An account of life inside a CIA black prison

The CIA has been operating a series of black prisons around the world to better interrogate the world's worst terrorists while safely hidden from prying eyes.

Human Rights Watch has issued a report calling on the Bush administration to come clean on what happened to everyone who went through that mill.

An excerpt from the Washington Post story:

On his last day in CIA custody, Marwan Jabour, an accused al-Qaeda paymaster, was stripped naked, seated in a chair and videotaped by agency officers. Afterward, he was shackled and blindfolded, headphones were put over his ears, and he was given an injection that made him groggy. Jabour, 30, was laid down in the back of a van, driven to an airstrip and put on a plane with at least one other prisoner.

His release from a secret facility in Afghanistan on June 30, 2006, was a surprise to Jabour -- and came just after the Supreme Court rejected the Bush administration's assertion that the Geneva Conventions do not apply to prisoners like him.

Jabour had spent two years in "black sites" -- a network of secret internment facilities the CIA operated around the world. His account of life in that system, which he described in three interviews with The Washington Post, offers an inside view of a clandestine world that held far more prisoners than the 14 men President Bush acknowledged and had transferred out of CIA custody in September.

"There are now no terrorists in the CIA program," the president said, adding that after the prisoners held were determined to have "little or no additional intelligence value, many of them have been returned to their home countries for prosecution or detention by their governments."

But Jabour's experience -- also chronicled by Human Rights Watch, which yesterday issued a report on the fate of former "black site" detainees -- often does not accord with the portrait the administration has offered of the CIA system, such as the number of people it held and the threat detainees posed. Although 14 detainees were publicly moved from CIA custody to the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, scores more have not been publicly identified by the U.S. government, and their whereabouts remain secret. Nor has the administration acknowledged that detainees such as Jabour, considered so dangerous and valuable that their detentions were kept secret, were freed.

After 28 months of incarceration, Jabour -- who was described by a counterterrorism official in the U.S. government as "a committed jihadist and a hard-core terrorist who was intent on doing harm to innocent people, including Americans" -- was released eight months ago. U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism officials confirmed his incarceration and that he was held in Pakistan and Afghanistan. They would not discuss conditions inside black sites or the treatment of any detainee.

A House in Islamabad

By Jabour's account, and that of U.S. intelligence officials, his entrance into the black-sites program began in May 2004. In interviews, he said he was muscled out of a car as it pulled inside the gates of a secluded villa in the Pakistani capital of Islamabad.

In the week before his arrival, Jabour said, Pakistani intelligence officers had beaten, abused and burned him at a jailhouse in Lahore, where he was arrested. There two female American interrogators also questioned him and told him he would be rich if he cooperated and would vanish for life if he refused. He said he was later blindfolded and driven four hours north to the villa in a wealthy residential neighborhood.

The house in Islamabad, which U.S. intelligence officials say was jointly run by the CIA and Pakistani intelligence, had been outfitted with jail cells. When Jabour arrived, he saw as many as 20 other detainees, including the 16-year-old son of an Egyptian sheik, who had been captured in Pakistan. Dozens of al-Qaeda suspects swept up in the years after Sept. 11, 2001, have been through the house, according to accounts by former prisoners and U.S. intelligence officials with knowledge of the facility.

Jabour spent five weeks there, chained to a wall and prevented from sleeping more than a few hours at a time. He said he was beaten nightly by Pakistani guards after hours of questions from U.S. interrogators. Then he and others were whisked off to CIA-run sites. Some sites were in Eastern Europe; Jabour went to one in Afghanistan. Interrogators -- whom he described as Americans in their late 20s and early 30s -- told Jabour he would never see his three children again.

Human Rights Watch has identified 38 people who may have been held by the CIA and remain unaccounted for. Intelligence officials told The Post that the number of detainees held in such facilities over nearly five years remains classified but is higher than 60. Their whereabouts have not been publicly disclosed.

What's the point of a sorority if you let in undesirables?

From the NYT:

When a psychology professor at DePauw University (in Greencastle, Ind.) surveyed students, they described one sorority as a group of “daddy’s little princesses” and another as “offbeat hippies.” The sisters of Delta Zeta were seen as “socially awkward.”

Worried that a negative stereotype of the sorority was contributing to a decline in membership that had left its Greek-columned house here half empty, Delta Zeta’s national officers interviewed 35 DePauw members in November, quizzing them about their dedication to recruitment. They judged 23 of the women insufficiently committed and later told them to vacate the sorority house.

The 23 members included every woman who was overweight. They also included the only black, Korean and Vietnamese members. The dozen students allowed to stay were slender and popular with fraternity men -- conventionally pretty women the sorority hoped could attract new recruits. Six of the 12 were so infuriated they quit.

“Virtually everyone who didn’t fit a certain sorority member archetype was told to leave,” said Kate Holloway, a senior who withdrew from the chapter during its reorganization.

Here's hoping the six conventionally pretty white women who stayed will meet like-minded, conventionally handsome fraternity men, and that they  go on to create the foundations of a master race together -- maybe even come up with a final solution for the socially awkward.

The Bagram bombing

How much are we to make of the fact that a Taliban suicide bomber blew himself outside the Bagram air base in Afghanistan while U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was safe inside?

This NYT analysis suggests it may symbolize American worries about a Taliban and al Qaeda resurgence in Afghanistan.

An excerpt:

American officials insisted that the importance of the attack, by a single suicide bomber who blew himself up a mile away from where the vice president was staying, was primarily symbolic. It was more successful at grabbing headlines and filling television screens with a scene of carnage than at getting anywhere near Mr. Cheney.

But the strike nonetheless demonstrated that Al Qaeda and the Taliban appear stronger and more emboldened in the region than at any time since the American invasion of the country five years ago, and since the Bush administration claimed to have decimated much of their middle management. And it fed directly into the debate over who is to blame.

The leaders with whom Mr. Cheney met on his mission to Pakistan and Afghanistan have appeared increasingly incapable of controlling the chaos, and have pointed fingers at one another.

Mr. Cheney said the attack was a reminder that terrorists seek “to question the authority of the central government,” and argued that it underscored the need for a renewed American effort.

His critics, on the other hand, said the strike was another reminder of how Iraq had diverted the Bush administration from finishing the job in Afghanistan.

Keeping the lights on in Afghanistan

The Kajaki dam, once it gets fully up to speed, could provide electricity for another two million Afghans. Don't think the Taliban don't know that.

Some excerpts from the BBC story:

The plaque bearing the American eagle says it was built in 1975 - the hydro-electric power station was donated at a time when Cold War nations were pouring money into Afghanistan to buy support at the crossroads of Asia.

And working hard to keep it running is a determined man with a long beard, who has been here since the year after the turbines started turning.

Engineer Sayeed Rasul pointed to the huge gap between the two round power generators: "Turbine one needs repairs and turbine three is working well and when turbine two arrives we will be able to generate much more power," he said.

"We have only one power station in southern Afghanistan and that is Kajaki power station.

"When we have all three turbines working it will be a very big help for us and Afghanistan and our people."  ...

The Taleban know how significant the project's success would be - jobs for locals, electricity for southern Afghanistan.

They are likely to use all the insurgent tactics they can to stop it succeeding - the Kajaki Dam will be a good litmus test in the coming months of how the mission is going.

Bush to talk tough on terror with Pakistan ...

From the NYT:

President Bush has decided to send an unusually tough message to one of his most important allies, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the president of Pakistan, warning him that the newly Democratic Congress could cut aid to his country unless his forces become far more aggressive in hunting down operatives with Al Qaeda, senior administration officials say.

The decision came after the White House concluded that General Musharraf is failing to live up to commitments he made to Mr. Bush during a visit here in September. General Musharraf insisted then, both in private and public, that a peace deal he struck with tribal leaders in one of the country’s most lawless border areas would not diminish the hunt for the leaders of Al Qaeda and the Taliban or their training camps.

Now, American intelligence officials have concluded that the terrorist infrastructure is being rebuilt, and that while Pakistan has attacked some camps, its overall effort has flagged.

“He’s made a number of assurances over the past few months, but the bottom line is that what they are doing now is not working,” one senior administration official who deals often with South Asian issues said late last week. “The message we’re sending to him now is that the only thing that matters is results.”

And Pakistan is fed up with Dubya (and Karzai, and NATO, and ...)

The Toronto Star's Haroon Siddiqui with Pakistan's side of the story on the current situation in Afghanistan.

An excerpt:

The assertions of Pakistani involvement have been repeated so often they have become part of the received wisdom of many Canadian politicians, editorial writers and pundits as well. I do not know and have not been able to ascertain whether Pakistan is guilty or not. But, given the track record of those making the allegations, we should be skeptical.

In the circumstances, it is useful to know what the Pakistanis, from President Pervez Musharraf down, have been saying.

Pakistan cannot possibly fully control the 2,400-kilometre border, most of it uninhabited terrain. "If the U.S. cannot stop infiltration from Mexico, how do you expect us to control our border with Afghanistan that's mostly desolate and mountainous?" pleaded Tariq Azim, minister of information, in an interview in Islamabad, the capital.

Pakistan has done more in battling terrorism in the neighbourhood than any other nation. It has deployed 80,000 troops along the Afghan border, double the entire American and NATO contingent in Afghanistan, and has lost more than 700 soldiers, more than double the casualty count of all the allies.

It has helped arrest dozens of Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives, in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. Musharraf: "Tell me how many Taliban leaders have been caught in Afghanistan. Name me one."

The Taliban do have sympathizers among their 15-million fellow-Pushtuns in Pakistan and among the 2.6 million Afghan Pushtun refugees living in Pakistan. But the main problem lies in Afghanistan, because of widespread corruption, opium production and the incompetence of the American and NATO forces, which have failed to bring security and economic development to the population. "We don't deny that Taliban come and go but that's not the entire truth," Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, spokesperson for Musharraf, told me. "If 25 per cent of the problem lies on our side, 75 per cent lies on that side."

Ah, the Oscars!

So Martin Scorsese finally wins an Oscar for Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, The King of Comedy and Goodfellas! Woo-hoo!! :)

About time!

While I'm happy for Scorcese, The Departed winning best picture was essentially a show-me-the-money award in addition to payback for all the Oscars Scorsese should have won, but didn't. The film grossed about US$129 million, better than the other four nominees.

Personally, I liked Infernal Affairs, the Hong Kong crime drama on which The Departed was based, much better. The Departed was certainly competent, but had a rote feel to it. While I periodically revisit Scorsese crime classics like Goodfellas, I can't see myself doing the same with The Departed.

And as far as best director goes, Paul Greengrass of United 93 and Stephen Frears of The Queen would have been legitimate winners too, but as I've said, I think Scorsese won as much for his previous work as this current entry.

For me, the two best films of 2006 were Pan's Labyrinth and Children of Men.

That being said, I've seen The Lives of Others, which won for best foreign film, and it's an excellent movie in its own right.

And Pan did pick up three Oscars, which has me sad that Children didn't get any recognition -- even though that says nothing of substance about the film's excellence.

While the environment is an obvious hobby horse for me, I don't know if I'm down with the pick of An Inconvenient Truth as best documentary (Melissa Etheridge won best original song for I Need To Wake Up, which accompanies the doc).

Personally, I think Jesus Camp may have been a better film, and Iraq in Fragments has moments of pure cinematic poetry within it.

However, climate change is the issue du jour, and this was a nice, safe political statement for Hollywood to make.

Now, Helen Mirren as best actress for The Queen; Forest Whitaker as best actor for The Last King of Scotland? Saw both films, can't argue with either choice. Both have been fine actors throughout their careers, and both deserve some recognition.

Alan Arkin as best supporting actor? I dunno. Best supporting over-actor, maybe.

As far as the speeches go, I left work about 11:30 p.m., but I think they have to cut them down to 30 seconds. Still w-a-a-a-a-y too much mumbling about thanking everybody and their dog and not enough about anything that is of the slightest interest to people outside the business. These people are supposed to be the cream of show biz, for God's sake! Captivate us!! :)

For the purely technical categories (sound editing), why bother? Why not televise the Plumbies, the plumbing industry's (fictional) annual awards show? Could that be less dull?

Ellen DeGeneres as host? Not bad, but too low-key.  The show, from what I saw, could have used a few more amps in its energy level.

Anyway, enough from me. Here's a link to CTV.ca's Oscar's coverage, for a full, heapin' helpin' of Oscar-tality.

Comedy Central: The serious book channel

From the NYT:

Since when did microlending, global poverty, constitutional law and civil wars in Africa become topics for frank discussion on fake-news comedy shows?

Publishers say that particularly for the last six months, “The Daily Show” and its spinoff, “The Colbert Report,” which has on similarly wonky authors, like the former White House official David Kuo, have become the most reliable venues for promoting weighty books whose authors would otherwise end up on “The Early Show” on CBS looking like they showed up at the wrong party.

(Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad) Yunus’s appearance gave a jump-start to his national press tour and sent his rank on the online bookseller Amazon soaring, said Susan Weinberg, who is the publisher of PublicAffairs. “It was our pièce de résistance,” Ms. Weinberg said. “It had a huge impact on the book.”

Tony Fox, a spokesman for Comedy Central, said that though “The Daily Show” has been on the air since 1996, the number of authors featured has increased significantly in the last five years.

Authors are treated to a fairly straight conversation with Mr. Stewart, but Stephen Colbert, who remains in character as a Bill O’Reilly-type commentator, can be a more challenging interviewer who forces the author to play along with his schtick. “It’s a different experience,” Ms. Weinberg said wryly.

The End of Faith/Jesus Camp/American Fascists

I've recently read the Sam Harris book The End of Faith, just finished watching the documentary Jesus Camp and am about one-third the way through Chris Hedges' American Fascists.

They work well as a trilogy.

The End of Faith is basically an attack on religion even as it acknowledges the need for spirituality. Harris particularly takes his rhetorical broadaxe to Christianity and Islam. He is especially frustrated with religious moderates who tolerate religious fanaticism (CBC's Tapestry interviewed him on Nov. 5/06).

"The first is their mode of discourse, that they don't want faith itself criticized ... (which) really provides immense cover for religious fundamentalism and religious extremism," he said in that interview.

They don't see the link between faith and violence, he said. "The religious moderate ... because his beliefs really don't commit him to anything very concrete in this life, really loses sight of the fact that millions and millions of religious believers believe in God with much more certainty than that, and expect paradise for dying under the right circumstances."

In the United States, millions of Christians "quite literally expect to be raptured into the sky by Jesus so they can witness a holy genocide that is going to inaugurate the end of human history," he said.

"These beliefs really do commit people to, I argue, behaviours that are totally maladaptive and they prevent people from making the types of compromises and decisions that we need to create a durable future for ourselves as a civilization."

Veteran visitors to this blog might remember my Jan. 26 post Global Warming and the Second Coming, about a Washington state father's crusade against showing the Oscar-nominated An Inconvenient Truth in his daughter's school. An excerpt:

"No you will not teach or show that propagandist Al Gore video to my child, blaming our nation -- the greatest nation ever to exist on this planet -- for global warming," (Frosty) Hardison wrote in an e-mail to the Federal Way School Board. The 43-year-old computer consultant is an evangelical Christian who says he believes that a warming planet is "one of the signs" of Jesus Christ's imminent return for Judgment Day.

Let's segue to Jesus Camp.

Early on in this documentary co-directed by Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady, we see two young boys watching TV at their home in St. Robert, Missouri, where they are home-schooled by mom.

On the TV, an Indiana Jones-looking actor asks rhetorically: "Was it an explosion? Did we come from a gob of goo?"

A cartoon character adds: "It has been said we are the result of an explosion. Is this 'true'? Is this 'scientific'?" and then adds, without irony, "... or is it just based on a belief?"

The boys are called into the kitchen for homework. The textbook is "Exploring Creation With Physical Science."

Mom reads the following out loud: "One popular thing to note in the United States in the past few years is that the summers in the United States have been very warm. As a result, global warming must be real. What's wrong with this reasoning?"

Levi, who hopes to be a preacher, says, "It's only gone up 0.6 degrees."

"Yes, it's not really a problem, is it?" replies mom.

Levi opines that he doesn't think it's going to "hurt us."

"It's a huge political issue, global warming. And that's why it's really important for you to understand," says mom.

Levi asks about evolution and creationism.

"If you look at creationism, you realize it's the only possible answer to all the questions," mom said.

She then says: "Did you get to the part where it says science doesn't really prove anything? It's really interesting when you look at it that way."

The film slips in the nugget that 75 per cent of those home-schooled in the United States are evangelical Christians.

"Why are kids taught that global warming doesn't exist?" asks Air America host Mike Papantonio. "'Look, rape this world, rape this Earth. It doesn't matter because we're not here for very long. Christ is coming to take us away from Earth. So cut down our trees, use all of our oil, take advantage of everything the earth has to offer .' ... you want to shake them and you want to say, 'what is it you are not understanding about the fundamentals of Christianity?'"

Enter American Fascists.

Author Chris Hedges, who attended the Harvard Divinity School, starts by quoting Umberto Eco's 14 elements of Ur or Eternal fascism. Number four is "The critical spirit makes distinctions, and to distinguish is a sign of modernism. In modern culture, the scientific community praises disagreement as a way to improve knowledge. For Ur-Fascism, disagreement is treason."

Hedges notes that many in the Christian faith are "selective literalists" who cherry-pick from among the Bible's many contradictory passages, with those on the right leaning towards the most bloodthirsty interpretations. He appears to be on Harris's side with respects to criticizing religious moderates. "... Until the Christian churches wade into the debate, these biblical passages will be used by bigots and despots to give sacred authority to their calls to subjugate or eradicate the enemies of God. ... The steadfast refusal by churches to challenge the canonical authority of these passages means these churches share some of the blame."

The most malignant branch of the Christian right, for Hedges, are the Dominionists. "Dominionism takes its name from Genesis 1:26-31, in which God gives human beings 'dominion' over all creation," he says.

Dominionists seek political power and seek to make the United States a theocratic country. They probably comprise about seven to 12.6 per cent of the U.S. population  (about 25 per cent of Americans are evangelical Christians).

Hedges makes the point that the evangelical community is a diverse one, ranging from those who believe God wants Christians to be rich to those who eschew politics and focus on spiritual renewal. But he still thinks a major crisis could provide the opening the Dominionists need to make a move.

The book talks about why evangelical churches are successful, and looks at the recruiting tactics they use, which aren't really different than those of any successful cult.

And when you've read that, watch Jesus Camp and watch Pastor Becky Fischer work the kids.

“Extreme liberals who look at this should be quaking in their boots,” she declares towards the film's end.

Quite so.

Addendum

Salon talked to the filmmakers back in September.

If you go to the Kids In Ministry website, they promote the sale of the film. From the blurb:

Jesus Camp, the Oscar nominated documentary that has America talking, features Kids in Ministry International and it's founder Becky Fischer along with the most amazing children who are 100% sold out to the Lord Jesus Christ and are not ashamed to say so. As Bill O'Reilly of the O'Reilly factor said about the film, "Hollywood doesn't like seeing kids worship God." And, though secular viewers cannot relate to or understand what they see, passionate faith and worship by children is exactly what you experience in this film. And, yes, they WILL change America and the world!

There are comments about the film available there.

There is also a section dealing with questions about the film, such as "Are you raising Christian terrorists or another Hitler Youth Movement?"

An excerpt of Fischer's answer:

This is probably the most frustrating and exasperating part of this film for me. This is the conclusion people are coming to when they see the trailer, and I have to say that if I was not a believer in Christ and I saw nothing but the trailer, I would probably come away with the same impression.

But any born again Christian should be able to read between the lines and know there is absolutely no truth to this at all, and I hope other discerning individuals will as well.

There are many scriptures in the Bible that use terminology like "warfare," "weapons," "armor"  and so on. When born again Christians speak of warfare they mean "spiritual" warfare. This is a war of ideologies and spiritual issues, and not a physical war that is fought with guns and bombs. Christians do believe they are in a cultural war for the lives and souls of people worldwide, and particularly for the minds and hearts of our children and youth.

There's a clip in the trailer that shows me with my arms raised up and I'm shouting, "This means war!" That came during a prayer time at the end of one of our services where I spoke on the battle we wage against sin and temptation we fight on a daily basis. We had spoken about the challenges of keeping our minds and our hearts pure in a world that throws all kinds of mental and visual trash at us all the time. But out of context it could be taken to mean anything!

The unfortunate thing is that right now the secular world has no other grid to go by than what is happening in the war on terror, and the terrorists themselves sending their young out to blow themselves up and take as many other people with them as they can at the same time. But that has nothing to do with the way Christians think of spiritual warfare. The weapons Christians use is prayer, the Word of God [Bible], and so on.

On the other hand, Fischer does make comparisons with Islamic youth who do go on to commit suicide bombings and whatnot. "I want to see young people who are as committed to Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam. I want to see them as radically laying down their lives for the Gospel as they are over in Pakistan, in Israel, in Palestine, in all those different places."

Her definition of war is not that dissimilar from the Islamic notion of jihad, or struggle. Jihad can have multiple levels of meaning. It can mean the internal struggle to live a virtuous life, or it can mean physical battle against the perceived enemies of Islam.

At one point in the film, Fischer starts talking about Harry Potter (?!?!). "Warlocks are enemies of God. And I don't care what kind of hero they are, they are enemies of God. And had it been in the Old Testament, Harry Potter would have been put to death."

Becky sounded like she was longing for the good old days.

At another point, some unidentified male adult with a vaguely South African accent asks the kids: "How many of you want to be those who would give up their lives for Jesus?" Much wild screaming.

Now, there's a subtle difference between those who would give their lives to serve Jesus or give up their lives for Jesus.

This guy also talked about the "enemies" in government who did things like take prayer out of schools.

I'm sorry, but when you start throwing around words like "enemy" and "war," and how killing "enemies of God" like warlocks would have been hunky dory in Old Testament days, some people might get confused.

Sam Harris devotes a large part of his book to pointing out some of the more poisonous verses in both the Koran and the Bible -- and details some of the horrible things that have been done in the service of God.

And Chris Hedges talks about how the Christian right's definition of things like "liberty" are radically different from the same term in the secular world.

For all that, the main kids in Jesus Camp seem like very nice youngsters. Based on the film, there would be no basis for calling them Hitler Youth or Christian terrorists.

However, kids do grow up. And the vision of the hard religious U.S. right that Hedges outlines sounds like a Christian version of Iran on a bad tolerance day.

For some reason, I'm moved to remember this lyrical snippet from Saturday Night Holocaust, by the Dead Kennedys:

A Hitler youth in jogging suit
Smiling face banded 'round his arm
Says, 'Line up, you've got work to do
We need dog food for the poor'

The one thing Jello Biafra might want to add, if the worst-case scenario of Hedges ever came true, is a cross around the neck.

Global warming and food -- or the lack thereof

The Globe and Mail's Martin Mittlestaedt on why some experts think food supply might be among the first major casualties of global warming.

An excerpt:

That's the view of a small but influential group of agricultural experts who are increasingly worried that global warming will trigger food shortages long before it causes better known but more distant threats, such as rising sea levels that flood coastal cities.

The scale of agriculture's vulnerability to global warming was highlighted late last year when the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), an umbrella organization representing 15 of the world's top crop research centres, issued an astounding estimate of the impact of climate change on a single crop, wheat, in one of the world's major breadbaskets.

Researchers using computer models to simulate the weather patterns likely to exist around 2050 found that the best wheat-growing land in the wide arc of fertile farmland stretching from Pakistan through Northern India and Nepal to Bangladesh would be decimated. Much of the area would become too hot and dry for the crop, placing the food supply of 200 million people at risk.

"The impacts on agriculture in developing countries, and particularly on countries that depend on rain-fed agriculture, are likely to be devastating," says Dr. Louis Verchot, principal ecologist at the World Agroforestry Centre in Nairobi, Kenya.

Wheat, the source of one-fifth of the world's food, isn't the only crop that could be clobbered by climate change. Cereals and corn production in Africa are at risk, as is the rice crop in much of India and Southeast Asia, according to Dr. Verchot.

In a cruel twist of fate, most of the hunger resulting from global warming is likely to be felt by those who haven't caused the problem: the people in developing countries. At the same time, it may be a boon to agriculture in richer northern countries more responsible for the greenhouse gas emissions driving climate instability.

"With climate change, the agricultural areas in Canada, Russia and Europe will expand, while the areas suited for agriculture in the tropics will decline," Dr. Verchot says. "Basically, the situation is that those who are well off now will be better off in the future, and those who are in problems will have greater problems."

U.S. buildup against Iran continues

The Guardian reports that the U.S. could be in a position to attack Iran's nuclear sites by this spring, although an attack isn't likely until early in 2008, just before Dubya leaves office.

Some excerpts:

Neo-conservatives, particularly at the Washington-based American Enterprise Institute, are urging Mr Bush to open a new front against Iran. So too is the vice-president, Dick Cheney.

The state department and the Pentagon are opposed, as are Democratic congressmen and the overwhelming majority of Republicans. The sources said Mr Bush had not yet made a decision.

The Bush administration insists the military build-up is not offensive but aimed at containing Iran and forcing it to make diplomatic concessions. The aim is to persuade Tehran to curb its suspect nuclear weapons programme and abandon ambitions for regional expansion. ...

Robert Gates, the new US defence secretary, said yesterday: "I don't know how many times the president, secretary [of state Condoleezza] Rice and I have had to repeat that we have no intention of attacking Iran."

But Vincent Cannistraro, a Washington-based intelligence analyst, shared the sources' assessment that Pentagon planning was well under way. "Planning is going on, in spite of public disavowals by Gates. Targets have been selected. For a bombing campaign against nuclear sites, it is quite advanced. The military assets to carry this out are being put in place."

He added: "We are planning for war. It is incredibly dangerous."

Back to my usual blog

My bandwidth came back on Thursday. I will be posting at my usual blog: http://billdoskoch.blogware.com