علق الرئيس السابق للمخابرات الإسرائيلية العسكرية آهارون زئيفي على الاوضاع التي تشهدها العاصمة اللبنانية بيروت بقوله ان “امريكا واسرائيل في مأزق”.
واوضح زئيفي في حوار لصالح موقع استخباري اسرائيلي انه نصح “السي أي أيه” بعدم الإعتماد على وليد جنبلاط أو سعد الحريري لأن تجربة العام 2006 لم تثبت بأن لديهم الجرأة أو القدرة على مواجهة حزب الله موضحا بان جماهير جنبلاط والحريري عبارة عن بسطاء وعاطفيين لا ينفع معهم كل التدريب.

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Sadr group withdraws support to Iraq government

NAJAF, Iraq (AFP) - The movement of radical Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Saturday withdrew its support for the embattled Iraqi government, delivering a fresh blow to the political process of the country.

The group declared it has withdrawn from the main Shiite bloc that leads the Iraqi government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

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By Steve Weizman in Jerusalem

Published: 07 May 2007

Israel’s Shin Bet security service tortures Palestinian prisoners during interrogations in defiance of a 1999 court ruling outlawing such practices, two of the country’s human rights groups said yesterday.

Interrogators beat suspects, shackle them in painful, contorted positions and deprive them of sleep for long periods, according to the 96-page report,Absolutely Forbidden, by B’Tselem and The Centre for the Defence of the Individual.

The Justice Ministry said interrogations were carried out within the law and described the report as badly flawed.

Israel’s Supreme Court outlawed in 1999 what the Shin Bet called “moderate physical pressure”, such as exposure to extreme temperatures and tying up detainees in painful positions.

(more…)

Soldiers in ‘guns for coke’ scandal
David Leppard

BRITISH soldiers have been caught smuggling stolen guns out of Iraq and allegedly exchanging them for cocaine and cash on the black market.

Security officials confirmed this weekend that soldiers from the 3rd Battalion the Yorkshire Regiment are at the centre of a criminal inquiry by the Royal Military Police (RMP) into a “guns for cocaine” network.

[snip]

Although drug use is increasing in the armed forces, this is the first time military police have evidence that stolen weapons are being sold to pay for them.

One of the first soldiers from the Yorkshire Regiment to have been arrested is alleged to have bought drugs by trading handguns, including Glock pistols, smuggled from Iraq to Germany on at least six occasions.

A security source said some of the weapons had been exchanged for about 50 grams of cocaine with a street value of £2,500. The drugs were sold to other British soldiers serving in Iraq.

The source said it was unclear whether the weapons were army issue or seized from Iraqi insurgent groups.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) fears the soldiers may have been doing business with members of organised crime syndicates in Germany. The battalion has a base near Fallingbostel, north of Hanover.

[snip]

As Iraq slides further into chaos, the country has become awash with illicit weapons, many provided to the Iraqi police by America and Britain.

The army is suffering an epidemic of drug abuse. Earlier this year The Sunday Times revealed how the army regiment involved in the first Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal was awash with drugs as the soldiers went to war.

One former fusilier claimed that 75 men from his company, some 60% of its strength, regularly took cocaine, ecstasy or marijuana. “There’s guys who have to have two or three lines of coke before they can operate,” he said.

According to a parliamentary answer, 1,020 army personnel tested positive for drugs last year, including 520 cases using class A drugs - a 50% rise in the past five years.

The MoD confirmed the RMP inquiry but declined to comment further.

---

The full text of the article can be found on the Sunday Times website.

Declan

L’Shanah Tovah Tikatevu
Happy Rosh HaShana to our Jewish brothers and sisters.

You are our brothers and sisters either in religion or in Humanity.

The Gorilla’s Guides team:

Abbas, Ahmad, Ali, Ali (al-Basrawi), Anthony, Declan, Dubhaltach, Erdla, Fatima, Gerard, Hassan, Hussayn, Laith, Mark, Omar, Tony, Padhraic, Sagib, Thalit, Yassir, Zeynab.

Ties to GOP Trumped Know-How Among Staff Sent to Rebuild Iraq
By Rajiv Chandrasekaran
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 17, 2006; A01

Adapted from “Imperial Life in the Emerald City,” by Rajiv Chandrasekaran, copyright Knopf 2006

After the fall of Saddam Hussein’s government in April 2003, the opportunity to participate in the U.S.-led effort to reconstruct Iraq attracted all manner of Americans — restless professionals, Arabic-speaking academics, development specialists and war-zone adventurers. But before they could go to Baghdad, they had to get past Jim O’Beirne’s office in the Pentagon.

To pass muster with O’Beirne, a political appointee who screens prospective political appointees for Defense Department posts, applicants didn’t need to be experts in the Middle East or in post-conflict reconstruction. What seemed most important was loyalty to the Bush administration.

[snip]

Many of those chosen by O’Beirne’s office to work for the Coalition Provisional Authority, which ran Iraq’s government from April 2003 to June 2004, lacked vital skills and experience. A 24-year-old who had never worked in finance — but had applied for a White House job — was sent to reopen Baghdad’s stock exchange. The daughter of a prominent neoconservative commentator and a recent graduate from an evangelical university for home-schooled children were tapped to manage Iraq’s $13 billion budget, even though they didn’t have a background in accounting.

The decision to send the loyal and the willing instead of the best and the brightest is now regarded by many people involved in the 3 1/2 -year effort to stabilize and rebuild Iraq as one of the Bush administration’s gravest errors. Many of those selected because of their political fidelity spent their time trying to impose a conservative agenda on the postwar occupation, which sidetracked more important reconstruction efforts and squandered goodwill among the Iraqi people, according to many people who participated in the reconstruction effort.

[snip]

“We didn’t tap — and it should have started from the White House on down — just didn’t tap the right people to do this job,” said Frederick Smith, who served as the deputy director of the CPA’s Washington office. “It was a tough, tough job. Instead we got people who went out there because of their political leanings.”

[snip]

But many CPA staff members were more interested in other things: in instituting a flat tax, in selling off government assets, in ending food rations and otherwise fashioning a new nation that looked a lot like the United States. Many of them spent their days cloistered in the Green Zone, a walled-off enclave in central Baghdad with towering palms, posh villas, well-stocked bars and resort-size swimming pools.

[snip]

To recruit the people he wanted, O’Beirne sought résumés from the offices of Republican congressmen, conservative think tanks and GOP activists. He discarded applications from those his staff deemed ideologically suspect, even if the applicants possessed Arabic language skills or postwar rebuilding experience.

Smith said O’Beirne once pointed to a young man’s résumé and pronounced him “an ideal candidate.” His chief qualification was that he had worked for the Republican Party in Florida during the presidential election recount in 2000.

[snip]

As more and more of O’Beirne’s hires arrived in the Green Zone, the CPA’s headquarters in Hussein’s marble-walled former Republican Palace felt like a campaign war room. Bumper stickers and mouse pads praising President Bush were standard desk decorations. In addition to military uniforms and “Operation Iraqi Freedom” garb, “Bush-Cheney 2004″ T-shirts were among the most common pieces of clothing.

“I’m not here for the Iraqis,” one staffer noted to a reporter over lunch. “I’m here for George Bush.”

[snip]

When Tabatabai was asked what would have happened if Hallen hadn’t been assigned to reopen the exchange, he smiled. “We would have opened months earlier. He had grand ideas, but those ideas did not materialize,” Tabatabai said of Hallen. “Those CPA people reminded me of Lawrence of Arabia.”

‘Loyalist’ Replaces Public Health Expert

The hiring of Bremer’s most senior advisers was settled upon at the highest levels of the White House and the Pentagon. Some, like Foley, were personally recruited by Bush. Others got their jobs because an influential Republican made a call on behalf of a friend or trusted colleague.

That’s what happened with James K. Haveman Jr., who was selected to oversee the rehabilitation of Iraq’s health care system.

Haveman, a 60-year-old social worker, was largely unknown among international health experts, but he had connections. He had been the community health director for the former Republican governor of Michigan, John Engler, who recommended him to Paul D. Wolfowitz, the deputy secretary of defense.

[snip]

Haveman replaced Frederick M. Burkle Jr., a physician with a master’s degree in public health and postgraduate degrees from Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and the University of California at Berkeley. Burkle taught at the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, where he specialized in disaster-response issues, and he was a deputy assistant administrator at the U.S. Agency for International Development, which sent him to Baghdad immediately after the war.

[snip]

Haveman arrived in Iraq with his own priorities. He liked to talk about the number of hospitals that had reopened since the war and the pay raises that had been given to doctors instead of the still-decrepit conditions inside the hospitals or the fact that many physicians were leaving for safer, better paying jobs outside Iraq. He approached problems the way a health care administrator in America would: He focused on preventive measures to reduce the need for hospital treatment.

He urged the Health Ministry to mount an anti-smoking campaign, and he assigned an American from the CPA team — who turned out to be a closet smoker himself — to lead the public education effort. Several members of Haveman’s staff noted wryly that Iraqis faced far greater dangers in their daily lives than tobacco. The CPA’s limited resources, they argued, would be better used raising awareness about how to prevent childhood diarrhea and other fatal maladies.

Haveman didn’t like the idea that medical care in Iraq was free. He figured Iraqis should pay a small fee every time they saw a doctor. He also decided to allocate almost all of the Health Ministry’s $793 million share of U.S. reconstruction funds to renovating maternity hospitals and building new community medical clinics. His intention, he said, was “to shift the mind-set of the Iraqis that you don’t get health care unless you go to a hospital.”

But his decision meant there were no reconstruction funds set aside to rehabilitate the emergency rooms and operating theaters at Iraqi hospitals, even though injuries from insurgent attacks were the country’s single largest public health challenge.

Haveman also wanted to apply American medicine to other parts of the Health Ministry. Instead of trying to restructure the dysfunctional state-owned firm that imported and distributed drugs and medical supplies to hospitals, he decided to try to sell it to a private company.

[snip]

The group was led by Theodore Briski, a balding, middle-aged pharmacist who held the rank of lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy. Haveman’s order, as Briski remembered it, was: “Build us a formulary in two weeks and then go home.” By his second day in Iraq, Briski came to three conclusions. First, the existing formulary “really wasn’t that bad.” Second, his mission was really about “redesigning the entire Iraqi pharmaceutical procurement and delivery system, and that was a complete change of scope — on a grand scale.” Third, Haveman and his advisers “really didn’t know what they were doing.”

[snip]

When Haveman left Iraq, Baghdad’s hospitals were as decrepit as the day the Americans arrived. At Yarmouk Hospital, the city’s largest, rooms lacked the most basic equipment to monitor a patient’s blood pressure and heart rate, operating theaters were without modern surgical tools and sterile implements, and the pharmacy’s shelves were bare.

In May 2003, a team of law enforcement experts from the Justice Department concluded that more than 6,600 foreign advisers were needed to help rehabilitate Iraq’s police forces.

The White House dispatched just one: Bernie Kerik.

Bernard Kerik had more star power than Bremer and everyone else in the CPA combined. Soldiers stopped him in the halls of the Republican Palace to ask for his autograph or, if they had a camera, a picture. Reporters were more interested in interviewing him than they were the viceroy.

[snip]

“I’m here to bring more media attention to the good work on police because the situation is probably not as bad as people think it is,” Kerik replied.

As they entered the Interior Ministry office in the palace, Gifford offered to brief Kerik. “It was during that period I realized he wasn’t with me,” Gifford recalled. “He didn’t listen to anything. He hadn’t read anything except his e-mails. I don’t think he read a single one of our proposals.”

[snip]

When it came to his own safety, Kerik took no chances. He hired a team of South African bodyguards, and he packed a 9mm handgun under his safari vest.

[snip]

All emphases added by me. Read the whole pathetic disgusting saga here. The book comes out on Tuesday Imperial Life in the Emerald City - details from a9.com

Declan

Commentary No. 193, Sept. 15, 2006

Everyone’s attention is in the wrong place. Most analysts, journalists, and political leaders worry about some government doing something truly destabilizing in the Middle East that will launch widespread regional havoc. The standard culprits - differing according to one’s political persuasions - are Iraq, Iran, Israel, and the United States. But in fact, for different reasons, none of these countries is likely, now or in the near future, to provoke a scenario that could lead to generalized warfare. Iraq is too engrossed in its civil war and in its attempts to end the U.S. presence to be able to start anything serious. Iran has a quite stable regime and is only trying to make sure that the United States cannot clip its wings. Israel is huffing and puffing about Iran but, after the Lebanon fiasco, is in no position to start anything serious. And the U.S. government is licking its Middle East wounds and seeking primarily to minimize the damage it has already caused to its own interests.

The loose cannon in the Middle East is Pakistan. Reflect on its history. There was a highly secular, highly “modern” political movement in British India, which sought, successfully, to have a largely Muslim zone carved out from British India and be recognized as an independent state. Immediately after the independence of India and Pakistan in 1948, they went to war, killed each other in large numbers, and engaged in a massive population exchange. Ever since there has been continuing tension between the two states, especially since they in effect partitioned the large border area of Kashmir, without either side recognizing the legitimacy of the partition.

In the more than half century since then, several important changes have taken place. Pakistan, which was a geographical monstrosity, itself broke in two. Its geographically separated eastern half becoming the independent state of Bangladesh (with the encouragement of India). India and Pakistan engaged in more wars, which basically changed nothing. (And China and India also had a border war.) During the Cold War, India became a leader of the non-aligned movement, entertaining rather friendly relations with the Soviet Union. As a result, two countries were particularly unhappy with India’s foreign policy: the United States and China. Hence, both pursued close relations with Pakistan.

Neither India nor Pakistan signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (the only other non-signatory being Israel). They both developed nuclear weapons. India has had a turbulent and complicated internal political history since 1948. But fundamentally it has remained politically stable, despite its seeming potential for disintegration. For one thing, India has survived multiple changes of government without any sign that the army would step in. The story in Pakistan is quite different. It has had multiple changes in regime, and the army has been responsible for a large number of them. The present regime came into existence as the result of a military coup.

Religion has played a different role in the two countries. In India, Hindu fundamentalism has been very strong and prone to violence, but ultimately it has expressed itself via a political party, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which has largely played by parliamentary rules, in and out of power. And there remains in India a very large Muslim population, one whose votes matter. In Pakistan, Islamic fundamentalists have pursued multiple paths at once. They have created parties to be sure, which have been in and out of power. But they have also created guerilla movements, which (at least initially) were largely active in Kashmir. Even more to the point, they have infiltrated the once purely secular armed forces, and especially its intelligence operations. And they have established de facto autonomous regimes in the so-called Northwest frontier.

Pakistani governments have had to struggle to keep their heads above water. They have been trying to satisfy two different clienteles at the same time: the “modernizing” (that is, Westernizing) strata (professionals, businessmen, academics) on the one hand: and the much more “popular” Islamist groups. This has not been an easy political ball to juggle. One of their key techniques has been to develop an ambiguous but close relationship with the United States, trying to get as much U.S. financial and politico-military support as they could while giving the least possible in return.

One of Osama bin Laden’s chief objectives has been to knock the props from under this game of ambiguity. He hoped, with the 9/11 attack, to get the United States to put pressure on Pakistan to be a much more fully-committed ally. And to some extent Osama bin Laden achieved this (due to the crass lack of geopolitical sophistication in the Bush regime). This brought about a clear reaction in Pakistan. The army’s attempt to bring “order” to the northwest provinces (and thereby capture Osama bin Laden) has failed and the army has now had to draw back. Meanwhile India has been successful in getting the United States to legitimate their further nuclear development, and the United States refused to do the same for Pakistan, lest it upset the applecart in the improved U.S.-India relationship. So Pakistan has turned to its other old ally, China, to fill in the gap.

Still, President Musharref of Pakistan looks increasingly like a political failure. His army has furtively renewed its support for the Taliban in Afghanistan (of whom Pakistan had been the principal sponsor in the 1990s), and the United States is getting increasingly irritated. If Musharref totters, Pakistan could well next have a truly Islamist regime quite hostile to the United States - this time in a militarily powerful country with nuclear weapons, and one in which Osama bin Laden resides with impunity.

Then what?

by Immanuel Wallerstein

[Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein, distributed by Agence Global. For rights and permissions, including translations and posting to non-commercial sites, and contact: rights@agenceglobal.com, 1.336.686.9002 or 1.336.286.6606. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically, or e-mail to others, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To contact author, write: immanuel.wallerstein@yale.edu.

These commentaries, published twice monthly, are intended to be reflections on the contemporary world scene, as seen from the perspective not of the immediate headlines but of the long term.]

Gen Nehushtan said: “We have to recognise that we will be dealing with new definitions of victory. There will be no white flags being raised on this battlefield,” he said.

I’ve got your new definition right here General:

defeat

Function: noun

1 : frustration by nullification or by prevention of success <the bill suffered defeat in the Senate>

2 obsolete : DESTRUCTION

3 a : an overthrow especially of an army in battle b : the loss of a contest

Estimates of the number of refugees inside Iraq itself (IDPs internally-displaced-persons) vary. This photo shows a boy standing in front of the tent that he must now call “home.” The photo was taken today July 20, 2006 in a Baghdad refugee camp.

Declan

Graphic courtesy of this posting by Hilal Chouman at Lebanese Blogger’s Forum

Declan