Month: May 2011

Seymour Hersh reports in the latest issue of The New Yorker that “despite years of covert operations inside Iran, extensive satellite imagery, and the recruitment of Iranian intelligence assets, the United States and its allies, including Israel, have been unable to find irrefutable evidence of an ongoing hidden nuclear-weapons program in Iran.” The piece is not available for free yet, but you can find an abstract here. I’ve read it in its entirety.

Hersh cites an update of the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate which concluded that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003 and added, “We do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear weapons.” Hersh:

A government consultant who has read the highly classified 2011 N.I.E. update depicted the report as reinforcing the essential conclusion of the 2007 paper: Iran halted weaponization in 2003. “There’s more evidence to support that assessment,” the consultant told me.

The views of the I.A.E.A. are more suspicious, but despite some disputes between the agency and Iran, a very tight surveillance has been kept on Iran through the agency, complete with frequent inspections and 24-hour video surveillance inside nuclear facilities.

Despite obedient media lapdogs trying to refute Hersh’s report, claims of a current weapons program or of an intention to begin one remain unsubstantiated. “The guys working on this are good analysts,” Hersh was told by an intelligence analyst, “and their bosses are backing them up.” Hawkish cries to the contrary are understandable, as a Defense Intelligence Agency analyst told Hersh, they knew the 2011 update to the N.I.E would be politically explosive: “If Iran is not a nuclear threat, the Israelis have no reason to threaten imminent military action.” This is an unwelcome potentiality in Washington.

Here is an interesting excerpt regarding intelligence efforts to determine the nature of Iran’s nuclear activities:

The N.I.E makes clear that U.S. intelligence has been unable to find decisive evidence that Iran has been moving enriched uranium to an underground weapon-making center. In the past six years, soldiers from the Joint Special Operations Force, working with Iranian intelligence assets, put in place cutting-edge surveillance techniques, according to two former intelligence officers. Street signs were surreptitiously removed in heavily populated areas of Tehran – say, near a university suspected of conducting nuclear enrichment – and replaced with similar-looking sings implanted with radiation sensors. American operatives, working undercover, also removed bricks from a building or two in central Tehran that they thought housed nuclear enrichment activities and replaced them with bricks embedded with radiation-monitoring devices.

High-powered sensors disguised as stones were spread randomly along roadways in a mountainous area where a suspected underground weapon site was under construction. The stones were capable of transmitting electronic data on the weight of the vehicles going in and out of the site; a truck going in light and coming out heavy could be hauling dirt – crucial evidence of evacuation work. There is also constant satellite coverage of major suspect areas in Iran and some American analysts were assigned the difficult task of examining footage in the hope of finding air vents – signs, perhaps, of an underground facility in lightly populated areas.

The administration and Congress have systematically mischaracterized what U.S. intelligence knows about Iran’s nuclear program, consistently claiming a current weaponization program is underway or that an intention to conduct one is essentially confirmed.

Hersh’s report also talks about the possibility that the Obama administration’s push for sanctions is actually aimed “at changing Iran’s political behavior” as opposed to preventing nuclear proliferation. This seems likely to me. The fact that Iran is not a subservient client state who we pay to obey, like most of the rest of the states in the region, represents a threat to American hegemonic dominance. And they’re unlikely to stand for it.

Also unlikely is the notion that Iran would ever intend to use a nuclear weapon on the U.S. or any of its allies in the Middle East or Europe. There is no evidence that the Iranian leadership yearns for the near-instant incineration of their entire country that would surely be an immediate response of the U.S. if Iran were to do such a thing. If Iran does intend to develop a nuclear weapons program, it’s because they would then be in a position where the U.S. and Israel could not push them around on the international stage. The secret war the U.S. is currently unleashing on Iran – from cyber-attacks to economic warfare to destabilizing covert operations – would be much less likely to continue if Iran had the ability to defend itself.

Yet, U.S. leadership continues to condemn Iran about nuclear enrichment and proliferation, about its support for terrorists, and about its aggressive and threatening rhetoric (all offenses the U.S. continuously engages in as official policy). Unless a more realistic and sober understanding of Iran becomes broadly accepted, we are doomed to rising tensions and a potential repeat of the Iraq War debacle.

Today’s Wall Street Journal:

The Pentagon has concluded that computer sabotage coming from another country can constitute an act of war, a finding that for the first time opens the door for the U.S. to respond using traditional military force.

…In part, the Pentagon intends its plan as a warning to potential adversaries of the consequences of attacking the U.S. in this way. “If you shut down our power grid, maybe we will put a missile down one of your smokestacks,” said a military official.

In other words, the Pentagon has declared that the Iranian regime has the right to attack the United States with missiles. At least, that’s the principle being laid down by this announcement. Cyber attacks have been an official policy, as far as we can gather, of the United States towards Iran for some time. No military response is even worried about from Iranians – they don’t have that prerogative. We, on the other hand, rule the world. And rules that apply to others simply don’t apply to us.

It’s a dangerous iteration of war policy to declare that if some foreign government hacks into a power grid in the U.S., they will suffer death and destruction. First of all, there are serious questions of proportionality consider. Murdering people from the sky is not warranted by a power outage.

Furthermore, the Pentagon has said that the United States will not distinguish between governments who aim cyber attacks at us and rogue individual hackers from some other country who commit such an act. The Pentagon will hold the government of whatever country such an attack comes from responsible regardless of who actually committed it. Among the ominous potential unintended consequences to come from this policy is that it could very well become a justification for government control of the internet  in all kinds of countries. If governments want to protect their sovereignty, freedom of access to the open world wide web seems too risky as per this policy.

A video was released today showing the house raid on 26 year old Marine veteran Jose Guerena. A heavily armed SWAT team, following orders from their leaders in the War on Drugs, approached the suburban home, bashed down the door, and got into a firefight with a man who survived two tours in Iraq and seemed to be harming no one. They killed him in his home that day on May 5.

There is lots of good commentary on this militarized form of law enforcement now increasingly popular in the land of the free. But here is David Axe’s, over at Wired, closing comments:

The doctor declared Guerena dead. “But we wanna still, you know, go in and put eyes on, just, just to be sure,” Krygier said. So the SWAT sergeant came up with a plan. “Very slow … methodical,” is how he described it. Police re-entered the house, moving room to room until they caught up with the robots in the living room. There, they confirmed that Guerena was indeed deceased, part of his brain exposed to the air.

Now the police could finally conduct the search that was the entire justification for the raid. They found no drugs, but did discover another AR-15, plus a third rifle and two handguns. There were also several sets of body armor and a hat bearing the U.S. Border Patrol logo. None of these items is necessarily illegal or, for a Marine, even uncommon. But Krygier told his debriefer that the weapons and armor were consistent with what a cartel rip crew would possess.

Nearly a month after Guerena’s killing, it’s still unclear whether the Marine had any ties to a cartel. But the absence of clear evidence means we must assume he was innocent. It’s equally unclear, at least to outsiders, precisely how the shooting went down and who’s to blame.

One thing is clear. With military-grade vehicles, armor, assault weapons and robots, the raid on Guerena’s home was all but indistinguishable from the kind of house-clearing operations U.S. forces perform every day in Iraq and Afghanistan. Guerena survived two tours in the desert only to perish in a military-style action in his own home.

Obama and the Group of 8 have pledged tens of millions of dollars in support of the Arab Spring. The aid and cooperation is supposedly conditional on positive steps towards reform, despite Washington’s track record on such things. The communiqué contained all the necessary pomposity about freedom, democracy, and common values, but this plan is plagued by omens of imperial policy.

The transition from tyranny to freedom is progressing with some promise, but it is by no means assured. It is delicate. Obama’s re-branding of America’s approach towards the region has yet to prove any different from the system of imperial control traditionally imposed on the region and could potentially disrupt or reverse the progress that’s been made.

Egypt is on the road to real change. Military checkpoints throughout the country have been dismantled, parliamentary elections are set to take place in September, and a constitution is to be drafted promptly thereafter. Mubarak and his sons will be tried for killing over 800 people and injuring thousands more during the protests, a development demanded by the people since before Mubarak’s ouster.

But, as protesters’ banners read Friday in Tahrir Square, “the Egyptian revolution is not over.” Scattered instances of sectarian violence and a struggling economy threaten stability, a crime wave unsettles the country’s security, and the military rulers are still directing the proceedings of the democratic transition. Some have accused the military and supreme council of collaborating with remaining elements of the Mubarak regime, upholding a system special treatment to elites, and continuing to treat protestors harshly.

Much about Egypt’s transition to democracy is uncertain at this early stage, and U.S. diplomatic collaboration has some potential to mimic the selection of political leaders by external forces as happened with Omar Suleiman just after Mubarak stepped down. Economic integration and new influxes of aid may have ominous outcomes as well, with taxpayer money finding its way into dark corners as has happened in decades passed. Ultimately, U.S. involvement in Egypt’s progress is about ensuring that it goes the way national security planners in Washington prefer, and this could tarnish the revolution forever.

Tunisia is similarly teetering in its democratic adolescence. Parliamentary elections are planned for July and “the new authorities have taken a number of steps towards ensuring accountability and long-term reforms,” UN Special Rapporteur Juan Méndez said. But practices of torture and abuse have continued under the interim government, according to Tunisian rights activist Radhia Nasraoui. Economic challenges and a troubling refugee problem also undermine the transition.

In countries not yet successful in overthrowing their governments, U.S. policy has remained essentially unchanged. Yemen’s dictatorial President Ali Abdullah Saleh refuses to step down from power and continues to brutally crack down on protestors. In Bahrain, the democracy movement continues to be oppressed and subdued by authoritarian policies. Pro-democracy demonstrators in Oman are being tried on charges of rioting and vandalism, while the regime refuses to reform its despotic government. All these countries, however, remain steadfastly supported by Obama.

The wave of revolutions still sweeping the Middle East presented an opportunity to truly change U.S. policy from one of unrelenting imposition to one of peaceful non-intervention in support of the notion that those formally under the boot of U.S.-supported regimes ought to be given a chance at self-actualization. But stepping back and allowing people to determine their own futures was apparently out of the question. Obama is giving this spontaneous upheaval half way across the world the kind of attention and administration that might be warranted if it were happening in Boston, Massachusetts. But the world is his dominion. Everywhere is his backyard. Only naiveté of the sort that got him elected could lead one to think he would let this develop without attempting to have it go his way.

Cliff Beattie’s parents spoke to the local news reporter outside their house in Medical Lake, Washington last Tuesday. His father’s voice quivered with the kind of choked reluctance you get when pressed to utter what you hoped you’d never have to. He can feel Cliff’s spirit, he said, in calm moments, a sign they take to their broken hearts that their son is at peace. One of Cliff’s two children will graduate from high school in a few weeks, perhaps with images in mind of her father’s final moments before the improvised explosive device took his life in Baghdad.

Twenty five year old Brandon M. Kirton, a Corporal serving in Kandahar province in Afghanistan, died the Wednesday before from wounds he suffered in a fire fight. His infant daughter, who he named Heaven, will never know her father, but is sure to hear stories from his friends and family who wrote about him on a memorial Facebook page, that his laughter and love was ever-present.

Private Thomas Allers from the 27th Infantry Division was only 23 years old and a mere three weeks into his first tour in Afghanistan. He lost his life along with three of his fellow soldiers from another explosive device, buried just beneath the dirt on the arid land in Kunar Province that he never should have been sent to set foot on.

The bombs that came thundering down from a NATO war plane, flattening two civilian homes in Helmond Province, murdered two women and twelve children. The tribal elders carried out the stiff corpses of the slain infants and toddlers to show to journalists, presumably in the hopes that somebody out there might see the footage and pity their sorrow and injustice, having never done harm to deserve death by aerial machinery. The five girls, seven boys, and two women were packed into rows in the bed of a dusty truck draped with blankets.

Eighteen more civilians were reported dead in similar airstrikes that day in Nouristan, far North West of Helmond. We won’t know their names. No memorial web pages will be visited in their honor. No national day of respect for their sacrifice will establish itself for Americans to observe.

Ask a politician why these deaths were necessary and they’ll regurgitate shopworn platitudes about freedom, American values, so-called humanitarian warfare, and fighting terrorism. Ask an average American, they will first ask, “What deaths?” They may then repeat what they’ve been told by their overlords in Washington. The honest ones will admit they don’t know what good it’s done. Ask an Afghan, and he is likely to have no idea at all the motivation behind the invasion, the attacks, or the occupation.

Even the informed won’t have a good answer. They will speculate about geo-strategic interests, big business, perhaps the limits of collective action.

All this ignorance about something our government spends hundreds of billions of dollars on. Decades of financial investment, high technology, oversized guns, and bombs with brains; the cutting edge. Yet it’s hard to find a good answer to why it’s necessary to fight and occupy the poor, rural, uneducated Afghans.

Memorial Day services will speak of valor, of sacrifice, of a higher purpose. Not a one will ably justify these wars and the ends they seek. Caught in their ignorance, resorting to triteness and the same language lent for every war which preceded this one, which seems to have no boundaries itself, you will hear no reasons.

Each year passes, and each year a sizable portion of your income (you can calculate how much here) goes to the perpetuation of what will ultimately mean more sons and daughters never knowing their father’s touch, more parents with a weakened quiver in their voice, and more taut, premature bodies piled in trucks.

This year, do something different. Take a portion of that amount you give to the conductors of wars nobody understands, and donate it to antiwar.com. We fight for an end to this murder and destruction; we work to get some accountability for those that insist on its continuance; and we desperately need your help to keep it going.

There is a great example of the general bias of The New York Times in today’s edition.

Saudi Arabia is flexing its financial and diplomatic might across the Middle East in a wide-ranging bid to contain the tide of change, shield fellow monarchs from popular discontent and avert the overthrow of any more leaders struggling to calm turbulent republics.

From Egypt, where the Saudis dispensed $4 billion in aid last week to shore up the ruling military council, to Yemen, where it is trying to ease out the president, to the kingdoms of Jordan and Morocco, which it has invited to join a union of Gulf monarchies, Saudi Arabia is scrambling to forestall more radical change and block Iran’s influence.

The kingdom is aggressively emphasizing the relative stability of monarchies, part of an effort to avert any dramatic shift from the authoritarian model, which would generate uncomfortable questions about the glacial pace of political and social change at home.

You can swap the words “Saudi Arabia” for the words “United States” and read the article we should have read at the very beginning of the Arab Spring. The U.S. has flexed its financial and diplomatic might in a desperate attempt to avert any shift from the authoritarian model they’ve maintained in the region for decades. In Yemen, in Bahrain, in Jordan, in Palestine, in Egypt (before Mubarak’s ousting was successful), and elsewhere, the U.S. has made significant efforts to ensure democracy is suppressed and tyranny persists. This is well known, but the mainstream media often suffers from an inability to scrutinize – or honestly report – the policies of America the way they do for other countries.