Month: April 2012

The big, bad, dangerous North Korea actually paraded fake missiles to scare Washington. And it apparently worked since Washington spent so much time hysterically denouncing the country for its pathetic failure of a missile test launch last week.

Analysts who have studied photos of a half-dozen ominous new North Korean missiles showcased recently at a lavish military parade say they were fake, and not very convincing ones, casting further doubt on the country’s claims of military prowess.

…the weapons displayed April 15 appear to be a mishmash of liquid-fuel and solid-fuel components that could never fly together. Undulating casings on the missiles suggest the metal is too thin to withstand flight. Each missile was slightly different from the others, even though all were supposedly the same make. They don’t even fit the launchers they were carried on. “There is no doubt that these missiles were mock-ups,” Markus Schiller and Robert Schmucker, of Germany’s Schmucker Technologie, wrote in a paper posted recently on the website Armscontrolwonk.com that listed those discrepancies. “It remains unknown if they were designed this way to confuse foreign analysts, or if the designers simply did some sloppy work.”

It turns out that, not only are they mock-ups, but they are mock-ups of weapons they aren’t working on for real.

Theodore Postol, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and former scientific adviser to the US Chief of Naval Operations, said the Taepodong-2 design remains the more real future threat — though even that remains at least a decade away — and the KN-08 is simply a smoke screen. “I believe that these missiles are not only mock-ups, but they are very unlikely to be actual mock-ups of any missiles in design.”

Check out the rest of the article. It goes into some history of North Korea’s previous displays of toy weapons in the 1990s. Here’s the Daily Mail on it and the Los Angeles Times. Also see my piece from last week on the hypocritical posture the U.S. has towards North Korea’s nukes.

This is the 75th anniversary of the bombing of Guernica. Indignation about bombing civilians seems like such a historic relic.

Unfortunately, this atrocity seems to have been almost completely forgotten in the United States. Perhaps the last time that the most famous momento of that slaughter got any attention was when Colin Powell was shilling at the United Nations in 2003 to whip up support for bombing Iraq.

Here’s an outtake from Maureen Dowd’s excellent New York Times column (February 5, 2003) on that absurdity:

Powell Without Picasso
By MAUREEN DOWD
When Colin Powell goes to the United Nations today to make his
case for war with Saddam, the U.N. plans to throw a blue cover
over Picasso’s antiwar masterpiece, “Guernica.”

Too much of a mixed message, diplomats say. As final
preparations for the secretary’s presentation were being made
last night, a U.N. spokesman explained, “Tomorrow it will be
covered and we will put the Security Council flags in front of
it.”

Mr. Powell can’t very well seduce the world into bombing Iraq
surrounded on camera by shrieking and mutilated women, men,
children, bulls and horses.

Reporters and cameras will stake out the secretary of state at
the entrance of the U.N. Security Council, where the tapestry
reproduction of “Guernica,” contributed by Nelson Rockefeller,
hangs.

The U.N. began covering the tapestry last week after getting
nervous that Hans Blix’s head would end up on TV next to a
screaming horse head.
______

Geez, I wonder what they would do that painting if Obama was speaking in that venue.

There are two narratives on the Syria conflict rising to the top of the headlines the past few days. First, the ceasefire brokered by UN envoy Kofi Annan has failed. Second, Western powers are eager to escalate their interventionist policies. Both narratives are premature, I think.

Yes, considerable violence has continued despite the ceasefire. But overall, the violence seems to have decreased compared to before the ceasefire. Those in Washington thirsting for a comprehensive military intervention like Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman pushed this “ceasefire failed” narrative mere days after it was announced, eager to pretend Washington has no other choice but war.

And it’s true that Western powers, particularly the U.S., Britian and France, are increasingly hinting at some sort of imminent intervention. The Obama administration is allegedly considering what actions it could take beyond the “non-lethal” aid already being sent to the opposition forces and the French Foreign Minister expressed intentions to push for war at the UN Security Council. But the inability for even people like McCain and Lieberman to put forth the “greeted as liberators” and “piece of cake” justifications for military action is indicative of the general understanding that intervening in Syria would be very costly for the U.S. (not to mention Syrians).

Marc Lynch of George Washington University has been one of the leading voices against direct intervention in Syria, as I wrote about here. Yesterday he gave a testimony to before the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia on what U.S. policy towards Syria should be. He eloquently reiterated his opposition to the the perilous proposals to intervene.

Nobody expects the current diplomatic path to quickly or easily end the conflict in Syria, but military intervention does not offer a compelling alternative.  There are no cheap or easy forms of military intervention which would quickly bring down the regime of Bashar al-Assad or effectively protect Syrian civilians. Military half-measures, including safe zones, humanitarian corridors and arming the Syrian opposition, would likely spread the violence and increase the numbers of Syrian dead without increasing the likelihood of regime collapse.  An initially limited intervention would most likely pave the way to more direct and expensive involvement comparable to the experience in Iraq.

He goes into details for each one of those points, but I especially want to draw attention to his analysis of launching an air campaign against the Assad regime. With whitewashed memories of Libya still crisp in people’s minds, bombing from the sky tends to strike people as foolproof. But Lynch points out that this would “likely begin with significant initial air strikes to eliminate air defenses,” but that “many Syrian anti-aircraft capabilities are located in or near urban areas, which means that significant civilian casualties could result from any attempt to eliminate them.” And that’s not all: there are important precedents for why “air power” and enforced “safe zones” would fail.

Using air power to protect civilians and defend the opposition within safe areas or humanitarian corridors is even more complex.  Such safe areas could most easily be established and protected along the Turkish border, but most of the threatened civilians live in other parts of Syria. Humanitarian corridors would be extremely difficult to protect, and could create a new refugee crisis if desperate civilians rush into designated safe zones or neighboring countries. Protecting either would require a serious commitment of resources. Declaring a safe area without defending it effectively would only repeat the painful mistakes of history. In Bosnia, thousands of people were murdered in Srebrenica and other designated safe areas when peacekeepers lacked the means to protect them. Even historical “successes” are sobering. Operation Provide Comfort, established in northern Iraq after 1991, was envisioned as a short-term crisis response, but turned into a 12-year commitment that ended only when the United States invaded Iraq in 2003. Creating and protecting a safe area in Syria would therefore require a significant and lengthy investment of troops and resources, and would not likely hasten Assad’s collapse.

Lynch thinks the Annan plan could successfully end the bloodshed, if allowed to run its course. This all depends on whether or not the warmongers win out, but as of right now, I don’t see full-on military intervention happening.

———————————————–

In reference to the McCain-Lieberman push to intervene, Lynch says “It is not enough to demonstrate that the cause of intervention is just,” because the intervention would have consequences directly counter to the supposed “humanitarian justification” touted by the hawks. What still fascinates me is how readily the hawks – particularly the leadership of the GOP – admit that a war on Syria would really be about eliminating Iran’s ally and gaining more control over the Middle East. I wrote about this back in February. It’s amazing, really. They’re not even embarrassed to sing their imperial dogma loud and clear.

The comments of Israel’s top military chief Benny Gantz are getting a lot of attention. But they are not new.

“[Iran] is going step by step to the place where it will be able to decide whether to manufacture a nuclear bomb. It hasn’t yet decided whether to go the extra mile.”

“If the supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei wants, he will advance it to the acquisition of a nuclear bomb, but the decision must first be taken. It will happen if Khamenei judges that he is invulnerable to a [military] response,” he said in the interview published on Wednesday.

“I believe he would be making an enormous mistake, and I don’t think he will want to go the extra mile.”

“I think the Iranian leadership is composed of very rational people. But I agree that such a capability, in the hands of Islamic fundamentalists who at particular moments could make different calculations, is dangerous.”

Here Gantz explains what we at Antiwar.com and those in the U.S. intelligence community have been saying all along. As I see it, he acknowledges three key points: (1) Iran is not developing nuclear weapons, (2) Iran’s posture of maintaining technical capability is defensive, not offensive, (3) the Iranian leadership are rational actors. All of these claims, while advocated by the experts, are rejected and even derided by warmongers in Washington and in the news media. Often left out of the conversation altogether is what military and intelligence experts have also expressed, namely that attacking Iran would almost surely bring about the result the warmongers supposedly want to prevent: an emboldened, perhaps nuclear Iran.

What Gantz doesn’t mention is something I’ve been pondering for a long time: If these three postulates are true, why have world leaders threatened to attack Iran and why are such high-level negotiations to “restore international confidence in the exclusively peaceful nature of Iran’s nuclear program” necessary? As I’ve written, I think the reasons are similar to those given to justify constantly patrolling the Persian Gulf with U.S. warships.

Why menace Iran when it presents no threat to us? When Obama accelerated the deployment of warships to the Gulf in 2010, the New York Times described it as “part of a coordinated administration strategy to increase pressure on Iran” and also “intended to counter the impression that Iran is fast becoming the most powerful military force in the Middle East.” Onboard the USS Abraham Lincoln in the Gulf’s Strait of Hormuz last February, BBC reporter Jonathan Beale explained, “This carrier and these [fighter] jets are more than just a show of force, they’re here to send a clear message to Iran as to who really controls these waters.”

“We’re leaving behind a sovereign, stable and self-reliant Iraq, with a representative government that was elected by its people.” – President Barack Obama, Fort Bragg, N.C., December 2011

“You will leave with great pride – lasting pride.” – Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta to U.S. troops, December 2011

I’ve written repeatedly about the terrible dictatorship and lasting sectarian violence Washington left in Iraq after the troop withdrawal of December 2011. Contrary to the lies of these indecent politicians, the enduring effects of the illegal U.S. war in Iraq are still causing havoc and bloodshed throughout the country. Iraq is neither secure, nor is it a democracy as was promised by warmongers in Washington.

A new Congressional Research Service report takes a look at post-withdrawal Iraq and at one point lists the most high-profile incidents of sectarian violence:

On February 7, 2012, the AQ-I affiliate Islamic State of Iraq claimed responsibility for two of the deadliest attacks on Shiites since the U.S. withdrawal—on January 5 and January 14, 2012, which killed 78 and 53 Shiite pilgrims, respectively. In one of the most complex attacks in recent months, on February 23, 2012, bombings in 12 Iraqi cities killed over 50 persons; based on the method and scope of the attacks, Iraqi observers attributed the attacks to AQ-I. AQ-I claimed responsibility for a broad series of attacks—encompassing six cities—on March 20, 2012; over 40 persons were killed. Another spate of attacks took place in Baghdad and Kirkuk on April 19, 2012, killing about 36 persons.

As for the record of the government (other than what’s included in the above hyperlinks), the report had this to say:

The State Department’s report on human rights for 2010 released April 8, 2011, largely repeated the previous year’s characterizations of Iraq’s human rights record as follows: “Extremist violence, coupled with weak government performance in upholding the rule of law, resulted in widespread and severe human rights abuses.” The State Department report cited a wide range of human rights problems committed by Iraqi government security and law enforcement personnel, including some unlawful killings; torture and other cruel punishments; poor conditions in prison facilities; denial of fair public trials; arbitrary arrest; arbitrary interference with privacy and home; limits on freedoms of speech, assembly, and association due to sectarianism and extremist threats; lack of protection of stateless persons; wide scale governmental corruption; human trafficking; and limited exercise of labor rights.

All this, as America continues to give money and weapons to the Maliki government. What exactly do U.S. troops have to be proud about?

Despite the legal burdens in keeping it secret, the Obama administration is doubling down on the drone war.

In procedures for FOIA requests on “targeted lethal operations” conducted by the CIA – that is, the drone war –  government lawyers asked the court to allow them more time to decide how to respond to the request for the classified information. Secrecy News:

“Attorney General Eric H. Holder, Jr. has personally directed us to seek this additional time to allow the Government to finalize its position with regard to the sensitive national security matters presented in this case,” the Justice Department attorneys told the judge.

“Given the significance of the matters presented in this case, the Government’s position is being deliberated at the highest level of the Executive Branch.”

At issue are two FOIA lawsuits brought by the New York Times and the American Civil Liberties Union.  The request for an extension until May 21, 2012 was granted by Judge Colleen McMahon.

Steven Aftergood of the Secrecy News blog sees this as potentially a good sign: “The attorneys’ request seems to portend a possible change in the government’s persistent refusal to acknowledge the widely reported fact of the CIA’s use of drones in targeted killing operations.” I think he’s far too optimistic. The criticism the administration faces now for stubbornly keeping the drone war secret is nothing compared to the criticism they would face if they began to declassify the programs. Simply employing state secrets privilege and stonewalling the process is too easy an out for them to start declassifying now.

That said, keeping the well-known drone war a secret is recognized for its absurdity more and more everyday. As Micah Zenko at the Council on Foreign Relations wrote yesterday, “the existence of these drone strikes is no secret, and no longer justifies the thick veil of secrecy.” He calls the borderless drone program America’s Third War and argues, “the charade of the ‘covert’ nature of the Third War is indefensible.”

Since 9/11, the United States has attempted targeted killings in four other countries [other than Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya]: approximately three hundred in Pakistan, thirty in Yemen, twenty in Somalia, and one in Syria. These attacks were primarily conducted by armed drones, but also by ship- and aircraft-launched cruise missiles, AC-130 gunships, and special operations raids. Although estimates vary, perhaps three thousand people were killed in these attacks, including suspected al-Qaeda members, local militants, and some unintended civilian victims.

By any common-sense definition, these vast targeted killings should be characterized as America’s Third War since 9/11. Unlike Iraq and Afghanistan—where government agencies acted according to articulated strategies, congressional hearings and press conferences provided some oversight, and timelines explicitly stated when the U.S. combat role would end—the Third War is Orwellian in its lack of cogent strategy, transparency, and end date.

But while the government stalls the courts through these FOIA procedures, the CIA is seeking explicit authority to expand its covert drone war in Yemen by assassinating individuals even when their identities are not known. Such authority would merely codify what appears to already be current practice in Pakistan. Illustrating what I think Zenko means when he says the drone war lacks a cogent strategy, Abdul Salam Mohammed, director of Abaad Strategic Center, told CNN recently that, “U.S. involvement is far more than ever in Yemen. We have no evidence that all those being killed are terrorists. With every U.S. attack that is conducted in Yemen al Qaeda is only growing in power and we have to ask ourselves why that is happening.”

Additionally, the Obama administration’s recent security deal with Afghanistan appears crafted specifically to continue the drone war in Pakistan unabated. With the drawdown of the war in Iraq and the new arrangement set to take place in Afghanistan in 2014, the trend appears to be a move away from full-scale ground invasions and military occupations. The Obama administration seems to be making America’s wars targeted operations programs…and making them increasingly secret.