[Peace-discuss] Just Foreign Policy News, September 28, 2006

[Robert Naiman]

Just Foreign Policy News
September 28, 2006

Summary:
U.S.
A majority of Americans want the US to increase diplomatic efforts
over Iran's nuclear ambitions, while 70% oppose the use of U.S. troops
to thwart Iran, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released Thursday.
Meanwhile, the House of Representatives passed today the "Iran Freedom
Support Act," tightening sanctions on Iran and US allies trading with
Iran and promoting a policy of "regime change," despite the negative
impact this may have on current negotiations. The measure now goes to
the Senate.

Congress took major steps Wednesday toward establishing a new system
for interrogating and trying terror suspects as the House approved
legislation sought by President Bush and the Senate defeated efforts
to alter the measure. The House voted 253 to 168, mostly on party
lines, in favor of new rules governing the questioning of terror
suspects and bringing them before military tribunals. Links to the
roll call and the text are given below. Meanwhile, CNN ran a powerful
interview with Maher Arad, the Canadian deported by the Bush
Administration to Syria and tortured, the link is below.

The New York Times editoralized again in opposition to the bill and
the political timing of the measure and called for a Senate
filibuster. The editorial summarized the problems with the bill with
respect to habeas corpus, the Geneva Conventions, judicial review,
secret and coerced evidence.

Protests and civil disobedience in the US this week against the US
occupation of Iraq were reported by CNN, the Baltimore Sun, and the
Washington Post. CNN has nice footage of the protest in the Hart
Senate office building.

As Bush prepares to receive Kazakh president Nazarbayev at a state
dinner, critics say US policy towards Kazakhstan illustrates the Bush
administration's willingness to sacrifice democracy when it conflicts
with other goals. Meanwhile, the New York Times, reports, comedian
Sasha Cohen has managed to get under the skin of Kazakh officials by
mocking the imperial aura that surrounds Nazarbayev.

Iran
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said he had failed to reach a
deal with Iran's chief nuclear negotiator on Tehran's nuclear program,
but had laid the ground for further discussions.

Laura Rozen, writing for the American Prospect, suggests that once
discredited Iranian exile and Iran-contra arms dealer Manucher
Ghorbanifar once again has an ear in Washington, this time at the
Defense Intelligence Agency.

Iraq
Democrats contend the White House is deliberately withholding a
National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq until after the November
elections. Representative Harman said sources had told her that a
draft of the document had been finished. "I have heard that it's
complete, and that it's grim," Harman said.

The radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has lost control of portions
of his Mahdi Army militia that are splintering off into freelance
death squads and criminal gangs, the New York Times reports. The
report suggests that Sadr militiamen who have grown frustrated with
the Sadr's compromises due to participation in the government may fall
under the control of Iran, without offering any evidence or
explanation of why it would be in Iran's interest to do so.

A $75 million project to build the largest police academy in Iraq has
been so grossly mismanaged that the campus now poses health risks to
recruits and might need to be partially demolished, the Washington
Post reports. The Baghdad Police College, hailed as crucial to U.S.
efforts to prepare Iraqis to take control of the country's security,
was so poorly constructed that feces and urine rained from the
ceilings in student barracks.

Israel
An Israeli military court Wednesday released the Palestinian deputy
prime minister, citing lack of evidence. Other Palestinian lawmakers
remain in jail.

Pakistan
Three weeks after Pakistan's president announced a peace pact with
Taliban radicals in a tribal area bordering Afghanistan, some say
militant Pakistani tribal leaders, while complying with their pledge
to reduce the presence of foreign fighters, intend to defy the peace
pact by sending local fighters into Afghanistan, the Washington Post
reports.

Turkey
A Turkish court fined an elderly man $6,700 for criticizing Prime
Minister Erdogan in a visitors' book at the onetime home of Ataturk.

Mexico
Thousands of local residents, teachers and social activists in a
movement against local authorities in the southern Mexican state of
Oaxaca fear a major police crackdown may be imminent, Inter Press
Service reports.

Contents:
U.S.
1) Americans Favor Diplomacy on Iran: Reuters Poll
Reuters, September 28, 2006, Filed at 7:03 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/washington/politics-usa-politics-poll-iran.html
A majority of Americans want the US to increase diplomatic efforts
over Iran's nuclear ambitions, while 70% oppose the use of U.S. troops
to thwart Iran, according to a Reuters/Zogby poll released
Thursday.Asked the best course of action for the US in dealing with
Iran's nuclear ambitions, 45% said Washington should join with allies
to increase diplomatic efforts and another 17% said the US should step
up diplomacy on its own. One in four respondents, 26%, said they
supported the use of U.S. ground troops in Iran, while 70% opposed it.
9% favored air strikes on selected military targets in Iran.
[Meanwhile, the House of Representatives passed today the "Iran
Freedom Support Act," tightening sanctions on Iran and US allies
trading with Iran and promoting a policy of "regime change," despite
the negative impact this may have on current negotiations. The measure
now goes to the Senate - JFP.]

2) Legislation Advances on Terrorism Trials
Carl Hulse & Kate Zernike, New York Times, September 28, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/washington/28detain.html
Congress took major steps Wednesday toward establishing a new system
for interrogating and trying terror suspects as the House approved
legislation sought by President Bush and the Senate defeated efforts
to alter the measure. The House, in a politically charged decision,
voted 253 to 168 in favor of extensive new rules governing the
questioning of terror suspects and bringing them before military
tribunals. The Senate was expected to follow suit on Thursday, which
would deliver Republicans a major national security victory before the
elections. In the House, 219 Republicans and 34 Democrats, many in
more competitive districts, supported the bill; 160 Democrats and 7
Republicans opposed it; the opponents included the Democratic
leadership and major party voices on the military and intelligence
issues.
House Roll Call: http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll491.xml
Text - Military Commissions Act of 2006:
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.6166:
CNN interview with Maher Arad, Canadian deported by the Bush
Administration to Syria and tortured:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vL3__pxKUkI

3) Rushing Off a Cliff
Editorial, New York Times, September 28, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/opinion/28thu1.html

These are some of the bill's biggest flaws:
Enemy Combatants: A broad definition of "illegal enemy combatant"
could subject legal residents of the US, as well as people in other
countries, to summary arrest and indefinite detention with no hope of
appeal.

Geneva Conventions: The bill would repudiate a half-century of
international precedent by allowing Bush to decide what abusive
interrogation methods he considered permissible. And his decision
could stay secret.

Habeas Corpus: Detainees in U.S. military prisons would lose the right
to challenge their imprisonment. Wrongly imprisoned people would lose
a chance to prove their innocence.

Judicial Review: The courts would have no power to review this new
system, except verdicts by military tribunals. The bill would limit
appeals and bar legal actions based on the Geneva Conventions. All
Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is declare him an
illegal combatant and not have a trial.

Coerced Evidence: Coerced evidence would be permissible if a judge
considered it reliable and relevant. Coercion is defined so that it
exempts anything done before the passage of the 2005 Detainee
Treatment Act, and anything else Bush chooses.

Secret Evidence: American standards of justice prohibit evidence and
testimony that is kept secret from the defendant. But the bill as
redrafted by Cheney seems to weaken protections against such evidence.

Offenses: The definition of torture is unacceptably narrow. Rape and
sexual assault are defined in a way that covers only forced or coerced
activity, and not other forms of nonconsensual sex. The bill would
effectively eliminate the idea of rape as torture.

There isn't time to fix these bills. If there was ever a moment for a
filibuster, this was it.

4) Peaceful Iraq war protests prompt 71 arrests
Lisa Goddard, CNN, September 26, 2006, 8:30 p.m. EDT,
http://www.cnn.com/2006/US/09/26/dc.protests/
Two Presbyterian ministers were among 71 people arrested during a
series of peaceful protests against the Iraq war Tuesday.
Demonstrators held sit-ins, prayer services and sing-alongs at four
locations in the Capitol complex, including the central atrium of the
Senate Hart Office Building. [CNN has a nice video of peace
campaigners lying down in the atrium and being arrested, while they
are serenaded from one balcony as bemused Senate staffers look on from
another. See also:
http://www.iraqpledge.org/]

5) For Kazakh Leader's Visit, U.S. Seeks a Balance
Steven Lee Myers & Ilan Greenberg, New York Times, September 28, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/world/asia/28kazakh.html
When Vice President Cheney came to this oil-rich Central Asian nation
he expressed admiration for its "political development." A day before
his visit, the government effectively shut down the two most prominent
American democracy organizations working here. While American
officials are negotiating to reverse the government's decision, they
have yet to complain about it publicly. As Bush prepares to receive
Kazakh president Nazarbayev at a state dinner, the episode reflects
the balance the administration has struck with a country that has a
record of corruption, flawed elections and rights violations,
including the killings of two opposition leaders in the last year.

Critics say the episode also illustrates the Bush administration's
willingness to sacrifice democracy, a centerpiece of its foreign
policy, when it conflicts with other foreign policy goals. "There are
four enemies of human rights: oil, gas, the war on terror and
geopolitical considerations," said Yevgeny Zhovtis of the Kazakhstan
International Bureau for Human Rights and Rule of Law, which has
received funding from the US Embassy and the National Endowment for
Democracy. "And we have all four."

6) Kazakhs Shrug at 'Borat' While the State Fumes
Steven Lee Myers, New York Times, September 28, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/movies/28bora.html
There is no Running of the Jews here. The country's national drink is
not made from horse urine, though fermented horse milk, or kumys, is
considered a delicacy. (It tastes like effervescent yogurt.) There is
almost nothing remotely truthful in the satiric depiction of
Kazakhstan popularized by Sacha Baron Cohen, the comedian who plays a
bumbling, boorish, anti-Semitic, homophobic and misogynistic Kazakh
television reporter named Borat Sagdiyev.

And yet Borat/Cohen has managed to infuriate the country's officials.
Their attempts to respond have resulted only in more attention here,
where Borat's antics now make the rounds like samizdat. Now Cohen has
a film, called "Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit
Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan." And Kazakhstan's government is
flustered all over again. That the film had its premiere at the
Toronto Film Festival in advance of a visit to the US by the country's
president only made matters worse, and a denunciation by the Kazakh
Embassy in Washington led to a flurry of newspaper articles asserting
- wrongly, the embassy said - that Nazarbayev intended to complain
about "Borat" to Bush.

The foreign ministry spokesman, Yerzhan Ashykbayev, denounced Cohen's
performance as host of the MTV Europe Music Awards, in which a skit
mocked the imperial aura that surrounds Nazarbayev. Ashykbayev
suggested Cohen was acting on behalf of "someone's political order" to
denigrate Kazakhstan and said the government "reserved the right to
any legal action to prevent new pranks of this kind." Cohen, who is
Jewish, responded as Borat on his Web site, declaring he "fully
supported my government's decision to sue this Jew." "Since the 2003
Tulyakov reforms, Kazakhstan is as civilized as any other country in
the world," he went on. "Women can now travel inside of bus.
Homosexuals no longer have to wear blue hats. And age of consent has
been raised to 8 years old."

But it was the Foreign Ministry's complaint that gave some in the
country's news media a chance to report on it. In an atmosphere of
legal constraints on the press, the ministry's statement offered a way
to poke fun at Nazarbayev's near-absolute political power, by showing
what the fuss was all about. "There is an unwritten rule that the
president's personality is never criticized," said Baryz Bayen,
correspondent for TV 31. Last fall Bayen prepared a feature on the
controversy over Cohen's MTV performance that included clips of the
skit depicting Nazarbayev. Bayen recalled a refrain from Soviet times:
"I have never read Solzhenitsyn, but I condemn him absolutely." "I do
not feel any false patriotism," said Bayen, who, like all ethnic
Kazakhs, bears no resemblance to Borat whatsoever. "I saw portions of
his show, and I can say it is funny."

Iran
7) Talks Between Europe and Iran End Without a Deal
Reuters, September 28, 2006, Filed at 7:05 a.m. ET
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/world/international-nuclear-iran.html
EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said he had failed to reach any
deal with Iran's chief nuclear negotiator at talks on Tehran's nuclear
ambitions Thursday, but had laid the ground for further
discussions."We have been progressing," Solana told reporters. Solana
said he hoped to renew contact with the Iranians in the middle of next
week.

8) They're Back
An Iran contra-era fabricator and his associate appear to have opened
a new channel to Washington.
Laura Rozen, American Prospect, 09.26.06
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=12059
Last week I called a longtime associate of Manucher Ghorbanifar, the
Iran-contra arms dealer and intelligence peddler deemed a fabricator
by the CIA who lured the Reagan administration to sell TOW missiles to
Iran. Since 9-11, Ghorbanifar and his associate have tried through
various channels and schemes to get back on the U.S. government
payroll as intelligence sources on Iran and the Middle East. Their
efforts to do so have been thwarted - until now. The associate told me
that he now has channels to the U.S. government, and a response to my
inquiry from the office of Director of National Intelligence John
Negroponte did not include a denial.

I've written about a 2004 effort by Ghorbanifar and his business
associate to get on the U.S. government payroll as intelligence assets
through Congressman Weldon. At every juncture, pressure from the CIA
and Foggy Bottom ultimately shut those channels down. So I was
surprised, speaking with this Ghorbanifar associate, prompted by a
recent McClatchy report, when he proudly told me that he is again
giving his information to Washington. He implied U.S. officials call
him frequently. Ghorbanifar is the subject of two CIA "burn notices"
warning its employees not to deal with him.

John Negroponte, as intelligence czar, is presumably responsible for
preventing the corruption of U.S. intelligence on Iran by possible
fabricators. I was issued a boiler plate response from the DNI that
was most striking for what it lacked: A denial. "We decline to comment
on any individual or specific activity,"  the response read. "The
Intelligence Community does not make judgments based on a single
source," the answer continued. "If there are two or three real
contending points of view, we want policymakers to know about that. As
a result, policymakers are getting to see a lot more than they used
to." I called a former intelligence official to get his take on it.
"They're saying 'yes,'" he said - they are taking Ghorbanifar's
associate's information. "The system is so … corrupt," he continued.
"The problem is when you introduce data into the analytic stream that
is based on no foundation, it's going to lead you to false
conclusions. Garbage in, garbage out." U.S. intelligence sources
surmise that the agency taking Ghorbanifar's associate's information
is not the CIA, but the Pentagon, most likely the Defense Intelligence
Agency.

Iraq
9) Iraq Report Is Due in '07; Skeptics Want to See It Now
Mark Mazzetti, New York Times, September 28, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/washington/28intel.html
In fall 2002, weeks before the midterm elections, American
intelligence agencies were racing to complete an assessment of Iraq as
the Senate prepared to vote on a resolution to prepare the groundwork
for war. Four years later, in the shadow of another midterm campaign,
agencies are again drafting a formal assessment on Iraq. But this
time, the document is one that the White House might prefer to see
finished later rather than sooner. In mid-August, John Negroponte,
director of national intelligence, gave the go-ahead for a National
Intelligence Estimate that will address security in Iraq and the
potential for civil war there. White House and intelligence officials
say the work is still in its early stages and will not be done until
next year.

But Democrats contend the White House is "slow rolling" the document -
deliberately withholding what could be bleak conclusions - until after
the November elections. The Democrats have intensified those
complaints since the White House, under political pressure, on Tuesday
released parts of a separate intelligence report, a sober assessment
of global terrorism. On Wednesday, Representative Harman of
California, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said
sources had told her that a draft of the document had been finished.
"I have heard that it's complete, and that it's grim," Harman said.

10) Cleric Said to Lose Reins of Parts of Iraqi Militia
Sabrina Tavernise, New York Times, September 28, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/world/middleeast/28sadr.html
The radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr has lost control of portions
of his Mahdi Army militia that are splintering off into freelance
death squads and criminal gangs, a senior coalition intelligence
official said Wednesday. The question of how tightly Sadr holds the
militia, one of the largest armed groups in Iraq, is of critical
importance to American and Iraqi officials. Seeking to ease the
sectarian violence, they have pressed him to join the political
process and curb his fighters, who see themselves as defenders of
Shiism - and often as agents of vengeance against Sunnis.

But as Sadr has taken a more active role in the government, as many as
a third of his militiamen have grown frustrated with the constraints
of compromise and have broken off, often selling their services to the
highest bidders, said the official. "When Sadr says you can't do this,
for whatever political reason, that's when they start to go rogue,"
the official said. "Frankly, at that point, they start to become very
open to alternative sources of sponsorship." The official said that
opened the door to control by Iran. [No evidence is offered as to why
it would be in Iran's interest to sponsor such people. -JFP]

11) Heralded Iraq Police Academy a 'Disaster'
Amit Paley, Washington Post, Thursday, September 28, 2006; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/27/AR2006092702134.html
A $75 million project to build the largest police academy in Iraq has
been so grossly mismanaged that the campus now poses health risks to
recruits and might need to be partially demolished, U.S. investigators
have found. The Baghdad Police College, hailed as crucial to U.S.
efforts to prepare Iraqis to take control of the country's security,
was so poorly constructed that feces and urine rained from the
ceilings in student barracks. Floors heaved inches off the ground and
cracked apart. Water dripped so profusely in one room that it was
dubbed "the rain forest."

"This is the most essential civil security project in the country -
and it's a failure," said Stuart Bowen Jr., the special inspector
general for Iraq reconstruction. "The Baghdad police academy is a
disaster." Bowen's office plans to release a report Thursday detailing
the most alarming problems with the facility. Even in a $21 billion
reconstruction effort that has been marred by cases of corruption and
fraud, failures in training and housing Iraq's security forces are
particularly significant because of their effect on what the U.S.
military has called its primary mission here: to prepare Iraqi police
and soldiers so that Americans can depart.

Israel
12) Israel Frees a Top Hamas Official but Still Holds Other Lawmakers
Greg Myre, New York Times, September 28, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/world/middleeast/28mideast.html
An Israeli military court Wednesday released the Palestinian deputy
prime minister, Nasser al-Shaer, one of more than 30 Hamas lawmakers
and cabinet ministers in the Hamas-led government who have been
detained by the Israelis over the past three months. Shaer, the
highest-ranking official held, was arrested on Aug. 19, but was not
charged with a crime and the court cited a "lack of evidence" in
ordering his release.

However, the court said that for the next two weeks, Shaer would not
be allowed to go to Ramallah, where his office is and which serves as
the Palestinian political headquarters in the West Bank. It gave no
reason. Israel began rounding up the Hamas legislators after
Palestinian militants captured an Israeli soldier on June 25. The
soldier, Cpl. Gilad Shalit, is still being held, despite an Israeli
military incursion into Gaza and the crackdown on Hamas lawmakers.  A
military court ruled Sept. 12 that 18 of the Hamas legislators should
be freed. But on Monday, a military appeals court reversed the ruling,
and those legislators and others remain in jail while awaiting trial.

Pakistan
In Tribal Pakistan, an Uneasy Quiet
Pact Fails to Deter Backing for Taliban
Pamela Constable, Washington Post, Thursday, September 28, 2006; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/27/AR2006092702054.html
Three weeks after Pakistan's president, Gen. Musharraf, announced a
peace pact with Taliban radicals in a tribal area bordering
Afghanistan, visitors report quiet in territory that shook with
artillery and bomb blasts. Religious patrols are enforcing law and
order, in place of Pakistan army troops who have withdrawn to their
barracks. But as the toll from violence rises across the border in
Afghanistan, there are reports that militant Pakistani tribal leaders,
while complying with their pledge to reduce the presence of foreign
fighters, intend to defy the peace pact by sending local fighters into
Afghanistan.

Musharraf continues to deny Afghan charges that the Pakistani
government is sheltering and encouraging the revived Taliban
insurgency from the tribal zones. But people interviewed in northwest
Pakistan said there is widespread support in the tribal region for the
Taliban movement's harsh Islamic morality and its war against U.S.
forces and their allies in Afghanistan.

Turkey
14) Turkey: Fine for Upsetting Prime Minister
Reuters, September 28, 2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/28/world/europe/28briefs-007.html
An Ankara court fined an elderly man $6,700 for criticizing Prime
Minister Erdogan in a visitors' book at the onetime home of Ataturk,
who founded the Turkish Republic in 1923. Fethi Dorduncu visited in
May the house in Thessaloniki, Greece, where Ataturk was born, and
wrote in the visitors' book that Erdogan was a "traitor" bent on
destroying Ataturk's secular republic and building an Islamic state.
Erdogan ripped the page from the book in anger when he later visited
the house. The court ordered Dorduncu to pay damages for the pain and
anguish he caused Erdogan. Erdogan, who denies he has an Islamist
agenda, has filed a number of lawsuits against his critics, including
journalists and cartoonists.

Mexico
15) Oaxaca Protesters Fear Major Police Crackdown
Diego Cevallos, Inter Press Service, Thursday, September 28, 2006
http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0928-02.htm
Thousands of local residents, teachers and social activists in a
movement against local authorities in the southern Mexican state of
Oaxaca are preparing to resist a police operation they believe may be
imminent. "We demand that force should not be used, nobody wants blood
in the streets," Florentino López, spokesman for the Popular Assembly
of the People of Oaxaca, a social movement bringing together trade
unions and leftist political forces in the state, told IPS. Sources
close to President Fox's government said that police plans are laid to
put an end to the conflict, which has already lasted 129 days, after
attempts failed at negotiation between APPO and representatives of
state Governor Ruiz, accused of corruption and human rights abuses. A
police crackdown in Oaxaca "is not planned, but neither is it ruled
out," said Interior Minister Abascal, who has been meeting members of
the business community, opinion leaders and church representatives to
discuss the conflict.

--------
Robert Naiman
Just Foreign Policy
www.justforeignpolicy.org

Just Foreign Policy is a membership organization devoted to reforming
U.S. foreign policy so that it reflects the values and interests of
the majority of Americans.