<$BlogRSDUrl$>

Friday, December 05, 2003

SCAAAAARY!

Israel Shares Blame on Iraq Intelligence, Report Says
By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Friday, December 5, 2003; Page A18


JERUSALEM, Dec. 4 -- Israel was a "full partner" in U.S. and British intelligence failures that exaggerated former president Saddam Hussein's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, a report by an Israeli military research center has charged.



"The failures of this war indicate weaknesses and inherent flaws within Israeli intelligence and among Israeli decision-makers," Brig. Gen. Shlomo Brom wrote in an analysis for Tel Aviv University's Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies.

Israeli intelligence services and political leaders provided "an exaggerated assessment of Iraqi capabilities," raising "the possibility that the intelligence picture was manipulated," wrote Brom, former deputy commander of the Israeli military's planning division.

David Baker, a spokesman for Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, declined to comment on the report.

The allegations parallel those raised in the United States and Britain. Officials have combed Iraq and interrogated former authorities for months, but have turned up little evidence to support the prewar assessments of Iraq's weapons programs.

"In the questioning of the picture painted by coalition intelligence, the third party in this intelligence failure, Israel, has remained in the shadows," the report said. "Israeli intelligence was a full partner to the picture presented by American and British intelligence regarding Iraq's non-conventional capabilities."

The report added, "A critical question to be answered is whether governmental bodies falsely manipulated the intelligence information in order to gain support for their decision to go to war in Iraq, while the real reasons for this decision were obfuscated or concealed."

The study did not cite specific exchanges of intelligence. Israeli officials frequently told foreign journalists before the war that Israel and the United States were sharing information, particularly regarding Iraqi missiles and nonconventional weapons that could possibly be used against Israel.

The report accused intelligence agencies of being blinded by a "one-dimensional perception of Saddam Hussein."

"At the heart of this perception lay the colorful portrait of an embodiment of evil, a man possessed by a compulsion to develop weapons of mass destruction in order to strike Israel and others, regardless of additional considerations," the report said.

The analysis said a "certain degree of intelligence wariness is justified," but added, "the problem lies in getting carried away to extremes, as was clearly the case with Israeli intelligence on Iraq."

The report said that when "Israeli intelligence became aware that certain items had been transferred by the head of the regime from Iraq to Syria, Israeli intelligence immediately portrayed it -- including in leaks to the media -- as if Iraq was moving banned weapons out of Iraq in order to conceal them."

The analysis faulted intelligence officials for discounting the more likely scenario that Hussein and his aides were moving cash or family members out of the country in anticipation of the attack.

The study noted that Israeli and U.S. governments have disagreed over the past decade on the "weight of various threats in the Middle East." The report said Israel has generally claimed that Iran poses a more serious threat than Iraq, because the latter was "contained and under control."

But, the author added, "Once the Bush administration decided to take action against Iraq, it was more difficult for Israel to maintain its position that dealing with Iraq was not the highest priority, especially when it was obvious that the war would serve Israel's interests."

The report prompted one Israeli lawmaker, Yossi Sarid, a member of the Meretz party, to renew demands for an investigation. The analysis said that creating an "inflated, overly-severe intelligence picture" undermined public and international trust in Israel's security services. The report also said the Israeli defense establishment was forced to spend "a great deal of money on addressing threats that were either non-existent or highly unlikely."


Thursday, December 04, 2003

News from the Terminator's team:

The Golden State, From Red to Black
How Gov. Schwarzenegger will make California solvent again.

BY DONNA ARDUIN
Thursday, December 4, 2003 12:01 a.m.

SACRAMENTO, Calif.--For the past five years, California government has spent $23 billion more than it has taken in. Over the past five years, while revenues have increased by 25%, state expenditures have risen by 43%. If government had simply spent at the same rate that California's economy has grown, the state's budget would be balanced today.
Instead of resolving imbalances, the previous administration and the Legislature chose to borrow $25 billion from future state budgets in order to create or expand programs that the state couldn't afford. In health and human services alone, significant program expansions have totaled $1.3 billion.

The combined result of this overspending is stark. California faces massive budget deficits and has run out of places to borrow. And if we do not get our fiscal house in order, we will not be able to refinance the $14 billion of debt that matures in June, or be able to pay our bills.





Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger did not create this crisis. But he is proposing a way to help lead California out of it.
First, the governor is asking the Legislature to send to the voters a constitutional spending limit that will significantly curtail spending next year.

Second, he is asking the Legislature to send to the voters authorization for a general obligation bond--but only if the spending limit is approved--in order to reduce the cost of currently contemplated borrowing.

Third, he is asking the Legislature to start curtailing overspending--and start now. In order to balance the current year's budget and begin to gain control of our fiscal situation, Gov. Schwarzenegger has said that he would ask the Legislature to enact roughly $2 billion in current-year spending reductions.

Let me discuss each of these steps in detail:

• Constitutional spending limit. This will require that expenditures in fiscal year 2004-05 cannot exceed revenues. It will truly require the state to live within its means. For the 2005-06 fiscal year, spending growth over the preceding year will match inflation and population growth. This spending limit will also establish a Revenue Stabilization Fund, which will receive any general fund revenue that comes in above the spending limit. This "rainy day" fund could be used--with a two-thirds vote of the Legislature--for the following four purposes: repaying deficit bonds, tax rebates, emergencies declared by the governor, and transfers to the general fund when revenues fall below the spending limit in the future.

This spending limit will allow the governor to declare a fiscal emergency in the event that the director of finance determines that general fund expenditures are projected to either exceed available general fund revenues, or exceed the spending limit. Once a fiscal emergency is declared, the governor is then required to call a special session and submit legislation to reduce expenditures. The Legislature would then have 30 days to enact, by a two-thirds vote in each house, any different package of legislation. But in doing so, the Legislature must make a finding that its package also solves the spending problem identified in the declaration.

• General obligation bond. This would be used to refinance $15 billion of the $25 billion in debt that has already been incurred.

As the 2003-04 budget was being debated this summer, the bond rating agencies chose to lower California's credit rating, citing the state's failure to close the gaps between revenues and spending, its reliance on short-term borrowing, and its use of spending deferrals. The rating agencies are also aware that legal challenges have been raised on both the pension obligation bonds and the deficit bonds authorized by the Legislature in the current budget.

In the discussion over whether to pursue a bond for this purpose, there's been a great deal of focus on the cost of debt. The state's financing objective is very simple--to obtain the full amount of money needed to address the accumulated deficit in as cost-effective a way as possible.

The voter-approved bond authority would provide insurance should the courts find the existing bond proposals illegal. We need to have an alternative plan.

If the bonds are structured with a longer maturity, it is no different from choosing to lock in an attractive home mortgage loan when rates are low, rather than risk having to refinance that loan in the next few years when rates are higher and new fees, or "points," have to be paid. That's why this bond proposes to refinance the $14 billion of short-term borrowing that's assumed in the current budget with longer term bonds that contain what are known as "call features"--which allow us pay that debt off earlier if circumstances warrant. That gives our economy time to grow and generate revenues. And if the economy grows faster than projected, we can pay off that debt faster.

• Spending reductions. Estimates vary on the size of the budget shortfall for the fiscal year we're now in. But they fall in the range of between $2.2 billion and $4.3 billion. The governor is asking this Legislature to eliminate nearly $2 billion of the projected shortfall immediately.

We have a list of proposals to start reducing spending now. It includes 38 specific actions that cover a range of program areas, including transportation, resources, health and human services, and education. Together, these total $1.9 billion in budget savings in the current and next year. I will seek additional savings through the new authority granted in this year's budget for the executive branch to make midyear expenditure reductions. Furthermore, we expect to generate additional savings from actions the governor is taking by executive order.





We have a realistic assessment of the state's fiscal picture, and a comprehensive plan to begin to fix fiscal problems that have grown in the past five years. No one is under illusions about how difficult this task will be. But the alternative--failing to take action--is simply not an option.
Ms. Arduin is the finance director for Gov. Schwarzenegger of California.



Wednesday, December 03, 2003

IRAQ THE MODEL
Monday, December 01, 2003

The blood was never for oil...
There had been a perspective that is widely spread among Arabs and the anti war, even some Iraqis, that America came to Iraq to steal the oil and other natural resources from Iraq (I don't know if anyone supports this idea in the USA) and I’ve got sick of seeing this ridiculous idea written on the walls in Baghdad or on signs held by the supposed peace activists or even being spoken in interviews on al-jazeera or other Arab media by those who pretend that they care for the interests of the Iraqi people.
I wonder how their brilliant, clear thinking got to that nonnegotiable conclusion!!?

Well I found that the answer is so simple, that even a blind man can see...heh.
I have read some statistics about the economy of the USA and I found that the (GDP) of America is something around (11,000 billion) dollars, while that of Iraq is about (18 billion) dollars (regarding the current rate of oil export), which means that the (GDP) of USA = 611 times the (GDP) of Iraq.
Another interesting result is that America can make that (18) billions in only 14 hours!.
Everyone knows that the American forces need about (4 billion) dollars/month for their supplies, operations and reconstruction work.
I find it so naive for someone to think that the USA is spending 4 billions a month to "steal" 1,5 billions.
The USA has already spent (or assigned) over 200 billion dollars, which requires the Americans to wait for over 10 years to get their money back.
What a great investment!!!
And that's only in the case that America is "stealing" all the oil or money of Iraq, while as a matter of fact, all the money that oil yields is spent to provide food, medications and of course to pay salaries to the Iraqis.
The war was never for oil itself, the aims of the war were freeing the Iraqi people, destroying Saddam's WMD's, fighting international terrorism and the spread of freedom and democracy in the M.E.

Some Iraqis say that Iraq is a wealthy country and that America came here to steal our fortune, and I ask them what f***ing fortune? Saddam has driven Iraq bankrupt and even worse, Iraq is now drowning in debts.
Iraq is a (potentially rich) country, that's true. Iraq was once rich, but right now it's a poor country, and in order to make Iraq a rich country once again we need researches, experience, investments and years of hard work. This can not be done by the Iraqis alone, we need help, and we're getting that help.
Saddam wasted most of our fortune on his intelligence and security agencies and his plans to get WMD's and the rest was transferred to the secret accounts of his and his family.


However I find that there is one good side effect of the war that is related to the oil, oil is needed continuously all over the world, and the oil supplies should be maintained to every country, no crazy tyrant like Saddam should be controlling one of the largest reserves of oil in the world, imagine the mess if Saddam, Gaddafy and the mullahs of Iran decided to cease the production of oil, as some Arab countries did in 1973 when Saddam held the slogan (oil is a weapon in the battle).

Anyway I think that -even this side effect- was not in the interest of the USA alone.
Oil, like water; is essential to everyone, and no one should hold it off from the others.


- posted by Omar @ 19:34

Can We Win the Guerrilla War?
By Jim Hoagland
Wednesday, December 3, 2003; Page A29


There are moments in war that strip away the maneuvering, the rhetoric and the confusion that inevitably surround any conflict. One such moment occurred this week in the town of Samarra when Iraqi bandits ambushed a U.S. convoy and were repulsed with heavy losses.







Initial news accounts rushed past the obvious to focus on the guerrilla death toll, the tactics of the brief but bloody battle and disputes over civilian casualties. All important, yes. But the most revealing thing in this snapshot of conflict was the motive of these gunmen: They were after the money that U.S. troops were carrying to Iraqi banks.

At one basic level, the guerrilla war waged by Baathist remnants of Saddam Hussein's dictatorship is about money and privilege. The Baathists and their enormous clientele -- which stretches far outside Iraq -- have one of history's most extreme senses of entitlement.

Think of the worst divorce case you have ever heard about, and then imagine the embittered ex-spouses armed with Kalashnikovs and bombs instead of legal motions over alimony and property, and you get some sense of what Iraq's Sunnis, Shiites and Kurds are going through right now.

Other motives are also involved. Those so inclined can emphasize the religious fanaticism of the jihadists who have taken the battlefield in Iraq or the Arab fervor stirred by foreign occupation. I grant that both exist, and come back to the fundamental force of this counterrevolution: The warring Arab Sunnis of Iraq want the money. And they want to regain the privilege of dominating the country's other population groups.

This dead-ender sense of entitlement -- to run the country or to reduce it to ruins so that no one else can -- was underestimated by the Bush administration's intelligence, military and political leaders in the Iraq war and its immediate aftermath. Wishful thinking about Sunni generals, intelligence chiefs and scientists rallying to a post-Hussein regime was quickly punctured by an insurgency that has taken on a life of its own.

It is a misnomer to call the war against the U.S.-led coalition and its Iraqi allies a nationalist struggle. The country's majority Arab Shiite population offers tacit political cooperation to the occupation force, and the Kurdish Sunni minority is allied with the coalition. That represents three-fourths of the nation's population. This war is led and fought by a small, embittered minority of oppressors.

They long for a return to power and to riches that existed on a scale most humans find unimaginable. Oil money enabled Saddam Hussein to build a machine of repression and death as well as his palaces. He and other Arab leaders used the West's own misplaced sense of entitlement -- to cheap oil and energy to waste -- to enrich themselves and their supporters in places such as Samarra and Tikrit.

The Baathists used oil revenue to buy government officials, television executives, academics, newspaper columnists and double agents in Jordan, Syria, Egypt and other Arab countries -- and even in the West. The New York Times disclosed this week that Syrian middlemen were richly rewarded for helping the Iraqis in their attempt to buy a missile factory from North Korea.

The Syrians are refusing to return billions of dollars the Baathists stashed in Syrian bank accounts for illegal missile, oil and other deals, U.S. officials have confirmed to me. A tractor-trailer carrying gold bars and bundles of cash was intercepted by U.S. forces last spring as it made its way to, of all places, Syria.

The U.S.-led campaign that brought down the Baathists struck at the core of a regionwide network of corruption and repression that loots the citizens of most Arab states of liberty, dignity and the oil revenue that goes straight into the pockets of rulers. These leaders are the people U.S. administrations courted for 60 years in what President Bush now calls failed Middle East policies.

The "culture" that spawned the Saddamist dead-enders is a gangster culture. The townspeople of Samarra and Tikrit have a vested interest in restoring it. They and Iraq's Sunni Arabs in general must be convinced there is a better way to live and let live.

The real question about U.S. policy now is not whether the toppling of Saddam Hussein was the right thing to do -- it clearly was -- but whether the Bush administration can focus on and accomplish achievable goals in a whirlwind of conflict. That means focusing on changing the gangster culture of Iraq and neighboring countries, not on changing the Islamic or Arab culture of the Middle East.

">jimhoagland@washpost.com

Sunday, November 30, 2003

The Chant Not Heard
By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN

stood on the sidewalk in London the other day and watched thousands of antiwar, anti-George Bush, anti-Tony Blair protesters pass by. They chanted every antiwar slogan you could imagine and many you couldn't print. It was entertaining — but also depressing, because it was so disconnected from the day's other news.

Just a few hours earlier, terrorists in Istanbul had blown up a British-owned bank and the British consulate, killing or wounding scores of British and Turkish civilians. Yet nowhere could I find a single sign in London reading, "Osama, How Many Innocents Did You Kill Today?" or "Baathists — Hands Off the U.N. and the Red Cross in Iraq." Hey, I would have settled for "Bush and Blair Equal Bin Laden and Saddam" — something, anything, that acknowledged that the threats to global peace today weren't just coming from the White House and Downing Street.

Sorry, but there is something morally obtuse about holding an antiwar rally on a day when your own people have been murdered — and not even mentioning it or those who perpetrated it. Watching this scene, I couldn't help but wonder whether George Bush had made the liberal left crazy. It can't see anything else in the world today, other than the Bush-Blair original sin of launching the Iraq war, without U.N. approval or proof of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Believe me, being a liberal on every issue other than this war, I have great sympathy for where the left is coming from. And if I didn't, my wife would remind me. It would be a lot easier for the left to engage in a little postwar reconsideration if it saw even an ounce of reflection, contrition or self-criticism coming from the conservatives, such as Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld, who drove this war, yet so bungled its aftermath and so misjudged the complexity of postwar Iraq. Moreover, the Bush team is such a partisan, ideological, nonhealing administration that many liberals just want to punch its lights out — which is what the Howard Dean phenomenon is all about.

But here's why the left needs to get beyond its opposition to the war and start pitching in with its own ideas and moral support to try to make lemons into lemonade in Baghdad:

First, even though the Bush team came to this theme late in the day, this war is the most important liberal, revolutionary U.S. democracy-building project since the Marshall Plan. The primary focus of U.S. forces in Iraq today is erecting a decent, legitimate, tolerant, pluralistic representative government from the ground up. I don't know if we can pull this off. We got off to an unnecessarily bad start. But it is one of the noblest things this country has ever attempted abroad and it is a moral and strategic imperative that we give it our best shot.

Unless we begin the long process of partnering with the Arab world to dig it out of the developmental hole it's in, this angry, frustrated region is going to spew out threats to world peace forever. The next six months in Iraq — which will determine the prospects for democracy-building there — are the most important six months in U.S. foreign policy in a long, long time. And it is way too important to leave it to the Bush team alone.

On Iraq, there has to be more to the left than anti-Bushism. The senior Democrat who understands that best is the one not running for president — Senator Joe Biden. He understands that the liberal opposition to the Bush team should be from the right — to demand that we send more troops to Iraq, and more committed democracy builders, to do the job better and smarter than the Bush team has.

Second, we are seeing — from Bali to Istanbul — the birth of a virulent, nihilistic form of terrorism that seeks to kill any advocates of modernism and pluralism, be they Muslims, Christians or Jews. This terrorism started even before 9/11, and is growing in the darkest corners of the Muslim world. It is the most serious threat to open societies, because one more 9/11 and we'll really see an erosion of our civil liberties. Ultimately, only Arabs and Muslims can root out this threat, but they will do that only when they have ownership over their own lives and societies. Nurturing that is our real goal in Iraq.

"In general," says Robert Wright, author of "Nonzero," "too few who opposed the war understand the gravity of the terrorism problem, and too few who favored it understand the subtlety of the problem."

For my money, the right liberal approach to Iraq is to say: We can do it better. Which is why the sign I most hungered to see in London was, "Thanks, Mr. Bush. We'll take it from here."



This page is powered by Blogger. Isn't yours?

http://www.activistchat.com/blogiran/images/blogiran2.jpg