Elsewhere Today 453
Aljazeera:
Iraq blast wounds Polish ambassador
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 03, 2007
14:27 MECCA TIME, 11:27 GMT
Poland's ambassador to Iraq has been wounded in an apparent assassination attempt after a roadside bomb exploded in central Baghdad, killing two people, Iraqi and Polish officials have said.
One bystander and one of the ambassador's bodyguards died in the blast, while 14 people were wounded, including ambassador Edward Pietrzyk, officials said.
Sources told Al Jazeera three diplomatic cars were struck by the blasts on Wednesday shortly after leaving the embassy compound in al-Arasat.
"The ambassador was injured, but was able to leave the scene," Robert Szaniawski, a Polish foreign ministry spokesman, said from Warsaw, Poland's capital.
"Three cars in the Polish convoy were destroyed in the attack," he said.
'Assassination attempt'
Officials described the attack as an assassination attempt.
Bartosz Weglarczyk, the deputy foreign editor of Gazeta Wyborcza, told Al Jazeera that the attack was "well planned".
"It was just two or three blocks away from the Polish embassy in Baghdad," he said.
"It means the attack [had been] planned for a long time. The attackers knew who was in the convoy and what their target was."
Reuters Television pictures showed a European-looking man with his head, leg and hands bandaged being evacuated in a helicopter which had landed in the street.
Iraqi soldiers said the man, who was surrounded by security guards and troops, was the Polish ambassador.
They said other wounded people had been taken to the so-called Green Zone for treatment.
Pietrzyk was being treated for burns, Waldemar Figaj, the deputy ambassador, said later.
"He is going to be fine," he said.
'No withdrawal'
Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the Polish prime minister, said that Poland would not withdraw its troops from Iraq in response to the attack.
"Desertion is always the worst option," Kaczynski said.
"This is a difficult situation, but those who became engaged and were there for years and then withdrew are making the worst possible mistake."
Poland backed the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 which toppled Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi president at the time.
At the height of its involvement, Poland had 2,500 soldiers in Iraq, though it currently has about 900 troops in the country and the mission has lost popular support at home.
Poland's ruling party, which faces a snap election on October 21, supports extending the Iraq mission beyond the end of the year even though a majority of Poles want the the soldiers to return home.
Diplomats killed
Some opposition parties are also calling for an end to the mission.
Weglarczyk told Al Jazeera: "What happened in Baghdad today will change nothing.
"Poles don't like to be pushed to do something and we don't like to be threatened ... I don't think it will change the attitude of Polish society toward the Iraq war."
A number of diplomats have been killed in Baghdad since the invasion began.
Last year four Russian diplomats were abducted and killed and in 2005 fighters said they had killed Ihab el-Sherif, the Egyptian mission chief.
In the same year, Bahrain's envoy was also shot and wounded when fighters opened fire on his car.
Source: Al Jazeera and agencies
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/E2E92F8B-EDEF-4230-9F3F-6F20C50344D6.htm
AllAfrica:
Violent Protest At Kogi University
By Hamzat Baba
Leadership (Abuja) NEWS
3 October 2007
Students of the Kogi State University , Anyigba yesterday took to the streets of the commercial town in a violent protest to register their displeasure over the killing of two of their colleagues.
Informed sources at the university told LEADERSHIP that crisis began when an Audi car was involved in an accident with a commercial motorcyclist leading to the death of a 100 level student of history and international relations.
The incident which occurred at about 10 am in the morning saw other students on campus blocking the high way to protest the sudden demise of one of their colleagues.
Our correspondent further gathered that the situation became aggravated when a convoy of Enugu State Government heading to Abuja , the nation's capital arrived the scene of the accident about three hours later.
The escorts attached to the convoy started firing sporadic gun shots into the air so as to clear the road, an action that led to the death of one Mohammed, a 200 level Banking student via a stray bullet.
The development according to reliable sources, enraged the students who went berserk, burning and damaging any vehicle that came their way.
Our correspondent further gathered that two vehicles, a trailer carrying cement and red carina II car were burnt down completely while several others were damaged.
Equally, four Peace Mass Transit 18-seater buses traveling to the Federal Capital Territory were also seized by the rampaging students as at the time of filing this report.
Speaking in a telephone interview with LEADERSHIP, the police public relations officer of the state command, Mr. Ambrose Igbokwe confirmed receiving report on the incident.
He noted that concerted efforts were being made to bring the situation under control.
Copyright © 2007 Leadership. All rights reserved.
http://allafrica.com/stories/200710030368.html
AlterNet:
Bush's Agenda in Iran
By Reese Erlich, AlterNet
Posted on October 3, 2007
I went on Fox News' Hannity & Colmes recently. It was the usual food fight where right-wing zealot Sean Hannity interrupts and hogs the camera, not allowing much dissent. But I was even more interested in the stand of "liberal" Alan Colmes.
We were debating whether Iran's President Ahmadinejad should be allowed to speak at Columbia University. Colmes supported free speech. But in his introduction to the segment, he repeated almost every Bush falsehood about Iran, including its supposed, immediate plans to develop nuclear bombs, killing of American soldiers in Iraq and its grave danger to Israel. Unfortunately, his views reflect those of many mainstream Democratic Party leaders as well.
On Sept. 26, by a vote of 76-22, the Senate passed a "sense of the Senate" resolution calling on the United States to declare Iran's Revolutionary Guards a terrorist organization. The resolution, pushed by former vice presidential candidate Sen. Joe Lieberman, continues the drum beat for war against Iran. While some staunch liberals such as Ted Kennedy and Barbara Boxer voted nay, Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Hillary Clinton voted yes. (Click here for a full roll call vote.)
The Bush administration is preparing public opinion for a possible bombing attack on Iran. As with the months prior to the Iraq invasion, major Democratic Party leaders are climbing on board.
Half the warships in the U.S. Navy now sit within striking distance of Iran. Bush and Cheney have stepped up their rhetoric accusing Iran of threatening to start a "nuclear holocaust." The British press are predicting that the Bush administration will bomb Iran in the near future.
The White House is using the same propaganda techniques to whip up popular opinion against Iran that it used four years ago against Iraq. Here's the real story.
Iran has no nuclear weapons and couldn't have them for years. The International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N. body that was right about WMDs in Iraq, says it has no proof of Iranian plans to build nuclear bombs. The IAEA recently reached a binding agreement for Iran to reveal its past nuclear activities and allow full inspection of nuclear power sites.
The sophisticated EFPs (explosively formed penetrators) supposedly supplied by Iran to militias in Iraq are easily made in Iraqi machine shops and can be purchased commercially for mining operations.
For years Iran has given political, economic and military support to Shia and Kurdish militias, but the administration has never proven that Iran is intentionally targeting U.S. soldiers.
Iran does not plan, nor does it have the capability of "wiping Israel off the map." If Iran is such an immediate threat to Israel, why hasn't it already launched a conventional missile attack? Such aggression would invite immediate destruction of Iran by both Israel and the United States. So if Iran hasn't started a conventional attack in 28 years, why would it possibly launch an atomic attack, even assuming it could develop a few such weapons years from now? The Iranian leaders are angry; they are not crazy.
Iran does support Hizbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, but such support does not constitute a threat of Jewish annihilation. The U.S. and Israeli governments consciously distort and exaggerate Iran's threat in order to justify immediate military action.
For two years the United States has helped splinter groups among Iran's ethnic minorities to blow up buildings, assassinate Revolutionary Guards and kill civilians in an effort to destabilize the Tehran regime. In short, the United States does to Iran what it accuses Iran of doing in Iraq.
The hardliners in the Bush administration, led by Cheney, see a dwindling opportunity to bomb Iran before Bush leaves office. They hope to launch a massive bombing campaign which will so weaken Tehran that the regime will fall and Iranians will see the United States as their savior. Does this sound the faintest bit familiar?
In reality, a U.S. attack would be disastrous. Iran could close the Strait of Hormuz, through which 25 percent of the world's oil supplies pass. Oil prices would skyrocket. Iran could encourage Hizbollah to launch missiles into Israel. Muslims would hold demonstrations in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Iran could mobilize that anger and encourage Shiite parties in Iraq to attack U.S. troops.
In a truly nightmare scenario, Iran could encourage terrorist attacks inside the United States and in allied countries. When I interviewed Syria's President Bashar al-Asad in 2006, he said, "If you do a military strike, you will have chaos. It's very dangerous."
The people of Iran, leading democracy advocates and even conservative Iranian-American exile groups oppose an attack. They understand that U.S. bombs falling on Tehran will only rally people behind the current government.
In an open letter to the United Nations, former political prisoner and Iranian opposition leader Akbar Ganji wrote, "Even speaking about the possibility of a military attack on Iran makes things extremely difficult for human rights and pro-democracy activists in Iran. No Iranian wants to see what happened to Iraq or Afghanistan repeated in Iran."
I don't know with certainty if the United States will attack Iran. It is possible that the Bush administration is ratcheting up militarist rhetoric in order to intimidate European allies into tightening economic sanctions against Iran.
And the decision whether to bomb Iran depends, in part, on actions by the American people. Now is the time to let your national and local politicians know that we don't need another human disaster in the Middle East. Code Pink is organizing a national campaign to get local city councils to pass resolutions against attacks on Iran. Now is the time for anti-war demonstrations around the issues of both Iraq and Iran.
Reese Erlich is author of the new book The Iran Agenda: the Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Middle East Crisis.
© 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
View this story online at:
http://www.alternet.org/story/64221/
Clarín:
La Pasión del Che Guevara
LA LEYENDA DEL CHE | INTRODUCCION AL MITO
En esta edición se exploran las razones por las que la imagen del Che ha devenido simbólica y a la vez objeto de consumo. El proceso posiblemente comenzó antes de su muerte, con lo que ya tenían de mítico la revolución cubana y sus héroes. Pero el sacrificio convirtió al Che en emblema de desinterés, de férrea adhesión a los ideales, justamente en una sociedad donde ese desapego estoico y principista parece cada vez más un objeto de museo.
JORGE AULICINO jaulicino@clarin.com
29.09.2007 | Clarin.com | Revista Ñ
La conjunción de una derrota sublime, de un craso error táctico y estratégico, y de dos imágenes que se difundieron casi simultáneamente hicieron de Ernesto Guevara un símbolo de desinterés, coraje, absoluto desapego, incluso por el objetivo, y emblema de una victoria metafísica.
La historia debe aún decir mucho sobre las razones que llevaron a Guevara y sus ideales al callejón sin salida de la Quebrada de Churo, en la selva de Ñancahuazú, en el sudeste boliviano. El modo incluso en que el Che cayó en manos del ejército boliviano, herido, andrajoso, con su arma rota, debería ser tan significativo como su cuerpo tendido sobre una angarilla colocada a su vez sobre dos piletones en el lavadero del hospital de Vallegrande.
"No se preocupe, capitán, esto se acabó", dice Gary Prado que le dijo Guevara al entregarse. Prado es hoy general y se mueve en silla de ruedas, baleado por la espalda por error cuando desalojaba, años después, un pozo petrolero tomado por comandos ultraderechistas. Ese "esto se acabó" no significó más que la confesión casi sarcástica de una impotencia que nunca fue explicada. No es la frase que Guevara pronuncia desde el terreno del mito, al que lo enviaron para siempre las dos ráfagas de fusil automático disparadas por el sargento Mario Terán, mientras estaba prisionero en una escuela del poblado de La Higuera. Las palabras que el mito pronuncia son: "Apunte bien y dispare. Va usted a matar a un hombre". Terán se encargó de repetirlas. Ellas resuenan hoy de un modo extraño. Guevara parece estar diciendo: "Va usted a matar a un valiente", pero también: "Va a matar a un hombre, no a su leyenda".
¿Cómo se construyó ese mito ante el que no valían de nada ayer, y valen bien poco hoy, las protestas de equivocación, de pertinaz error, de profunda y quizá definitiva ceguera?
Hoy, los campesinos de esa región de Bolivia han hecho un santuario no del lugar en el que fue fusilado -la escuelita de La Higuera- sino del lavadero de Vallegrande, en el que fue exhibido su cadáver. El campesinado que entonces no se unió a él ni lo apoyó, en parte lo tiene como un santo. Ese es el resto de religiosidad verdadera que aún inspira el Che. El resto es un aluvión de imágenes de las que no es posible establecer el contenido ni el significado. Las llevan sobre sus remeras, sobre su piel o en las lunetas de sus automóviles miles de jóvenes que no habían nacido cuando el Che murió, que no son socialistas ni lo serán y que ignoran casi todo sobre el tipo de revolución que el Che quería.
El Che partió de Cuba en 1965. Es inocultable que había perdido allí varias batallas políticas y que no era demasiado apto para librarlas. En 1967, el año de su muerte, el editor marxista italiano Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, quien en 1972 murió víctima de una explosión mientras se supone intentaba sabotear una torre de alta tensión cerca de Milán, obtuvo regalada una foto de Alberto Korda, de 1960. El fotógrafo cubano la había tomado en un acto callejero cuando el Che se acercó a la baranda del palco para echar una mirada a la multitud. La descartó. Feltrinelli vio las posibilidades de esa imagen de una especie de ángel severo y visionario. En pocas semanas alumbraba el primer póster del Che. La imagen invadió pancartas y carteles. Meses después, el Che moría.
La construcción del héroe
Casi simultáneamente otra foto se sobrepuso: la que obtuvo el fotógrafo de UPI Freddy Alborta en la lavandería del hospital de Vallegrande, que lo haya querido o no recuerda a Cristo. Las fotos del Che que sacó Freddy Alborta; la pintura de Andrea Mantegna, La lamentación sobre Cristo Muerto, de 1490, y la pintura de Rembrandt, La lección de Anatomía del doctor Nicolás Tulp, de 1632, han dotado aquella muerte de una iconografía de martirio. Un cierto modo de vincular estas imágenes producidas por la pintura y la historia dieron pávulo a discusiones que se suceden desde que el escritor inglés John Berger relacionó el cuadro de Rembrandt con las fotografías de Vallegrande.
En realidad, los hechos, las casualidades, la pintura, la religión católica, parecen haberse complotado para que la imagen de Guevara saliera de la historia e ingresara en el terreno del mito, en el instante preciso en que murió. El ángel en 1960 y el mártir en 1967 son dos rostros para un mismo sacrificio, puesto que la foto de Korda da la vuelta al mundo impregnada ya del aire sacrificial de la foto de Alborta. Décadas después, ubicado por el realizador argentino Leandro Katz para su documental El día que me quieras (1997), el fotógrafo boliviano dijo: "Me conmovió la mirada de Guevara. Tenía la impresión de estar fotografiando a un Cristo, y en ese entorno me moví. No era simplemente un cadáver, era algo extraordinario". Si Alborta sintió realmente que se movía en un "entorno" místico, entonces estaba instintivamente unido a la corriente pictográfica que desde el Renacimiento ha puesto un poder sobrenatural en las imágenes del Cristo y del cuerpo de Cristo.
Ni el comando militar boliviano ni Terán que no hirió la cara del Che ni el agente de la CIA Félix Rodríguez que le ordenó evitar la desfiguración del rostro pudieron prever cómo la cámara del fotógrafo cavaría en la oscuridad hasta encontrar un cuerpo humano abatido y una mirada sobrehumana, al punto de que se comparara la escena con la de un Cristo bajado de la cruz y con una obra de Rembrandt en la que luces y sombras unen la carne detestable y perecedera, el olor de morgue y hospital, con un hálito cósmico. Hay mucha poesía en eso, pero una poesía de la que se hicieron cargo y dieron por buena sucesivas generaciones. La lente fotográfica, el arte mecánico del siglo, produjo el efecto de todo gran arte, desde el principio hasta el final del mito del Che.
El resto parece literatura. Y lo que siguió, una reproducción al infinito de una silueta que no tiene ya contenido propagandístico, puesto que no queda qué propagandizar, ni político, sino meramente ideológico en términos de mistificación.
Que el Che se haya estrellado contra la pared de hierro de la realidad lo hizo inmortal. En su momento, no sólo no detuvo el guerrillerismo juvenil, sino que lo alentó. Hoy no sirve de nada decir que su incursión en Bolivia fue un fracaso, militar y político, un error de trágicas dimensiones para él y para el movimiento revolucionario. La cuestión por la que el Che moría no era importante. El estadounidense Peter Bourne en su biografía Fidel ha señalado la causa por la que, en tanto fracaso político, la muerte del Che es éticamente estimulante: "El Che, un revolucionario purista, romántico, creía que estar moralmente en lo correcto era, en última instancia, más importante que lograr la victoria".
Hay ideas que la imagen del Che ya no conlleva. Ideas que por otra parte serían muy difíciles de entender para los jóvenes que portan esas imágenes. Son de un período de la historia cuyo discurso resulta incomprensible. En La vida en rojo (1997) el ensayista mexicano Jorge Castañeda anota: "Las ideas del Che, su vida, su obra, incluso su ejemplo, pertenecen a otra etapa de la historia moderna, y como tales, difícilmente recobrarán algún día su actualidad. Las principales tesis teóricas y políticas vinculadas al Che -la lucha armada, el foco guerrillero, la creación del hombre nuevo y la primacía de los estímulos morales, el internacionalismo combatiente y solidario- carecen virtualmente de vigencia. La revolución cubana -su mayor triunfo, su verdadero éxito- agoniza o sólo sobrevive gracias al rechazo de buena parte de la herencia ideológica de Guevara. Pero la nostalgia persiste".
El "clima de época" está en toda esta historia que al correr de los años pareció desmesurada e imposible. Tenía el sello de la revolución cubana, que también en principio pareció imposible y que fue juzgada en todo el mundo de la izquierda como un suceso excepcional en el que habían concurrido una incorrecta información de los Estados Unidos, la congénita debilidad del ejército cubano, la bandera nacionalista de fuerte arraigo en la isla y un coraje fuera de lo común. Un golpe de dados.
Copyright 1996-2007 Clarín.com - All rights reserved
http://www.clarin.com/suplementos/cultura/2007/09/29/u-00811.htm
Guardian:
Food for thought
Brian Whitaker
October 3, 2007 12:30 PM
I got an email yesterday from a firm called Busy People Ltd ("Part time cleaning, gardening, party help, handyman, painting & decorating, computer help, secretaries, filing, waiting for deliveries. Why don't you ask for our list of services? Please consider your environmental responsibility before printing this email.")
Among their multiplicity of tasks, Busy People have taken on the job of organising invitations for a dinner this evening in honour of Benazir Bhutto, the delightfully artistocratic convicted money-launderer who is returning to Pakistan after eight years in exile.
Her send-off bash, at the RAF club in London, is hosted by the Defence and Security Forum (run by Lady Olga Maitland and Major General Patrick Cordingley). Ms Bhutto will be introduced by Lord Ahmed of Rotherham and if you want to go along it will cost you 80 quid.
Ms Bhutto's expected return to Pakistan is the indirect result of efforts by General Musharraf - who seized power in a coup in 1999 - to secure another term as president. The Americans, not to mention many Pakistanis, have become disenchanted with Musharraf's performance and Ms Bhutto has been demanding that he should retire from the army if he wants to remain president.
General - sorry, Mr - Musharraf has now agreed to this and has nominated his intelligence chief to be head of the military.
As part of the deal the Pakistani government has said it will drop long-standing corruption charges. Ms Bhutto is also seeking a change in the constitution so that she can become prime minister for a third time.
Although she has been actively cultivating friends in the west and touting her democratic credentials, it might reasonably be argued that two doses of Ms Bhutto's premiership were more than enough for Pakistan. Both of her earlier periods in office ended amid allegations of corruption.
The charges, unsurprisingly, were instigated by her political opponents and Ms Bhutto continues to deny them. Even so, there are ample grounds for asking whether she is a fit person to hold office. The money trail has been pursued in various countries but readers in Britain may recall the affair of the diamond necklace and the mysterious purchase of Rockwood Estate in Surrey by her husband. The property was eventually reclaimed by the Pakistani government on the grounds that it had been acquired on the proceeds of corruption.
In 2003, a Swiss court convicted Ms Bhutto and her husband (in their absence) of money laundering. The pair were given suspended jail sentences of six months each and ordered to repay about £8m to the Pakistani government.
The decision to drop remaining charges in Pakistan (which may have run into a hitch today) seems to have more to do with political convenience than their actual substance - which is a pity. Whatever the outcome, they ought to be pursued through the courts to a proper conclusion. Abandoning them now does nothing to promote good governance and only encourages others to think they can get away with corruption.
http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/brian_whitaker/2007/10/food_for_thought.html
Jeune Afrique: L'armée américaine se dote
d'un nouveau commandement pour l'Afrique
ETATS-UNIS - 2 octobre 2007 - par AFP
Les Etats-Unis ont formellement mis en place à Stuttgart (sud-ouest de l'Allemagne) un commandement régional militaire unique pour l'Afrique (Africom), afin de mieux coordonner leur présence militaire sur ce continent, a annoncé mardi l'armée US à Stuttgart.
L'Africom sera responsable vis-à-vis du Pentagone pour les relations militaires des Etats-Unis avec 53 pays du continent, a indiqué l'armée américaine dans un communiqué.
L'Africom, dont l'annonce de la création remonte à février, deviendra un commandement pleinement opérationnel en octobre 2008. Le lieu où sera installé le QG sur le continent africain n'a pas encore été choisi. La première année, il opérera à Stuttgart dans le cadre de l'EUCOM, le Commandement régional américain pour l'Europe.
L'Africom apportera une assistance aux pays africains en matière de sécurité et les aidera à avoir des armées plus professionnelles, indique l'armée américaine dans son communiqué.
En attendant que l'Africom devienne vraiment opérationnel, les militaires chargés de la phase préparatoire auront un an pour mettre en place le dispositif final, qui consistera, outre le futur QG africain aux effectifs peu nombreux, en cinq cellules réparties à travers le continent africain, dans des pays qui restent à déterminer, a expliqué mi-septembre le sous-secrétaire adjoint du Pentagone aux Affaires politiques, Ryan Henry.
"Aucune nouvelle base ne sera créée et aucune force nouvelle ne sera déployée en rapport avec Africom", avait ajouté M. Henry, affirmant que "cela ne représentait aucun changement de (la) politique" américaine en Afrique.
Le président américain George W. Bush avait lui-même annoncé, le 6 février, la création de l'Africom.
Cette nouvelle structure permettra aux Etats-Unis d'être plus "efficaces" qu'avec l'actuel dispositif, qui partageait l'Afrique en trois commandements régionaux, avait par la suite souligné le secrétaire à la Défense, Robert Gates.
Cette réorganisation survient alors que les Etats-Unis ont intensifié leurs activités militaires - entre autres dans la Corne de l'Afrique - pour empêcher les groupes islamistes de la mouvance terroriste Al-Qaïda de trouver des bases de repli.
Le mois dernier, le Sénat américain avait confirmé le général William Ward comme le premier commandant de l'Africom.
William Ward était officier dans l'infanterie pendant l'intervention américaine en Somalie en 1993 et a par la suite commandé la force de stabilisation de l'OTAN en Bosnie. Il a également été coordinateur pour la sécurité entre Israël et l'Autorité palestinienne de mars à décembre 2005.
Le général a assuré que l'Africom collaborerait étroitement avec l'Union africaine (UA), avec les institutions régionales africaines et chacun des Etats.
L'UA est dotée d'un Conseil de paix et de sécurité (CPS) pour la prévention des conflits et le déploiement éventuel de forces d'interposition entre belligérants mais ses moyens sont très faibles.
En juin M. Henry avait assuré que le but de l'Africom n'était pas de prendre la tête des opérations de sécurité en Afrique mais d'apporter un soutien aux pays africains dans ce domaine.
La Libye notamment a affirmé son opposition à l'installation en Afrique de cette nouvelle structure.
http://www.jeuneafrique.com/jeune_afrique/article_
depeche.asp?art_cle=AFP31807larmeeuqirf0
Mail & Guardian:
AU outnumbered, outgunned in Darfur
Opheera McDoom | El-Fasher, Sudan
03 October 2007
African Union peacekeepers are outgunned and outnumbered by rebels and militias in Darfur, the AU force commander Martin Luther Agwai said on Tuesday.
He said this was one reason an AU base in Haskanita, south-east Darfur, was overwhelmed so quickly during the worst attack on the peacekeepers by suspected rebels on Saturday, killing and injuring at least 20 with three soldiers still missing.
"We are outgunned, we are outnumbered and we can be overrun very quickly," he told a visiting delegation of elder statesmen and women in Darfur's main town of el-Fasher.
He said attackers burnt the mosque, where many peacekeepers were praying during Ramadan and caught off guard during the attack at dusk prayers.
The injured waited about 18 hours until the AU could send in medical help, he said.
Nigerian Agwai, who will command a 26 000-strong joint United Nations-AU mission which is due to replace the struggling AU force by January 1, painted a grim picture for the deployment, which has been delayed by a lack of pledges of well-equipped troops.
He said he did not expect extra forces to deploy by then.
"From all indications ... we are not going to have any appreciable change from where we are today until December 31."
After months of talks, threats and negotiations Khartoum agreed to the hybrid mission, but they insist the force retain an "African character".
While African nations have pledged almost double the number of infantry needed for the force, Agwai said the reality was that most of them did not meet UN standards.
And despite an August 31 deadline for pledges, the force has still not enough specialised air or logistical support expected from Western nations.
"I'm an African ... but the reality is not many African countries can provide troops that can self-sustain themselves for six months," he said.
"There's no African country that can have the equipment we need for example in air assets," he said, adding Nigeria, one of the best armies in Africa, could not do it.
Failure
Beside being ill-equipped, Agwai revealed operational difficulties which the elders called "shocking".
The "elders", including former United States president Jimmy Carter and South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, arrived in el-Fasher in Darfur on Tuesday to support peace in the region.
Agwai said entire AU patrols were aborted because government and rebel ceasefire observers would fight over who could sit in the front seat.
The AU has come under attack, as in Haskanita, because they are the most visible sign of the failure of the international community to stem the violence in Darfur.
International experts say some 200 000 have died and 2,5-million driven from their homes sparking the world's largest humanitarian operation, which is also attacked almost daily.
Sudan criticised the United States and European Union for failing to impose sanction on Darfur rebel groups blamed for the Haskanita attack, which destroyed the AU base.
Foreign Ministry spokesperson Ali al-Sadig said the "most likely" culprits behind Saturday's attack on the Haskanita base were a splinter group of either the rebel Justice Equality Movement (JEM) or the Sudan Liberation Army's Unity faction. Both deny involvement.
The African Union mediated a peace agreement between the Sudanese government and Darfur rebels in May 2006 but only one of three rebel negotiating factions signed the deal. Since then rebels have split into a dozen factions.
The US said late on Monday it was prepared to impose fresh sanctions on whoever ordered the worst single assault on African Union peacekeepers since the mission came to Darfur in 2004.
The African Union said on Tuesday it had established some clear leads in its investigation into the attack, but was waiting for more firm evidence before publishing the findings.
"Investigations are under way but they are not complete," said spokesperson Noureddine Mezni.
Reuters
http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_
news/breaking_news__africa/&articleid=320890
Mother Jones:
Dirty Warriors
How South African hit men, Serbian paramilitaries, and other human rights violators became guns for hire for military contractors in Iraq
Barry Yeoman
November/December 2004 Issue
WHEN THE BUSH administration turned over much of its Iraqi security operations to the private sector last year, one of the companies that stood to profit was the London-based Hart Group. Run by former British soldiers, the firm received a large contract through the Army Corps of Engineers to guard Iraqi energy facilities and protect engineers rebuilding the country's electricity network.
Hart Group needed to hire 170 English-speaking guards with military experience - and it had to do it fast. "We had to recruit people in very, very short order," says Simon Falkner, the company's chief of operations. But Falkner knew exactly where to find many of his recruits: in South Africa, where soldiers trained under that country's apartheid regime now often find themselves unemployable. "They're good soldiers, the South Africans," says Falkner, a retired colonel. "They're tough people, and they're well-disciplined. And there are a lot of them who want to do the work. A lot of people have left the South African defense force since Nelson Mandela came in."
Hart's hiring practices might have passed entirely unnoticed had one of the company's employees not died in a firefight with Iraqi insurgents last spring. The victim was 55-year-old Gray Branfield, a former covert-operations specialist in South Africa's fight to preserve white minority rule. In the early 1980s, the apartheid government decided to assassinate the top 50 African National Congress (ANC) officials living beyond the country's borders, and Branfield was charged with tracking down apartheid opponents in Zimbabwe, Botswana, and Zambia. "We saw it as a battle in the global war to fight communism," he said in an interview shortly before his death.
In July 1981, Branfield's team was assigned to hunt down Joe Gqabi, the ANC's chief representative in Zimbabwe and the operations chief of its militant wing there. After two weeks searching for their quarry, Branfield's team located Gqabi at a house in a working-class suburb of Harare. With Uzis and Berettas beneath their coats, they climbed over a fence and waited until the anti-apartheid activist emerged from the house. Then the soldiers jumped from the bushes and pumped 19 bullets into Gqabi at close range.
Two decades later, Branfield joined the war on terror for "the second act of my career." But he didn't fully disclose his credentials. Falkner says he was unaware of Branfield's background when Hart Group hired him. "That would have been of great concern to us if he had been involved in illegal activity," says Falkner. "As far as I'm concerned, he was a bona fide individual and a very fine man. He died protecting his guys, which, frankly, if he was in the Army, would have won him a very high award."
How did a political assassin end up working for the U.S. government in Iraq? The answer illuminates an ominous aspect of what can happen when the business of war is handed over to the private sector.
To an unprecedented degree, the United States and its allies have turned to private companies to fill tens of thousands of jobs once performed only by soldiers, from prison interrogators to bodyguards for high-ranking officials. Several of these companies have even engaged in firefights as part of their work. To Iraqis, the corporate guards are often indistinguishable from U.S. troops, with whom they often cooperate. Yet there is one key difference between the contract soldiers and U.S. troops: With pressure to quickly fill thousands of jobs, many companies have recruited former police officers and soldiers who engaged in human rights violations - including torture and illicit killings - for regimes such as apartheid South Africa, Augusto Pinochet's Chile, and Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia. Some of these firms perform only cursory pre-employment screening, if any - making it easy for those with questionable backgrounds to slip through unnoticed.
"There is no interest on the part of many firms to do background checks," says Marco Nicovic, an attorney in Serbia who serves as vice president of the International Bodyguard and Security Services Association. "For men who are wanted and have arrest warrants, Iraq is a way out. It's easier, safer for them to start clean there."
The Pentagon says it is not in the business of policing contractors' hiring practices - and that concerns military watchdogs, who believe this creates a climate where human rights are seen as secondary. "The point is not lost on people working in the private security market that the United States has hired companies with cowboy reputations," says Deborah Avant, director of the Institute for Global and International Studies at George Washington University. In one case, the Pentagon awarded a security contract worth more than $250 million to a British company whose CEO has flouted basic human rights principles from Northern Ireland to the South Pacific.
Richard Goldstone, a retired justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa, said he was revolted when he learned that some apartheid-era veterans are now employed in Iraq under U.S. government contracts. "The mercenaries we're talking about worked for security forces that were synonymous with murder and torture," says Goldstone, who also served as chief prosecutor of the United Nations war crimes tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. "My reaction was one of horror that that sort of person is employed in a situation where what should be encouraged is the introduction of democracy. These are not the people who should be employed in this sort of endeavor."
PENTAGON OFFICIALS say they can no longer fight a war without private contractors. The U.S. military has shrunk from 2.1 million to 1.4 million active troops since the end of the Cold War, creating a shortage of personnel during wartime. Yet even as the Iraq war was gearing up, observers warned that replacing soldiers with contractors could cause accountability problems. "We have individuals who are not obligated to follow orders or follow the Military Code of Conduct," Rep. Jan Schakowsky, an Illinois Democrat, told Mother Jones last year. "Their main obligation is to their employer, not to their country."
Schakowsky's fears were realized at Abu Ghraib. Long before the infamous prison became a household name, the U.S. Justice Department awarded the research and engineering company SAIC a contract to help reconstruct the Iraqi prison system. SAIC in turn hired four former corrections officials from the United States who had been involved in prisoner-abuse cases. One of them, Gary DeLand, once ran a Utah jail where a mentally ill inmate arrested for nonviolent disorderly conduct was held naked and alone for 56 days without lights, recreation, windows, bedding, or a toilet - and without a hearing. Both SAIC and officials at the Justice Department have declined to comment.
None of the four officials have been directly implicated in the Abu Ghraib torture allegations. But the military's investigations of Abu Ghraib did conclude that employees of two other private contractors, CACI International interrogator Steven Stefanowicz and Titan Corp. translator Adel Nakhla, had participated in the abuses. In particular, the report compiled by Maj. General Antonio Taguba noted that Stefanowicz ordered military police to use interrogation techniques that "equated to physical abuse." More recently, an Army investigation concluded that four CACI and Titan employees actively participated in detainee abuse, including assault and possibly rape. The employees received "little, if any, training on the Geneva Conventions," said the report. Both companies have repeatedly denied wrongdoing on the part of their workers.
While the soldiers accused of violations at Abu Ghraib were court-martialed within months after the scandal broke, the cogs of justice have cranked considerably more slowly for the CACI and Titan employees. The difference lies in how the law treats civilians compared to soldiers: While the government can prosecute some crimes committed by civilians overseas, those laws have never been successfully applied to contractors - though in a case seen as a test, the government recently indicted a CIA contractor named David Passaro for allegedly beating a prisoner to death with a flashlight in Afghanistan. What's more, in a little-known order - issued just before the handover of sovereignty to Iraq last June - U.S. administrator Paul Bremer declared contractors "immune from the Iraqi legal process."
Critics - including some within the military - argue that the armed services are creating a shadow workforce that can't be held accountable. "The Pentagon is trying to cast a legal fog," says Scott Horton, who chairs the international law committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. In May 2003, senior officers from the Judge Advocate General's Corps took the extraordinary step of requesting a secret meeting with Horton to warn him about the increase in private contracting. "They explained, ‘Look, these civilian contractors are not subject to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, and they know they're not subject to it,'" Horton says. "This was creating an ambiguity that was ripe for abuse - and abuse was going to happen."
AS DISTURBING as the prison scandal has been, it constitutes only a small piece of a potentially much larger human rights problem. According to U.S. authorities in Iraq and independent experts, the war has put an estimated 20,000 military jobs into the hands of the private sector. "Private military firms have literally exploded in size at an Internet-like pace, going from a few executives drumming up contracts to over 1,200 personnel in the field in a matter of months," says Peter W. Singer, a national security fellow at the Brookings Institution. "The companies are pulling in people they have never even interviewed."
To find workers, the companies went to the deepest labor pools around - in some cases, the unemployed former foot soldiers of repressive regimes. Take, for example, Erinys International, which contracts with the Pentagon to provide security services in Iraq. Until recently, one of Erinys' employees was a South African named Deon Gouws. During the 1980s, as a member of a police unit called the Northern Transvaal Security Branch, Gouws used arson, bombings, and assassinations to intimidate activists. In one case, Gouws and his fellow officers assembled nine young men in a house and mowed them down with AK-47s before setting their bodies ablaze. "They were essentially trying to create a sense of terror," says Nicky Rousseau, a former researcher for South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. During his testimony before that commission, Gouws echoed the words of war-crimes defendants throughout history: "I simply carried out my orders and got the job done."
Gouws left Iraq after he was injured by a suicide bomber at a Baghdad hotel; the same attack killed Frans Strydom, a former member of Koevoet ("Crowbar"), a South African counterinsurgency unit notorious for terrorizing and killing blacks. "We were basically automatons," one Koevoet operative told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1997. "We would just kill. That's how we got our kicks."
There are no hard statistics on the numbers of South Africans now working in Iraq, though the figure most often quoted is 1,500. Soldiers associated with the apartheid regime's racist and antidemocratic security forces "have practically zero employment prospects" in today's South Africa, says Angela McIntyre, a researcher at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria. "They take what opportunities come along."
And South Africa is hardly the only source of private soldiers with problematic backgrounds. ArmorGroup, a British security firm, was embarrassed last winter when the Belfast Telegraph revealed that one of its Iraq employees, Derek Adgey, had served prison time for collaborating with the Ulster Freedom Fighters, a loyalist paramilitary group in Northern Ireland. When the news of Adgey's record broke, ArmorGroup fired him; company officials declined to comment.
An estimated 500 Serbs who served under the repressive Milosevic regime have also found jobs with private security firms in Iraq, according to sources in the country. "Everyone here knows that hundreds of men wanted for crimes against humanity have left the country to take jobs in Iraq," says one Italian diplomat. "They evaded justice by working for the Americans in Afghanistan, and now they are signing up for work in Iraq." The Chilean press has reported that veterans of that country's military from the Pinochet era have signed up with the security contractor Blackwater USA. And according to research by the Argentine journalist Mario Podestá, who was recently killed in a car accident en route to Baghdad, veterans of Argentina's Dirty War - in which political dissidents were routinely tortured and killed - have been deployed to Iraq on private security contracts.
Pentagon spokesman Glenn Flood says the Defense Department could theoretically suspend the contracts of companies whose employees have questionable pasts; he doesn't know if it has ever done so. But, he adds, having confessed war criminals such as Branfield or Gouws on the payroll does not necessarily disqualify a firm from working in Iraq.
IT'S NOT JUST RANK-AND-FILE thugs who are being sent to serve in Iraq under the U.S. flag. Last May, the Pentagon handed out a $293 million contract to oversee all private security operations in Iraq to a company headed by controversial former British officer Tim Spicer. Aegis Defence Services Limited won the Pentagon contract, even though it was founded just two years ago and has no track record in Iraq.
Before starting Aegis, Spicer was the CEO of a private military firm called Sandline International, which specialized in helping governments put down rebellions. "It often takes a certain amount of coercion, or more often the threat of coercion, to bring the parties to the negotiating table," he wrote in his autobiography, An Unorthodox Soldier. In one deal that made international headlines, Sandline was hired in 1997 by the government of Papua New Guinea to crush a popular uprising on the tiny South Pacific island of Bougainville, where local residents had shut down a vast open-pit copper mine that they said was destroying the local ecosystem. Papua New Guinea, which derived considerable revenues from the mine, paid Spicer's firm $36 million to invade the island with a strike force equipped with helicopters and rocket launchers. Sandline's official battle plan called for soldiers to target rebel commanders, then focus on "mopping up the enemy." Spicer's plan was foiled when the contract was made public.
It wasn't Spicer's first brush with controversy. When he served in Northern Ireland as a British officer, two soldiers under his command chased down and killed an unarmed, 18-year-old Catholic, Peter McBride. Although he didn't know the men well, Spicer took up the soldiers' cause, saying McBride had "acted like a terrorist" by running away. Even after the courts found the men guilty of murder, Spicer remained the soldiers' advocate and worked tirelessly to get them reinstated in the military.
Aegis officials declined to comment on Spicer's background or the $293 million contract. Pentagon officials have said they knew very little about Spicer's history. "Whatever occurred in the past is in the past," Army Major Gary Tallman told the Washington Post last June, "and we wouldn't necessarily know about it."
But that, critics say, is exactly the problem: By ignoring contractors' human rights records, the government is skirting its responsibility to prevent future abuses. "At the end of the day, we're talking about companies and personnel that aren't in our military, but are part of our military operations," says the Brookings Institution's Singer. "Given the importance of these roles, you'd think the government would want to get it right. But the recruiting and vetting - and the accountability and jurisdictional questions - have been punted to the marketplace."
Even in the wake of the Abu Ghraib scandal, Singer adds, "we haven't seen any cleaning up of what's going on. Has anyone tried to reform the system?" To the contrary: Not only did Bremer grant contractors blanket immunity from Iraqi courts, but last spring the Coalition Provisional Authority issued the opinion that "disciplining contractor personnel is the contractor's responsibility" - not, in other words, the government's.
In theory, there is a law designed to impose some accountability on military contractors. In 2000, Congress passed the Military Extraterritorial Jurisdiction Act (MEJA), which allows the government to prosecute anyone "employed by or accompanying the armed forces outside the United States" for significant crimes committed overseas. But the law has only been invoked once - to prosecute an Air Force officer's spouse for murder. "For all the good it's done, MEJA may as well not exist," says Rep. David Price, a North Carolina Democrat. Price has introduced two bills that would strengthen MEJA and require the Pentagon to set minimum standards for civilian employees. But the measures won't do much, he acknowledges, until the Pentagon demands accountability from the companies it hires. So far, Price says, "it's been a very lax process. There's been a breakdown of accountability and transparency. The Pentagon should have taken responsibility all along - but they didn't."
Barry Yeoman is a Mother Jones contributing writer.
This article has been made possible by the Foundation for National Progress, the Investigative Fund of Mother Jones, and gifts from generous readers like you.
© 2004 The Foundation for National Progress
http://www.motherjones.com/commentary/notebook/2004/11/11_200.html
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El día que la Tierra se detuvo
A CINCUENTA AÑOS DEL LANZAMIENTO DEL SPUTNIK
El 4 de octubre de 1957 el ser humano cortó las ataduras que lo mantenían atado al planeta: la Unión Soviética había logrado poner en órbita el primer satélite artificial, disparando así la carrera espacial.
Por Federico Kukso
Miércoles, 03 de Octubre de 2007
Si hubiera que asignarle una metáfora –y sólo una– a la hazaña del Sputnik, la más acertada tal vez sea la metáfora de la chispa. Porque es así como se ve desde este momento de la historia la aventura del primer satélite artificial creado por la humanidad que logró con éxito orbitar el planeta: a fin de cuentas, fue el Sputnik –y sobre todo su sonido firma parecido al emitido por un grillo– el que disparó la carrera espacial, el que hizo que tomara brío y dirección. Sin este prodigio de la técnica soviética, la exploración del universo quizá sería otra cosa diferente de lo que es hoy. Quedarse con la mirada fáctica significaría advertir meramente que dio 1367 vueltas alrededor de la Tierra y recorrió unos 70 millones de kilómetros hasta caer en picada a la atmósfera y desintegrarse tres meses después del lanzamiento, cuando se agotaron sus baterías químicas. Pero obviamente fue más. Esta esfera de aluminio del tamaño de una pelota de básquet (58 cm de diámetro y 83,6 kilos de masa) provocó lo que todas las amenazas y bravuconadas no habían conseguido hasta entonces: que Estados Unidos tuviera miedo.
Los libros de historia recuerdan que el PS-1, inmediatamente rebautizado como Sputnik (“compañero de viaje”, en ruso), despegó el 4 de octubre de 1957 (dos días antes de lo planeado) desde la base de Baikonur en Tyuratam (hoy Kazajistan) impulsado por un R-7, una serie de cohetes militares desarrollados con toda la información de los cohetes alemanes V-2 de la Segunda Guerra Mundial, mejorados para poder tener alcance intercontinental durante la Guerra Fría y eventualmente transportar una bomba de hidrógeno. Curiosamente, el lanzamiento no fue secreto sino público, en clara ostentación del poderío rojo. Minutos después de su salto a órbita (elíptica), el Sputnik pronunció su primer “bip”, emitido luego cada 0,3 segundos en la banda de los 7,5 y 15 metros de longitud de onda, y comenzó a dar vueltas al planeta cada 98 minutos.
Muchos lo habían intentado antes, pero fueron los soviéticos quienes lo consiguieron abriendo así el marcador: URSS 1 - Estados Unidos 0. Y fue todo un shock. Estados Unidos, literalmente, se sacudió. El Sputnik pasaba sobre territorio norteamericano siete veces al día, recordándoles –siete veces– que no habían sido ellos los primeros. Encima, no se sabía mucho cómo lucía el satélite, cuáles eran sus intenciones, qué podía hacer (¿qué información mandaba a Moscú?, ¿estaba armado?, ¿era peligroso?). El enemigo hasta entonces invisible y lejano (pero presente) había tomado cuerpo.
En realidad transportaba sensores de temperatura y radiación (con los que midió la densidad de la atmósfera y la propagación de las ondas de radio), unas pesadas baterías, dos radiotransmisores de frecuencias diferentes y en su exterior lucía cuatro antenas con forma de varillas. Igual, la alarma se encendió en los Estados Unidos. “Ningún evento desde Pearl Harbor provocó tantas repercusiones en la vida pública”, sostiene el historiador Walter A. McDougall, que compara el evento con los ataques terroristas del 11 de septiembre de 2001.
Sin embargo, inicialmente no cayó como una gran noticia en territorio soviético. El diario Pravda, por ejemplo, le dio poco espacio en tapa. Eso sí: cuando se percataron del revuelo internacional y de que Nikita Krushchev se regodeaba con el tema, titularon “Gran victoria en la competición mundial contra el capitalismo”.
La respuesta norteamericana no se hizo esperar, pero vino con un fracaso rotundo. Su primer intento de poner un satélite en órbita, el Vanguard TV-3, tuvo lugar el 6 de diciembre de 1957. Pero no logró siquiera elevarse mucho del suelo. Al incidente se lo conoce hoy como el “Kaputnik”. El éxito tardó en llegar y recién se dio el 31 de enero de 1958, cuando el Explorer 1 se posó en el espacio. Era un poco tarde: para entonces, los soviéticos ya habían puesto un animal en órbita (la famosa perra Laika) a bordo del Sputnik II, el 3 de noviembre de 1957.
La pregunta que se hacían todos por entonces era: ¿quién fue el genio que diseñó el Sputnik? La respuesta recién salió a la luz el 14 de enero de 1966: Serguei Pavlovich Korolev, un ingeniero ucraniano cuya identidad se reveló cuando murió a causa de un cáncer de intestino. Había pasado años en un campo de trabajos forzados en Siberia gracias a Stalin. Pero su voluntad pudo más. Se cuenta que el Comité del Nobel estaba interesado en darle el premio a Korolev y le solicitó a Kruschev que revelara su nombre. Sin embargo, el secretario general del Partido Comunista contestó que quien merecía el premio era todo el pueblo soviético. Y Korolev se quedó con las manos vacías.
Como todo el mundo sabe, la carrera espacial finalmente la ganó Estados Unidos (aunque el primer ser humano en tocar el espacio se llamó Yuri Gagarin). El Sputnik logró lo que ningún norteamericano había logrado: diplomáticamente realineó a Estados Unidos con Gran Bretaña, apresuró la creación de la agencia ARPA, donde nació Internet, y provocó la reorganización de los programas espaciales dispersos en departamentos militares hasta que se fundieron en la NASA (una organización civil) que, discurso de Kennedy en 1961 mediante, puso a Neil Armstrong en la Luna.
Muchos dudan de que tal hazaña se hubiera logrado sin aquella bola de metal. Quizás hoy no tendríamos sondas Voyager, robots en Marte, naves invadiendo cada rincón del sistema solar. Puede que en la Luna flameen (sin viento) las estrellas y las barras rojas y blancas de la bandera norteamericana. Pero el espacio irremediablemente será siempre rojo.
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Sputnik, compañero de viaje
Por Leonardo Moledo
Miércoles, 03 de Octubre de 2007
Y así fue. De pronto
La Gran Aventura empezaba otra vez:
unos pocos kilos de metal habían salido
del planeta ensimismado en guerras y deportes
cerrado en su soberbia circular.
Una llamada sencilla y contundente
Bip-bip y las familias de la Tierra
alargaban las antenas de sus radios
y los barcos en pleno mar
y los borrachos en el puerto
y los héroes de hazañas dudosas y mediocres
trataban de adivinar esa nueva cosa
que por mano humana se movía por el cielo
rodeando a un planeta débil
y sin asomo de sentido o de deseo.
Mirar el cielo, adivinar el cielo
donde algunos kilos de aluminio
giraban como un semidiós de metal
derribando el barro oscuro del mito
y la lenta mitología que enloquece.
bip-bip, bip-bip
le hablaba
a una Tierra donde nadie soñaba aún
con la barahúnda electrónica
paralizada en un éxtasis de silencio asombrado
que acallaba el estruendo de dos guerras.
Recomenzaba la aventura
y el Hombre recuperaba sus mayúsculas
perdidas en las revueltas del horror y el siglo XX.
Renegaba de su origen
de su pálida condición de prisionero
y encontraba algo nuevo, inesperado
una esfera pequeña de aluminio
girando alrededor de nuestro mundo estéril
y hablándole directamente a él
su lenguaje de dos letras.
Y en el fondo de los tiempos
en Africa, allí donde alguna vez nacimos
Lucy también levantaría sus ojos asombrada.
Ignorante aún de lo que es el cielo.
Supo que ya tenía un compañero de viaje.
© 2000-2007 www.pagina12.com.ar|Todos los Derechos Reservados
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The Independent:
Record 22C temperatures in Arctic heatwave
By Steve Connor, Science Editor
Published: 03 October 2007
Parts of the Arctic have experienced an unprecedented heatwave this summer, with one research station in the Canadian High Arctic recording temperatures above 20C, about 15C higher than the long-term average. The high temperatures were accompanied by a dramatic melting of Arctic sea ice in September to the lowest levels ever recorded, a further indication of how sensitive this region of the world is to global warming. Scientists from Queen's University in Ontario watched with amazement as their thermometers touched 22C during their July field expedition at the High Arctic camp on Melville Island, usually one of the coldest places in North America.
"This was exceptional for a place where the normal average temperatures are about 5C. This year we frequently recorded daytime temperatures of between 10C and 15C and on some days it went as high as 22C," said Scott Lamoureux, a professor of geography at Queen's.
"Even temperatures of 15C are higher than we'd expect and yet we recorded them for between 10 and 12 days during July. We won't know the August and September recordings until next year when we go back there but it appears the region has continued to be warm through the summer."
The high temperatures on the island caused catastrophic mudslides as the permafrost on hillsides melted, Professor Lamoureux said. "The landscape was being torn to pieces, literally before our eyes."
Other parts of the Arctic also experienced higher-than-normal temperatures, which indicate that the wider polar region may have experienced its hottest summer on record, according to Walt Meir of the US National Snow and Ice Data Centre in Colorado.
"It's been warm, with temperatures about 3C or 4C above normal for June, July and August, particularly to the north of Siberia where the temperatures have reached between 4C and 5C above average," Dr Meir said.
Unusually clear skies over the Arctic this summer have caused temperatures to rise. More sunlight has exacerbated the loss of sea ice, which fell to a record low of 4.28 million square kilometres (1.65 million square miles), some 39 per cent below the long-term average for the period 1979 to 2000. Dr Meir said: "While the decline of the ice started out fairly slowly in spring and early summer, it accelerated rapidly in July. By mid-August, we had already shattered all previous records for ice extent."
An international team of scientists on board the Polar Stern, a research ship operated by the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, also felt the effects of an exceptionally warm Arctic summer. The scientists had anticipated that large areas of the Arctic would be covered by ice with a thickness of about two metres, but found that it had thinned to just one metre.
Instead of breaking through thicker ice at an expected speed of between 1 and 2 knots, the Polar Stern managed to cruise at 6 knots through thin ice and sometimes open water.
"We are in the midst of a phase of dramatic change in the Arctic," said Ursula Schauer, the chief scientist at the Alfred Wegener Institute, who was on board the Polar Stern expedition. "The ice cover of the North Polar Sea is dwindling, the ocean and the atmosphere are becoming steadily warmer, the ocean currents are changing," she said.
One scientist came back from the North Pole and reported that it was raining there, said David Carlson, the director of International Polar Year, the effort to highlight the climate issues of the Arctic and Antarctic. "It makes you wonder whether anyone has ever reported rain at the North Pole before."
Another team of scientists monitoring the movements of Ayles Ice Island off northern Canada reported that it had broken in two far earlier than expected, a further indication of warmer temperatures. And this summer, for the first time, an American sailing boat managed to traverse the North-west Passage from Nova Scotia to Alaska, a voyage usually made by icebreakers. Never before has a sail-powered vessel managed to get straight through the usually ice-blocked sea passage.
Inhabitants of the region are also noticing a significant change as a result of warmer summers, according to Shari Gearheard, a research scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Centre. "People who live in the region are noticing changes in sea ice. The earlier break-up and later freeze-up affect when and where people can go hunting, as well as safety for travel," she said.
Mark Serreze of the National Snow and Ice Data Centre, said: "We may see an ice-free Arctic Ocean in summer within our lifetimes. The implications... are disturbing."
The North-west Passage: an ominous sign
The idea of a North-west Passage was born in 1493, when Pope Alexander VI divided the discovered world between Spain and Portugal, blocking England, France and Holland from a sea route to Asia. As it became clear a passage across Europe was impossible, the ambitious plan was hatched to seek out a route through north-western waters, and nations sent out explorers. When, in the 18th century, James Cook reported that Antarctic icebergs produced fresh water, the view that northern waters were not impossibly frozen was encouraged. In 1776 Cook himself was dispatched by the Admiralty with an Act promising a £20,000 prize, but he failed to push through a route north of Canada. His attempt preceded several British expeditions including a famous Victorian one by Sir John Franklin in 1845. Finally, in 1906 Roald Amundsen led the first trip across the passage to Alaska, and since then a number of fortified ships have followed. On 21 August this year, the North-west Passage was opened to ships not armed with icebreakers for the first time since records began.
http://environment.independent.co.uk/climate_change/article3021309.ece
The Independent:
Dinner in Beirut, and a lesson in courage
Robert Fisk
Published: 29 September 2007
Secrecy, an intellectual said, is a powerful aphrodisiac. Secrecy is exciting. Danger is darker, more sinister. It blows like a fog through the streets of Beirut these days, creeping down the laneways where policemen – who may or may not work for the forces of law and order – shout their instructions through loud-hailers.
No parking. Is anyone fooled? When the Lebanese MP Antoine Ghanem was assassinated last week, the cops couldn't – or wouldn't – secure the crime scene. Why not? And so last Wednesday, the fog came creeping through the iron gateway of Druze leader Walid Jumblatt's town house in Beirut where he and a few brave MPs had gathered for dinner before parliament's useless vote on the presidential elections – now delayed until 23 October. There was much talk of majorities and quorums; 50 plus one appears to be the constitutional rule here, although the supporters of Syria would dispute that. I have to admit I still meet Lebanese MPs who don't understand their own parliamentary system; I suspect it needs several PhDs to get it right.
The food, as always, was impeccable. And why should those who face death by explosives or gunfire every day not eat well? Not for nothing has Nora Jumblatt been called the world's best hostess. I sat close to the Jumblatts while their guests – Ghazi Aridi, the minister of information, Marwan Hamade, minister of communications, and Tripoli MP Mosbah Al-Ahdab and a Beirut judge – joked and talked and showed insouciance for the fog of danger that shrouds their lives.
In 2004, "they" almost got Hamade at his home near my apartment. Altogether, 46 of Lebanon's MPs are now hiding in the Phoenicia Hotel, three to a suite. Jumblatt had heard rumours of another murder the day before Ghanem was blown apart. Who is next? That is the question we all ask. "They" – the Syrians or their agents or gunmen working for mysterious governments – are out there, planning the next murder to cut Fouad Siniora's tiny majority down. "There will be another two dead in the next three weeks," Jumblatt said. And the dinner guests all looked at each other.
"We have all made our wills," Nora said quietly. Even you, Nora? She didn't think she was a target. "But I may be with Walid." And I looked at these educated, brave men – their policies not always wise, perhaps, but their courage unmistakable – and pondered how little we Westerners now care for the life of Lebanon.
There is no longer a sense of shock when MPs die in Beirut. I don't even feel the shock. A young Lebanese couple asked me at week's end how Lebanon has affected me after 31 years, and I said that when I saw Ghanem's corpse last week, I felt nothing. That is what Lebanon has done to me. That is what it has done to all the Lebanese.
Scarcely 1,000 Druze could be rounded up for Ghanem's funeral. And even now there is no security. My driver Abed was blithely permitted to park only 100 metres from Jumblatt's house without a single policeman checking the boot of his car. What if he worked for someone more dangerous than The Independent's correspondent? And who were all those cops outside working for?
Yet at this little dinner party in Beirut, I could not help thinking of all our smug statesmen, the Browns and the Straws and the Sarkozys and the imperious Kouchners and Merkels and their equally smug belief that they are fighting a "war on terror" – do we still believe that, by the way? – and reflect that here in Beirut there are intellectual men and women who could run away to London or Paris if they chose, but prefer to stick it out, waiting to die for their democracy in a country smaller than Yorkshire. I don't think our Western statesmen are of this calibre.
Well, we talked about death and not long before midnight a man in a pony tail and an elegant woman in black (a suitable colour for our conversation) arrived with an advertisement hoarding that could be used in the next day's parliament sitting. Rafiq Hariri was at the top. And there was journalist Jibran Tueni and MP Pierre Gemayel and Hariri's colleague Basil Fleihan, and Ghanem of course. All stone dead because they believed in Lebanon.
What do you have to be to be famous in Lebanon, I asked Jumblatt, and he burst into laughter. Ghoulish humour is in fashion.
And at one point Jumblatt fetched Curzio Malaparte's hideous, brilliant account of the Second World War on the eastern front – Kaputt – and presented it to me with his personal inscription. "To Robert Fisk," he wrote. "I hope I will not surrender, but this book is horribly cruel and somehow beautiful. W Joumblatt [sic]." And I wondered how cruelty and beauty can come together.
Maybe we should make a movie about these men and women. Alastair Sim would have to play the professorial Aridi, Clark Gable the MP Al-Ahdab. (We all agreed that Gable would get the part.) I thought that perhaps Herbert Lom might play Hamade. (I imagine he is already Googling for Lom's name.) Nora? She'd have to be played by Vivien Leigh or – nowadays – Demi Moore. And who would play Walid Jumblatt? Well, Walid Jumblatt, of course.
But remember these Lebanese names. And think of them when the next explosion tears across this dangerous city.
http://news.independent.co.uk/fisk/article3010168.ece
The New Yorker:
Shifting Targets
The Administration’s plan for Iran.
by Seymour M. Hersh
October 8, 2007
In a series of public statements in recent months, President Bush and members of his Administration have redefined the war in Iraq, to an increasing degree, as a strategic battle between the United States and Iran. “Shia extremists, backed by Iran, are training Iraqis to carry out attacks on our forces and the Iraqi people,” Bush told the national convention of the American Legion in August. “The attacks on our bases and our troops by Iranian-supplied munitions have increased. . . . The Iranian regime must halt these actions. And, until it does, I will take actions necessary to protect our troops.” He then concluded, to applause, “I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran’s murderous activities.”
The President’s position, and its corollary—that, if many of America’s problems in Iraq are the responsibility of Tehran, then the solution to them is to confront the Iranians—have taken firm hold in the Administration. This summer, the White House, pushed by the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney, requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran, according to former officials and government consultants. The focus of the plans had been a broad bombing attack, with targets including Iran’s known and suspected nuclear facilities and other military and infrastructure sites. Now the emphasis is on “surgical” strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere, which, the Administration claims, have been the source of attacks on Americans in Iraq. What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism.
The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, the President and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign to convince the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threat has failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that as a result there is not enough popular support for a major bombing campaign. The second development is that the White House has come to terms, in private, with the general consensus of the American intelligence community that Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb. And, finally, there has been a growing recognition in Washington and throughout the Middle East that Iran is emerging as the geopolitical winner of the war in Iraq.
During a secure videoconference that took place early this summer, the President told Ryan Crocker, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq, that he was thinking of hitting Iranian targets across the border and that the British “were on board.” At that point, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice interjected that there was a need to proceed carefully, because of the ongoing diplomatic track. Bush ended by instructing Crocker to tell Iran to stop interfering in Iraq or it would face American retribution.
At a White House meeting with Cheney this summer, according to a former senior intelligence official, it was agreed that, if limited strikes on Iran were carried out, the Administration could fend off criticism by arguing that they were a defensive action to save soldiers in Iraq. If Democrats objected, the Administration could say, “Bill Clinton did the same thing; he conducted limited strikes in Afghanistan, the Sudan, and in Baghdad to protect American lives.” The former intelligence official added, “There is a desperate effort by Cheney et al. to bring military action to Iran as soon as possible. Meanwhile, the politicians are saying, ‘You can’t do it, because every Republican is going to be defeated, and we’re only one fact from going over the cliff in Iraq.’ But Cheney doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the Republican worries, and neither does the President.”
Bryan Whitman, a Pentagon spokesman, said, “The President has made it clear that the United States government remains committed to a diplomatic solution with respect to Iran. The State Department is working diligently along with the international community to address our broad range of concerns.” (The White House declined to comment.)
I was repeatedly cautioned, in interviews, that the President has yet to issue the “execute order” that would be required for a military operation inside Iran, and such an order may never be issued. But there has been a significant increase in the tempo of attack planning. In mid-August, senior officials told reporters that the Administration intended to declare Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a foreign terrorist organization. And two former senior officials of the C.I.A. told me that, by late summer, the agency had increased the size and the authority of the Iranian Operations Group. (A spokesman for the agency said, “The C.I.A. does not, as a rule, publicly discuss the relative size of its operational components.”)
“They’re moving everybody to the Iran desk,” one recently retired C.I.A. official said. “They’re dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up everything. It’s just like the fall of 2002”—the months before the invasion of Iraq, when the Iraqi Operations Group became the most important in the agency. He added, “The guys now running the Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event of an attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the Administration has not thought it all the way through.”
That theme was echoed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national-security adviser, who said that he had heard discussions of the White House’s more limited bombing plans for Iran. Brzezinski said that Iran would likely react to an American attack “by intensifying the conflict in Iraq and also in Afghanistan, their neighbors, and that could draw in Pakistan. We will be stuck in a regional war for twenty years.”
In a speech at the United Nations last week, Iran’s President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was defiant. He referred to America as an “aggressor” state, and said, “How can the incompetents who cannot even manage and control themselves rule humanity and arrange its affairs? Unfortunately, they have put themselves in the position of God.” (The day before, at Columbia, he suggested that the facts of the Holocaust still needed to be determined.)
“A lot depends on how stupid the Iranians will be,” Brzezinski told me. “Will they cool off Ahmadinejad and tone down their language?” The Bush Administration, by charging that Iran was interfering in Iraq, was aiming “to paint it as ‘We’re responding to what is an intolerable situation,’ ” Brzezinski said. “This time, unlike the attack in Iraq, we’re going to play the victim. The name of our game seems to be to get the Iranians to overplay their hand.”
General David Petraeus, the commander of the multinational forces in Iraq, in his report to Congress in September, buttressed the Administration’s case against Iran. “None of us, earlier this year, appreciated the extent of Iranian involvement in Iraq, something about which we and Iraq’s leaders all now have greater concern,” he said. Iran, Petraeus said, was fighting “a proxy war against the Iraqi state and coalition forces in Iraq.”
Iran has had a presence in Iraq for decades; the extent and the purpose of its current activities there are in dispute, however. During Saddam Hussein’s rule, when the Sunni-dominated Baath Party brutally oppressed the majority Shiites, Iran supported them. Many in the present Iraqi Shiite leadership, including prominent members of the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, spent years in exile in Iran; last week, at the Council on Foreign Relations, Maliki said, according to the Washington Post, that Iraq’s relations with the Iranians had “improved to the point that they are not interfering in our internal affairs.” Iran is so entrenched in Iraqi Shiite circles that any “proxy war” could be as much through the Iraqi state as against it. The crux of the Bush Administration’s strategic dilemma is that its decision to back a Shiite-led government after the fall of Saddam has empowered Iran, and made it impossible to exclude Iran from the Iraqi political scene.
Vali Nasr, a professor of international politics at Tufts University, who is an expert on Iran and Shiism, told me, “Between 2003 and 2006, the Iranians thought they were closest to the United States on the issue of Iraq.” The Iraqi Shia religious leadership encouraged Shiites to avoid confrontation with American soldiers and to participate in elections—believing that a one-man, one-vote election process could only result in a Shia-dominated government. Initially, the insurgency was mainly Sunni, especially Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Nasr told me that Iran’s policy since 2003 has been to provide funding, arms, and aid to several Shiite factions—including some in Maliki’s coalition. The problem, Nasr said, is that “once you put the arms on the ground you cannot control how they’re used later.”
In the Shiite view, the White House “only looks at Iran’s ties to Iraq in terms of security,” Nasr said. “Last year, over one million Iranians travelled to Iraq on pilgrimages, and there is more than a billion dollars a year in trading between the two countries. But the Americans act as if every Iranian inside Iraq were there to import weapons.”
Many of those who support the President’s policy argue that Iran poses an imminent threat. In a recent essay in Commentary, Norman Podhoretz depicted President Ahmadinejad as a revolutionary, “like Hitler . . . whose objective is to overturn the going international system and to replace it . . . with a new order dominated by Iran. . . . [T]he plain and brutal truth is that if Iran is to be prevented from developing a nuclear arsenal, there is no alternative to the actual use of military force.” Podhoretz concluded, “I pray with all my heart” that President Bush “will find it possible to take the only action that can stop Iran from following through on its evil intentions both toward us and toward Israel.” Podhoretz recently told politico.com that he had met with the President for about forty-five minutes to urge him to take military action against Iran, and believed that “Bush is going to hit” Iran before leaving office. (Podhoretz, one of the founders of neoconservatism, is a strong backer of Rudolph Giuliani’s Presidential campaign, and his son-in-law, Elliott Abrams, is a senior adviser to President Bush on national security.)
In early August, Army Lieutenant General Raymond Odierno, the second-ranking U.S. commander in Iraq, told the Times about an increase in attacks involving explosively formed penetrators, a type of lethal bomb that discharges a semi-molten copper slug that can rip through the armor of Humvees. The Times reported that U.S. intelligence and technical analyses indicated that Shiite militias had obtained the bombs from Iran. Odierno said that Iranians had been “surging support” over the past three or four months.
Questions remain, however, about the provenance of weapons in Iraq, especially given the rampant black market in arms. David Kay, a former C.I.A. adviser and the chief weapons inspector in Iraq for the United Nations, told me that his inspection team was astonished, in the aftermath of both Iraq wars, by “the huge amounts of arms” it found circulating among civilians and military personnel throughout the country. He recalled seeing stockpiles of explosively formed penetrators, as well as charges that had been recovered from unexploded American cluster bombs. Arms had also been supplied years ago by the Iranians to their Shiite allies in southern Iraq who had been persecuted by the Baath Party.
“I thought Petraeus went way beyond what Iran is doing inside Iraq today,” Kay said. “When the White House started its anti-Iran campaign, six months ago, I thought it was all craziness. Now it does look like there is some selective smuggling by Iran, but much of it has been in response to American pressure and American threats—more a ‘shot across the bow’ sort of thing, to let Washington know that it was not going to get away with its threats so freely. Iran is not giving the Iraqis the good stuff—the anti-aircraft missiles that can shoot down American planes and its advanced anti-tank weapons.”
Another element of the Administration’s case against Iran is the presence of Iranian agents in Iraq. General Petraeus, testifying before Congress, said that a commando faction of the Revolutionary Guards was seeking to turn its allies inside Iraq into a “Hezbollah-like force to serve its interests.” In August, Army Major General Rick Lynch, the commander of the 3rd Infantry Division, told reporters in Baghdad that his troops were tracking some fifty Iranian men sent by the Revolutionary Guards who were training Shiite insurgents south of Baghdad. “We know they’re here and we target them as well,” he said.
Patrick Clawson, an expert on Iran at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, told me that “there are a lot of Iranians at any time inside Iraq, including those doing intelligence work and those doing humanitarian missions. It would be prudent for the Administration to produce more evidence of direct military training—or produce fighters captured in Iraq who had been trained in Iran.” He added, “It will be important for the Iraqi government to be able to state that they were unaware of this activity”; otherwise, given the intense relationship between the Iraqi Shiite leadership and Tehran, the Iranians could say that “they had been asked by the Iraqi government to train these people.” (In late August, American troops raided a Baghdad hotel and arrested a group of Iranians. They were a delegation from Iran’s energy ministry, and had been invited to Iraq by the Maliki government; they were later released.)
“If you want to attack, you have to prepare the groundwork, and you have to be prepared to show the evidence,” Clawson said. Adding to the complexity, he said, is a question that seems almost counterintuitive: “What is the attitude of Iraq going to be if we hit Iran? Such an attack could put a strain on the Iraqi government.”
A senior European diplomat, who works closely with American intelligence, told me that there is evidence that Iran has been making extensive preparation for an American bombing attack. “We know that the Iranians are strengthening their air-defense capabilities,” he said, “and we believe they will react asymmetrically—hitting targets in Europe and in Latin America.” There is also specific intelligence suggesting that Iran will be aided in these attacks by Hezbollah. “Hezbollah is capable, and they can do it,” the diplomat said.
In interviews with current and former officials, there were repeated complaints about the paucity of reliable information. A former high-level C.I.A. official said that the intelligence about who is doing what inside Iran “is so thin that nobody even wants his name on it. This is the problem.”
The difficulty of determining who is responsible for the chaos in Iraq can be seen in Basra, in the Shiite south, where British forces had earlier presided over a relatively secure area. Over the course of this year, however, the region became increasingly ungovernable, and by fall the British had retreated to fixed bases. A European official who has access to current intelligence told me that “there is a firm belief inside the American and U.K. intelligence community that Iran is supporting many of the groups in southern Iraq that are responsible for the deaths of British and American soldiers. Weapons and money are getting in from Iran. They have been able to penetrate many groups”—primarily the Mahdi Army and other Shiite militias.
A June, 2007, report by the International Crisis Group found, however, that Basra’s renewed instability was mainly the result of “the systematic abuse of official institutions, political assassinations, tribal vendettas, neighborhood vigilantism and enforcement of social mores, together with the rise of criminal mafias.” The report added that leading Iraqi politicians and officials “routinely invoke the threat of outside interference”—from bordering Iran—“to justify their behavior or evade responsibility for their failures.”
Earlier this year, before the surge in U.S. troops, the American command in Baghdad changed what had been a confrontational policy in western Iraq, the Sunni heartland (and the base of the Baathist regime), and began working with the Sunni tribes, including some tied to the insurgency. Tribal leaders are now getting combat support as well as money, intelligence, and arms, ostensibly to fight Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia. Empowering Sunni forces may undermine efforts toward national reconciliation, however. Already, tens of thousands of Shiites have fled Anbar Province, many to Shiite neighborhoods in Baghdad, while Sunnis have been forced from their homes in Shiite communities. Vali Nasr, of Tufts, called the internal displacement of communities in Iraq a form of “ethnic cleansing.”
“The American policy of supporting the Sunnis in western Iraq is making the Shia leadership very nervous,” Nasr said. “The White House makes it seem as if the Shia were afraid only of Al Qaeda—but they are afraid of the Sunni tribesmen we are arming. The Shia attitude is ‘So what if you’re getting rid of Al Qaeda?’ The problem of Sunni resistance is still there. The Americans believe they can distinguish between good and bad insurgents, but the Shia don’t share that distinction. For the Shia, they are all one adversary.”
Nasr went on, “The United States is trying to fight on all sides—Sunni and Shia—and be friends with all sides.” In the Shiite view, “It’s clear that the United States cannot bring security to Iraq, because it is not doing everything necessary to bring stability. If they did, they would talk to anybody to achieve it—even Iran and Syria,” Nasr said. (Such engagement was a major recommendation of the Iraq Study Group.) “America cannot bring stability in Iraq by fighting Iran in Iraq.”
The revised bombing plan for a possible attack, with its tightened focus on counterterrorism, is gathering support among generals and admirals in the Pentagon. The strategy calls for the use of sea-launched cruise missiles and more precisely targeted ground attacks and bombing strikes, including plans to destroy the most important Revolutionary Guard training camps, supply depots, and command and control facilities.
“Cheney’s option is now for a fast in and out—for surgical strikes,” the former senior American intelligence official told me. The Joint Chiefs have turned to the Navy, he said, which had been chafing over its role in the Air Force-dominated air war in Iraq. “The Navy’s planes, ships, and cruise missiles are in place in the Gulf and operating daily. They’ve got everything they need—even AWACS are in place and the targets in Iran have been programmed. The Navy is flying FA-18 missions every day in the Gulf.” There are also plans to hit Iran’s anti-aircraft surface-to-air missile sites. “We’ve got to get a path in and a path out,” the former official said.
A Pentagon consultant on counterterrorism told me that, if the bombing campaign took place, it would be accompanied by a series of what he called “short, sharp incursions” by American Special Forces units into suspected Iranian training sites. He said, “Cheney is devoted to this, no question.”
A limited bombing attack of this sort “only makes sense if the intelligence is good,” the consultant said. If the targets are not clearly defined, the bombing “will start as limited, but then there will be an ‘escalation special.’ Planners will say that we have to deal with Hezbollah here and Syria there. The goal will be to hit the cue ball one time and have all the balls go in the pocket. But add-ons are always there in strike planning.”
The surgical-strike plan has been shared with some of America’s allies, who have had mixed reactions to it. Israel’s military and political leaders were alarmed, believing, the consultant said, that it didn’t sufficiently target Iran’s nuclear facilities. The White House has been reassuring the Israeli government, the former senior official told me, that the more limited target list would still serve the goal of counter-proliferation by decapitating the leadership of the Revolutionary Guards, who are believed to have direct control over the nuclear-research program. “Our theory is that if we do the attacks as planned it will accomplish two things,” the former senior official said.
An Israeli official said, “Our main focus has been the Iranian nuclear facilities, not because other things aren’t important. We’ve worked on missile technology and terrorism, but we see the Iranian nuclear issue as one that cuts across everything.” Iran, he added, does not need to develop an actual warhead to be a threat. “Our problems begin when they learn and master the nuclear fuel cycle and when they have the nuclear materials,” he said. There was, for example, the possibility of a “dirty bomb,” or of Iran’s passing materials to terrorist groups. “There is still time for diplomacy to have an impact, but not a lot,” the Israeli official said. “We believe the technological timetable is moving faster than the diplomatic timetable. And if diplomacy doesn’t work, as they say, all options are on the table.”
The bombing plan has had its most positive reception from the newly elected government of Britain’s Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. A senior European official told me, “The British perception is that the Iranians are not making the progress they want to see in their nuclear-enrichment processing. All the intelligence community agree that Iran is providing critical assistance, training, and technology to a surprising number of terrorist groups in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, through Hezbollah, in Lebanon, and Israel/Palestine, too.”
There were four possible responses to this Iranian activity, the European official said: to do nothing (“There would be no retaliation to the Iranians for their attacks; this would be sending the wrong signal”); to publicize the Iranian actions (“There is one great difficulty with this option—the widespread lack of faith in American intelligence assessments”); to attack the Iranians operating inside Iraq (“We’ve been taking action since last December, and it does have an effect”); or, finally, to attack inside Iran.
The European official continued, “A major air strike against Iran could well lead to a rallying around the flag there, but a very careful targeting of terrorist training camps might not.” His view, he said, was that “once the Iranians get a bloody nose they rethink things.” For example, Ali Akbar Rafsanjani and Ali Larijani, two of Iran’s most influential political figures, “might go to the Supreme Leader and say, ‘The hard-line policies have got us into this mess. We must change our approach for the sake of the regime.’ ”
A retired American four-star general with close ties to the British military told me that there was another reason for Britain’s interest—shame over the failure of the Royal Navy to protect the sailors and Royal Marines who were seized by Iran on March 23rd, in the Persian Gulf. “The professional guys are saying that British honor is at stake, and if there’s another event like that in the water off Iran the British will hit back,” he said.
The revised bombing plan “could work—if it’s in response to an Iranian attack,” the retired four-star general said. “The British may want to do it to get even, but the more reasonable people are saying, ‘Let’s do it if the Iranians stage a cross-border attack inside Iraq.’ It’s got to be ten dead American soldiers and four burned trucks.” There is, he added, “a widespread belief in London that Tony Blair’s government was sold a bill of goods by the White House in the buildup to the war against Iraq. So if somebody comes into Gordon Brown’s office and says, ‘We have this intelligence from America,’ Brown will ask, ‘Where did it come from? Have we verified it?’ The burden of proof is high.”
The French government shares the Administration’s sense of urgency about Iran’s nuclear program, and believes that Iran will be able to produce a warhead within two years. France’s newly elected President, Nicolas Sarkozy, created a stir in late August when he warned that Iran could be attacked if it did not halt its nuclear program. Nonetheless, France has indicated to the White House that it has doubts about a limited strike, the former senior intelligence official told me. Many in the French government have concluded that the Bush Administration has exaggerated the extent of Iranian meddling inside Iraq; they believe, according to a European diplomat, that “the American problems in Iraq are due to their own mistakes, and now the Americans are trying to show some teeth. An American bombing will show only that the Bush Administration has its own agenda toward Iran.”
A European intelligence official made a similar point. “If you attack Iran,” he told me, “and do not label it as being against Iran’s nuclear facilities, it will strengthen the regime, and help to make the Islamic air in the Middle East thicker.”
Ahmadinejad, in his speech at the United Nations, said that Iran considered the dispute over its nuclear program “closed.” Iran would deal with it only through the International Atomic Energy Agency, he said, and had decided to “disregard unlawful and political impositions of the arrogant powers.” He added, in a press conference after the speech, “the decisions of the United States and France are not important.”
The director general of the I.A.E.A., Mohamed ElBaradei, has for years been in an often bitter public dispute with the Bush Administration; the agency’s most recent report found that Iran was far less proficient in enriching uranium than expected. A diplomat in Vienna, where the I.A.E.A. is based, said, “The Iranians are years away from making a bomb, as ElBaradei has said all along. Running three thousand centrifuges does not make a bomb.” The diplomat added, referring to hawks in the Bush Administration, “They don’t like ElBaradei, because they are in a state of denial. And now their negotiating policy has failed, and Iran is still enriching uranium and still making progress.”
The diplomat expressed the bitterness that has marked the I.A.E.A.’s dealings with the Bush Administration since the buildup to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. “The White House’s claims were all a pack of lies, and Mohamed is dismissive of those lies,” the diplomat said.
Hans Blix, a former head of the I.A.E.A., questioned the Bush Administration’s commitment to diplomacy. “There are important cards that Washington could play; instead, they have three aircraft carriers sitting in the Persian Gulf,” he said. Speaking of Iran’s role in Iraq, Blix added, “My impression is that the United States has been trying to push up the accusations against Iran as a basis for a possible attack—as an excuse for jumping on them.”
The Iranian leadership is feeling the pressure. In the press conference after his U.N. speech, Ahmadinejad was asked about a possible attack. “They want to hurt us,” he said, “but, with the will of God, they won’t be able to do it.” According to a former State Department adviser on Iran, the Iranians complained, in diplomatic meetings in Baghdad with Ambassador Crocker, about a refusal by the Bush Administration to take advantage of their knowledge of the Iraqi political scene. The former adviser said, “They’ve been trying to convey to the United States that ‘We can help you in Iraq. Nobody knows Iraq better than us.’ ” Instead, the Iranians are preparing for an American attack.
The adviser said that he had heard from a source in Iran that the Revolutionary Guards have been telling religious leaders that they can stand up to an American attack. “The Guards are claiming that they can infiltrate American security,” the adviser said. “They are bragging that they have spray-painted an American warship—to signal the Americans that they can get close to them.” (I was told by the former senior intelligence official that there was an unexplained incident, this spring, in which an American warship was spray-painted with a bull’s-eye while docked in Qatar, which may have been the source of the boasts.)
“Do you think those crazies in Tehran are going to say, ‘Uncle Sam is here! We’d better stand down’? ” the former senior intelligence official said. “The reality is an attack will make things ten times warmer.”
Another recent incident, in Afghanistan, reflects the tension over intelligence. In July, the London Telegraph reported that what appeared to be an SA-7 shoulder-launched missile was fired at an American C-130 Hercules aircraft. The missile missed its mark. Months earlier, British commandos had intercepted a few truckloads of weapons, including one containing a working SA-7 missile, coming across the Iranian border. But there was no way of determining whether the missile fired at the C-130 had come from Iran—especially since SA-7s are available through black-market arms dealers.
Vincent Cannistraro, a retired C.I.A. officer who has worked closely with his counterparts in Britain, added to the story: “The Brits told me that they were afraid at first to tell us about the incident—in fear that Cheney would use it as a reason to attack Iran.” The intelligence subsequently was forwarded, he said.
The retired four-star general confirmed that British intelligence “was worried” about passing the information along. “The Brits don’t trust the Iranians,” the retired general said, “but they also don’t trust Bush and Cheney.”
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2007/10/08/071008fa_fact_hersh
ZNet | Latin America
Che’s Posthumous Gift
Cuban Doctors Restore The Sight Of His Bolivian Executioner
by Salim Lamrani
Rebelión; October 02, 2007
Mario Terán, a retired former non-commissioned officer sadly famous for having executed the legendary guerrilla, Ernesto Che Guevara, on October 9, 1967, in the tiny school of La Higuera in Bolivia, lives in complete anonymity in Santa Cruz. Mired in poverty, he lives only on his miserable pension of a former soldier and had lost his sight, victim of a cataract that he could not treat lacking resources.
In 2004, the Cuban President, Fidel Castro, launched a broad and continental humanitarian campaign bearing the name of Operation Milagro (Miracle), supported by Venezuela, which consisted in operating for free on the poor of Latin American suffering from cataract and other eye diseases. In 30 months, close to 600,000 people of 28 countries, including citizens of the United States, recovered their sight thanks to the altruism of the Cuban doctors. The stated objective is to operate on six million people by 2016. The election of Evo Morales as President of the Republic of Bolivia in December 2005… has allowed Bolivians to access the humanitarian programme that Cuba started. Close to 110,000 Bolivians have been able to regain their sight without paying a single centavo.
Among these is one Mario Terán, who could shake off his grave illness thanks to the Cuban doctors. Pablo Oritz, who works for the daily El Deber of Santa Cruz, tells the story: “Terán had a problem of cataracts and was cured… by Cuban doctors for free… The fellow is a complete stranger. Nobody knows him. He is a wreck and turned up in the Operation Milagro hospital. Nobody recognised him and he was operated upon. His son, who went to the newspaper to make an act of public gratitude, told us the story … It was in last August (2006).”
At times the story holds some surprises like that Che’s assassin was cured by doctors sent by Fidel Castro, the most loyal and intimate companion of the “heroic guerrilla”. Terán owes his sight to the health emissaries who follow the internationalist example of the man he killed. According to the former CIA agent, Félix Rodríguez, who participated in Che’s capture, Terán volunteered to execute the rebel leader. Before that he had killed in cold blood all the other prisoners. But facing Che, his courage failed him.
“When I reached the classroom, Che was seated on a bench. On seeing me, he said, ‘You have come to kill me’.
“I felt inhibited and lowered my head without answering. Then he asked me, ‘What have the others said?’
“I answered that they had said nothing and he commented, ‘They were brave!’
“I dared not fire. At that moment, I saw Che as big, very big, enormous. His eyes shone intensely. I felt they were on me and when he fixed his looks on me, it made me ill. I thought that with one rapid movement Che could take away my weapon.
“‘Be calm,’ he told me, ‘and aim well. You are going to kill a man.’
“Then I took a step back towards the threshold, closed my eyes and fired the first volley…I regained my courage and fired the second volley that got him in an arm, in the shoulder and in the heart. He was dead.”
[Gerardo Arreola of La Jornada, Mexico, quotes Ortiz as saying, “Terán does not want to be identified because he fears the ‘curse’ of Che,” a popular legend which arose from the many violent deaths of those directly linked to Guevara’s capture and execution.
The list is headed by Bolivia’s President of that time, René Barrientos, burnt to death when his helicopter crashed in 1969, in an incident that was never cleared up. Eduardo Huerta, the official who took part in the capture (of Che) died in a car accident… Honorato Rojas, who betrayed the guerrilla group, Colonel Roberto Quintanilla and General Joaquin Zenteno were finished off in incidents claimed by Guevara’s supporters. Captain Gary Prado was paralysed by a bullet. Juan José Torres was the chief of staff of the army that fought Che. Years later, he came to power on a Left ticket and was deposed in a military coup. An ultra-Right commando assassinated him in Argentina.]
On the eve of the fortieth anniversary of his end and despite the execrable international media campaign destined to sully the image of one of greatest revolutionaries of the 20th century, Che’s example remains “big, very big, enormous” and shines “intensely” thanks to the sacrifice of the tens of thousands of Cuban doctors who… persist in the faith that another world, less cruel, is possible.
Revised by Caty R. and translated by Supriyo Chatterjee
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=20&ItemID=13930
posted by attilav at 19:06
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