16th of NAM

ECHOof Islam

Leader: NAM Should Play a New Role in Emerging

International Order

Morsi Prevents Egypt from Following Turkish Pattern

Muslims mark International Day of Qods across the world

Role of Military Establishments in US Invasion of Iraq

Al-Qaeda unleashes bloodshed, threatens new wave of attacks in Iraq

Iran calls Syria OIC suspen-sion ‘unjust’

India joins Japan to resume shipping of Iranian oil

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An International Monthly on Social, Political and Cultural Issues

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Leader: NAM Should Play a New Role in Emerging International Order

UNSC resolutions against Iran lack

legal bases

Ban Ki-moon: NAM plays significant

role in maintaining global peace

India joins Japan to resume shipping

of Iranian oil

ECHOISSN

: 101

9-07

75

of Islam

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Table of Contents

Leader: NAM Should Play a New Role in Emerging International Order

The world is in transition to-wards a new international order and the Non-Aligned

Movement can and should play a new role, the Leader of Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei said on August 30 in his inaugural speech of the 16th NAM summit in Tehran.

Heads of states from over 120 NAM member states and repre-sentatives of major international organizations participated in the summit which included Secretary-General of the United Nation Ban Ki-moon, Special Envoy of the Saudi King Abdulaziz bin Abdul-lah al-Saud, Emir of Qatar Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, President of Pakistan Yusuf Ali Zardari and Lebanese President Michel Sulaiman.

Prime Minister of Syria Wael Nader al-Halqi and the country’s Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem also attended the meeting.

This new order should be based on the participation of all

nations and equal rights for all of them. And as members of this movement, our solidarity is an obvious necessity in the current era for establishing this new order, he added.

Commenting on the values of NAM, he added, today after the passage of nearly six decades, the main values of the Non-Aligned Movement remain alive and steady: values such as anti-colonialism, political, economic and cultural independence, non-alignment with any power blocs, and improving solidarity and cooperation among the member states.

Current global conditions provide the Non-Aligned Move-ment with an opportunity that might never arise again. Our view is that the control room of the world should not be managed by the dictatorial will of a few Western countries, he said, add-ing that it should be possible to establish and ensure a participa-

tory system for managing interna-tional affairs, one that is global and democratic.

The UN Security Council has an illogical, unjust and com-pletely undemocratic structure and mechanism. This is a flagrant form of dictatorship, which is an-tiquated and obsolete and whose expiry date has passed, he said.

Good and evil are defined in a completely one-sided and selec-tive way.

This flawed and harmful situa-tion cannot continue. Everybody has become tired of this faulty international structure.

Referring to the issue of nuclear weapons, he said that nuclear weapons neither ensure

World of IslamECHOof Islam2 A u g u s t - S e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 2 / N o . 2 4 6

By Amin Mirzazadeh

security, nor do they consolidate political power, rather they are a threat to both security and politi-cal power.

The Islamic Republic of Iran considers the use of nuclear, chemical and similar weapons as a great and unforgivable sin. We proposed the idea of “Middle East free of nuclear weapons” and we are committed to it. This does not mean forgoing our right to peaceful use of nuclear power and production of nuclear fuel. On the basis of international laws, peaceful use of nuclear en-ergy is a right of every country.

I stress that the Islamic Repub-lic has never been after nuclear weapons and that it will never

give up the right of its people to use nuclear energy for peaceful purposes. Our motto is: “Nuclear energy for all and nuclear weap-ons for none.”

Referring to the issue of Palestine, the Ayatollah Khame-nei said, our standpoint is that Palestine belongs to the Pales-tinians and that continuing its occupation is a great and intoler-able injustice and a major threat to global peace and security. All solutions suggested and fol-lowed up by the Westerners and their affiliates for “resolving the problem of Palestine” have been wrong and unsuccessful, and it will remain so in the future. We have put forth a just and

entirely democratic solution. All the Palestinians – both the current citizens of Palestine and those who have been forced to immigrate to other countries but have preserved their Palestin-ian identity, including Muslims, Christians and Jews – should take part in a carefully supervised and confidence-building referendum and chose the political system of their country, and all the Pales-tinians who have suffered from years of exile should return to their country and take part in this referendum and then help draft a Constitution and hold elections. Peace will then be established.

By pooling our resources and

World of IslamECHOof Islam

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A u g u s t - S e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 2 / N o . 2 4 6

President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt in a key-note speech delivered on August 30 in the 16th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement

said NAM should play its pivotal role in global developments.

NAM members have gathered in Tehran to indi-cate their potential in moving ahead with NAM’s aspirations, he said.

NAM members have gathered in the 16th NAM Summit to uphold aspirations of the Movement, he said.

He said that in January 25th 2011, Egypt witnessed a revolution during which the Egyptians could pursue their interests through maintaining unity and solidarity.

Morsi said that late Egypt President Gamal Abdel Nasser as one of the founders of the NAM could collapse the image of its then global powers through forming the movement.

“On January 25th, Egypt nation through staging a revolution could open a new chapter which is re-garded as a turning point in the country’s history.”

Referring to significant developments in the Middle East in the past two years, he said before witnessing a democratic revolution in Egypt, such development occurred in Tunisia and then in Libya and Yemen.

On January 25th, 2011 Egyptians could put an end to authority of western governments, he said

adding that people in Egypt have overcome many hardships and difficulties to set up a democratic system, he said.

Referring to exist-ing challenges among NAM member states, he expressed the hope that the event help find suitable solution to resolve such challenges.

Morsi’s visit to Tehran was highly

focused by political and media circles as a major event.

Analysts believe that his visit to Iran indicates the failure of the US anti-Iran policies. They say President Morsi’s meeting with senior Iranian offi-cials would pave the way for promotion of Tehran-Cairo relations.

Egypt president: NAM should play its pivotal role in global developments

capacities, we members of the NAM can create a new historic and lasting role towards rescuing the world from insecurity, war and hegemony, he said. This goal can be achieved only through our comprehensive cooperation with each other.

We should not fear the bullying powers when they frown at us, nor should we become happy when they smile at us. We should consider the will of God and the laws of creation as our support. We should learn lessons from what happened to the communist camp two decades ago and from the failure of the policies of so-called “Western liberal democracy” at the present time, whose signs can be seen by everybody in the streets of European countries and America and in the insoluble economic problems of these countries.

The Ayatollah added, we can plan for effective economic cooperation and define paradigms for cultural relationships among ourselves. Undoubtedly, establishing an active and motivated secretariat for this or-ganization will be a great and significant help in achieving these goals.


President Mohamed Morsi of Egypt officially handed over presidency of the

Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) for the next three years to his Iranian counterpart Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during the inaugu-ral ceremony of the 16th NAM Summit here on August 30.

The transfer took place after President Morsi ended his address to the inaugural ceremony of the NAM Summit which began with a speech by Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei.

President Mahmoud Ah-madinejad said that the Non-Aligned Movement

needs to reconsider its goals and aspirations to have a part in governance of the international community.

Addressing the inaugural ceremony of the 16th Summit of NAM, the President called for materialization of partnership in global governance and establish-ing a lasting peace worldwide as ultimate goals of the NAM late founders.

The President said he believed “materialization of the joint glob-al governance which secures a justice-based peace, freedom and human dignity was the ultimate goals of the late founders of the NAM”, dismissing veto powers in the context of the United Nations Security Council as the defunct legacy of the World War II.

When all world countries par-ticipated in governing the world then there would be no room

for discrimination, aggression and hegemony and every nation would have the chance to take advantage of all possibilities, said the president.

President Ahmadinejad criti-cized the US administration for printing banknotes without nec-essary reserves stirring inflation in the international monetary circles, or in other words, spend-ing for the wars from pockets of the international community.

He said that the US adminis-tration has printed dlrs 32,000 billion banknotes without reserve creating wealth for the United States war machine at the ex-pense of the developing nations.

President Ahmadinejad said that the US federal reserve administration is dominating management of the United Na-tions financial institutions -- the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund which must work for well-being of the UN member states.

Iran officially receives NAM presidency from Egypt

President urges reconsideration of NAM goals, aspirations


5


Secretary of Supreme National Security Coun-cil Saeed Jalili said on

August 31 that the 16th NAM Summit is indicative of the US strategic isolation in the world.

In a meeting with the Chi-nese Deputy Foreign Minster Ma Jao Choe, he added that claims that the US attempts to discourage the leaders of states from attending the event were futile.

Presence of two third of countries’ high-ranking of-ficials in the event and their consensus over Iran’s presi-dency for coordinating 120 states’ international policies is a clear sign of the US stra-tegic isolation in the world, Jalili reiterated.

Choe, for his part, con-gratulated Iran on taking over presidency of the NAM for the next three years and hoped that NAM member states’ cooperation with Iran will in-crease under Iran’s leadership of the world body.

Condemning unilateral sanctions against Iran, he un-derscored China’s principled stance in peaceful coexist-ence with the states of five continents.

United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon in a keynote speech delivered at the 16th Non-Aligned Summit said that NAM as the second important international organization after

the United Nations plays significant role in maintain global peace and security.

Addressing the Summit of Leaders, he said as you believed in mu-tual cooperation and having powerful collaboration in running affairs,

the United Nations underlined having such significant role in resoling global issues.

He called for NAM member states solidarity to re-solve their issues and respect freedom of speech

and thought. He called on governments of NAM member

states to spare no effort to render services to their nations.

NAM Summit is indicative of the US strategic isolation

Ban Ki-moon: NAM plays significant role in maintaining global peace


The organizations under UN umbrella should undergo restruc-turing to attain collective goals, he said.

“We should mind our people and promote cooperation instead of confrontation. We should go ahead with dialogue among civili-zations and religions,” he said.

The United Nations along with NAM is committed to promotion of cooperation with all nations and try to overcome the challenges to maintain peace and development, he said.

UN spokesman Farhan Haq said that the remarks by the Leader of the Islamic

Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei on a need for reform-ing structure of the UN Security Council are welcomed by the UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon.

Haq noted that the Ban usually welcomes such proposals or ideas that will result in international legitimacy of the UN Security Council. ‘While the resolutions of the UN Security Council are important and what has been issued so far should be respected by the governments, such propos-als have always been paid heed

to,’ he added. The Leader of the Islamic

Revolution Ayatollah Seyed Ali Khamenei in his inaugural speech of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) in Tehran had said that the UN Security Council has an irrational, unjust and completely undemocratic structure.

‘This is an evident dictatorship and an obsolete and outdated situation. It is through abusing such wrong mechanism that the US and its allies have managed to impose their bullies under the guise of acceptable concepts in the world,’ Ayatollah Khamenei said.

Spokesman: UN welcomes Ayatollah Khamenei’s remarks on UNSC’s reform


7


Al-Qaeda unleashes bloodshed, threatens new wave of attacks in Iraq

Officials say at least 91 people killed,172 wounded, as result of 21 different attacks mounted in 13 cities on July 23, shattering relative calm which held in lead-up to start of Ramadan.

A wave of attacks in Baghdad and north of the capital killed 91 people in Iraq’s deadliest day in more than two years after Al-Qaeda warned it would mount new attacks and sought to retake terri-tory.

In the deadliest attack, a string of roadside bombs and a car bomb, followed by a suicide attack targeting emergency responders, in the town of Taji killed at least 42 people and wounded 40 others, according to two medical officials.

“I heard explosions in the distance so I left my house and I saw a car outside,” said 40-year-old Taji resident Abu Mohammed, who added that police inspectors concluded the vehicle was a car bomb.

“We asked the neighbors to leave their houses, but when they were leaving, the bomb went off.”Abu Mohammed said he saw an elderly woman carrying a newborn baby die, as well as the police-

By Mohammad Amiri


ings across Iraq killed at least 17 people and wounded nearly 100 others. The toll was the highest since May 10, 2010, when 110 people were killed.

The latest violence comes after the country suffered a spike in unrest in June when at least 282 people were killed, according to a tally, although government figures said 131 Iraqis died.

Although those figures are markedly lower than during the peak of Iraq’s communal blood-shed from 2006 to 2008, attacks remain com-mon.

Al-Qaeda’s front group in Iraq has warned in recent days that it seeks to retake territory in the country.

The “Islamic State of Iraq” warned in an audio message posted on various jihadist forums that it would begin targeting judges and prosecutors, and appealed for the help of Sunni tribes in its quest to recapture territory it once held.

“We are starting a new stage,” said the voice on the message, purportedly that of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, who has been leader of the Islamic State of Iraq since May 2010.

“The first priority in this is releasing Muslim prisoners everywhere, and chasing and eliminat-ing judges and investigators and their guards.”

It was not possible to verify whether the voice was that of Baghdadi.

Baghdadi added: “On the occasion of the beginning of the return of the state to the areas that we left, I urge you to carry out more ef-forts, and send your sons with the mujahedeen to defend your religion and obey God.”

Al-Qaeda in Iraq is regarded by Iraqi officials as significantly weaker than at the peak of its strength in 2006 and 2007, but it is still capable of launching spectacular mass-casualty attacks.

man who first concluded the car was packed with explosives.

A row of houses were completely destroyed, and residents were rummaging through the rub-ble in search of victims and their belongings.

In Baghdad, meanwhile, a car bomb outside a government office responsible for producing identity papers in the Shiite bastion of Sadr City killed at least 12 people and wounded 22 others, security and medical officials said.

“This attack is a terrible crime against human-ity, because they did it during Ramadan, while people are fasting,” said one elderly witness.

Many of the victims of attack could not be identified because their papers were inside the offices that were targeted.

Two other explosions in the Baghdad neighbor-hoods of Husseiniyah and Yarmuk killed at least three people and left 21 others wounded, while a car bomb in the town of Tarmiyah, just north of Baghdad, hurt nine people, officials said.

Checkpoint shootings and bomb blasts in res-tive ethnically-mixed Diyala province killed 11 people and left 40 others wounded, security of-ficials and Doctor Ahmed Ibrahim from the main hospital in provincial capital Baquba said.

Insurgents also launched attacks on a military base near the town of Dhuluiyah, killing at least 15 Iraqi soldiers and leaving two others wounded, according to two security officials.

Nine bomb blasts, some of them minutes apart, meanwhile killed seven people and wounded 29 in Kirkuk city and the eponymous province’s towns of Dibis and Tuz Khurmatu.

Another car bomb, near a Shiite mosque in the town of Dujail, killed a woman and wounded four others.

The attacks came a day after a spate of bomb-


9


Mission Failure:

Afghanistan


World of IslamECHOof Islam10

Green-on-blue attacks have been countrywide, in ar-eas of militant insurgency;

they continue to escalate, and (as far as we can tell) are almost always committed by actual members of the Afghan military or police who have experienced the American project in their country in a particularly up-close and personal way.

Imagine for a moment that almost once a week for the last six months somebody somewhere in this country had burst, well-armed, into a movie theater showing a su-perhero film and fired into the audience. That

would get your attention, wouldn’t it? James Holmes times 21? It would dominate the news. We would certainly be consulting experts, trying to make sense of the pattern, groping for explana-tions. And what if the same thing had also happened almost once every two weeks in 2011? Imagine the shock, imagine the reaction here.

Well, the equivalent has hap-pened in Afghanistan (minus, of course, the superhero movies). It even has a name: green-on-blue violence. In 2012 – a and

twice last

week – Afghan soldiers, police-men, or security guards, largely in units being trained or men-tored by the U.S. or its NATO allies, have turned their guns on those mentors, the people who are funding, supporting, and teaching them, and pulled the trigger.

It’s already happened at least 21 times in this half-year, result-ing in 30 American and European deaths, a 50% jump from 2011, when similar acts occurred at least 21 times with 35 coalition deaths. (The “at least” is there because, in May, the Associated Press reported that, while U.S. and NATO spokespeople were releasing the news of deaths from such acts, green-on-blue incidents that resulted in no fatalities, even if there were wounded, were sometimes not reported at all.)

Take July. There have already

By Tom Engelhardt



11

been at least four such attacks. The first, on July 1st, reportedly involved a member of the Afghan National Civil Order Police, a specially trained outfit, shooting down three British soldiers at a checkpoint in Helmand Province, deep in the Taliban heartland of the country. The shooter was cap-tured. Two days later, a man in “an Afghan army uniform” turned his machine gun on American troops just outside a NATO base in Wardak Province, east of the Afghan capital Kabul, wounding five before fleeing. (In initial re-ports, the shooter in all such inci-dents is invariably described as a man “in an Army/police uniform” as if he might be a Taliban infil-trator, and he almost invariably turns out to be an actual Afghan policeman or soldier.)

Then, on July 22nd, a secu-

rity guard gunned down three police trainers –two former U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents and a former United King-dom Revenue and Customs Officer (while another retired Border Protection agent and an Afghan interpreter were wounded). This happened at a police training fa-cility near Herat in Afghanistan’s generally peaceful northwest near the Iranian border. The next day, a soldier on a military base in Faryab Province in the north of the country turned his gun on a group of American soldiers also evidently working as police trainers, wounding two of them before being killed by return fire.

Note that these July attacks were geographically diverse: one in the Taliban south, one east of the capital in an area that has seen a rise in Taliban attacks, and

two in areas that aren’t normally considered insurgent hotbeds. Similar attacks have been going for years, a number of them far more high profile, including the deaths of an American lieutenant colonel and major, each shot in the back of the head inside the heavily guarded Afghan Interior Ministry in Kabul; the killing of four French soldiers (and the wounding of 16) by an Afghan non-commissioned officer after an argument; the first killing of an American special forces op-erative by a U.S.-trained Afghan commando during a joint night raid; an elaborate attack organ-ized by two Afghan soldiers and a civilian teacher at a joint out-post that killed two Americans, wounded two more, and disabled an armored vehicle; and the 2011 shooting of nine trainers (eight


American officers and a contrac-tor) in a restricted section of Kabul International Airport by an Afghan air force pilot.

In 2007-2008, there were only four green-on-blue attacks, resulting in four deaths. When they started multiplying in 2010, the initial impulse of coalition spokespeople was to blame them on Taliban infiltrators (and the Taliban did take credit for most of them). Now, U.S. or NATO spokespeople tend to dismiss such violence as individual pique or the result of some personal grievance against coalition forces rather than Taliban affiliation. While reaffirming the coalition mission of training a vast security force for the country, they prefer to present each case as if it were a local oddity with little rela-tion to any of the others – “an

isolated incident [that] has its own underlying circumstances and motives.” (Privately, the U.S. military is undoubtedly far more worried.)

In fact, there is a striking pat-tern at work that should be front-page news here. Green-on-blue attacks have been countrywide, in areas of militant insurgency and not; they continue to esca-late, and (as far as we can tell) are almost always committed by actual members of the Afghan military or police who have ex-perienced the American project in their country in a particularly up-close and personal way.

In addition, these attacks are, again as far as anyone can tell, in no way coordinated. They are individual or small group acts, in some cases clearly after signifi-cant thought and calculation, in

others just as clearly impulsive. Nonetheless, they do seem to represent a kind of collective vote, not by ballot obviously, nor – as in Lenin’s phrase about Rus-sia’s deserting peasant soldiers in World War I – with their feet, but with guns.

The number of these events is, after all, startling, given that an Afghan who turns his weapon on well-armed American or European allies is likely to die. A small number of shooters have escaped and a few have been captured alive (including one recently sentenced to death in an Afghan court), but most are shot down. In a situation where foreign advisors and troops are now distinctly on guard and on edge – and in some cases are shadowed by armed compatriots (“guardian angels”) whose job


13


it is to protect them from such events – these are essentially suicidal acts.

So it’s reasonable to assume that, for every Afghan who acts on such a violent impulse, there must be a far larger pool of fellow members of the security forces the coalition is building who have similar feelings, but don’t act on them (or simply vote with their feet, like the 24,590 soldiers who deserted in the first six months of 2011 alone). Unlike James Holmes’s rampage in Aurora, such acts, extreme as they may be, are not in the usual sense mad ones. And scattered and disparate as they may be, they have a distinctly unitary feel to them. They seem, that is, like a single repetitive act being committed, as if by plan and program, across the length and breadth of the country – or perhaps a primal Afghan scream of rejection of the American and NATO presence from an armed people who have known little but fighting for more than three decades.

If the significance of green-on-blue violence hasn’t quite sunk in yet here, consider this: such acts in such numbers are histori-cally unprecedented. No exam-ple comes to mind of a colonial power, neocolonial power, or modern superpower fighting a war with “native” allies whose forces repeatedly find the weap-ons they have supplied turned on them. There is nothing in our historical record faintly compa-rable – not in the eighteenth and nineteenth century Indian wars, the Philippine Insurrection at the turn of the last century, Korea in the early 1950s, Vietnam in the 1960s and early 1970s, or Iraq in this century. (In Vietnam, the only somewhat analogous set of events involved U.S. soldiers, not

their South Vietnamese counter-parts, repeatedly turning their weapons on their own officers in acts that, like “green-on-blue” violence, got a label all their own: “fragging.”)

Perhaps the sole historical example that comes close might be the Indian Rebellion of 1857. That, however, was a full-scale revolt, not a series of uncon-nected, ever escalating individual acts.

Whatever the singular bitter-ness or complaint behind any specific attack, a cumulative message clearly lurks in them that the U.S. military and Wash-ington would undoubtedly prefer

not to hear, and that reporters, even when they are toting up the numbers, prefer not to consider too deeply. To do so would be to acknowledge the full-scale failure of the ongoing American mission in Afghanistan. After all, what could be more devastating 12 years after the invasion of that country than having such attacks come not from the enemies the U.S. is officially fighting, but from the Afghans closest to us, the ones we have been training at a cost of nearly $50 billion to take over the country as U.S. combat troops drawdown?

What we’re seeing in the

most violent form imaginable is a sweeping message from our Afghan allies, the very secu-rity forces Washington plans to continue bolstering up long after the 2014 drawdown date for U.S. “combat forces” passes. To the extent that bullets can be trans-lated into words, that message, uncompromising and bloody-minded, would be something like: your mission’s failed, get out or die.

If the Aurora shootings got all the attention here, far more Americans are dying at the hands of Afghan allies than died in James Holmes’s hail of gunfire. And yet the message from the

more deadly of those rampages is barely in the news and few here are paying attention.

In reality, the American mission in Afghanistan failed years ago. It’s as if we refused to notice, but the Afghans we were train-ing did. Now, they are sending a message that couldn’t be blunter or grimmer from that endlessly war-torn land. Not to listen is, in fact, to condemn more Americans to death-by-ally.

Tom Engelhardt is co-founder of the American Empire Project and author of The United States of Fear as well as The End of Vic-tory Culture.

If the significance of green-on-blue violence hasn’t quite sunk in yet here, consider

this: such acts in such numbers are historically unprecedented. No example comes to mind of a colonial power, neocolonial power, or modern superpower fighting a war with “native” allies whose forces repeatedly find the weapons they have supplied turned on them.


President Barack Obama has signed a covert document authorizing US support for

Syrian rebels locked in a battle to overthrow the anti-US, anti-Zionist President Bashar al-Assad, reports said on August 2.

The directive was contained in a “finding” – a device authorizing clandestine action by the Central Intelligence Agency, NBC and CNN said, citing unidentified sources.

White House officials declined to comment on the reports but did not specifically rule out the idea that Washington was provid-ing more intelligence support to anti-Assad forces than had previ-ously been made public.

Washington has previously said that it is offering medical

and communications assistance to Syrian rebels but declined to supply arms, warning it would be counter-productive to further “weaponize” the conflict.

Officials have confided they are sending armaments to groups even about which little is known merely because they are fighting anti-US and anti-Zionist Syrian forces under Assad.

Reports of an increased US role with Syrian rebels came as the rebels committed violence in the major cities.

They also coincided with rising political pressure by the Zionist lobbies on the White House to demonstrate more support for the rebels in Syria, despite US reluctance to become more di-

rectly involved in another Middle Eastern war.

It was not clear when Obama signed the secret order. There was no indication however that Washington had changed its overarching policy of not directly providing arms to the rebels.

Obama spoke by telephone with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the two lead-ers agreed to “accelerate a politi-cal transition in Syria,” the White House said. It is a clear instance of inference in internal affairs of countries which is in contraven-tion with international law

Syria is in the grip of a conflict now in its 17th month, triggered by the Zionist regime and United States.

By Ahmad Vaziri

Obama signs covert action backing Syrian rebels

Middle East

A u g u s t - S e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 2 / N o . 2 4 6 ECHOof Islam

15

Epidemic of self-immola-tions hits Israel

A wheelchair-bound Israeli was in serious condition on July 22 after setting

himself on fire just hours before the funeral of a man who had set himself alight during a social justice protest on July 14.

“A man in a wheelchair set himself on fire at a bus stop near Yehud” near Tel Aviv, police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.

“Passersby put out the flames. The man, in his late forties,

was in serious condition, he was taken to the Sheba hospital in Tel HaShomer,” he said.

“From what we know, he set himself on fire,” Rosenfeld said.

The self-immolation, carried out by a man who is reportedly a disabled Israeli army veteran, took place just hours before the funeral of Moshe Silman.

Silman died on July 20, six days after setting himself ablaze at a Tel Aviv social justice demon-stration.

In a letter he read out before setting himself alight, he accused the Israeli establishment of “tak-ing from the poor and giving to

Protest against injustice engulfs Zionist regime

By Mohmoud Azizi

Self-immolation become order

of day among ‘desperate’ Israelis. Moshe Silman’s self-immolation sets off wave of similar incidents, with July 20 incident marking fifth such attempt.


Middle EastECHOof Islam16

the rich.”He also wrote that despite being incapable of

working due to a stroke, a housing ministry com-mittee did not find him eligible for public housing benefits.

Over a thousand Israelis held vigils for Silman in Tel Aviv and other Israeli cities on July 21.

“Tonight, we are all Moshe Silman,” they chanted at the site where he doused himself with kerosene and set himself on fire.

Many participants carried candles, a corre-spondent said.

“By marching we honor the memory of all victims of economic duress and the anti-social policy of the Israeli government” headed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the organ-izers said in a statement.

Silman’s self-immolation set off a wave of similar incidents, with the latest incident mark-ing the fifth such attempt, press reports said.

The latest victim sustained the worst injuries since Silman, with the man sustaining burns over 80 percent of his body.

In December 2010, Tunisian Mohammed Bouazizi set himself ablaze. He protested in front of Sidi Bouzid government offices. At issue was police confiscating his merchandise for operating without a permit. He was a street vendor. He sold vegetables.

An American author says the protests against social injustice in Israel show the population is under siege by the Tel Aviv regime, Press TV reports.

“They (protests) mark the extent to which the population in Israel is finding itself under siege by their own [regime],” said Ralph Schoenman, political analyst and author of the Hidden History of Zionism, in an interview with Press TV.

He added that the Israelis are “taking to the streets in a generalized movement of protests against the rising cost of living; the cuts in social programs and benefits; and the control of eco-nomic life in Israel by a tiny oligarchy of the rich, which has galvanized resistance throughout its very society.”

Schoenman made the comments a day after 57-year-old protester Moshe Silman died of burns he had sustained after he set himself on fire in Tel Aviv.

Silman self-immolated on July 14 during a demonstration held to mark the first anniversary of protests against social injustice and high cost of living that swept Israel last summer.

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End to Military Role in Politics

Even some are pessimistic about the recent developments, dismiss-ing it as an agreement between the army and Muslim Brotherhood. But the reality is apparently something else.

Morsi’s decision, in fact, prevented Egypt from following the Turkish pat-tern. The democratic mechanism in Turkey allows the election of president, members of parliament, and ministers of cabinet, but this democratic structure is highly influenced by the country’s top army commanders, who play a major role in making decisions about Turkey’s political and security measures.

Turkey’s top military officials, in fact, lay great stress on the need for preserving the system’s secularity while confronting the Islamists. Before the victory of revolu-tion in Egypt on January 25, the military had a significant influence on the country’s affairs and its dominance had been achieved during six decades.

The regime of Hosni Mubarak had a democratic appearance, but it was, in fact, a dictatorship and was ruled by the military’s iron first.

After the victory of Egypt’s victory, parliamentary election was held and later Mohamed Morsi was elected in the country’s presidential elections. The army that Mubarak had developed in several decades had a major row with the new president on the president’s prerogatives and it was so serious that was considered a big blow to the popular revolution.

In the meantime, the issue of prerogatives caused a considerable tension among the Egyptian president, Islamists, Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, and Supreme Constitutional Court in the recent months.

But the attack in Sinai Peninsula on August 5, 2012 that left 16 Egyptian soldiers dead was a good opportunity for Morsi to take back his authorities, prevent Egypt from turning to a country like Turkey, where the military commanders and not politicians have the final say.

Following the people’s rage over the military’s failure to support the Egyptian

By Sadrodin Musavi

Morsi Prevents Egyptfrom Following Turkish PatternEgypt’s President Mohamed Morsi ordered top General Hussein Tantawi to retire and canceled the addendum to the constitutional declaration issued by the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF), producing different analyses in recent days.


Middle EastECHOof Islam18

soldiers, President Morsi ousted the Mubarak-era top officials.

Morsi ordered General Tan-tawi to retire after 20 years and dismissed the intelligence chief Murad Muwafi and the army’s chief of staff Sami Hafez Anan, who was known as a main op-ponent of the president’s reform plans. Morsi appointed three to do the ousted officials’ jobs.

Morsi counted on the divi-sion among Egypt’s top military officials for the success of his courageous decisions and preven-tion of coup.

He secretly met with new military commanders, inform-ing them of changes. After they reached an agreement, Morsi made the changes and gave the ousted commanders honorary roles as advisers to ease their concern about possible trial for cooperation with the regime of Mubarak.

No doubt, Morsi’s audacious decisions help the president

regain his powers and reduce the role of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces so that the army will have no right to make decisions about political affairs.

Morsi’s appointment of senior judge Mahmoud Makki as vice president and cancelation of the addendum to the constitutional declaration prevent the govern-ment from interfering in judicial affairs and help revise Egypt’s constitution according to the will of the revolutionaries. Makki was a popular judiciary official, who strongly voiced his opposition to the government’s interference in judicial affairs in the Mubarak era.

Following his reconciliatory decisions about the military, thepresident of Egypt has been faced with growing pressure fromWashington to avoid chang-ing Cairo’s stances on the region-particularly on security agree-ments with the Zionist regime. On the other hand, Israel did not

hide his concern about changes in Egypt’s military, warning lack of bilateral security coordination will cause great problems in the future.

Now the questions are: Can Morsi carry out his courageous decisions and reforms or will the interests of the United States and Israel in the region be alongside the interests of those who were damaged by Morsi’s decision to stage a coup against the new president of Egypt?

The news channel Aljazeera broadcast a report that said Morsi’s recent decisions changed the power equation in Egypt, underlining that the ouster of de-fense minister and senior military officials by Morsi is considered an end to the military’s role in the country’s political affairs.

The report referred to Morsi’s thoughtful and gradual policy in the recent months, calling it an introduction to his rapid changes.

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InternationalECHOof Islam20 A u g u s t - S e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 2 / N o . 2 4 6

Muslims mark International Day of Qods across the world

InternationalECHOof Islam

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Muslims in different parts of the world marked the Internation-al Day of Qods held on the last

Friday of the holy month of Ramadan (August 18).

The leader of Islamic Revolution, Imam Khomeini, designated the last Friday of the month of Ramadan as the International Day of Qods so the Muslims across the world express their solidarity with the Palestinian nation.

Commenting on the event, a lawmaker described Qods Day as a common issue of the Muslims across the world, saying that the founder of the Islamic Revolution, late Imam Khomeini used plight of Palestine as the common ground to bring the Muslims together against the oppressive powers.

Seyyed Saeed Zamaniyan added that Qods Day is a roadmap which has taken aim at the destructive currents of Zion-ism.

He further noted that the Islamic Awakening prevailing in the region originated from Imam Khomeini’s ideas and foresightedness.

The Qods Day is observed across the world every year.

Economic crisis and social insecurity turns ‘Batman’ screening into a real ‘horror movie’

By Ali Azimi

A masked, black-clad shooter burst into a movie theater in town of Aurora just outside Denver in July barely 20

minutes into the midnight screening, throwing two tear-gas type devices before opening fire, which left 12 dead and also injured 70.

“As far as we know, it was a pretty rapid pace of fire in that theater,” said Oates, his voice shaking at times with emotion, and exhaustion after a long night and day deal-ing with the trauma.James Holmes, 24, who reportedly attended the University of Colo-rado medical school until June 2012, had no

criminal record aside from a citation for speeding in October 2011, according

to police.A local children’s hospital

reported six young victims, the

youngest of whom

was

aged only six. At least three of the wounded were US military members, the Pentagon said.

Shots fired in one auditorium went through the wall and hit people in the auditorium next door. The first police were on the scene within 90 sec-onds, while eventually some 200 officers swarmed around the building.

“In the last 60 days, he purchased four guns at local metro gun shops and through the internet he purchased over 6,000 rounds of ammunition,” the police chief said.

He added: “My understanding is that all the weapons that he possessed, he possessed legally, and all the clips that he possessed, he possessed legally, and all the ammunition he possessed, he possessed legally.”

Police arrested Holmes – who was wearing full body armor and a gas mask, apparently to protect him from effects of his own tear gas – without en-countering resistance by his car at the rear of the theater.

Hundreds of mourners held candles, many sob-bing and hugging each other in an outpouring of grief for those who died when the gunman opened fire in a packed cinema showing Batman movie “The Dark Knight Rises.”

The shooting drew expressions of concern from political leaders led by President Barack Obama, and revived the perennial debate about gun con-trol in the United States.

President Obama promised justice to the residents of Aurora, Colorado, saying: “The fed-eral government stands ready to do everything necessary to bring whoever’s responsible for this heinous crime to justice.”

He said the government “will take every step possible” to ensure the safety of all Ameri-

cans.


Bomb squad experts tried for much of the next day to gain en-trance to the apartment shortly after the shooting in the town of Aurora just outside Denver.

But they gave up shortly before sundown, and said they would resume again the next day, when they hoped to make a break-through that could also reveal clues as the motives of 24-year-old gunman James Holmes.

“It is a very vexing problem how to enter that apartment safely. I personally have never seen anything like what the pictures show us is in there. I’m a layman when it comes to bomb stuff, said Aurora Police Chief Dan Oates.

“I see an awful lot of wires, trip wires, jars full of ammuni-tion, jars full of liquid. Some things that look like mortar

rounds. We have a lot of chal-lenge, to get in there safely.”

It emerged that Holmes bought more than 6,000 rounds of ammu-nition on the Internet, and four guns, in the two months before the shootings.

Witnesses described chaos chillingly similar to that depicted in the Batman films, in which ma-niacal villains terrorize Gotham City.

“I saw some people start to get up. I poked my head up to see what was going on and when I did that I saw another flash and instantly put my head down as he started shooting again,” said 17-year-old Tanner Coon.

Cinemas in New York tightened security at Batman showings, and the AMC theatre chain announced a ban on face masks and fake weapons – several people wore

costumes in Aurora, possibly helping Holmes to blend in with the melee.

The French premiere of the film in Paris was cancelled.

As with previous such shootings – all too regular in the US – lobby groups and some political leaders called for legislation to restrict civilians’ access to firearms.

“Maybe it’s time that the two people who want to be president of the United States stand up and tell us what they are going to do because this is obviously a problem across the country,” New York mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

Aurora is barely 20 miles (32 kilometers) from the scene of the 1999 Columbine High School mas-sacre, in which two students shot dead 13 people before commit-ting suicide.


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Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman

The Republican Party could steal the 2012 US Presiden-tial election with relative

ease. Corporate money has come

to totally dominate the Ameri-can electoral process. The John Roberts US Supreme Court has definitively opened the flood-gates with its infamous Citizens United decision. But for well over a century, at least since the 1880s, corporations have ruled American politics. Back then the courts began to confer on corpo-rations the privileges of human rights without the responsibilities of human decency.

Citizens United has taken that reality to a whole new level. As the 2012 election approaches we are watching gargantuan waves of unrestricted capital pouring into political campaigns at all levels. The June recall election in Wisconsin saw at least 8 times as much money being spent on protecting Republican governor Scott Walker as was spent trying to oust him.

Nationwide this year, the corporate largess vastly favors Republicans over Democrats. But since both parties are essentially corporate in nature, that could change in coming elections, and may even vary in certain races in 2012.

We do not believe that once given the chance, the Republi-cans are any more prone to steal-ing elections than the Democrats. And that is a major point.

On its surface, the prime focus of our nation’s sorry history of stolen elections has to do with Democrats stealing elections from Republicans and vice-versa. In 2012 it will be primarily Republicans using gargantuan sums of corporate money to take control of the government from Democrats, and democracy be damned.

But in the longer view, the more important reality is that the corruption of our electoral system is perfectly geared toward crushing third and other par-ties whose focus is challenging

a corporate status quo deeply entrenched in war, inequality, and ecological destruction.

So as we trace the stories of election theft dating all the way back to John Adams and Tom Jefferson, we do fret over the corruption that defines so much of the back-and-forth between Democrats and Republicans. But we hope that you, the reader, will always remember that whatever the corporate parties do to each other separately pales before what they will do together to crush non-corporate forces like the Populist Party, the Socialist movement and the grassroots campaigns for peace, justice and ecological preservation. This ap-plies to both candidates running for office and referenda aimed at

Corporate Vote Theft and the Future of American Democracy

American history is chock full of election abuse from both parties,

dating at least back to 1800, when the Democrat-Republican Thomas Jefferson wrested the presidency from Federalist John Adams based on the “votes” of African-American slaves who were allowed nowhere near a ballot box.

On its surface, the prime focus of our nation’s sorry history of stolen elections has to do with Democrats stealing elections from Republicans and vice-versa. In 2012 it will be primarily Republicans using gargantuan sums of corporate money to take control of the government from Democrats, and democracy be damned.


directly changing policy. Yes, we are concerned with the

injustice and corrupting nature of the reality that corporate money could fund a series of anti-dem-ocratic tricks that will steal the 2012 election away from the in-tent of the American electorate. Given the choices facing us, this means Mitt Romney could well become president despite the possibility of a legitimate victory by Barack Obama.

But far more important in the long run is that the ability to do this by either corporate party (or both of them) means no third party will be allowed to break through in future elections to make meaningful change in this country – at least not through the ballot box.

No reality could be more grim for a nation that long-ago pio-neered modern democracy and

seemed to bring to the world the possibility of a society in which the possibility of continually mak-ing meaningful, life-giving change was guaranteed along with the right to vote.

American history is chock full of election abuse from both par-ties, dating at least back to 1800, when the Democrat-Republican Thomas Jefferson wrested the presidency from Federalist John Adams based on the “votes” of African-American slaves who were allowed nowhere near a ballot box.

That Adams spent the next six years muttering about that theft before he opened a legendary ex-change of letters with his former friend and rival did nothing to rid the country of the Electoral College that made it possible. Nor did it prevent his son, John Quincy, from using it to steal

the 1824 election from a very angry slaveowner named Andrew Jackson, who then formed the Democratic Party that now claims Barack Obama.

But in 2012, the GOP controls the registration rolls and the swing state vote count in ways that the Democrats do not.

It will be the Republicans’ choice as to how far they are willing to go to put Mitt Romney in the White House. But, they have the power to do it if they’re willing to use it.

They did not have that option in 2008, when Barack Obama and Joe Biden defeated John Mc-Cain and Sarah Palin. Ohio had a Democratic governor and secre-tary of state that year. Obama safely carried the usually decisive Buckeye State in 2008, along with enough additional swing states to put him in the White House.


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The present essay is an at-tempt to examine the role of military establishments

in making a decision to invade Iraq, codenamed the Operation Iraqi Freedom (OIF) decision. In order to shed light on the role of military establishments, attempts have been made to focus on the role of US military institutions and figures as well as administrative officials with close ties with the military establishments in making the final decision to invade Iraq.

IntroductionFor a decade before the

election of George W. Bush as President, many of the men and women who would become his top foreign policy advisers argued for several major propositions. Two of the leading ones were that American power ought to be vig-orously asserted to bring order to a potentially disintegrating post-Cold War world, and that Saddam Hussein had to be removed from power. The first of these goals had been on the minds of key Repub-lican foreign policy leaders for nearly a decade: the writer James Mann contends that the roots of the Iraq war can be found in the 1992 Defense Policy Guidance (DPG), drafted at the tail end of the first Bush administration. ‘‘The underlying rationale’’ for OIF ‘‘was both broader and more abstract: The war was carried out in pursuit of a larger vision of using America’s overwhelm-ing military superiority to shape the future,’’ he contends (Mann 2004b).

Mann explains that the au-thor of the first DPG draft was not, as commonly reported, Paul Wolfowitz, but Zalmay Khalilzad later a main player on U.S. Iraq policy. The most enthusiastic early reader was then-Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney. And

a second version of the report, allegedly ‘‘toned down’’ after the first draft had been publicly revealed, in fact preserved and in some ways even extended the core ideas of American dominance offered in the first draft. In fact, a continued argument for U.S. power could have been expected, because the official given respon-sibility for editing and revising the draft was Lewis (‘‘Scooter’’) Libby, then serving as principal deputy undersecretary of defense for strategy.

Rather than walking away from the idea of American pre-dominance, Mann writes, ‘‘Libby’s rewrite encompassed a more breathtaking vision: The United States would buildup its military capabilities to such an extent that there could never be a rival.’’ It also built up the suggestion that the United States would ‘‘act

to ensure events moved in ways favorable to U.S. interests’’, an early statement of what was to become the preemption doctrine in the second Bush administra-tion. When the draft was done, Defense Secretary Cheney ‘‘took ownership of it,’’ according to Khalilzad.

Mann draws a number of les-sons from the episode. One is that an especially crucial player in the second Bush administration, Rich-ard Cheney, was a bold, aggres-sive thinker years before 9-11. A persuasive analysis in The New Republic by Spencer Ackerman and Franklin Foer (2003:17–18) agrees: They describe, for exam-ple, Cheney’s unsuccessful battle in the first Bush administration to shift U.S. Soviet policy away from Mikhail Gorbachev and toward an effort to collapse a tottering Soviet Union and promote de-


By Hamideh Hosseini

Role of Military Establishments in US Invasion of Iraq

mocracy. Their sources pointed to a willingness, even then, on Cheney’s part to ‘‘circumvent the typical bureaucratic channels to gain advantage over his rivals.’’ In retrospect, Cheney probably felt he had been right about the Soviet Union: Gorbachev did not survive; Yeltsin, for whom Cheney had urged support, had arisen to power in Russia and proved a friendly, if unsteady, interlocutor; and the Soviet Union had col-lapsed in a wave of democratic reforms. If Dick Cheney learned a lesson from the event, it was probably to trust his instincts, to favor rollback rather than incre-mentalism, to scoff at those who saw all problems as ‘‘intracta-ble,’’ and to favor bold moves.

The importance of expressions of American power to many men who would become senior officials in the second Bush administration was joined by, and closely re-lated to, a second foreign policy preoccupation: that Saddam Hus-sein must be driven from power. During the first Persian Gulf War, Hussein had revealed aggressive regional ambitions; afterwards, U.S. intelligence tried to project him to have been much closer to a nuclear arsenal than had been thought. This episode was inten-tionally promoted by key mem-bers of the U.S. national security policy community: that Saddam would do anything to obtain weapons of mass destruction; that he was skilled in concealing his WMD programs from inspectors; that U.S. intelligence tended to underplay, rather than exagger-ate, emerging threats; and that no scenario would safeguard U.S. interests short of regime change (Mann 2004a: 182–183, 234–238). It should be borne in mind that Weapons of Mass Destruction were never found in Iraq. After the war not a single weapon of mass

For a decade before the election of George W. Bush as President, many of the men and women who would become his top foreign policy advisers argued for several major propositions.


27


destruction was found. Even as of May 1991, therefore, President George H. W. Bush had signed a presidential order authorizing the CIA to spend over a hundred million dollars on various covert operations to ‘‘create the condi-tions for [the] removal of Saddam Hussein from power’’ (Mayer 2004:61). Dealing with Saddam would directly support the first goal, of restoring American cred-ibility: George Packer (2005:36) suggests that the conservatives saw Iraq ‘‘as a test case for their ideas about American power and world leadership.’’ Clearly the conservatives have close relations with the military establishments.

The Decision to Attack IraqDuring the 1990s, a group of

dedicated anti-Saddam activists emerged, largely outside govern-ment (because most of them were Republicans with close ties with the military establishment), who worked together to understand and promote the issue and who would later assume senior policy positions in the administration of George W. Bush. This group kept abreast of developments in Iraq; spoke to Iraqi exile groups and leaders; published articles and op-eds on the Iraq issue; held confer-ences and informal meetings on the subject; lobbied members of the administration and Congress and the military establishment to get tougher on Saddam; and fed key information about Saddam’s behavior to U.S. and international news media. By the late 1990s, they had become convinced that U.S. policy toward Iraq and its twin pillars of economic sanctions and no-fly-zones was collapsing, that time was on Saddam’s side. Their policy recommendations centered largely around plans such as one developed by lead-ing Iraqi exiles, including Ahmed

Chalabi that envisioned a Bay of Pigs-style regime change option (Mayer 2004:58–72). Chalabi made his case in the draft plan called ‘‘End Game’’ by claiming that ‘‘The time for the plan is now. Iraq is on the verge of spontane-ous combustion. It only needs a trigger to set off a chain of events that will lead to the overthrow of Saddam’’ (Hersh 2001:58).This process was well underway by 2000. Even Hans Blix (2004:53–54; Interviewee 13) stresses this fact in his book, noting the ‘‘sanctions fatigue’’ that was afflicting lead-ing powers at the time, the popu-lar outrage at the effects of the

sanctions. Baghdad was becoming filled with businessmen; the oil-for-food program was enriching Saddam and strengthening his hold on power ironically, creating just the sort of kleptocracy that would prove unable to function as an effective government, thus consigning Iraqi infrastructure to a gradual decline, requiring vast new investments to rescue something U.S. planners did not recognize until it was too late.

Former CIA case officer Robert Baer reports being briefed on the End Game plan in August 1994, by which time, according to Baer, it had been ‘‘well shopped around Washington’’ (Baer 2002:188; See also Gordon and Trainor, 2006:12–

13). In February 1998, this group

of anti-Saddam activists, all of whom had close ties with military establishments, sent President Clinton a letter recommend-ing that regime change in Iraq become a major foreign policy priority. The letter claimed that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction, and charged that the existing policy of con-tainment was ‘‘bound to erode,’’ and ‘‘only a determined program to change the regime in Baghdad will bring the Iraqi crisis to a satisfactory conclusion.’’ Iraq ‘‘is ripe for a broad-based insurrec-

tion,’’ the letter contended. ‘‘We must exploit this opportunity.’’ Signatories of the letter included a host of people who had strong ties with the military establish-ments and would become senior officials in or advisers to the Bush administration, the defining core of the group of anti-Saddam activ-ists:

Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, Paul Wolfowitz, Elliot Abrams, Richard Armitage, John Bolton, Paula Dobrianski, Zalmay Khal-ilzad, Peter Rodman, Donald Rumsfeld, David Wurmser, and Dov Zakheim. All these figures have close ties with the military establishments.

In October 1998, partly under

Former CIA case officer Robert Baer reports being briefed on the End

Game plan in August 1994, by which time, according to Baer, it had been ‘‘well shopped around Washington’’ (Baer 2002:188; See also Gordon and Trainor, 2006:12–13).


the prodding of this same group, Congress passed the Iraq Libera-tion Act. It provided for assistance to radio and television broadcast-ing into Iraq, $97 million in mili-tary assistance to ‘‘democratic opposition organizations,’’ and humanitarian assistance to Iraqis living in liberated areas. That No-vember, President Clinton stated that containment of Saddam was insufficient, and committed the United States to regime change. In January 1999, Secretary of State Madeline Albright took this message throughout the Middle East bringing with her on the trip State’s ‘‘special representative for transition in Iraq,’’ an of-ficial charged with developing a strategy to ‘‘create the environ-ment and pressures inside Iraq’’

to overthrow Saddam Hussein (Perlez 1999:A3). Little practical actions came of these statements, however, and even as the Iraq Liberation.

Act was passing in the Con-gress, Secretary of Defense William Cohen tempered expec-tations by saying that Clinton ‘‘was not calling for the over-throw of Saddam Hussein’’ (Loeb 1998:A17). As it became clear that the Clinton administration was not interested in near-term regime change, Chalabi and oth-ers turned more of their attention to the anti-Saddam policy activ-ists outside government (Mayer 2004:64–65).

During the campaign, both Bush and Cheney threatened to take action in Iraq. ‘‘If I found in

any way, shape or form that he was developing weapons of mass destruction,’’ Bush said, ‘‘I’d take ’em out’’ a reference, he quickly claimed, to the weapons, not to Hussein himself (Lancaster 2000).

In a later television appear-ance, Bush quipped: ‘‘I will tell you this: If we catch him develop-ing weapons of mass destruction in any way, shape, or form, I’ll deal with him in a way that he won’t like.’’ Cheney, when asked about the ‘‘take ’em out’’ quote, said that ‘‘If in fact Saddam Hus-sein were taking steps to try to rebuild nuclear capacity or weap-ons of mass destruction, we’d have to give very serious consid-eration to military action to stop that activity’’ (Lemann 2001:34).

A number of quiet, largely


29


behind-the-scenes clues also hint-ed that they planned a greater emphasis on Saddam Hussein’s re-gime. One account, from June of 2000, suggests that an adviser to Bush mentioned during a briefing session that ‘‘we ought to have been rid of Saddam Hussein a long time ago,’’ and implied that candidate Bush agreed with the sentiment (Lancaster 2000:A1).

Once George W. Bush was elected, key members of the new administration quickly turned their attention to Iraq. In January 2001, even before Bush had been inaugurated,

Vice President-Elect Cheney reportedly asked outgoing Secre-tary of Defense William Cohen to brief President-Elect Bush. He did not, however, want the ‘‘routine, canned, round-the-world tour,’’ according to Bob Woodward’s account; instead, he ‘‘wanted a serious discussion about Iraq and different options.’ . . . Topic A should be Iraq’’ (Woodward 2004:9).

On January 30, 2001, the new Bush national security team held its first NSC meeting. This session is recounted at length in the Ron Suskind book on former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, The Price of Loyalty. O’Neill describes a session heavily focused on Iraq at which Secretary of Defense Rums-feld, President Bush, and others seemed intent on taking action soon. O’Neill contends that the next NSC meeting, on February 1, also focused on Iraq (Suskind 2004:73–74, 85–86).

What was clear to many in the administration was that sanctions were collapsing, that Saddam was growing stronger by the year, and that U.S. policy badly needed at-tention. What a new policy would become, however, was far from clear; and no one with whom I spoke read the meeting as an

indication that George Bush was anxious to go after Saddam.

These early questions and discussions morphed into an administration-wide debate about the future of sanctions against Iraq, proposals for new mod-els of ‘‘smart sanctions,’’ and dialogue about various plans to move against Saddam short of an all-out U.S. attack. At both the principals’ and deputies’ levels (both with close links with the

military), options were examined that included coups and support for opposition or insurgent groups within Iraq. The broad goal was to put more pressure on Saddam Hussein, but beyond that there was little consensus of what pre-cisely the United States should do or how far it should go. But there was little urgency to the debates, no clear goal, a fragmented policy process, no focusing event to rally policy change, and apart from a


decision on a revised sanctions program the result was inac-tion. One report suggests that the ‘‘process swiftly became bogged down in bitter interagency disagreements’’ and ‘‘remained stuck’’ in ‘‘gridlock’’ until Sep-tember 11 (Burrough et al. 2004:234), showing that the mili-tary establishment had not yet decided to go into war. Planning did continue, however. Between May 31 and July 26, 2001, the deputies committee met several times to discuss options for how to push Saddam’s regime toward collapse. Their resulting proposal, called ‘‘A Liberation Strategy,’’ seems to have been a cobbled-to-gether set of initiatives, increased support for opposition groups, tighter economic sanctions, more intrusive weapons inspections, more muscular use of no-fly-zones, and other U.S. military presence in the country, designed to make Saddam more uncomfort-able and his people more tempted to revolt (Woodward 2004:21). But it did not envisage direct U.S. military action, and little immedi-ate result came of the plan. Again it seems that the military estab-lishment had not yet concluded a military action.

Although, the nature of those behind the September 11 attacks is not yet clear, there are a num-ber of groups in the United States and Europe arguing that the US intelligence and military estab-lishments are behind the attacks. However, there is little question that the attacks of September 11, 2001 brought a new urgency, and readiness to take bigger risks, to the administration’s thinking on Iraq. And again the final decision to attack Iraq was taken by men who had close ties with the mili-tary establishments.

EndnotesBLIX, HANS. (2004) Disarming

A number of quiet, largely behind-the-scenes clues also hinted that they planned

a greater emphasis on Saddam Hussein’s regime. One account, from June of 2000, suggests that an adviser to Bush mentioned during a briefing session that ‘‘we ought to have been rid of Saddam Hussein a long time ago,’’ and implied that candidate Bush agreed with the sentiment.


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Iraq. New York: Pantheon Books.HERSH, SEYMOUR. (2001) The

Iraq Hawks: Can Their PlanWork? The New Yorker, December 24 and 31.

LANCASTER, JOHN. (2000) In Saddam’s Future, A Harder U.S. Line. Washington Post, June 3.

LEMANN, NICHOLAS. (2001) The Iraq Factor. The New Yorker, January 22.

LEMANN, NICHOLAS. (2003) How It Came to War. The New Yorker, March 31.

LOEB, VERNON. (1998) Saddam’s Iraqi Foes Heartened by Clinton. Washington Post, Novem-ber 16.

MANN, JAMES. (2004a) Rise of the Vulcans: The History of Bush’s War Cabinet. New York: Viking.

MANN, JAMES. (2004b) The True Rationale? It’s a Decade Old. Washington Post, March 7, 2004.

MAYER, JANE. (2004) The Ma-nipulator. The New Yorker, June 7.

MAYER, JANE. (2004) The Ma-nipulator. The New Yorker, June 7.

PERLEZ, JANE. (1999) Albright Introduces a New Phrase to Pro-mote Hussein’s Ouster. New York Times,

WOODWARD, BOB. (2002) Bush at War. New York: Simon and Schuster.

WOODWARD, BOB. (2004) Plan of Attack. New York: Simon and Schuster.

Hamideh Hosseini is a MA stu-dent, University of Tehran

On January 30, 2001, the new Bush

national security team held its first NSC meeting. This session is recounted at length in the Ron Suskind book on former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill, The Price of Loyalty. O’Neill describes a session heavily focused on Iraq at which Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld, President Bush, and others seemed intent on taking action soon,


Russia sharply criticized new U.S. sanc-tions against Iran, saying the measures to punish banks, insurance companies

and shippers assisting Iran’s oil sales would harm Moscow’s ties with Washington if Russian firms are affected.

Russia, which has long opposed sanctions beyond those approved by the UN Security Council to pressure Tehran over its nuclear program, called the measures “overt black-mail” and a “crude contradiction of interna-tional law.”

The United States ceased most trade with Iran in 1996, when Congress passed The Iran and Libya Sanctions Act, after heavy lobbying by AIPAC. Since then it has put increasing pres-sure on other countries to reduce their busi-ness with the Islamic Republic.

“We are talking about restrictive measures not only against Iran but also affecting foreign companies and individuals working with it, including in the hydrocarbon extraction and transport, petrochemicals, finance and insur-ance industries,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

“We consider efforts to ... impose inter-nal American legislation on the entire world completely unacceptable,” it said. “We reject methods of overt blackmail that the United States resorts to in relation to the companies and banks of other countries.”

“Those in Washington should take into ac-count that our bilateral relations will suffer seriously if Russian operators come under the effects of the American restrictions,” the min-istry said.

The West has put unprecedented pressure on Iran for its peaceful nuclear program.

However, Iran, as a signatory for the Non-Proliferation Treaty, has the right to nuclear technology for peaceful purposes. Iran’s enrichment processes are monitored by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

Russia: New sanctions on Iran overt blackmail

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Iran’s Ambassador to Paris Ali Ahani said the reso-lutions issued against Iran by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) lack any legal bases.He said the allegations leveled against Iran are

generally based on hollow and baseless remarks rather than solid legal argumentations.

He said in an article that Iran as an independent country which is committed to and fully observes the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) has an absolute right to develop and use nuclear technology for peaceful purposes.

He stressed that Iran strongly believed that the resolutions issued by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Board of Governors, referring Iran’s nuclear case to the UN, are erroneous, illegal and unjustifiable.

The ambassador further noted that the UN Secu-rity Council has been issuing anti-Iran resolutions since 2006 which are politically-motivated, illegal and irrational.

Ahani explained in his article that referring Iran’s nuclear case to the UN Security Council was done

through violation of the charter of the IAEA. He said the numerous IAEA reports on Iran’s nu-

clear program never mentioned any cases of “viola-tions” or “deviations” by Tehran. Therefore, the interference of the UNSC in the issue is absolutely against the IAEA charter and regulations.

The Iranian ambassador noted that the resolu-tions issued by the UNSC against Iran violate a number of basic rights of the Iranian nation includ-ing the right for development, to natural resources and determining its own destiny.

Ahani continued that the ongoing talks with the 5+1, could pave the way for a kind of agreement which would both remove the concerns of western partners and provide necessary guarantees for Iran in continuing its peaceful nuclear activities includ-ing uranium enrichment.

He wondered that in certain cases especially in the Middle East, the countries which are basi-cally not a signatory to the Non-proliferation treaty enjoy more rights than the member states but have also far less commitments.

UNSC resolutions against Iran lack legal bases

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Iran expressed its strong disap-proval of a decision by the Organization of Islamic Coop-

eration to suspend Syria’s mem-bership, calling the move “unfair and unjust.”

“Syria should have been invited to the summit to defend itself,” Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi told IRNA on the sidelines of the OIC summit in Mecca.

Salehi said Iran opposed the decision “because this is against the very charter of the organiza-

tion.”The Mecca summit was called

by Saudi King Abdullah, whose country is supporting Syrian rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad participated in the meeting which was held on 15 and 16.

Tehran has launched a cam-paign to facilitate talks between the opposition groups and the Syrian government.

Iran has insisted that dialogue

is the only viable solution to the Syrian crisis. Iran has also said the Damascus government must respond to the legitimate de-mands of the Syrian people.

“In our opinion, cooperation is more logical (than suspension),” Salehi said.

Instead of suspending Syria “we should seek a mechanism to exit the Syrian crisis, through which the opposition and the gov-ernment engage in talks to create favorable conditions (to end the crisis),” the top diplomat said.

Iran calls Syria OIC suspension ‘unjust’

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India has joined Japan in offering govern-ment-backed insurance for ships carrying Iranian crude in order to bypass European

sanctions, the Washington Post reported. The first Indian ship to carry oil from Iran

with Indian insurance loaded up in Iran on August 18, a shipping company executive said. This is a breakthrough for the Indian government, which has scrambled to maintain vital Iranian oil imports after European sanctions blocked third-party insurance in July.

The MT Omvati Prem – a tanker contracted to carry 85,000 metric tons of crude oil from Iran for Indian state refiner Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd. – was scheduled to arrive in India by Aug. 25, said Kow-shik Kuchroo, president of shipping for Mercator Ltd., an Indian shipping company.

“This being a government

India joins Japan to resume shipping of Iranian oil of India cargo, it has a different sense of

importance. We’re not doing it just for business,” Kuchroo said. “India is in defi-nite need of the crude. At a short notice, we can’t just snap the supply.”

Mercator is insuring the ship with $50 million in hull and machinery insurance,

which covers physical damage to the ship, from state-owned New India As-surance Co. It’s insuring the vessel with

another $50 million in protection and indemnity insurance, which covers a broad range of liabilities, including environmental pollution and cargo dam-

age, from govern-ment-backed

United India Insur-ance.

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16th of NAM