If there were ever a federal penalty for monkeybusiness, I'd say the act of panicking 4 million people should be one of them.

Retooling the Story

Juan Cole got it right this morning, we he ridiculed British PM Tony Blair for "retooling" for plausibility Don Rumsfeld's vision about Iran as supplier of the shaped charges to the Iraqi insurgency.

You really have to wonder who is running the Public Panic Squad in New York City. Yesterday it looked like former fanboys of Kerik thought they'd help the boss out and hand Dubya an 11th foiled al-Qaeda plot to stick his war on terror blather. The unsophisticated PPS chose the following plot: Through a multinational force raid on a preposterous Ansar al-Sunna safe house in Baghdad, some Muhammedan evil-doer was captured, dragged out and tortured to reveal the 11th-hour-and-fifty-nine-minutes plot to bomb the New York subway system. The headline-generating police mobilization was ordered in time to make the 7 o'clock TV news as New York officials announced that 19 briefcase-toting suicide bombers were somewhere in the system. Homeland Security, fearful of treading too deep, said only that the threat was credible, classified and doubtful.

The police, city officials and Homeland Security were treated roughly be the press this morning. But these people do not merely skulk away when one of their crackpot scenarios doesn't digest well with the public. Instead, they up the ante and retool. Tonight's retooling of the story drags Syria into the picture, a sure-fire indication that the official version is very, very unteathered from reality.

NYPD and the FBI, convinced that you and I have the brain of a flea, say they are now searching for a lonely stranger in a trenchcoat, who possibly trained in Afghanistan and who has arrived in the city from Damascus to train a suicide team of backpacker-bombers for a copycat attack of the July 7th bombings. The stranger has no identity or abode. Slick, huh?

You'd think that after the fiascoes of Nigergate, Saddam's WMD, and alleged al-Qaeda flight crews piloting Air France flights over North America, they'd lay off the sauce.

Read the retooled plot in NY Newsday.

Gotham Goes Ga-Ga

NYNewsday reports on today's terrorism panic in NYC which we suspect was orchestrated to shore up the President's numbers. Meanwhile, subway riders were left holding the bag.

The NYPD first learned of the potential threat to the city's subway system on Monday. At the time, however, the decision was made not to go public with the news[stifled laugh].

A federal source, however, said officials learned of the threat following a U.S. military-CIA raid on an al-Ansar safe house in or near Bagdad earlier this week. [guffaw]

A Homeland Security Department spokesman said "the intelligence community has concluded the information to be of doubtful credibility". [chortle]

6 October 2005 Events in Iraq and in the Region

Kirkuk: A retired brigadier-general was killed in an ambush by gunmen in Kirkuk, reports al-Arabiya TV.

Hilla. Locals sifted through the remains of a Shia mosque to try to ascertain whether yesterday's blast was caused by a car bomb or by explosives planted inside the mosque. Although the mosque and its minaret remained standing, much of the roof collapsed following the blast.

Cairo. Supporters of Saddam Hussein are attempting to obtain a guarantee from the United States to spare the life of the former dictator in exchange for halting attacks on US-Iraqi security forces, said Iraqi President Jalal Talabani in an interview with the Egyptian paper al-Ahram.
.
Washington. President George W. Bush accused Syria and Iran of supporting terrorist groups in Iraq and issued a warning: The United States makes no distinction between those who commit terrorist acts and those who support the terrorists and give them shelter because they are equally guilty of murder.

Milan. In an interview with the newspaper Corriere della Sera, Italian opposition leader Romano Prodi said he would pull the Italian contingent out of Iraq if the opposition wins the spring 2006 legislative elections. Prodi called the Iraq war a colossal mistake. For both the Americans and the British, the problem is now how to get out of Iraq. More than ever before, we see that the military route solves nothing. A political solution is necessary.

Baghdad. The distribution of millions of copies of the draft Iraqi Constitution is underway. Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari said he was certain that there would be a massive voter turnout to ratify the document.

Tehran. Iran denies that it has supplied explosives to Shi'ite militias in Iraq. It is a lie. The British are the cause of instability in Iraq, said Hamid Reza Asefi, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman.

Tegucigalpa. The US private security firm Yours Solutions says it has recruited and trained 165 Hondurans 105 Chileans who will leave from San Pedro Sula in northern Honduras on Friday for Iraq. Between now and the end of October, the company says it will train another 553 men, including Chileans, Hondurans and Nicaraguans.

Baghdad. Sunni Arab leaders who had threatened a boycott because of the changes said they were satisfied with Wednesday's reversal and are now mobilizing to defeat the charter at the polls. But some warned they could still call a boycott to protest major U.S. offensives launched in the past week in western Iraq, the Sunni heartland.

Baghdad. A roadside bomb hit a US patrol in the Shula district of northern Baghdad and killed one American soldier.

Baghdad. Four U.S. soldiers were slightly wounded when a car bomb hit their patrol in central Baghdad, setting off fighting with small-arms fire and the intervention of U.S. helicopters.

Baghdad. A roadside bomb hit a police patrol on a highway, killing five policemen and wounding two 20 miles south of the capital.

Taji. A shooting and a roadside bomb in the towns of Taji and Udaim, north of Baghdad, killed two Iraqi soldiers and a policeman.

Kirkuk. Insurgents bombed a pipeline sending plumes of black smoke and fire up into the air. The pipeline connects oil fields with Kirkuk's refineries.

Baghdad. A 43-year-old detainee died Wednesday of an apparent heart attack at U.S. Camp Bucca.

24:00 Washington. The Pentagon has announced that it has increased US troop strength in Iraq to 152,000 men.

21:51 Doha. Iranian Foreign Minister Manoushehr Mottaki held talks with Qatari officials on bilateral relations and regional developments. His visit coincided with that of US envoy and Iraq coordinator James Jeffrey, who met with Qatari Foreign Minister Hamad ben Jassem ben Jabr al-Thani to discuss the Iraq situation.

21:08 Warsaw. 150 anti-war activists demonstrated to demand that the topic of the Iraq war be included in debates during Poland's presidential race.

20:46 Baghdad. US warplanes bomb eight bridges over the Euphrates River near the Syrian border. Multinational forces say they control four crossings.

18:01 London. President Jalal Talabani said Thursday that the continued presence of U.S.-led coalition troops was vital to the job of securing democracy, and that a timetable for withdrawal would only help terrorists.

17:55 London. Tony Blair accused Iran of supporting Iraqi rebels through Lebanese Hezbollah. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the British goverment wants to hold talks with Iran on the matter of explosives.

17:36 Beirut. Lebanese Hezbollah rejected charges by Tony Blair that it is involved with the insurgency. To implicate Hezbollah in actions that have nothing to do with its mission, which is to resist the Israeli occupation of Lebanon, is an old story with which everyone is familiar, said Hezbollah officials in a communiqué to AFP.

17:32 Ramadi. Operations in western Iraq continue. Operations Lightning Strike, Iron Fist, River Gate, Mountaineers and Thunder II-National Unity continue.

17:32 Melilla. Six persons were either trampled or killed by Spanish border police when illegal African immigrants attempted an assault on the Spanish enclave of Melilla.

17:30 London. A BBC documentary to air 10 October, Israel and the Arabs: Unattainable Peace, relates that President George Bush confided to Palestinian President Mahmood Abbas and Foreign Minister Nabil Chaath that he had received an instruction from God to invade Iraq and Afghanistan.

17:22 Washington. President Bush calls terrorists operating in Iraw "the most ruthless enemy ever" at speech before the National Endowment for Democracy.

17:22 London. Tony Blair reiterates that British troops will remain in Iraq to prevent 'catastrophe".

17:10 Baghdad. Iraqi President Ibrahim Jaafari rejected British and American accusations against Iran, saying relations between the two countries are "very friendly". Jaafari also said accusations of Iranian interference in Iraq were "baseless and unacceptable."

16:46 Washington. President Bush said in a speech that the US has thwarted three terrorist attacks on the USA since 9-11.

16:46 Beirut. In a bid to stem a wave of mysterious bombings, the government said Thursday it would offer a reward for information leading to the arrest of bombers who have killed six people since February.

16:33 George W. Bush accused Islamic militants on Thursday of seeking to enslave whole nations and intimidate the world and charged they have made Iraq their main front. The militants believe that controlling one country will rally the Muslim masses, enabling them to overthrow all moderate governments in the region and establish a radical Islamic empire that spans from Spain to Indonesia, Bush said. The president has been stepping up his defense of his Iraq policy in the face of declining public support for the war and a crucial test in Iraq with the Oct. 15 constitutional referendum.

12:30 Baghdad. A second bomb in Palestine Street near Iraq's Oil Ministry kills 10 and wounds eight. A man wearing an explosives belt got onto a minibus carrying 14 people — including students, workers and policemen heading to the police academy, and detonated his payload as the bus passed a police patrol at the intersection where the academy is located, about 400 yards from the Oil Ministry.

10:40 London. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani to meet British PM Tony Blair to discuss the 15 October Constitutional popular referendum.

08:50 Baghdad. Carbomb strikes SUVs transporting foreign security contractors in al-Nidal Street in the Karrada district. Four passers-by were wounded.

Today's Major Presidential Address on Terrorism

Securitee...blab...democracee...blab...turrrists...blab...God Bless...blab...ducttape...blab...evildooers...blab...victoree
...blab...humanitee...blab...moolahs...blab...murder...blab
...ageetaters...blab...eyerack...blab...suiciders...nook-cue-ler.

My Koranic Cellphone

The Dubai corporation, Ikone Mobile Communications, has come out with the I-800 Islamic cellphone loaded with functions: The full text of the Koran, Mecca direction finder, Ramadan calendar, Julian-Hirji date converter, and automatic sleep mode for prayer, to mention a few.

Ikone is derived from the Arabic word for universe.

5 October 2005 Events in Iraq and in the Region

Baghdad. Four oilfield security guards received bullet wounds after a carbomb targeted their patrol.

Baghdad. A carbomb detonated near the Saj al-Rif restaurant. No injuries were reported. According to police, rockets placed inside the car did not explode, limiting the damage.

The Hague. Dutch Foreign Affairs Minister Bernard Bot expressed doubt on the utility of the war in Iraq in testimony to Parliament.

Baghdad. Saddam Hussein's defense team lacks funds. The Iraqi Special Tribunal has not provided the funds necessary for the defense of the former dictator. Meanwhile an anonymous British official said the trial would likely be postponed due to "logistical" reasons.

Tehran. Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's nuclear policies are coming under criticism inside Iran. Akbar Hashemi Rafsandjani accused the government of wasting time with propaganda instead of seriously pursuing negotiations. In a speech before Parliament, moderate MP Hassan Afarideh also criticized the government, accusing it of assuming overly aggresssive postures in its nuclear negotiations.

Strasbourg. The European Union said it would increase its political and econmic assistance towards the establishment of a Palestinian state.

Ramallah. Palestinian high school students returning from the weekend discovered an 8-meter high wall erected by the Israelis in 48 hours dividing their campus in half.

Beirut. The Lebanese Army is reinforcing its presence near the village of Yanta on the Syrian border after reports of arms smuggling to exiled Palestinians.

Kuwait. The newpaper al-Anbaa ran a story saying that Iraqi Parliamentary Speaker Hajem al-Hassani had "irrefutable proof" that Iran had a role in the assassination of Ayatollahs Mohammed Baqer al-Hakim and Abdel Majid al-Khoï. The paper said Mr. Hassan also accused Iran had a hand in several bloody and violent incidents across the country.

Tehran. Iranian diplomat Manouchehr Mottaki postponed an official trip to Saudi Arabia.

23:34 Alexandria. Former Pentagon expert Lawrence Franklin, 58, pleaded guilty of passing confidential information to an Israeli diplomat.

23:15 The US Senate has explicitly forbidden US forces to us torture and mistreatment of prisioners. The measure was proposed by Senator John McCain, a former POW. McCain was prompted to sponsor the measure by the revelations of Captain Ian Fishback concerning prisoner mistreatment.

22:42 Baghdad. Community strife grows in Iraq as Sunnis threaten to boycott the Constitutional referendum unless the US military halts its offensive in Western Iraq.

21:18 Jerusalem Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will meet next week following the intervention of Jordan's King Abdallah II.

Brusssels. A high-ranking Saudi delegation is in Brussels for informal discussions with NATO officials concerning a rapprochement between the Saudi kingdom and the Western military alliance.

18:38 Washington. President George Bush says Iraqi forces are assuming ever-increasing responsibilities for security in Iraq after a meeting with Defesne Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs General Peter Pace and General David Petraeus.

18:01 London. A anonymous British official accussed Iran of passing bombmaking technology to insurgents in Iraq.

17:30 Hilla. Twenty-five people were killed and 87 wounded in a carbombing at sunset during a Shi'ite Ramadan prayer hour. A car parked near Husseiniyah Ibn an-Nimaa mosque in the center of Hilla exploded as worshipers were about the recite the maghreb prayer at the end of fasting after sundown.

16:41 Tehran. High-profile diplomat Mohammad Javad Zarif has resigned from the Iranian nuclear negotiating team. Mr Zarif, the Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations, was considered a foreign policy moderate and was engaged in improving the international image of Iran.

16:29 Baghdad. Premier Ibrahim Jaafari minimized his differences with President Jalal Talabani, who had accused Jaafari of breaking the law.

16:27 Jeddah. The Organization of Islamic Conferences supported plans to hold an Iraq reconciliation conference proposed by Saudi Arabia.

16:19 Kuwait. Iraqi Parliamentary Speaker Hajem al-Hassani criticized the timing of the US offensive in western Iraq, saying the action is dissuading Sunni Arabs from going to the polls on October 15.

16:10 Baghdad. Ansar al-Sunna uploaded a video to the internet showing the beheading of two Iraqis accused of spying for the Americans.

16:10 Baghdad. Under pressure from the United Nations, the Iraqi Parliament rescinded a decision setting a high bar for rejection of the Constitution. The other day's decision was bad, unfair and antidemocratic, said independent MP Mahmoud Osman.

15:30 Baghdad. The Iraqi Parliament has modified the voting rules on constitutional referendum following a request from the United Nations to equalize the balance between proponents and opponents of the document. The Transitional Law currently in force has established the voting rules albeit in vague terms and only mentions electors who may vote for or against the constitution. Article 61C stipulates: The referendum will be a success and the draft Constitution ratified if a majority of Iraqi electors approve the draft and if two-thirds of electors in three or more provinces do not reject it." Nothing in the text mentions "registered" voters, that is, voters whose names are on the voting rosters. On Sunday, members of Parliament, composed mostly of Shi'ite and Kurdish representatives, voted on a motion to make rejection nearly impossible. In the motion, a very high turnout--greater than 2/3-- and a nearly unanimous vote would have been necessary to reject the Constitution. An additional difficulty is that the voter rosters are highly unreliable because they are based on lists of ration card holders. They are flawed lists which are not updated, particularly with respect to deaths, said a UN worker. Following last Sunday's vote, both the UN and the United States expressed their concern over the changes which guaranteed a victory for Shi'ite and Kurdish voters.

14:15 Madrid. Spanish justice reaffirmed that it was a competent authority to judge crimes of genocide and crimes against humanity committed against any group anywhere on earth. The decree overruled a prior ruling limiting the authority of Spanish courts to crimes committed against Spanish naitonals in Guatemala between 1978 and 1986.

14:14 Kirkuk. A police officer and an Iraqi civilian were killed in a drive-by shooting in Kirkuk. Armed men opened fire on a car driven by Kurdish police officer Ahmed Othman, shooting him dead.

12: 54 Bern. The Swiss government will not deliver 180 M-113 armored vehicles because the United Arab Emirates, which was to have bought the armored vehicles on behalf of Baghdad, has refused to make the purchase. The 180 M-113's were to be supplied from Swiss military surplus. The Swiss governnment had suspended the controversial order at the end of August after it became known that the vehicles were for the Iraqi army, not the Iraqi police. Swiss legislation forbids the export of war matériel to areas in the throes of conflict, althought it appears that the Swiss government was prepared to violate its own neutrality until caught in the act by the Swiss Socialist Party and the Centrist Democratic Union.

12: 17 Kabul. An Afghani child was killed and a man wounded in a suicide bombing which targeted a Canadian patrol near Kandahar.

08:41 Melilla. Forty illegal immigrants were able to jump a metal fence separating Melilla from Moroccan territory at dawn. Nearly 100 illegal immigrants participated in the fence-jumping attempt in the Pinares de Rostrogordo area. A Spanish frontier guard was injured when his all-terrain vehicle flipped over. Two days ago a similar attempt left 135 illegal immigrants wounded, including five seriously injured. Last Thursday, five Africans were killed when Spanish forces opened fire on a mob of illegal immigrants in Ceuta who were attempting to enter the city by force.

Operation "Block the Vote"

Joshua Landis at Syria Comment reports that the US military offensives in western Iraq have driven thousands of Sunnis--and Sunni voters--into Syria: Operation Iron Fist on Iraqi Border Empties out the Towns.

The timing of Operation Iron Fist (unhappy evocation of Ariel Sharon) has finally raised questions. Parliamentary Speaker Hajem al-Hassani has spoken out against it, saying it was a deliberate attempt by Washington to dissuade Sunnis from going to the polls on October 15. The offensives have emptied out several villages and towns along the upper Euphrates sending thousands of innocent Sunni civilians fleeing for their lives across the border.

Overriding the interests of Iraqis, George W. Bush is hell-bent on getting that draft Constitution ratified in the upcoming referendum. The President is cynically (What else is new?) deploying bombs and legislative endruns to make it happen. The UN has thwarted the parliamentary ploy to guarantee ratification of the draft Constitution by calling foul. But there is no referee in the western provinces to call a halt to the helicopter gunship missions.

Tel Afar, Rawa, Ramadi and dozens of other towns are deserted as former inhabitants have been forced camp in the desert--and far away from the ballot box.

Iraqi "Parliament" Reverses Course

Last Sunday, Iraqi "Parliament", an institution dominated by the Kurds and the Shi'a, thought it would cleverly sneak through an amendment to the rules for the October 15th popular referendum on the flawed draft Constitution, doubtlessly at the prompting of United States Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, who carries a brief from Bush to get the Constitution ratified on October 15--or else!

Under Sunday's backdoor rules, the Constitution could be voted down if and only if nearly all the registered voters within three provinces would turn out to vote "No". Meanwhile, the bar for a provincial "Yes" vote was lowered to a simple majority. The provision was meant as a sure-fire guarantee for ratification.

We noticed silence on the part of Washington after Sunday's vote. It wasn't until the United Nations observers complained that the ad-hoc change violated internationally recognized voting criteria, according to which a voter is someone who comes to the polling station on Election Day and casts a vote, that Washington expressed its "concern".

Sunday's parliamentary action has been rescinded and the upcoming referendum will proceed as originally provided by the US-imposed Transitional Administrative Law, whose vague stipulations suggested the opportunity for an end run in the first place. Article 61C of the TAL states: The referendum will considered successful and the draft Constitution ratified if a majority of Iraqi voters approve the draft and if two-thirds of electors in three or more provinces do not reject it. There is no mention of registered voters. Article 61C was crafted to enable Iraq's minorities to reject the Constitution. Ironically, it was likely that the US was thinking of the Kurds, not of the Sunni, when it estabished the rejection criteria. Hoisted by their own petard, as they say.

By the way, the voter rosters are notorious for their unreliability. United Nations observers point out that the rosters were created from lists of ration card holders which are not updated.

It will be interesting to see Ambassador Khalilzad's next move to guarantee ratification of the draft Constitution. Carpet bombing of Sunni provinces on Referendum Day might discourage voters.

Update: That's the idea, apparently. Not only has the US offensive in western Iraq driven thousands of Sunni voters out of Iraq and into Syria but the operations will keep voters at home. Iraqi Parliamentary Speaker Hajem al-Hassani, on an official visit to Kuwait, has criticized the timing of the US offensives which he views a deliberate attempt to dissuade Sunnis from participating in the referendum.

You've Got a Friend at S.P.E.C.T.R.E.

From today's Le Monde:

A vast swindle involving pseudo-financing of the war on terror has led to the withdrawal of 5 million euros from several banks. The brains behind the operation has sought refuge in Israel, say French police. Two persons were arrested Monday and three other sought, including the ringleader, Gilbert C., who has flown to Israel.

One of the swindlers presented himself at various Paris banks as the director of an international bank. Claiming to be an official in the war on terror in which several European countries are participating, the bogus banker informed French financial institutions that they'd have to "clean house" on "suspicious money transfers" to "terrorist networks". The targeted French banks were told to expect a visit from the French counterespionnage agency, the DGSE (General Directorate for Foreign Security) to solicit money in order to penetrate the networks. He indicated that cash would be requested and urged discretion on the transaction.

In July, a French bank indicated its acceptance and handed over 350,000 euros in cash at a Parisian bar to the girlfriend of the ringleader. $2.5 million was deposited into a Swiss bank account by another French bank in September. Another million euros were deposited into an account opened in Hong Kong. A third account with a deposit of 5 million euros was opened at an Estonian bank. The first two deposits were cancelled in time, but Gilbert C. was able to withdraw funds from the third account.

The Israeli Guide to Arab Relations

Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Baqer Solagh has been devoting a great deal of time studying the guide.

Chapter 9: Relations with Saudi Arabia.

The best way to address a member of the Saudi royal family is to recall to him his beduin ancestors. A reference to camel riding, camel herding or camel kissing is essential to making a good impression. Should your nation be wracked by civil war, enemy occupation, or a bloody Salafist insurrection (with which the Saudis could exert some quelling influence) and you require foreign financing on the grand scale, including Saudi billions, it is recommended that you seek out the nearest outlet to global media, preferably while in the capital of a country not your own, to throw flowers at his feet.

Thus, you may address any Saudi royal present (and he might also serve as a high-ranking minister--this is to your advantage), by complimenting him on his reeking scent of camel and his pleasing though perhaps slightly dusty pastoral demeanor.

15:43 Iraqi Interior Minister Bayan Baqer Solagh delivered a vitriolic verbal attack on Saudi Arabia Sunday while in Amman, declaring that Baghdad had no lessons to learn from a "beduin on a camel", referring to Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal. The words were uttered while Iraq had dispatched an envoy to Saudi Arabia to attend a meeting of the Committee of Arab Ministers which is studying ways of providing more assistance and support to wartorn Iraq.

Arthur Schlesinger Advises the President

US historian Arthur Schlesinger wrote a piece for Le Monde yesterday. I've provided the translation below. If I find the original article in English, I'll post it.

My Conversation with the President.

The President of the United States is calling, said the operator. Right away I heard a Texas accent reverberating in the receiver.

Hey, Artie, how are you? It was definitely President Bush. I have never met him, but his liking for nicknames is well known. No one has called me Artie in 48 years. Look, I’m having a discussion here on the war in Iraq, confessed the President, and I’d like your opinion on what to do next.

I’d look for a good opportunity to declare victory, stop the mayhem and leave, Mr. President, I answered.

But my advisors tell me that to pull out would be a disaster, replied Mr. Bush, a real calamity. If we pull out now and leave the Iraqis in this mess, what foreign government would ever trust the word of the United States in the future? It would destroy our credibility. Our priority is to stay on course.

You’ll have to put up with the bad press, I told him. The last time the United States obviously threw in the towel was thirty years ago in Vietnam. The stakes were claimed to be high. According to President Eisenhower’s Domino Theory, the fall of South Vietnam would lead to communist control of all of Southeast Asia.

Our defeat and our humiliation, Richard Nixon would say later, would lead to boldness on the part of the great powers, which haven’t renounced their objectives of world domination.

However, I continued, we did end the mayhem and pulled out of Vietnam. The spectacle of our Vietnamese friends hanging onto helicopter skids even more glaringly emphasized the US defeat and humiliation. But the credibility crisis never happened. For most foreigners, the US returned to its senses after a long period of aberration.

The act of packing it in extirpated us from a war that we could not win and one in which our vital interests were not at stake. The departure liberated our armed forces. They were freed up to play their role of containment and dissuasion in other parts of the globe. In the end, our withdrawal from Vietnam raised our credibility, just at De Gaulle’s evacuation of Algeria raised French credibility.

The aftermath proved the Domino Theory wrong, the very notion that had led us into the Vietnam War, just as the Iraqi situation has shown the allegations of weapons of mass destruction to be false--the pretext which had led us into the war.

I’d like you to think about this, Mr. President. The pullout from Vietnam was an historical precedent.

Moreover, I added, we had genuine obligations towards our Vietnamese friends. Obligations which do not exist in Iraq. We intervened in a civil war in Vietnam to prop up one of the camps. That meant that by pulling out, we abandoned our comrades-in-arms. We committed an act of moral betrayal for which our allies paid a heavy price. We were forced to make a difficult choice: pursue a hopeless war or sacrifice our friends. Geopolitics is an harsh mistress. But, in spite of the ruin which we left behind in Vietnam —far more than the death and destruction we’re leaving in Iraq- Americans are still well-liked in communist Vietnam.

The future of Iraq is uncertain. A pullout may lead to anarchy, with all sides exercising their options, or it could lead to Islamic domination. But it may also serve as a catalyst for cooperation among Sunnis, Shi’ites and Kurds who may then end the insurrection and govern Iraq. The shock of a US pullout may stimulate the development of a sense of responsibly among the Iraqis.

As long as I am President, shot back George W. Bush, we’ll stay. We will fight and we will win the War on Terror.

But Mr. President, I said, as long as the US military occupation lasts, it will continue to encourage the recruitment of terrorists from all over the Middle East. As Chuck Hagel, a Vietnam Veteran and a senator in your own party said, "The longer we stay the more problems we’ll have."

That is the fatal contradiction in your policy of staying the course. There is another tremendous flaw, too: If we want the Iraqi Army to be sufficiently able to contain the insurrection, it will need heavy weaponry from the United States. Given the uncertainty of the future of Iraq, no one can say if or when these arms would be used against the occupying army itself.

But we owe them something, insisted the President, referring to the GIs killed in the war in Iraq, and we are going to finish the job for which they sacrificed their lives. But as Stephen Schlesinger, Director of the World Policy Institute, observed: Using this logic, we would still be in Vietnam, because we owe it to the 50,000 Americans who died there. In Iraq today, the question is to find out where our national interest truly lie.

Mr. President, I said, our true interests lie in ending this senseless war.

And then I woke up.