Right Wing Nut House

Amidst the larger political and and military moves in Iraq where grand plans are carried out and important men argue and cajole each other, there is a singular truth that has underwritten this entire effort at bringing peace: No matter what happens with the surge or the militias or Prime Minister Maliki’s government, what will really decide the fate of that blood soaked nation will occur in the quiet neighborhoods where Sunni and Shia formerly lived together in peace and friendship but where now only fear and violence reign.

It is where the sectarian strife has cleaved most deeply. Families that had lived side by side for generations suddenly found their neighbors ordering them out of their homes or face death. More than 300,000 fled for their lives to other parts of Iraq while countless others - perhaps as many as 2 million - have left the country in the last 4 years.

But despite the carnage, small glimmers of hope have emerged in recent months courtesy of the United States military.

Far beneath the radar of the mainstream press, the military has quietly been organizing meetings between Shias and Sunnis in areas where there has been conflict. These local conferences represent one of the major efforts at reconciling the various factions and seek to reestablish trust between the sects. The Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRT’s) who are responsible for this program have doubled in number since the President’s speech in January and have intensified these efforts as part of the surge.

And there is some evidence that the program, if not wildly successful, may have started something significant. The proof is in the efforts by both the insurgents and The Islamic State of Iraq (al-Qaeda) to intimidate and threaten individuals who take part in these reconciliation meetings:

A recent wave of Sunni reprisals appears linked to increasingly high-profile attempts to stir popular momentum against Sunni extremists trying to drive out the Shiite-led government and its American backers.

Among those targeted include a range of Sunnis raising their voices against violence: imams, clan-based vigilantes and activists trying to bridge deep rifts with majority Shias.

“We are seeing more people beginning to challenge the insurgents,” said Marine Brig. Gen. John Allen, who oversees units in the militant heartland west of Baghdad.

In Youssifiyah, a Sunni-dominated area about 12 miles south of Baghdad, One of the PRT’s organized a meeting of local tribes and religious leaders last month. Among them were two prominent local families who braved the threats of the extremists in order to help build a new Iraq. Sadly, 6 members of those families were found dead over the weekend -victims of execution style murders:

The two families gunned down at sunrise Saturday had received death threats for weeks after attending gatherings of Sunni and Shiite leaders, police said.

The first meeting, organized by U.S. military officials on Feb. 13, brought together leaders of prominent clans from both sides, said military spokesman Maj. Webster M. Wright III.

The clan chiefs held another round on their own about a week later and appointed a joint council “to discuss the terms of reconciliation” around Youssifiyah, a Sunni-dominated area about 12 miles south of Baghdad, Wright said.

At dawn, gunmen stormed the home of two families belonging to the influential Sunni Mashhada tribe, said police 1st Lt. Haider Satar. Two fathers and their four sons were separated from their wives and sisters. They were executed at point-blank range.

In the morgue in nearby Mahmoudiya, AP Television News footage showed at least two victims had their hands bound behind their backs.

One more small tragedy in an ocean of pain and suffering? The fact that the clans were willing to seek reconciliation in spite of the threats, in spite of all that has gone before has got to say something important - otherwise those men will have given their lives for nothing.

This is how Iraq will heal. When men like those who were ruthlessly executed continue to show courage in the face of such brutality and evil, progress will almost certainly be made. There are already martyrs enough on both sides. What is needed now is the steadfast belief that something better can be achieved by talking than by hating each other.

No doubt that the insurgents will continue to desperately try and derail these reconciliation efforts. This is where Prime Minister Maliki comes in. He absolutely must get to work on a National Reconciliation Plan that will bring all but the worst of the murderers and terrorists into the national life of the nation. This will necessarily mean granting amnesty to a large number of fighters who have fought and killed our troops. The Pentagon won’t like that. I don’t like it. I daresay most Americans won’t like it. But we have to understand that our occupation has fueled some of this insurgency. There are thousands of tribal militia men who saw our cozying up to the Shias as a direct threat and took up arms in what they felt was in defense of their home and hearth. Most of the Iraqi people hold these men blameless - at least less culpable than the car bombers and death squad killers who continue their rampage to this day.

Taking these men out of the fight by granting them amnesty will pull the teeth of the insurgency. It will free up our forces to concentrate on the remaining terrorists and Baathist bitter enders who carry out most of the violence against civilians. For these reasons alone, amnesty would be worth it.

Those nameless martyrs in Youssifiyah were seeking to build a new Iraq. Not the Iraq we envisioned when we invaded but one of their own creation. Let’s hope that those left behind are inspired by their courage and will continue to work toward building a peaceful society free from fear.

In this excellent overview of the Israeli’s view of the Iranian nuclear program in the Daily Telegraph, it’s made very clear by the government that attacking Iran before they can acquire a nuclear weapon is not a question of if, but of when:

Having already suffered a near-apocalypse in the form of the Holocaust, the Jewish people have no intention of being the hapless victims of Ahmadinejad’s genocidal designs. Ehud Olmert, the Israeli Prime Minister, last month gave his most explicit warning to date that Israel was prepared to use military force to prevent Teheran from obtaining a nuclear weapon: “The Jewish people, with the scars of the Holocaust fresh on its body, cannot afford to allow itself to face threats of annihilation once again.”

That single sentence sums up the consensus among most of the Israeli people. If the wider world is not prepared to take pre-emptive action to stop Iran from fulfilling its nuclear ambitions, then Israel is ready to act alone.

There are those who do not take the Iranian President at his word that he will “wipe Israel off the map.” But if you are an Israeli government official charged with the safety and security of your tiny nation, you cannot afford the luxury of wondering whether Ahmadinejad is serious or not. He is the leader of a nation that at the very least, is about to get his hands on the technology - uranium enrichment - that can be used for both peaceful and military purposes. If you can enrich uranium for fuel to drive a nuclear reactor, then you can certainly enrich it enough to build a bomb.

The process is exactly the same. The only difference is is in the percentage of isotopes that are converted from U-235 to U238. In short, all you have to do is run the centrifuges for a longer period of time.

Since the Iranians have not shown any willingness to allow for the very intrusive inspections and monitoring by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) which would give confidence to the Israelis that the Iranian program is peaceful, it is a virtual certainty that they will attack and take care of what they perceive to be a problem themselves:

As for Israel’s offensive plans against Iran, the Iran Command team’s task is to demonstrate that Israel has the capability to act unilaterally.

“No one is going to take this threat seriously until the State of Israel can demonstrate to the outside world that we have the ability to deal with this menace on our own,” said a senior security official who serves on Iran Command.

“The only way we can put pressure on the outside world to deal effectively with Iran’s nuclear programme is to demonstrate that we can do this ourselves.

”Of course, we hope it doesn’t come to a military solution, and we hope that this can be resolved through diplomacy. But Iran’s track record is not good.”

If the Israelis do go through with their attack on Iranian nuclear sites, the United States will almost certainly suffer for the Israeli action. The Iranians have made it clear that they consider the US and Israel interchangeable in this matter and that an attack by either one will require a response against both countries.

Given this set of circumstances, the Bush Administration may very well be thinking that if they are going to get blamed by Iran for an Israeli attack on Iran, why not carry out the attack themselves? In for a penny, in for a pound.

Of course, our attack on Iran would set in motion a series of events in Iraq and elsewhere that would have consequences far more costly than a “pound.” The resulting turmoil in the Middle East could have a catastrophic impact on our interests not to mention any interruption in the oil supply deeply affecting our economy.

But it is in Iraq where we would suffer most from our attack on Iran. Some Shia militias would almost certainly turn on us and make any efforts to stem the violence there futile. For this reason, as well as all the other downside probabilities, I believe that we are not seriously contemplating a military strike on Iran.

In fact, we may be playing a willing cats paw for Israel. While we send more and more naval assets to the Persian Gulf while keeping up a constant drumbeat of charges and allegations about the Iranians assisting in the killing of Americans in Iraq, Israel can carry out the enormously complex planning involved in their own attack on Iran largely below the radar of world scrutiny:

For the Israelis, taking out Iran’s nuclear facilities is a very different proposition to the 1981 attack on Iraq’s nuclear reactor. Back then, the Israelis had the element of surprise - the last thing the Iraqis expected to see was a squadron of Israeli warplanes in their airspace.

Iraq’s nuclear programme also posed a relatively straightforward target in that all the facilities were concentrated at the Osirak complex, south of Baghdad. A few well-targeted bombs released in a single air raid were sufficient to do the job.

The Iranians, on the other hand, learning the lessons of the Osirak debacle, have scattered their resources around the country. Obvious targets, such as the controversial uranium enrichment complex at Natanz, are set in specially constructed bomb proof bunkers that would require high-precision, bunker-busting bombs to inflict any serious damage.

Yet another challenge is presented by the recent arrival of the Russian-made Tor M1 anti-aircraft missile system as part of an arms deal signed between Moscow and Teheran last year.

The military challenges may seem like a picnic when Israel considers the diplomatic nightmare of what the world’s reaction would be to their attack. Although the Jewish state can hardly be more isolated, actual sanctions would almost certainly be considered by the UN (and vetoed promptly by the US). And the idea of Israel attacking Muslim country would almost certainly roil the Arab street, although it would meet with secret approval in several Arab capitols where Sunnis dominate.

There simply are no consequence-free options on Iran for either Israel or the United States. But for the Israelis, who believe that Iran is willing and will be capable of carrying out another Holocaust of the Jewish people, the only consequence they fear may be from not doing anything at all.

More than 300,000 supporters of the Siniora government pack Martyr’s Square on the second anniversary of the assassination of the beloved ex-Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri.

They came by bus, by car, on foot, even by boat. They came from the north, from the south, east and west. The traffic jams were so bad that many simply abandoned their cars and walked 5 miles or more to Martyrs Square where more than 300,000 Lebanese citizens came to honor the memory of one man and support another.

Two years ago today, a massive car bomb killed 23 people including the former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. He is credited with taking the small, war torn, nearly bankrupt country and a tired, dispirited people and injecting hope where there was only despair while rebuilding much of downtown Beirut so that citizens could once again take pride in their capitol city.

To honor the memory of Hariri was one goal of the massive demonstration today. The other was more practical; support Prime Minister Fouad Siniora in his efforts to resist Syrian-backed Hizbullah in their efforts to overturn the government and re-establish Syrian hegemony over the tiny country.

The demonstration comes one day after explosions ripped through two mini-busses carrying people to work in the northern Metn province, killing three and injuring more than 20. The terrorist act was the first such attack targeting civilians in many years and helped ratchet up tensions on the eve of the historic demonstration. Most analysts (and the Lebanese themselves) blame Syria for trying to scare people into not attending the rally.

If that were the case, Assad and his henchmen failed miserably. As of mid afternoon in Beirut, people were still streaming into the square to hear speaker after speaker denounce Syria, denounce Hizbullah, and call for the approval of the International Tribunal to try the assassins who killed Hariri:

Lebanon’s majority leaders told a sea of supporters marking the second anniversary of ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s assassination in Beirut that agreeing on the international tribunal to try his murderers is the only gateway to dialogue and unity.
Hundreds of thousands of March 14 supporters streamed from north, east, central and south Lebanon to Martyrs’ Square in cars, buses, and boats raising Lebanese flags and chanting slogans against Syrian President Bashar Assad.

The March 14 majority coalition accuses the Assad regime of masterminding the Hariri assassination on Feb. 14 2005 and the serial assassinations, the latest of which killed three civilians and wounded 23 in a twin bombing that targeted commuting buses northeast of Beirut on Tuesday.

Lebanese Forces Leader Samir Geagea said the international tribunal, which Syria reportedly rejects, “will certainly be created.”

He stressed that “whoever fights against what is right will be knocked out … The international tribunal will certainly be created.”

Geagea escalated the confrontation with Hizbullah pledging that “henceforth, we will not accept any weapons outside the Lebanese army’s frame of control…The Lebanese army is the resistance, the Lebanese government is the resistance, the Lebanese people is the resistance.”

Geagea’s words drew thundering chants of support that echoed across the whole of Beirut and reached the ears of protestors taking part in a Hizbullah-led sit in at the nearby Riad Solh Square since Dec. 1 with the declared objective of toppling Premier Fouad Saniora’s majority government.

Perhaps the emotional peak of the rally was when the dead Hariri’s son Saad addressed the crowd:

Parliamentary Majority leader Saad Hariri, son of the slain ex-premier, delivered an emotional speech in which he thanked all those who took part in the ceremony and stressed that the Lebanese are “committed to freedom, independence, the truth, justice and the international tribunal.”

“We adhere to justice to punish the murderers” who committed the Hariri killings and related crimes, he said.

He condemned recent “aggressions on peaceful neighborhoods” by masked followers of the Hizbullah-led opposition on Jan. 23.

“Despite all that, we are in the final phase of the march to create the international tribunal soon, very soon,” Hariri said.

Recognizing perhaps that a gesture toward the wildly popular ex-Prime Minister’s memory was good politics, Hizbullah chief Hassan Nasrallah wrote an article for Hizbullah propaganda newspaper as-Safir in which he said that “revealing the truth” about Hariri’s killers was desirable. Nasrallah declined to attend the memorial ceremony however, saying of the Tribunal that “because our sole guilt is that we had refused to make charges lacking evidence,” he could not participate in the event.

No matter. Hizbullah finds itself at an impasse in their campaign to oust Siniora’s government. As long as the Prime Minister holds fast, Nasrallah is stuck. If he tries violence, he will become isolated as there is an almost universal desire among all Lebanese to avoid a resumption of the civil war at all costs. But trying to maintain pressure on the Siniora government without resorting to blood is sapping his coalition while angering his patron in Syria, President Bashar Assad.

Assad has already shot down at least one compromise to end the standoff. That’s because the negotiators for the government - in this case, the Saudis - refuse to budge from their position that the International Tribunal must sit. Assad simply can’t let that happen. As Michael Totten points out in this fascinating interview with the old Druze warlord Walid Jumblatt, even though everyone knows Assad is guilty of ordering the assassination of Hariri, the naming of names by the Tribunal would be devastating:

“Why do you suppose Bashar al-Assad is so afraid of the Hariri tribunal?” I said. “Everybody already knows he’s guilty.”

“Because they killed Hariri,” he said. “If [Assad] wasn’t that nervous and if he wasn’t enhancing his people – Nasrallah and others – to block the process of the tribunal…it means that he’s guilty.”

“Right,” I said. “But we all know he’s guilty anyway.”

“Yes, okay,” he said. “But I mean blocking the tribunal will delay his indictments.”

What most frightens Assad is that an international conviction against him and his government might authorize an American-led regime-change campaign in Damascus. Few Americans actually want that, though, mostly because of what is happening right now in Iraq. Assad’s role in Iraq’s destabilization is an effective life-insurance policy.

A real wild card that may be emerging in the cabinet crisis is Nabih Berri, Speaker of Parliament, who so far has rejected calls to order parliament into session to approve the final form of the Tribunal. While still a member of Nasrallah’s coalition (Berri heads up the Amal Party, a Shia dominated group), Berri has shown flashes of independence since the crisis started in December. Now he may be trying to find a compromise on sitting the Tribunal:

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri was reported Sunday to be setting up a “working group” of law experts where rival political parties could discuss the U.N.-Lebanon agreement on an international tribunal to try suspects in the 2005 assassination of former Premier Rafik Hariri and related crimes.

The daily Al Hayat, citing prominent Lebanese political sources, said Sunday that Berri had intensified contacts aimed at creating the working group, where the Hizbullah-led Opposition could “suggest amendments” to the tribunal bylaw.

The paper said the pro-government March 14 coalition has approved Berri’s initiative.

The U.N. on Tuesday signed a treaty creating the international tribunal.

Berri will almost certainly not abandon Nasrallah. But his willingness to at least talk about a compromise on the Tribunal may be significant.

Today, however, belonged to the March 14th Forces and their supporters who flooded downtown Beirut with a sea of humanity to stand up once again and be counted as a free and independent people. By demonstrating their determination to stand with the elected government, they have shown the Syrians and the Iranians that they will not give up their independence easily. And they have put Hizbullah on notice that their patience is not infinite and that a resumption of the violence that tore this country apart for 15 years will not be tolerated.

A good day for freedom in Lebanon. A good day for freedom.

Students take cover behind a makeshift concrete barrier in Beirut yesterday during clashes at Beirut University.

Neither side planned it. Neither side wanted it. But in their darkest nightmares, both sides must have realized that the potential for the violence to get out of hand and acquire a life of its own must have been there all along.

Yesterday in Beirut, the brinkmanship that Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah has been practicing for almost two months bore unexpected fruit. Priding himself on making only carefully planned and tightly controlled moves in his dangerous chess match against Prime Minister Siniora’s government, his followers took matters into their own hands yesterday and in a burst of violence not seen in many years, battled pro government forces around the Beirut University campus. The significance of Thursday’s clashes is that it marks the first time that a confrontation occurred between the factions that didn’t have the overt blessing of the Hizbullah leader.

In the past two months, Nasrallah has staged two massive demonstrations, tried to shut down government offices using the time honored tactic of sit ins, and finally resorted on Tuesday to a general strike - shutting down roads and bringing the country to a virtual standstill. Violence associated with these carefully planned moves was both accidental and unwanted. Even Tuesday’s butcher’s bill of 3 dead and 130 injured came as shock to the opposition forces and may have caused them to back off in order to let things cool down.

But things didn’t cool down. Yesterday’s mayhem that has left 4 dead and 169 wounded was not planned. And it erupted between Sunni and Shia youths; the same people who would be facing off in any potential civil war:

Thursday’s clashes in Beirut showed just how quickly any spark can turn into a wildfire.

Students said it began with a scuffle in the cafeteria of Beirut Arab University between Sunni Muslims and supporters of the Shiite Hezbollah. As Sunnis in the surrounding Tarik el-Jadideh district moved in, Hezbollah activists called in reinforcements.

Hezbollah activists with walkie-talkies were seen coordinating as a ragtag convoy of hundreds of vigilantes raced to the campus. Gangs - many wearing blue and red construction hard hats and wielding clubs made from sticks and even chair legs - poured into the area and battled Sunni students and riot police and soldiers.

Hezbollah backers claimed Sunni gunmen fired from apartment balconies near the school, wounding several people. The claim could not be independently confirmed.

Thick black smoke rose over the campus and the neighborhood on the southern edge of Beirut as rioters set fire to vehicles, tires and trash. Bands of youths clashed with stones and clubs in running street battles as the army tried to close off streets with tanks and armored vehicles. Troops fired tear gas and warning shots into the air.

“We are afraid about the future of the country. We are afraid about civil war,” said Mohammed Abdul-Sater, a 21-year-old Shiite student.

The “Sunni gunmen” were arrested later. They were identified by security forces as a Syrian and a Lebanese.

It is not likely that Syrian President Bashir Assad planned the violence. But most analysts have little doubt that he is ready to take advantage of any clashes that erupt and attempt to widen the conflict into a full blown civil war. Would a civil war lead to a re-introduction of Syrian troops into Lebanon? Assad would dearly love it although the US, the French, and most of the Arab world might have something to say about it.

Note also the highly organized response by Hizbullah. Do they have some kind of “rapid reaction force” available for just such eventualities? It would seem so. Of course, the Sunnis don’t have anything comparable which would put them at a huge disadvantage if things begin to escalate. Also, the Sunnis who poured in from the nearby Tarik el-Jadideh district brought sticks and stones to a gunfight - not a good sign. Next time, the firepower will probably be more equal.

One hopeful sign was the performance of the army. During Tuesday’s violence, they appeared to stay on the periphery, even assisting the opposition in their efforts to shut down the country. But yesterday’s clashes took a heavy toll on the security forces as they suffered 17 wounded.

There are conflicting reports of a Saudi-Iranian initiative to end the crisis by changing the make up of the cabinet and giving the opposition a voice in discussions regarding the International Tribunal that will try the murderers of ex-Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. In fact, according to MEMRI, this appeared to be a done deal a week ago:

The March 14 Forces agreed to the draft agreement, as did Iran, as mentioned. However, Nasrallah delayed answering. Finally, on January 18, during an interview on Hizbullah’s Al-Manar TV channel, Nasrallah rejected the draft because it did not include General Michel Aoun’s demand for early parliamentary elections.

The next day, Saudi Arabia called Iran to find out what the holdup was over the agreement. The answer it received was that senior Iranian officials still viewed the draft agreement positively, and they intended to send Larijani to Syria on the coming Monday, January 21, in order to obtain Syria’s agreement. The Saudis were also told that Larijani was in touch with Hizbullah as well.

On January 22, 2007, Larijani went to Syria and met with Syrian officials and then with a Hizbullah delegation there. Sources following the contacts said that Larijani was heavily criticized during the talks in Damascus for accepting the inclusion of the international court in the Saudi draft agreement. The talks ended with Syria’s rejection of the draft agreement.

The scuttling of the agreement by Assad is to be expected. Simply put, once the International Tribunal sits and begins to present evidence of high level Syrian complicity - perhaps the highest - in the assassinations and bombings that have shaken Lebanon over the past two years, the Assad regime will become an international pariah and perhaps even fall to an internal coup. And as I mentioned before, Assad feels it is in his interest to foment civil war in Lebanon so that he can re-occupy and once again, milk what he considers the Syrian province for everything he can.

Would Nasrallah go ahead and take a deal without the backing of Syria? Iran is pushing the agreement because the last thing they want is for Nasrallah to be seen as the cause of Shia on Sunni bloodletting. It flies in the face of their larger strategic goal of uniting the Muslim world against the US and the west. In this instance, Syria and Iran have competing interests in Lebanon and Nasrallah is caught in the middle.

And Nasrallah has his own agenda as well. He has a fractious coalition to tend including the necessity of keeping the extremely troublesome Free Patriotic Movement leader Michel Aoun happy - something that is becoming more difficult as time passes. Aoun wants early parliamentary elections because he thinks it will give him a stronger base when he runs for President next year. He may be dreaming. The Christian community is badly split over his desertion to the opposition and his list will get precious few votes from Sunnis and Shias.

Talks between the Saudis and Iranians were renewed on Wednesday and picked up steam yesterday as a result of the violence. There are once again conflicting reports about whether a deal has been ironed out between the two regional powers:

The secretary general of the Saudi National Security Council, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, held talks with Iranian counterpart Ali Larijani in Tehran on “the critical situation in Lebanon,” the television said.

The two men, whose talks came a day after three people were killed in Lebanon in clashes between government and opposition supporters, “emphasized the necessity of finding a solution agreed to by all Lebanese groups.”

But the Saudi foreign minister said Thursday Saudi Arabia is not negotiating with Iran to try to broker an end to the political crisis in Lebanon, but the two countries have exchanged messages about Muslim cooperation.

Asked about the reports, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal said: “There is no initiative really.”

And Nasrallah has made it clear that he considers any initiative from outside Lebanon to be unwelcome:

In a speech yesterday, January 24, 2007, Hizbullah leader Nasrallah said, referring to the Iran-Saudi contacts: “Allah will bless all those who help Lebanon, but every agreement between two countries or two governments does not bind the Lebanese, because the Lebanese must seek their own interests and not the interests of Saudi Arabia and Iran.”

It seems to me that Nasrallah basically has two options at this point. He can embrace the horror and continue down the path he has chosen - a path that he must realize by now can only end in sectarian conflict. Or he can sit down with Siniora and hammer out a compromise that he can live with.

As for the latter, he is getting plenty of cover from his own allies. Speaker of the Parliament Nabih Berri of the Amal party, Hizbullah’s major partner in the anti-government coalition has called for all parties to negotiate. And Siniora has constantly issued pleas for Nasrallah to come to the table and find a way to untie the knot of civil war that seems to be tightening every day that Hizbullah is in the streets.

But after making grandiose claims about bringing down the government, can Nasrallah afford to back down? The answer to that question will determine if Lebanon sinks into the nightmare of civil war.

His options narrowing, his people perhaps getting beyond his control, resistance stiffening among the opposition parties, and his main benefactors in Iran and Syria split over what is the best course for the future, Nasrallah is in a bind of his own making. If he plays the statesmen, Lebanon will probably settle back into an uneasy peace. But if he decides to play the fiery revolutionary leader, it is very likely that in the not too distant future, the streets of Beirut and Tyre and Tripoli will once again run red with the blood of innocents and combatants alike and Lebanon will sink to its knees in agony.

UPDATE

Jim Hoft has some good photos and some troubling information:

Blacksmiths of Lebanon has news (Via Naharnet) that police… “defused a rocket that was directed at the Moustaqbal newspaper in Beirut, shortly before it was set to launch. “Luckily they discovered it. It would have resulted in a massacre. The newspaper is packed by journalists at this time of the evening,” Editor Nassir al-Assad told Naharnet by telephone.”

This sounds like meddling by Syria. I can’t believe that Nasrallah would be dumb enough to target the press. In fact, Syria has been behind a series of assassinations of Lebanese journalists over the last two years including the death of An Nahar’s Gebran Tueni, grandson of the founding publisher and an anti-Syrian member of Parliament.

UPDATE II

Robert Mayer also points out that Nasrallah is in a bind. He also believes that Nasrallah is retreating as a result of Tuesday’s violence.

This article originally appears in The American Thinker

In what is being referred to by pro-government forces as an attempted coup, Hezb’allah and their allies in the opposition took to the streets on Tuesday in what was billed as a “General Strike” in order to force the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora to capitulate to opposition demands for a “National Unity Government.”

Protestors blocked roads with burning tires in what appeared to be an extraordinarily well organized effort to shut down the country. The roadblocks effectively kept tens of thousands of people from commuting to work and many of Lebanon’s businesses were closed for the day. Also, the road to the airport was blocked when dump trucks appeared and piled dirt and garbage at strategic locations along the route.

Pro government forces clashed with the opposition at many locations throughout the country, but especially in the north in Tripoli where violence continued Wednesday. All told, at least three deaths were reported and 133 injured. Most of the injuries were from gunshot wounds.

As swiftly as the violence broke out, it appears today that the opposition has called off the protests. Hezb’allah leader Hassan Nasrallah may have been taken aback by the intensity of the clashes between his supporters and those of the government and decided to take a step back. Or, he may have planned the strike as a one day demonstration of his ability to shut the country down any time he wishes. In either case, it is clear that Nasrallah has begun to ratchet up the pressure on the government and force them to accede to his demands.

But in so doing, Nasrallah has energized the Sunnis and forced them to confront the Shias. The act of blocking the roads in southern and western Beirut hemmed the Sunnis into their own enclave and was seen as something of a blockade. Not only that, the roadblocks and the shutting down of the road to the airport was all too reminiscent of what transpired during the years of civil war. Many of the same areas that were battlegrounds during that horrible period once again saw blood running in the streets. The significance was not lost on Nasrallah nor on the Sunnis which may be the main reason that the Hezb’allah leader called off the general strike. Nasrallah and his masters in Iran do not want a civil war in Lebanon. He would just as soon swallow Lebanon whole without a messy sectarian conflict on his hands.

This doesn’t take into account what Nasrallah’s Christian ally Michel Aoun would like to see happen. Aoun and Nasrallah appear to be getting farther apart in what each wants to accomplish with these opposition demonstrations that have been going on since early December. Where Nasrallah wants a sufficent number of ministers in the cabinet so that he would have veto power over the government, Aoun’s Presidential ambitions seem to have taken a backseat in Nasrallah’s planning.

And Aoun’s machinations have split the Christian community to the point that some of those clashes yesterday were between Christian factions loyal to Aoun’s Free Patriotic Movement and the pro-government Lebanese Forces headed up by Aoun’s longtime rival Samir Geaegea. The Maronite Patriarch Nasrallah Boutros Sfeir has condemned both sides in the conflict but so far has done little to try and heal the split among his people. This schism among Christians is another reminder of what happened during the civil war when the anti-Syrian faction headed up ironically by Aoun fought pitched battles with Geagea’s Lebanese Forces in East Beirut. It is indicative of the tragedy that is Lebanese history and politics that 17 years later, the same forces are fighting again only this time it is Aoun allied with pro-Syrian forces and Geagea in opposition.

Where was the army during these clashes? Early in the day, the army commander Michel Suleiman ordered his troops not to fire on protestors but to try and keep the roads open. This order was honored in the breech as there is ample evidence the army not only assisted the opposition by preventing people from going to work but also stood by and allowed small numbers of protestors to blockade the roads. It is clear that the army failed to do its job. Troops did move in when violence erupted to scatter combatants with tear gas and by firing their guns into the air. But the damage is done. Prime Minister Siniora may not be able to trust the army when Nasrallah makes his next move.

The timing of the protest is interesting in that Siniora was headed to Paris to conclude talks that would bring billions of dollars in aid to the Lebanese economy, devastated by Hezb’allah’s war with Israel last summer. The US has pledged more than $750 million while the French have promised another $500 million to help rebuild much of the infrastructure destroyed in the war as well as help with Lebanon’s crushing debt burden. By any measure, the Paris III Conference, involving dozens of countries in the reconstruction effort, is a triumph for Siniora’s government - something that Nasrallah couldn’t abide. In effect, Siniora is demonstrating that the government doesn’t need Hezb’allah or its allies to govern effectively.

At present, Nasrallah appears to be running out of “peaceful” options in his quest to overthrow the government. Everything he has tried in order to bring down Siniora has failed. He has been stymied not only by the support of the Lebanese people for the government but he has been checked by Lebanon’s friends and neighbors who have worked diligently to help Siniora and his government survive, now holed up in the Grand Serail for nearly two months in order to prevent Hezb’allah from achieving their aims through assassination.

The Arab League has been especially supportive and their appears to be a tentative agreement to end the cabinet standoff that has been negotiated by Saudi Arabia and Iran. Few details are available but the agreement apparently addresses both cabinet representation for the opposition as well as coming to an understanding regarding the International Tribunal that will try the assassins of ex-Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri. This is crucial as it is thought that the Tribunal will almost certainly implicate high level Syrian government officials in the death of Hariri as well as other bombings and assassinations in Lebanon over the past 2 years. It is doubtful that the Saudi’s would have agreed to any measures that would dilute the power of the Tribunal which makes Hezb’allah’s acceptance of this agreement problematic. It is equally doubtful that Nasrallah will be handed veto power over cabinet decisions.

This means that either Nasrallah accepts this face saving retreat (he will probably get a near majority of ministers) or he continues his quixotic protests in the hopes that eventually he can wear down the March 14th Forces in government. But it is becoming more apparent as time passes that the only way that Nasrallah will get what he wants is through violence. Siniora and his government aren’t going anywhere. There is no chance that early parliamentary elections will be held that would give him an opportunity to muscle his way into power through voter intimidation and fraud. And his alliance with Michel Aoun may begin to become more of a burden as time goes on. Losing the vain Aoun would doom his faction to a permanent minority as well as taking away any fig leaf of legitimacy he held in his claim that he represented all Lebanese and not just the Shias.

What will he do? A hard man to read, Hassan Nasrallah. He seems unwilling to take the final plunge into civil war (something opposed by his paymasters in Tehran) but will lose credibility if he simply gives in and goes home. His calculations must include the fact that rule by the Shias or a Shia dominated government will be unacceptable to the Sunnis and most Christians. For this reason, I believe that if the agreement ironed out between Iran and the Saudis gives him enough of what he wanted, he may fold and go home, hoping that the next round of elections will give him more leverage in his next confrontation with the government.

Nasrallah knows that no one will dare disarm his militia, something called for in 2 separate UN resolutions and the Taif Accords under which the Lebanese government operates. And as long as his bully boys have the guns, they will have the ultimate veto power over the Lebanese government and society. For this reason, Nasrallah will be able to bide his time and wait for the next opportunity to take Lebanon to the brink.

I have nothing but the greatest respect for Michael Ledeen. He has proven himself one of the most plugged in analysts in the commentariat when it comes to all things having to do with Iran. I would take anything he says about Iran much more seriously than anything I’d hear from Juan Cole who, although a noted scholar and someone whose articles on the historical background of the Middle East are nothing short of fascinating, suffers from a horrible case of Bush Derangement Syndrome which has clouded his analyses and at times, made him virtually unreadable.

That said, Ledeen is trying to take us over a cliff by advocating War against the Iranians.

It’s not that I disagree with his basic premise; that Iran has been at war with the west in general and the United States in particular since 1979. This fact should be self-evident given the number of attacks sponsored by the Iranians against Americans and American interests in the last quarter century. And I also have no disagreement with Ledeen regarding this latest evidence of Iranian aggression; the shocking assistance to both Shia and Sunni terrorists that has no doubt led to many American deaths in Iraq.

They are attacking our interests. They are killing our soldiers. They are threatening much worse. Why then should we not make the attempt to change the regime in Iran to one that would be freer, more peaceful, and less aggressive in its aspirations to dominate the region?

Ledeen believes that the amount of force needed to cause the Iranian regime to collapse is minimal and wouldn’t detract from our efforts in Iraq:

I have little sympathy for those who have avoided the obvious necessity of confronting Iran, however I do understand the concerns of military leaders, such as General Abizaid, who are doing everything in their considerable power to avoid a two-front war. But I do not think we need massive military power to bring down the mullahs, and in any event we now have a three-front war: within Iraq, and with both Iran and Syria. So General Abizaid’s objection is beside the point. We are in a big war, and we cannot fight it by playing defense in Iraq. That is a sucker’s game. And I hope the president realizes this at last, and that he finds himself some generals who also realize it, and finally demands a strategy for victory.

In passing, it follows from this that the entire debate over more or less troops in Iraq, surge or no surge, Baghdad or Anbar Province, all of it begs the central question. As long as Iran and their appendage in Damascus have a free shot at us, all these stratagems are doomed.

Alright. I’ll play. Suppose we apply whatever military power (short of “massive” - whatever that means) and the mullahs still rule? What’s next? We’ve just spent three years learning a valuable lesson (all over again) that American military power has its limits, that despite our troops best efforts and spectacular performance on the battlefield, it doesn’t matter a tinker’s damn if other factors not amendable to military force cannot be controlled or are not addressed.

In the case of Iran, it is answering the question who or what would take over once the government was overthrown? Are we once again going to indulge in the fantasy that a tyrannical government is teetering on the edge and all that is needed to send it crashing into the garbage heap of history is a little push? Ledeen thinks so:

As it happens, this is a particularly good moment to go after the mullahs, because they are deeply engaged in a war of all against all within Iran. I wrote in NRO two weeks ago that the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had been carted off to the hospital–a major event, of which the Intelligence Community was totally unaware–and his prognosis is very poor. That information has now trickled out, and I found it today in the Italian press and on an Iranian web site. The mullahs are maneuvering for position, and Ahmadi-Nezhad’s ever more frantic rhetoric bespeaks the intensity of the power struggle, which includes former president Rafsanjani, Khamenei’s son, and Ahmadi-Nezhad’s favorite nut ayatollah. We should propose another option to the Iranian people: freedom.

Freedom is what most Iranians want, and, unlike their neighbors in Iraq, they have considerable experience with self-government. The Iranian Constitution of 1906 is remarkably modern, and Iranian intellectuals have in fact been debating the best form of government for their country for many years. Iranian workers are in open revolt against the regime, along with such minority groups as the Kurds, the Balouchis, the Azeris, and the Ahwazi Arabs. In other words, most of the Iranian people. It is long past time for us to speak clearly to them and support their cause.

I have no doubt that the Iranians want freedom. Just as I am convinced that the people of Iraq want to be free. But Iranian intellectuals, enamored though they are with a 100 year old document that even the Shah honored in the breach, are not going to pick up guns and kill the mullahs. Nor are the 200,000 Revolutionary Guards going to suddenly become rabid democrats and lay down their arms to give democracy a chance. And Ledeen and the rest of the Iran hawks have yet to present any kind of a military option (short of “massive”) that wouldn’t necessarily involve hundreds of thousands of presumably American troops who would have to physically march to Tehran in order to overthrow the government. For Ledeen fails to answer who in Iran would finish the job that we would be starting?

As internally weak as the Iranians may be - and I’m not convinced of that by any means - they have done their job the last 25 years. Anyone who has expressed a desire for anything more than cosmetic reforms in the Islamic paradise has been ruthlessly suppressed. The restive minorities that Ledeen rightly points to as our natural allies are even more brutally oppressed. In short, any real opposition to not only Ahmadinejad but also the Rafsanjanis and Khatamis is small, frightened, disorganized, and incapable of taking advantage of any favorable military situation we may present them with. And it would take years to build up any kind of effective political opposition to the theocrats in Tehran, something one assumes Ledeen and the other Iran hawks would not be willing to wait on.

Ledeen cautions against a two front war but then virtually advocates taking Syria on too. This is madness. We have got to realize that the consequences of starting a war against Iran would not only fail to achieve the goal of overthrowing the mullahs (short of throwing everything we have against Iran’s 800,000 man military) but also lead to unforeseen problems that would only make matters worse in Iraq, in Lebanon, and could lead to a general Middle Eastern war in which hundreds of thousands of people would be killed.

There is another way. It won’t overthrow the mullahs right away nor will it stop their nuclear program - something that an attack as envisioned by Ledeen won’t guarantee anyway. This study done by the Army’s Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) recognizes the danger of Iranian nukes as well as the continued threat of aggression from the Iranian regime. They advocate a much broader approach to the problem:

* Engage in traditional deterrent strategies such as making it clear to Tehran that the use or threatening the use of nuclear weapons has reciprocal disadvantages to the regime.

* Allow the development of nuclear weapons by states threatened by Iran such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

* Employ a regional military strategy against the regime by building credible alliances.

* Work with dissident groups to create an armed, united opposition that could affect regime change.

Unsatisfying to be sure. But perhaps we should ask ourselves if it isn’t better than the alternative to an attack on Iran? Iraq in even greater chaos thanks to a general Shia uprising against our forces. No guarantee the mullahs would be ousted. Almost certainly the prospect of a spate of terrorist attacks carried out against our interests in the Middle East and perhaps even here in the United States. And the horrible prospect of a general war in the Middle East.

To my way of thinking, military action only makes sense if the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages War with Iran - as satisfying and enticing an option though it may be - isn’t even a close call. And advocating such a course of action is like shadowboxing with reality; you’re not dealing with the real problems in Iraq by going to war with Iran.

There may be security issues we can help the Iraqis with by sending another 30,000 troops into Baghdad and Anbar. But the insurgency and sectarian violence would continue with or without Iranian and Syrian assistance. Hence, only an Iraqi political settlement that all parties can sign off on has any chance at all of bringing a modicum of peace to that bloody land. And until the political will exists in Iraqi society for such a general settlement, any war we wage against those who assist the militias and the insurgents will be worse than futile and do more harm to our interests in the region than good.

UPDATE

A commenter points to this blurb on The Corner where Ledeen is saying he does not advocate going to war against Iran:

Rich: No, I don’t want to invade Iran, as I have said for many years. And I don’t follow your logic. I think — and, as recent news stories in the NY Sun and NY Times have made clear, the policymakers in the Bush administration now know—that much of the terror war in Iraq is the result of Iranian activities. I have written here for years that the Iranians were promoting both sides of a series of potential civil wars in Iraq, Sunni/Shiite, Kurd/Turkamen, Arab/non-Arab, etc.

The two policies you list (run away or invade Iran) are only two among many. In Tracinski’s article, he quotes Michael Rubin on behalf of what Tracinski calls “Cold War II.” That is, support democratic revolution in Iran. Again, I’ve been arguing in support of that since before we started Operation Iraqi Freedom. I think it’s the best option, I think it will succeed if it is well done, and I think this is an excellent moment for it, since Khamenei is dying (as I was the first to report; it is now all over the Iranian blogs) and there is an intense internal power struggle at work. You probably noticed that the justice minister was killed in an automobile crash the other day, and it is noteworthy that an amazingly high percentage of important Iranians die in car and air “accidents.”

“Tracinski” is Robert Tracinski who advocates attacking Iran now. On the other hand, Ledeen does not advocate a hands off policy regarding Iran either:

I have also argued for a long time that our troops in Iraq should defend themselves against Iran and Syria. I think we should attack terrorist training camps in both those countries, and I think we should also go after the facilities where the terribly lethal new generation of IEDs is produced and assembled.

As I have said, any military action taken against Iran will cause enormous problems for us in Iraq as well as set off some of the consequences I outline above.

Also, See-Dubya over at Hot Air accuses me of wanting a “political settlement” with Iran. This is incorrect. I linked to the SSI monograph largely because it gave some alternatives for going to war - none of which included negotiating with Iran BTW. Reading what Ledeen had to say on The Corner, I would guess that my thinking is much closer to his - support of democratic elements in Iran (or attempting to unite the opposition) while strengthening our friends and working to develop a coalition in the region to oppose Iranian aggression.

Hardly a “Bakerite” solution.

As the quest to unravel the mystery surrounding Captain Jamil Hussein as a source for approximately 61 AP stories originating from Iraq continues, several critics from the left have weighed in to denounce the effort - most by using the curious logic that it doesn’t really matter, that things are so bad in Iraq what’s the difference if a couple of stories turn out to be created out of whole cloth by the enemy?

Things are bad in Iraq as every blogger who has taken an interest in this story has been constrained to point out. And in the grand scheme of things, whether or not the AP has been a tool for enemy propaganda - willing or unwilling - is not the point either. For myself, I assume that the AP is in the same boat as other western news outlets when it comes to reporting from Iraq, albeit given their extensive contacts and experience in the region, probably not as beholden to “stringers” for getting the facts for a story as others.

What is at issue here and why the stakes are so high is so simple that one would think that both left and right could agree on the vital importance of getting to the bottom of the Captain Hussein mystery; to discover the facts of the matter.

Will this discovery alter the outcome of the war? Of course not. Will it ruin AP if it is discovered that Hussein is either an insurgent plant or a non-existent source, a Jayson Blaired construct without flesh and bones, existing as a convenient catch-all pseudonymous source for particularly ghastly rumored attacks on innocents? Probably not, although it might cause the AP to become a little more careful in the sourcing.

Why then?

Eric Boehlert thinks he has the answer:

The warbloggers’ strawman is built around the claim that if the AP hadn’t reported the Burned Alive story, which was no more than a few sentences within a larger here’s-the-carnage-from-Baghdad-today article, then Americans would still gladly support the war in Iraq. That it was somehow the contested Burned Alive story that swung public opinion on Iraq, not the three years’ worth of bad news.

Chasing the Burned Alive story down a rabbit’s hole, giddy warbloggers deliberately ignore the hundreds of Iraqi civilians who are killed each week, the thousands who are injured, and the tens of thousands who try to flee the disintegrating country. None of that matters. Only Burned Alive matters, as if an AP retraction would change a thing on the ground in Baghdad, where electricity remains scarce, but sectarian death squads roam freely.

Boehlert might want to rethink that first sentence. In fact, the burning Sunnis was the lead story in hundreds of newspapers around the world. It was headline news in dozens of prominent dailies here in the United States (including the Suburban Daily Herald in my neck of the woods). His contention that it was “no more than a few sentences” is absurd on its face and bespeaks either an extraordinary ignorance of the facts or a deliberate attempt to downplay how the story was disseminated.

But why the superficial, shallow, needlessly partisan, and, in the end, stupid charge that bloggers who are covering this story wish to discredit the AP in order to reverse the slide in public support for the war? What bloggers are after here is the same thing that bloggers wanted from CBS following the Dan Rather TANG documents scandal; an acknowledgement of error. The AP has relied on Captain Hussein as either an eyewitness source or as a knowledgeable spokesman for violent incidents in Iraq going back at least to April. Trying to get to the bottom of who or what Hussein is would seem to be a job tailor made for blogs - right or left.

The larger issues at play in this story should be of concern to every blogger, indeed every American who is a consumer of news. And at the top of the list of questions is does the AP really care if they get it right? It appears to me that their double checking on the accuracy of the story in question was cursory and designed to confirm what had been written rather than approach the story afresh in order to see if their sources were correct. We know now, for instance, that at least two of the mosques that were supposedly burned in the original AP story are still standing and still open - the only damage being some bullet holes in the facade.

And their interviewing of “new” witnesses to the atrocity was revealing; the AP swears that their stories were all consistent with the facts that were reported. I daresay that this should have set off a bunch of red flags to begin with; a first year journalism student knows that eyewitness testimony tends to vary wildly from person to person. And in this case - interviewing witnesses 4 days after the story broke and was featured on al-Jazeera as well as other Arab media - one wonders how much these eyewitnesses actually “witnessed” and how much they gleaned from broadcast media about the story. No word from the AP whether they even tried to determine if their “witnesses” were cross contaminated in this way.

But this is not central to either Boehlert’s argument nor my criticism of his ridiculously flawed and over-generalized piece. For instance, Boehlert links to this Bob Owen piece about the incident where the blogger asks a legitimate question:

This presents us with the unsettling possibility that the Associated Press has no idea how much of the news it has reported out of Iraq since the 2003 invasion is in fact real, and how much they reported was propaganda. they failure of accountability here is potentially of epic proportions.

When producer Mary Mapes and anchor Dan Rather ran faked Texas Air National Guard records on 60 Minutes, it was undoubtedly the largest news media scandal of 2004, and yet, it was an isolated scandal, identified within hours, affecting one network and one show in particular.

This developing Associated Press implosion may go back as far as two years, affecting as many as 60 stories from just this one allegedly fake policeman alone. And Jamil Hussein is just one of more than a dozen potentially fake Iraqi policemen used in news reports the AP disseminates around the world. This does not begin to attempt to account for non-offical sources which the AP will have an even harder time substantiating. Quite literally, almost all AP reporting from Iraq not verified from reporters of other news organizations is now suspect, and with good reason.

Why does Boehlert fail to mention that Captain Hussein is a featured source in more than 60 AP stories? Because it ruins his thesis that it is this one story pursued by conservative bloggers is just a question of “holding the AP accountable for questionable sourcing in an isolated incident…” Is Boehlert really this stupid or, like many in the media, is he simply lazy and won’t address the massive implications involved in generating fake news from a war zone?

At the risk of being redundant (something I feel constrained to do given the short attention span and limited reading skills of most of the lefties who visit this site), I will say again the unraveling of this mystery - even if it implicates the AP in years of selling the American public fake news - does not change anything on the ground in Iraq now and would not have changed the attitudes of the American public regarding the war. The people of the United States are a lot smarter than your average lefty and don’t need either enemy propaganda coming from the AP or liberals glorifying our mistakes and blunders in Iraq to know that we are failing there.

But Owens has hit the nail on the head; the only asset that the Associated Press has is its credibility. If it can be shown that Jamil Hussein is a fake or doesn’t exist, where does that leave AP’s coverage of the war over the last three years? How do you separate the facts from what might be propaganda? It’s a question Boehlert doesn’t even bother to address because his mission is to slime “warbloggers” as he calls them by over generalizing and ascribing non-existent motives to their efforts.

And in the process of pooh-poohing the efforts of those who are attempting to get the facts on Hussein, Boehlert also misses a story that would reveal the inner workings of the media and answer some fairly basic questions that absolutely no one connected with any major media outlet has deemed it important enough to answer. That is, the use of local “stringers” to gather the news that western reporters, due to the extraordinary danger of the war zone, cannot gather for themselves.

Boehlert rightly points out that we don’t give enough credit to the dangers faced by western reporters in Iraq. He highlights the death of an Associated Press Television News cameraman Aswan Ahmed Lutfallah, who was killed in Mosul while filming a gun battle between police and insurgents. Boehlert informs us that Mr. Lutfallah’s death brings the total of journalists and others associated with the media killed in Iraq to 129. Even for the locals, it is an incredibly dangerous place to work.

And, as I’ve written before during the Jill Carroll hostage story and in numerous other posts, the process of gathering facts, writing a story, vetting sources, and meeting a deadline is so hazardous that the media’s reliance on stringers is an absolute necessity. Otherwise, the only news we’d be getting would be from press releases by CENTCOM and the Iraqi government. No one wants that - despite Mr. Boehlert’s hysterically off-base arguments to the contrary.

But as citizens interested in the news, we have a right and, indeed, an obligation, to demand that media outlets using stringers answer a few basic questions about them. We can certainly understand why their real names can’t be used or why they would be withheld. But we can ask about their credentials, their experience, the vetting of sources by both the reporter on the scene and the editor back home, and a dozen other noteworthy issues that bloggers have raised about them.

Boehlert is so busy trashing conservative bloggers and trying to demonize their motives that he’s missing a great story that Captain Hussein is only a part. And writing for a publication that ostensibly deals with issues relating to the media, it is unbelievable that he dismisses the questions raised in the course of reporting on this story. They go to the heart of media credibility and believability and have nothing whatsoever to do with trying to place blame for the American public’s attitudes toward the war on the shoulders of the men and women trying to do an impossible job under the most trying of circumstances.

The incuriousness of Boehlert and the rest of the left regarding how news is collected and disseminated from the war zone is telling. Perhaps they are afraid that if they scratch too deep, some of their own cherished notions about the media and maybe even the war itself will have to change.

UPDATE

Michelle Malkin has the latest on who is Jamil Hussein.

The Baghdad-based CPATT officer says there is no “Sgt. Jamil Hussein” at Yarmouk, which contradicts what Marc Danziger’s contacts found. I have another military source on the ground who works with the Iraqi Army (separate and apart from the CPATT sources) and is checking into whether anyone named “Jamil Hussein” has ever worked at Yarmouk.

According to the CPATT officers, Captain Jamil Ghdaab Gulaim “denies ever speaking to the AP or any other media.” I retracted information to the contrary two days ago based on a single CPATT source who said he had erroneously stated that Gulaim had admitted being the source.

If I might venture a little informed speculation…

It is an extremely hazardous business, this transliteration of turning Arabic names into English. As a frequent reader of English language Arabic media sites including The Daily Star, Naharnet, Ya Libnan, al-Jazeera, and Palestine Times, it is amazing the different spellings one comes across for the same proper names and names of organizations.

One example is “Hizbullah.” This is the way that the Daily Star spells the name of the terrorist group. But look at the alternate spellings I’ve come across both in western and Arab media:

Hizbollah
Hezbollah
Hizballah
Hezballah
Hezb’allah
Hizb’allah

The same issues arises with the spelling of the Lebanese Prime Minister’s name:

Siniora
Seniora
Saniora

Is this entire issue a translation problem? I think Malkin has almost totally knocked that issue down although I think we should wait to see if AP has any response whatsoever to what Michelle has discovered. But I find it tantalizing that the spelling of the two names could be so close, even if the individual denies talking to the AP. There are numerous reasons why he might make such a denial, including the fact that he might be in hot water if he did speak to the press without authorization. But then why use his name in the stories?

The AP, of course, could solve this mystery by simply producing Captain/Mister/Sergeant Hussein. Since they haven’t so far, either they are unable to do so or won’t because doing so would place the man in danger (Again, then why publish his name in the first place?). Or, they’re just being stubborn and don’;t want to give in to a bunch of pajama clad bloggers.

UPDATE II

Allah roasts Boehlert slowly on a spit over a hot fire.

One would think that a “Media Critic” would want to, you know, criticize the media once and a while rather than attack his ideological opponents using so many strawmen that one would think the Scarecrow from the Wizard of Oz had gotten a hold of a Star Trek replicator and populated the countryside with copies of himself.

Saying that his investigation has reached a “critical stage,” Belgian prosecutor Serge Brammertz says that he has now identified suspects in the killing of ex-Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and has also made connections between that crime and 14 other politically motivated killings over the past 2 years:

The U.N. probe into ex-Premier Rafik Hariri’s assassination has now identified suspects and witnesses and found possible links to 14 other murders or attempted killings in Lebanon over the past two years, chief investigator Serge Brammertz said.
Brammertz, a Belgian prosecutor, said his investigation has reached “a critical stage.”

In its fourth report to the U.N. Security Council issued Tuesday, the International Independent Investigation Commission which Brammertz heads provided new evidence and tantalizing clues about the suicide bombing that killed Hariri and 22 others on Feb. 14, 2005.

Brammertz said his investigators have now identified a number of suspects and witnesses but agreed with Lebanon’s prosecutor general that none of their names should be made public to avoid prejudicing any trial.

“The commission has reached a critical stage in its investigations, and with this in mind, the commission and the prosecutor general of Lebanon believe that placing information concerning witnesses and suspects in the public domain would be contrary to the principles of fairness and justice,” Brammertz said.

He also revealed that the commission’s work on 14 other cases of murder and attempted murder since October 2004 “continues to elicit significant links between each case, and to indicate links to the Rafik Hariri case.”

While not revealing the names of any suspects, Bramertz’s predecessor Detlev Mehlis, in his first report to the United Nations on behalf of the Commission, did in fact reveal several Syrian suspects in the killings. The information was later redacted at the request of the American State Department according to a report in the Daily Star at the time. Other reports indicate that Kofi Annan himself requested that the names be squelched. But the names were out in the open nonetheless, thanks to a mistake in releasing the report in Microsoft Word format. And, if the witnesses can stay alive until the Tribunal hears from them, the world will indeed be shocked to discover that Syrians at the highest levels of government not only knew of the plot to kill the beloved Hariri but actively planned and participated in the murder.

Some of the Syrian government officials named in the Mehlis report are:

* Maher al-Assad, brother of President Bashar Assad

* Assef Shawkat, Syrian President Bashar Assad’s brother-in-law and head of Syrian intelligence;

* Bahjat Suleiman, a high ranking Syrian intelligence officer;

* Ghazi Kenaan, the former Syrian Interior Minister and commander of Syria’s intelligence apparatus in Lebanon between 1982 and 2002.

President Assad himself threatened Hariri personally in a meeting just weeks prior to the assassination according to Saad Hariri, the ex-Prime Minister’s son and current leader of March 14th Forces in Parliament:

Saad said: “I discussed with my father, the late Rafik Hariri, the extension of President Lahoud’s term. He told me that President Bashar Assad threatened him telling him: “This is what I want. If you think that President Chirac and you are going to run Lebanon, you are mistaken. It is not going to happen. President Lahoud is me. Whatever I tell him, he follows suit. This extension is to happen or else I will break Lebanon over your head and Walid Jumblat’s. (…) So, you either do as you are told or we will get you and your family wherever you are.”

(Here is a link to the unexpurgated Mehlis Report)

Besides President Assad, Hariri was warned by Syrian Deputy Foreign Minister and former Ambassador to Washington Walid Mouallem, in a meeting just days before the assassination, who told him that Syrian security services had him “cornered” and not to “take things lightly.” The former Prime Minister said after the meeting that “it was the worst day of his life.”

In addition to the Syrians, four Pro-Syrian Lebanese generals have been in jail for 15 months, suspected of being involved in the conspiracy. There are also indications that perhaps even one or more of Hariri’s bodyguards may have been involved, given that the assassins knew precisely when Hariri would be passing the King George’s hotel, in front of which the massive truck bomb was detonated killing 22 others in addition to the ex-Prime Minister.

The investigators have discovered that a team of bombers used aliases and six cell phones to communicate on the day of the Hariri bombing and there were indications that they had significant knowledge about security measures.

“The location of the telephones when used, and the purposes for which some of the linking numbers were used have revealed the high degree of security-aware behavior exhibited by individuals under investigation,” Brammertz said.

One of those cell phones was used by a mysterious Lebanese who has connections to President Lahoud:

One shadowy Lebanese operative appears to have been a conduit for several of the factions involved in the killing. Sheikh Ahmad Abdel-Al, a prominent figure in the Al-Ahbash, Association of Islamic Philanthropic Projects, and a close friend to President Lahoud, made a call minutes before the blast, at 1247 hrs, to the mobile phone of Lebanese President Emile Lahoud and at 1249 hrs had contact with the mobile telephoneone of one of the Lebanese Generals implicated in the plot, Raymond Azar.

Connections to the 14 other politically inspired murders in Lebanon reveal a systematic campaign by the Syrians to strike fear into anyone who would oppose their rule in Lebanon as well as an effort to destroy organized efforts to kick the Syrians out of the country:

The report said some of the victims of the targeted attacks were directly or indirectly linked to the March 14 Forces. Samir Kassir, Gebran Tueni, George Hawi and Marwan Hamadeh were associated with it in one context or another.

It said another link between Marwan Hamadeh, Rafik Hariri, Samir Kassir and Gebran Tueni was their association with An Nahar newspaper.

Some of the victims were also connected to each other or to Rafik Hariri through family ties, friendship or other personal association, the report added.

Brammertz said 240 “exhibits” related to the killing have been sent to a laboratory for forensic research and analysis.

Among the forensic exhibits being analyzed are body parts of the suspected suicide bomber, who, according to the Lebanese Medical Examiner was Palestinian. This points to another probable accomplice in the conspiracy; the notorious head of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command Ahmad Jibreel. The PFLP Commander has been a thorn in the side of Israel for many years and is the author of dozens of terrorist attacks directed against the Jewish state.

A Palestinian also made a videotape claiming responsibility for the attack:

Brammertz said the commission is also investigating Ahmed Abu Adass, a Palestinian who lived in Lebanon and appeared on a video tape claiming responsibility. The investigation “has elicited some useful information” from individuals associated with him in Lebanon and abroad.

A previous report from Brammertz in June said there was no evidence Adass was involved. But in Tuesday’s report, he said investigators were focusing on how Adass was chosen “for the role he played” and his alleged involvement with unnamed individuals in late 2004 and early 2005, when he disappeared.

(Here’s a link to the entire Brammertz Report)

I mentioned earlier the problem with keeping witnesses alive long enough to testify before the International Tribunal who will hear evidence connected with the assassinations. That’s because several witnesses have already disappeared or been murdered. It’s no wonder that Brammertz wants to keep much of his evidence hidden because revealing too much will give Syrian intelligence an idea of who might be squealing. This from the Wikpedia entry on the Mehlis Report:

In December 2005 the UN’s case against Syria came under scrutiny when a main witness of the Mehlis report (Hussam Taher Hussam) was publicly identified and dramatically recanted his testimony, claiming he had been bribed and tortured by Lebanese interests to testify against Syria.[2]

However, the 10 December Mehlis report asserts receipt of “credible information that, prior to Mr. Hussam’s recent public recantation of his statement to UNIIC, Syrian officials had arrested and threatened some of Mr. Hussam’s close relatives in Syria.”

Similar circumstances surround Zuhair Ibn Muhammad Said Saddik, who was later revealed to be the unnamed primary witness in the report. He originally approached the commission with detailed information about the planning of the attack but then later changed his testimony and confessed to participating in the attack. In his testemony, Saddik said that senior Syrian and Lebanese officials had met in his apartment to plan the assassination. He is currently under arrest in Paris at the request of Mehlis for his possible involvement in the Hariri assassination.[3]. Subsequent to this, the UN commission which had submitted the Mehlis report to the UN security council has raised serious doubts about the reliability and the credibility of the Siddik declaraions.

Nawar Habib Donna, a Tripoli cellphone dealer who sold five of the eight prepaid phone cards connected to the killing, was killed in an apparent car accident in November 2005.[4]

Then there’s the case of the strange “suicide” of a key witness Ghazi Kanaan, the former Syrian intelligence chief in Lebanon. He gave some preliminary interviews to the Mehlis team but he died before a formal statement could be given. He was living in France at the time of his “suicide” and there has been ample speculation about who might have wanted him dead - including a bizarre plot involving Hafez al-Assad’s exiled brother who might have been manipulating Kanaan in order to oust current President Bashar. At any rate, is is thought that another reason (among many) that Assad wants the Tribunal squashed is that the investigation by both Mehlis and Brammertz will reveal internal Syrian power struggles and details of other plots.

But nothing will happen until the Lebanese Parliament approves the enabling legislation for the Tribunal to go forward. At the moment, given the political turmoil in Lebanon, that appears a long way off.

The proposal by Arab League members that was accepted “in principle” by both sides in the Lebanese cabinet crisis appears to be unravelling as the opposition led by Hizbullah’s Hassan Nasrallah is balking at one of the major items contained in the agreement.

The proposal, similar to one offered by Prime Minister Siniora weeks ago, would expand the cabinet from 24 to 29 members and grant the opposition 9 ministries while giving the March 14th Forces 19 slots. The remaining member would be chosen by the opposition, subject to approval by the majority, and would be a non voting minister, thus preserving the government’s supermajority and preventing Hizbullah from blocking government actions.

In addition, the Arab League plan calls for the resignation of pro-Syrian President Emile Lahoud, a new Presidential election, and the approval of legislation that would authorize the International Tribunal looking into the Hariri assassination.

It is the last item that Nasrallah and his patron in Damascus are balking at. Nasrallah still wants a blocking minority (10) ministers in any new unity government so that efforts to pass the Tribunal agreement with the UN will be stifled. Siniora refuses to give up on the majority that was voted in by the Lebanese people. As if to emphasize this point, Siniora’s cabinet yesterday approved enabling legislation for the Tribunal and sent it on to Parliament for final passage despite President Lahoud’s claim that any action by the cabinet on the Tribunal was unconstitutional. Since Lahoud did not act on the initial approval by the cabinet, it was returned and has now been approved and passed on to the legislature.

Unfortunately, Speaker of Parliament Nabih Berri, a leading member of the opposition, is refusing to call Parliament into session in order to approve the legislation. And there seems to be no way that the March 14th majority can legally get around Berri’s refusal. For the moment, the Tribunal hangs in limbo awaiting a resolution of the cabinet crisis.

Arab League Secretary General Amr Moussa is still hopeful that an agreement can be reached:

The cabinet move coincided with the arrival of Arab League Secretary-General Amr Moussa in Beirut for another round of talks with the feuding camps in an attempt to defuse the rising tensions.

“There is hope… but we are only beginning,” Moussa told reporters after a first round of talks with Saniora and Berri.

Moussa also met later Tuesday with Hizbullah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah and MP Saad Hariri.

“There is an optimistic atmosphere,” Moussa told the daily As Safir late in the evening.
“I’m holding on to hope and to the will of the Lebanese to overcome the crisis,” As Safir on Wednesday quoted Moussa as saying.

Moussa’s visit followed that of Arab League envoy Mustafa Ismail who is trying to mediate between the Saniora government and the Hizbullah-led coalition.

Abu Kais has some interesting thoughts about Nasrallah’s position:

It is perhaps too early to discuss the so-called Arab initiative, which has reportedly won Hizbullah’s and Assad’s support. That this “breakthrough” was announced in Damascus, and not in Beirut, speaks volumes about what these protests were really about…

Assad must think himself important and “yielding influence” again. Only let’s not get ahead of ourselves. There is no “deal” yet, and, unlike what some people are already predicting, nobody has been declared winner, especially not Hizbullah, Aoun and the Assad regime.

Indeed, one would think that any agreement that allowed the Tribunal to sit with the cooperation of the Lebanese government would be a huge blow to both Damascus and Nasrallah. Again, despite the best of intentions by the Arab League (who based their formula on proposals aired by the Maronite Church leadership last week) it appears that the two sides are exactly where they were before this initiative began.

And where is that exactly? If you ask Michel Aoun, Christian head of the Free Patriotic Movement and junior partner in Nasrallah’s coalition, the government is close to being overthrown:

Speaking to MBC television station late Tuesday, Aoun upped the tensions with his continued threats to topple the government, saying: “Even though there are many legitimate and nonpeaceful means to topple a government, we are dedicated in toppling this government by peaceful means.”

Despite some of his allies’ refusal to storm the Grand Serail, the former army general said that “the natural tide can carry the demonstrators to the Grand Serail, which is why they increased the metal barriers.”

“Siniora should not take this as a threat but rather a warning, to him and to all those who support him, that the people will not wait much longer for him to step down. They don’t even need encouragement from the leaders.”

Religious and political leaders - many of whom are allied with the Free Patriotic Movement and Hizbullah - have said that breaking into the Serail is a “red line” that the opposition cannot cross.

Aoun is either letting the cat out of the bag by disclosing Hizbullah’s true intentions or he is talking through his oversized hat. If the former - and few put it past Nasrallah to eventually tire of the street protests and initiate “direct action” against the cabinet, holed up now in the Grand Serail for nearly a month - then there will be civil war. But Aoun has been known to exaggerate in the past and his bombastic pronouncements should be taken with a very large dose of salt.

And so the crisis drags on. Meanwhile, Prosecutor Brammertz has issued another report on his investigation into the Hariri assassination which purportedly names names of who was involved. I’ll have some thoughts on this report later so stay tuned for a separate post on the Tribunal.

This is the best news coming out of Iraq in months.

Realizing that current Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki is little more than an empty suit whose efforts to tamp down the sectarian violence tearing at the vitals of the country have failed miserably, the Bush Administration is trying to engineer a bloodless coup against the incompetent Prime Minister by shuffling the coalition of parties who are currently in the majority:

Major partners in Iraq’s governing coalition are in behind-the-scenes talks to oust Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki amid discontent over his failure to quell raging violence, according to lawmakers involved.

The talks are aimed at forming a new parliamentary bloc that would seek to replace the current government and that would likely exclude supporters of the radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, who is a vehement opponent of the U.S. military presence.

The new alliance would be led by senior Shiite politician Abdul-Aziz al-Hakim, who met with President Bush last week. Al-Hakim, however, was not expected to be the next prime minister because he prefers the role of powerbroker, staying above the grinding day-to-day running of the country.

A key figure in the proposed alliance, Vice President Tariq al-Hashemi, a Sunni Arab, left for Washington on Sunday for a meeting with Bush at least three weeks ahead of schedule.

“The failure of the government has forced us into this in the hope that it can provide a solution,” said Omar Abdul-Sattar, a lawmaker from al-Hashemi’s Iraqi Islamic Party. “The new alliance will form the new government.”

Of course, there’s no guarantee that whoever they replace Maliki with will be any more competent. But the exciting part of this move is they are seeking to marginalize Muqtada al-Sadr and his Mahdi army by keeping him out of the government:

News of the bid to oust al-Maliki, in office since May, came amid growing dissent over his government’s performance among his Sunni and Shiite partners and the damaging fallout from a leaked White House memo questioning the prime minister’s abilities.

Washington also has been unhappy with al-Maliki’s reluctance to comply with its repeated demands to disband Shiite militias blamed for much of Iraq’s sectarian bloodletting.

Bush publicly expressed his confidence in al-Maliki after talks in Jordan on Nov. 30. But the president told White House reporters four days later that he was not satisfied with the pace of efforts to stop Iraq’s violence.

It was not immediately clear how much progress had been made in the effort to cobble together a new parliamentary alliance. But lawmakers loyal to al-Sadr who support al-Maliki were almost certainly not going to be a part of it. They had no word on al-Maliki’s Dawa party.

They said al-Maliki was livid at the attempt to unseat him.

This puts the leaking of the memo in a little different context, no? It’s no wonder that Maliki bristled at what was in Hadley’s report - he must have seen the writing on the wall. And it could even be that Bush gave him the bad news personally - which would explain his snubbing the President at dinner the night before their meeting.

The Dawa party is an important member of the ruling coalition, however, and it won’t be easy escorting Maliki to the door. But the new coalition will probably be able to cobble together support from enough members of that party to keep them in government.

The brilliance of this move however, is in what it does to our good friend Mookie al-Sadr.

If al-Sadr balks and uses his militia to start attacking American forces, he is going to wish he hadn’t. Twice now the United States military has handed the Mahdi army humiliating and devastating defeats. Twice, the Grand Ayatollah Sistani has interceded with his American friends to pull Sadr’s chestnuts out of the fire.

Since Sistani appears to have re-engaged politically by backing this move against al-Maliki, it could mean that he wishes to put the upstart Sadr in his place - or 6 feet under. Clearly the US now has Sadr in a box. If he fights, he loses. And if he acquiesces, he’s out of power and loses.

A win/win situation is a good thing for the US in Iraq. And this is the kind of thinking that was totally lacking from the ISG. This move is creative with definite thinking outside the box. It goes to show that there are in fact other options available to the US - options with a chance of turning the situation around relatively quickly.

However, having praised this move it should also be viewed with some trepidation. This move will essentially put the Badr Brigade in a very powerful position. Al-Hakim is the leader of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI) - a pro Iranian group with close ties to Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. The Badr Brigade is the armed wing of the party. Most of them were trained in Iran. This will open the question of how close the Iraqi government will be to Iran. Al-Sadr never trusted the Iranians, which displeased Ahmadinejad. But I think it’s safe to say that putting the SCIRI and the Badr’s in charge, there is a very real chance that the Shias will begin agitating for more autonomy in the south as well as escalate the violence already raging betwen Sadrites and the Badr Brigades.

Al-Hakim will not exactly be our new best buddy either. He has made it clear that he wants us out sooner rather than later. And Hakim has a reputation of using the Interior Ministry to settle party and militia business. Death squads and secret detention centers where Sunnis are routinely tortured and killed are a part of the Brigade’s profile. In short, we may be trading one gigantic headache for another.

But this move, if it pans out, is certainly welcome news. At the very least, it shows that the Administration is still engaged, still trying to come up with a solution that will allow us to leave. And it may just be the start of a turnaround in Baghdad that could go a long way toward establishing the rule of law in Iraq.