Israeli Military Official Threatens New Lebanon War - Officials Admit Last War Was Planned

Marking the third anniversary of the July War
Lebanon remembers as Israeli official says war planned in advance
By NOW Staff, NOW Lebanon, July 12, 2009

Today marks the third anniversary of the outbreak of the 2006 July War. The 34-day conflict killed over 1000 Lebanese civilians, forced nearly one million from their homes and left swathes of the country in ruins.

Three years on, an Israeli official used the occasion to admit the country had planned war against Lebanon prior to the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers and that it was intended to eliminate Hezbollah. A former head of the National Security Council also warned of future conflict if Hezbollah is included in the next cabinet.

Within Lebanon, Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri used the occasion to emphasize the need for a national-unity cabinet, while opposition politicians called for unity in the face of Israeli threats and de-mining teams continue to remove unexploded cluster bombs in the South.

The 2006 War

On June 12, 2006, Hezbollah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, and killed three during an assault on a patrol on the Israeli side of Lebanon’s southern border.

Israel, which was already involved in a military operation in the Gaza Strip to free another captured soldier, immediately responded by sending ground forces into southern Lebanon for the first time since its 2000 withdrawal.

The Israeli Defense Force carried out massive airstrikes against Lebanon, paralyzing major points of infrastructure such as the country’s only international airport, bridges and power plants, and subjected it to a punishing air and naval blockade.

Hezbollah strongholds in the South, the Bekaa Valley and Dahiyeh in southern Beirut were particularly targeted by Israeli strikes.

Hezbollah responded by engaging in guerilla battles against advancing Israeli units and fired approximately 4,000 unguided rockets into northern Israel.

According to AFP reports, the 34-day Israeli offensive left at least 1,287 Lebanese dead and 4,054 wounded. Four UN observers and one UNIFIL member were also killed by Israeli strikes. The UNHCR estimates nearly one million Lebanese were displaced by the war.

The Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs said 119 Israeli soldiers and 44 civilians were killed during the conflict. Hezbollah and Amal announced they lost 91 combatants.

A ceasefire came into effect on August 14 after UN Security Council Resolution 1701 was unanimously approved by the UN Security Council on August 11, and by the Lebanese and Israeli governments the following days. The resolution called for a full Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon and the disarmament of Hezbollah.

In the final stages of the conflict, Israel rained millions of cluster bomblets on southern Lebanon, many of which failed to detonate on impact and have killed and injured dozens of civilians in the last three years, despite ongoing de-mining efforts. After considerable international pressure, Israel handed maps of the locations of the cluster bombs to UNIFIL in May this year.

The conflict cost Lebanon billions of dollars. At the 2006 Stockholm and 2007 Paris III donor conferences, governments and organizations pledged close to 8.5 billion dollars in grants and loans to help Lebanon rebuild and recover from the devastating war.

Hezbollah returned the bodies of the two kidnapped Israeli soldiers on July 16, 2008, in return for the release of Palestinian Liberation Front member Samir Kuntar, who was convicted of murder by an Israeli court, four Hezbollah members and the bodies of 200 Lebanese and Palestinians.

The 2009 Israeli response

Former and current Israeli officials used the anniversary to warn of future attacks against Lebanon if Hezbollah is legitimized by being included in the cabinet. They also acknowledged the 2006 attack had been planned well in advance and was intended to destroy Hezbollah.

NOW Lebanon’s correspondent in South Lebanon also reported on Sunday that Israeli fighter jets conducted low flights over Nabatiyeh, Marjayoun and Hasbaya and launched mock air raids against southern areas.

Israeli Brigadier General Dan Halutz, IDF Chief of Staff during the 2006 July War, told a conference at Tel Aviv University's Center for Strategic Research on Sunday that Israel had planned for war against Lebanon long before Hezbollah abducted the two IDF soldiers and its principle aim was “the total elimination of Hezbollah.”

He said former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Defense Minister Amir Peretz had erred when they refused his proposal to attack the Lebanese cabinet and infrastructure during the war, which he said paved the way for Hezbollah to later strengthen its military capabilities.

Former head of the Israeli National Security Council, Giyora Giora Eiland, also warned on Sunday that Israel will wage war against Lebanon, its infrastructure and all those who support Hezbollah, if the new Lebanese cabinet legitimizes the party.

He warned that Israel will wage in the future a stronger offensive than that witnessed during the 2006 July War.

Eiland called on the Israeli cabinet to urge the international community, particularly the United States, France and Saudi Arabia, to put pressure on the Lebanese cabinet in order to change its policy toward Hezbollah.

An Israeli official preempted the anniversary on Saturday by warning Hezbollah had expanded its arsenal after the 2006 war, and cautioned the militant group against carrying out further acts of sabotage against Israel or abducting its citizens and soldiers.

“After 2006, Hezbollah has not attempted to attack northern Israel, which proves that the party incurred heavy losses during the war and the Israeli Defense Forces were capable of restoring their deterrent capacity,” Israeli Northern Command chief Alon Friedman told Israeli public radio.

The Lebanese commemoration

Lebanese politicians praised the unity and courage of the Lebanese people during the July War, and used the occasion to emphasize the importance of a national unity government.

Hezbollah Secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah met on Sunday with Vice President of the Higher Shia Islamic Council Sheikh Abdel Amir Qabalan to commemorate the anniversary, saying it is “necessary to confront Israeli aggression against domestic Lebanese affairs with a unified national front.”

They also discussed the ongoing threat posed by Israel, referring to its ongoing occupation of Lebanese land, its violations of Lebanese sovereignty by land, air and sea, as well as the establishment of spy networks that threatened Lebanon’s stability and security.

Speaker Nabih Berri used the occasion to call for all compensation issues related to the conflict to be finalized and said Lebanon defeated Israel in 2006 because of national unity.

“The Resistance and the army’s martyrs achieved something glorious for the Lebanese people,” Berri said.

Foreign Minister Fawzi Salloukh said the conflict had destroyed Israel’s deterrent force. He called for the cabinet to be formed quickly, so the country can confront Israel’s “threats and intimidation, in addition to its daily violations of Lebanon’s sovereignty and UN Security Council Resolution 1701.”

Speaking on Saturday after meeting President Sleiman at Baabda, Prime Minister-elect Saad Hariri said the occasion had prompted the president and himself to stress the importance of forming a national-unity cabinet.

In a statement issued earlier on Saturday, Sleiman praised the “victorious” efforts of the Lebanese Armed Forces, the Resistance and ordinary civilians during the conflict.

“Israel learned a tough lesson after the war, which led them to resort to threats and intimidation instead of the attacks that have proceeded each summer,” the president added.

He also criticized Israel for continuing to violate UN Security Council Resolution 1701 on a daily basis.

Israeli Army amasses troops, military hardware along Lebanese border

Daily Star staff, The Daily Star, June 26, 2009

BEIRUT: The Israeli Army stepped up its presence along the border with Lebanon deploying armored tanks and setting up fortifications as it intensified airspace violations in the area, Lebanon's state-run National News Agency reported Thursday. In "unusual military activity," the Israeli Army deployed Merkava tanks and soldier carriers, among other armored vehicles, along the barb-wired fence separating Shebaa Farms from liberated Lebanese territories, the NNA said.

Israeli tanks were also amassing along a 5-kilometer area, stretching from Tallat Sobaih army post to Jabal al-Sheikh observatory. Sporadic gunfire was also heard throughout the day, the NNA report said.

Meanwhile, the Israeli Air Force carried out several flights over the regions of the Shebaa Farms, Al-Arqoub villages, Hasbaya, Marjayoun, Western Bekaa and Iqlim al-Tuffah. Israeli helicopters were also spotted over the Shebaa Farms between 6 a.m. and 8:30 a.m.

On the outskirts of the southern village of Abassiya, the Israeli Army set up fortifications and barricades as part of a military workshop around Al-Dohaira post, off the town of Al-Ghajar. Heavy machinery was being used including bulldozers, drills and large cranes. A similar workshop was taking place at Jabal al-Sheikh's observatory with soldiers setting up military equipment.

In other news, an Israeli Army delegation suggested taking Lebanese-Israeli military talks under the auspices of the UN peacekeepers' command to the next stage, As-Safir newspaper reported on Thursday.

The newspaper said that the proposal came during a meeting held between the two sides on the implementation of UN Resolution 1701 in the presence of commander of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) Major General Claudio Graziano in the border town of Naqoura on Wednesday.

Lebanese government sources told As-Safir that the Israeli side proposed to Lebanese Army representatives to move the talks which solely focus on the implementation of the resolution, which put an end to the summer 2006 war, "to the bilateral political level between the governments of Lebanon and Israel."

"If you accept our invitation, all [problems] would be subject to a solution at one time," the head of the Israeli delegation had reportedly told the Lebanese side.

But the Lebanese Army representatives bluntly replied that government instructions limit the tripartite meeting's agenda to issues related to the implementation of Resolution 1701, according to As-Safir.

The delegation "categorically" rejected the Israeli proposal, the daily reported.

The army delegation later informed Prime Minister Fouad Siniora about the results of the tripartite meeting that lasted three hours.

Meanwhile, As-Safir said the UNIFIL command informed Lebanon that the Israeli violation of the Blue Line was removed after the Israeli Army had taken down its flag at an observation post that it erected last week in a restricted area on the outskirts of Kfar Shouba Hills.

However, An-Nahar daily said that the outpost was intact and all that Israel did was to take down the flag.

Kfar Shouba's Mayor Izzat al-Qadri, who inspected the area on Wednesday, told the newspaper that the Israeli violation was ongoing.

"I urge the Lebanese premier, the army command and the UNIFIL leadership to make every effort to end this violation," he said.

Indian warship on goodwill visit to Israel

Harinder Mishra, Press Trust Of India, Hindustan Times, June 1, 2009

India's front line warship of the Sword Arm Western Fleet, INS Brahmaputra, is on a four-day goodwill visit to this northern coastal city to re-affirm old ties with Israel.

"The visit shows the importance India attaches to its relationship with Israel. Not only that, it is also fitted with the 'state of the art' Barak defence missile system as the first line of defence supplied by it", commander of the warship, Captain Philipose G Pynumootil, said while addressing a gathering on the ship.

"The enthusiasm clearly shows that the Indian ship is in friendly waters. It is not only in Israel but a part of it is also Israeli", India's Ambassador to Israel, Navtej Sarna, said referring to the Barak defence missile system on the warship.

Navy officials on board the ship told PTI that Indian warships have regularly paid visits to ports in the West Asia and East Africa reaffirming their peaceful presence and solidarity with countries in the region. Among those gathered to see the Indian ship was a former commander of the old INS Brahmaputra, Jack Japheth, who is now an Israeli citizen settled in Tel Aviv after retirement.

Dressed in Indian Navy uniform, the 93-year-old former naval officer drew huge applause from the audience when he sang a hit patriotic number from a Raj Kapoor film. INS Brahmaputra, one of Indian Navy's finest guided missile frigates, arrived here from Eritrea and will leave for Naples on June 2.

The warship boasts versatile suite of long range sensors, incorporating radars, sonars and electronic warfare equipment that enable her to simultaneously address threats in all three dimensions--surface, sub-surface and air. When called upon, she can bring to bear awesome offensive or defensive firepower, with her wide-ranging 'top of the line' ordnance.

It has been deployed on humanitarian aid and disaster relief missions on several occasions, including the tsunami relief operations in December 2004 and the Operation Sukoon during the Lebanon crisis in July 2006.

Soon after the tsunami wreaked havoc, INS Brahmaputra made a dash to Campbell Bay in the Andaman and Nicobar group of Islands dropping 18 tonnes of relief material, bringing succour to the unfortunate personnel who had lost their home and hearth to the fury of nature.

During the Lebanon crisis, the ship as part of the Indian Naval Flotilla played a stellar role in evacuating over 2280 Indian and SAARC nationals.

Convergence and Continuity: The American-Backed Terror Campaign in Iran

Chris Floyd, OpEdNews, May 29, 2009

On Thursday, a suicide bomber walked into a mosque, detonated his explosives and killed and wounded almost 140 people. In the wreckage and confusion afterward, a final death count has not yet been established, but the latest available information puts it at 23.

It is unlikely that you heard about this terrorist attack -- because it took place in Iran. For years, Iran has endured a series of terrorist actions -- suicide bombings, kidnappings, beheadings, open assaults by fanatical gunmen, sabotage, and "targeted assassinations" of government officials, scientists and others. Multitudes have been slaughtered in these operations, whose ferocity and frequency are surpassed only by the atrocities that have been unleashed in the four countries that have been on the forefront of America's Terror War: Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Somalia. One shudders to think what Washington's response would be to such a sustained campaign on American soil.

Of course, it is no mystery why the attack on the mosque in Zahedan -- a city situated at the strategic point where the borders of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan converge -- attracted so little attention in the Western press. Every day, we are schooled relentlessly by our political and media classes to regard the Iranians -- heirs to one of the world's oldest and most sophisticated civilizations -- as demons and subhumans, whose lives are of little account. This can be seen in the long-running debate over an attack on Iran, which focuses almost entirely on the advantages or disadvantages such an assault would pose for American and Israeli interests -- and not at all on the thousands of human beings living in Iran who would be killed in the operation.

But there is another reason why the terrorist attack in Zahedan has not been greeted with commiserations from the White House or excited coverage from our government-spoonfed media: because it is highly likely that the United States played a role in fomenting the attack, either by direct or by collateral hand.

As AFP notes, Zahedan is the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province, with "a large ethnic Sunni Baluch minority," which is often at odds with the Shiite-dominated central government. The region -- which is also a prime conduit for arms and drug trafficking across the volatile borders -- has been roiled for years by the militant Sunni extremist group, Jundullah (Soldiers of God). This group, aligned philosophically if not operationally with al Qaeda, has openly boasted of killing hundreds of people in its campaigns, and, as Chris Hedges notes, "has a habit of beheading Iranians it captures, including a recent group of 16 Iranian police officials, and filming and distributing the executions."

You would think that such violent, frenzied zealots -- fellow travellers of Osama bin Laden! -- would be taken up by our Terror Warriors as poster boys for the evils of "Islamofascism." But as we noted here a few months ago, "bombings and beheadings and deathporn videos are not inherently evil; they can also be a force for good -- as long as they put to the service of America's ever-noble, ever-lofty foreign policy ideals."

For Jundullah is one of the several armed insurgent groups inside Iran being supported by the United States. As Andrew Cockburn reported last year:

Six weeks ago, President Bush signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime that, according to those familiar with its contents, "unprecedented in its scope."

Bush's secret directive covers actions across a huge geographic area – from Lebanon to Afghanistan – but is also far more sweeping in the type of actions permitted under its guidelines – up to and including the assassination of targeted officials. This widened scope clears the way, for example, for full support for the military arm of Mujahedin-e Khalq, the cultish Iranian opposition group, despite its enduring position on the State Department's list of terrorist groups.

Similarly, covert funds can now flow without restriction to Jundullah, or "army of god," the militant Sunni group in Iranian Baluchistan – just across the Afghan border -- whose leader was featured not long ago on Dan Rather Reports cutting his brother-in-law's throat.

Other elements that will benefit from U.S. largesse and advice include Iranian Kurdish nationalists, as well the Ahwazi Arabs of south west Iran. Further afield, operations against Iran's Hezbollah allies in Lebanon will be stepped up, along with efforts to destabilize the Syrian regime.

Thus the attack this week in Zahedan is an integral part of a wide-ranging campaign of American-supported terrorism inside Iran -- even if the "darksiders" in the U.S. security organs had no direct involvement or knowledge of this particular attack. When you are in the business of fomenting terror (see here and here), there's no need for micro-management. You co-opt the armed extremists who best serve your political agenda of the moment; you slip them guns, money, intelligence, guidance -- and then you turn them loose on the local populace.

We have seen this over and over; in Iraq, for example, where American death squads -- such as the ones led by Stanley McChrystal, recently appointed by Barack Obama to work his "dirty war" magic in Afghanistan -- joined with mostly Shiite militias to carry out massive "ethnic cleansing" campaigns and individual assassinations. We saw it years ago, in the American-led construction of an international army of mostly Sunni extremists raised to hot-foot the Soviets in Afghanistan -- then turned loose upon the world. And of course this lineage of terror-breeding as an instrument of American foreign policy goes back for many decades. with one of the earliest, most spectacular successes being the use of religious extremists to help bring down the secular republic in Iran in 1953.

And as we noted here last year:

Bush's directive represents an intensification of the drive for open war with Iran, but it is not a new development; rather, it is a major "surge" in a state terror campaign the Administration has been waging against Iran (among others) for years. As I wrote as along ago as August 2004, the Bushists have openly sought, and received, big budgets and bipartisan support for terrorist groups and extremist militias all over the world. Here's an excerpt from that 2004 report:

If you would know the hell that awaits us – and not far off – there's no need to consult ancient prophecies, or the intricate coils of hidden conspiracies, or the tortured arcana of high-credentialed experts. You need only read the public words, sworn before God, of top public officials, the great lords of state, the defenders of civilization, as they explain – clearly, openly, with confidence and pride – their plans to foment terror, rape, war and repression across the face of the earth.

Last month, in little-noticed testimony before Congress, the Bush Regime unveiled its plans to raise a host of warlord armies in the most volatile areas in the world, Agence France-Presse reports. Bush wants $500 million in seed money to arm and train non-governmental "local militias" – i.e., bands of lawless freebooters – to serve as Washington's proxy killers in the so-called "arc of crisis" that just happens to stretch across the oil-bearing lands and strategic pipeline routes of Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia and South America.

Flanked by a gaggle of military brass, Pentagon deputy honcho Paul Wolfowitz told a rapt panel of Congressional rubber-stamps that Bush wants big bucks to run "counter-insurgency" and "counter-terrorist" operations in "ungoverned areas" of the world – and in the hinterlands of nations providing "sanctuary" for terrorists. Making copious citations from Bush's 2002 "National Security Strategy" of unprovoked aggressive war against "potential" enemies, Howlin' Wolf proposed expanding the definition of "terrorist sanctuary" to any nation that allows clerics and other rabble-rousers to offer even verbal encouragement to America's designated enemies du jour....

There's nothing really new in Bush's murder-by-proxy scheme, of course; America has a long, bipartisan tradition of paying local thugs to do Washington's bloodwork. For example, late last month, Guatemala was forced to pay $420 million in extortion to veterans of the U.S.-backed "paramilitaries" who helped Ronald Reagan's favorite dictator, right-wing Christian coupster Efrain Rios Montt, kill 100,000 innocent people during his reign, the BBC reports. The paramilitaries, whose well-documented war crimes include rape, murder and torture, had threatened to shut down the country if they weren't given some belated booty for their yeoman service in the Reagan-Bush cause.

But Wolfowitz did reveal one original twist in Bush's plan: targeting the Homeland itself as a "terrorist sanctuary." In addition to loosing his own personal Janjaweed on global hotspots, Bush is also seeking new powers to prevent anyone he designates a "terrorist" from "abusing the freedom of democratic societies" or "exploiting the technologies of communication" – i.e., defending themselves in court or logging on to the Internet. As AFP notes, Wolfowitz tactfully refrained from detailing just how the Regime intends to curb the dangerous use of American freedom, but he did allow that "difficult decisions" would be required.

[Perhaps some of those measures to prevent people from "exploiting the technologies of communication" to spread discontent with the Imperium are being formalized right now in the new Administration's plans for a "cyberspace command," where "the armed forces [will] conduct both offensive and defensive computer warfare," as the NY Times reports. And since "cyberwar" -- like the Terror War -- "knows no borders" (as the usual anonymous "senior intelligence official" told the Times), the Obama White House is now busying trying to figure out just how you can aim its cyberwar offensives at the Homeland itself. After all, said the official, "how do you fight them if you can't act both inside and outside the United States?" How indeed? Better start training your carrier pigeons for any private messages you might want to send.]

II.
In any case, whatever its provenance, the attack on the Zahedan mosque serves a confluence of interests. For it comes not only at a strategic location but also at a strategic time: just two weeks before the Iranian presidential election, with the hardline incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, facing a strong challenge from two reformist candidates.

Of course, the very last thing that the militarists in Washington and Israel want to see is the election of a moderate in Iran. They want -- and need -- Ahmadinejad, or someone just like him, so they can keep stoking the fires for war. A moderate president, more open to genuine negotiations, and much cooler in rhetoric than the loose-lipped Ahmadinejad, would be yet another blow to their long-term plans. Because the ultimate aim -- the only aim, really -- of the militarists' policy toward Iran is regime change. They don't care about "national security" or the "threat" from Iran's non-existent nuclear arsenal; they know that there is no threat whatsoever that Iran will attack Israel -- or even more ludicrously, the United States -- even if Tehran did have nukes. They don't care about the suffering of the Iranian people under a draconian, repressive and corrupt regime. They are not worried about Iran's "sponsorship of terrorism," for, as we've seen, the militarists thrive on -- when they are not actively fomenting -- the fear and anguish caused by terrorism. This fear is the grease that drives the ever-expanding war machine and 'justifies' its own ever-increasing draconian powers and corruption.

No, in the end, the sole aim of the militarist policy is to overthrow Iran's current political system and replace it with a regime that will bow to the hegemony of the United States and its regional deputy, Israel. There is no essential difference in aim or method between today's policy and that of 1953. (Except that the regional deputy in those days was Britain, not Israel.) What they want is compliance, access to resources and another strategic stronghold in the heart of the oil lands -- precisely what they wanted, and got, with the installation of the Shah and his corruption-ridden police state more than a half-century ago.

They play the long game, our militarists. For example, they agitated openly -- and plotted covertly -- for the invasion of Iraq for almost 10 years before they finally got their way. They have worked for 30 years now to restore a client regime in Iran, and today, with the relentless bipartisan demonizing of the Iranians -- and the "mushroom cloud" fearmongering over a non-existent nuclear weapons program -- they are as close as they have ever been to their goal. To lose a fear-raising (and fundraising!) asset like Ahmadinejad now would be a bitter disappointment.

And what better way for an incumbent president to stand tall before the voters than to rally the nation around him in the face of a horrible terrorist attack? A mosque full of Shiite worshippers, blown to pieces, with photos showing the blood of the innocent martyrs splattered on the ruined walls? This serves the interests of all the major players in the great geopolitical game: the Iranian hardliners, the American and Israeli militarists, the Jundullah extremists. Of course, it doesn't serve the interests of the murdered dead, or the Iranian people -- or the American people, for that matter. But this too is nothing new. As we noted here in 2007, in a piece about an earlier escalation of state terror by the American government:

There are really no words to describe how morally depraved and monumentally stupid this policy is. It is of course not all that surprising that it springs from a family whose political fortunes are founded, at least in part, from the financial fortunes it reaped from helping build the Nazi military-industrial complex; a family that continued trading with the Nazis even after Americans were in battle against Hitler's forces. The Bushes and their outriders have always been attuned to the kind of brutal realpolitik that is willing -- at times eager -- to see American blood shed in order to advance their elitist agenda. (Which they have of course internalized as being identical with the "national interest.")

But as we've also noted many times, this political "philosophy" is by no means unique to the Bush Family faction. It is resolutely bipartisan, and deeply embedded in the mindset of the American Establishment. The Bushes are nothing but second-rate camp followers, empty shells and non-entities, originating nothing, ignorant and cynical in equal measure, their only unusual trait being how open they are in their scorn for the worthless rabble and the bullshit Constitution that the crypto-Commies like Madison and Jefferson foisted on the proper rulers of the country. Otherwise, they simply regurgitate the unprocessed prejudices, unexamined assumptions and vulgar ambitions of the clique that spawned them.

Of course, at times the idiot George W. Bush and the criminally ignorant crew that surrounds him have brought the inherent lawlessness, greed, brutality and incompetence of the American elite to what seem like new heights -- although even the sick-making murder of the Iraq campaign has still not approached the genocidal fury of, say, the bipartisan bombing of Indochina, and the millions of dead that the "best and the brightest" left behind there. Nor have Bush's domestic repression and flagrant abuse of authority -- as bad as they are -- yet approached the toxic and all-pervasive level of the "Red Scares" launched by Democratic icons Woodrow Wilson and Harry Truman. (Joe McCarthy merely took the ball that Truman put into play and ran with it.) But sufficient unto the day is the trouble thereof; the crimes of the Bush Administration are not any less heinous -- and the people they have murdered are not any less dead -- just because these crimes are not some aberration of the idiot and his crew but are instead continuations and at times accelerations of long-standing Establishment thinking and policy.

But with each passing decade, the technological tools of repression and militarism grow more overpowering and far-reaching. With each passing decade, the pernicious after-effects and blowback from past depredations build up and compound, breeding new evils. With each passing decade, the societal rot engendered by the rapacity of the elite spreads deeper, eating away at the foundation of the Republic and the fabric of our communities, and weakening or destroying the social and institutional counterbalances to unchecked greed and ambition.

Thus in one sense it doesn't matter if the Bush Faction is any more or less criminal and destructive than other administrations. The world in which they are blundering around killing people is far more unstable and dangerous than before, because it is filled with the compounded evil and folly of previous times.

Of course, that was written a long time ago, back in those dark days when Bush Family factotum Robert Gates was still running the Pentagon and operators of death squads and torture shops like Stanley McChrystal were given high commands; back when the government was going to court to protect warantless spying on Americans and seeking to strip all rights from Terror War captives held indefinitely at the arbitrary will of the president, and devising "legal" justifications for these exercises of authoritarian power; back when the Pentagon and CIA were expanding their operations in Pakistan and intensifying the civilian-shredding air war in Afghanistan; back when we had militarist leaders who considered the mass-murdering war crime in Iraq to be "an extraordinary achievement;" back when cynical and hypocritical presidents would travel to harsh dictatorships in the Middle East to deliver "major speeches" on America's great commitment to freedom and democracy in Muslim lands; and back when the president and his secretary of state routinely ignored all contrary evidence to insist that the Iranians were developing a nuclear arsenal that would soon threaten the whole world with destruction, while U.S. covert agencies were funding and fueling the death and suffering of Iranian civilians in terrorist operations.

Thank god everything is different now, in our glorious new era of Progressive Continuity. Too bad those people in Zahedan can't tell the difference.


Chris Floyd is an American journalist. His work has appeared in print and online in venues all over the world, including The Nation, Counterpunch, Columbia Journalism Review, the Christian Science Monitor, Il Manifesto, the Moscow Times and many (more...)

Casey: Army would have to ‘shift gears’ for N. Korea battle

By Jeff Schogol, Stars and Stripes, Pacific edition, May 30, 2009

WASHINGTON – It would take the Army time to "shift gears" if it needed to fight against North Korea, Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey said Thursday.

Right now, the Army is focused on the counterinsurgency efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, but North Korea’s recent saber rattling has raised the prospect that the Army might be called upon to fight a conventional war.

"I have said publicly for some time that if we had to shift gears, it would probably take us about 90 days or so to shift our gears and to train the folks up that were preparing to go to Iraq and Afghanistan to go someplace else," Casey said after a speech at a Washington think tank.

That doesn’t mean that it would take at least 90 days to send reinforcements to U.S. troops in South Korea, Casey said.

"We would move forces as rapidly as we could get them prepared," he said.

Casey declined to say how fast the Army could mobilize to meet a threat from North Korea, but he stressed the Army is "combat seasoned" and can move quickly.

"The mechanical skills of artillery gunnery and tank gunnery come back very, very quickly," he said. "The harder part is the integration — that really brigade level and above of massing fires and effects in a very constricted period of time as opposed to what you do in a counterinsurgency over a much longer extended period of time."

Looking to the future, Casey said he expects conflicts this century to look a lot like the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the Israeli war with Hezbollah in 2006.

Regarding the latter, Casey noted that the key lesson the Israelis learned was that they were too focused on irregular warfare.

"They were working so much in the West Bank and conducting counterinsurgency-like operations that they lost their combined arms skills, the ability to integrate fires in air and tanks and artillery," he said.

The U.S. Army needs to be prepared for the "full spectrum" operations ranging from offensive, defensive and stability operations, he said.

Casey expressed confidence that the U.S. Army can fight and win a conventional war against North Korea given its experience in Iraq and Afghanistan.

"I’m not afraid of putting this force in the field against anybody," he said.

Hezbollah gunmen seize control of Beirut neighborhoods

BASSEM MROUE, AP, May 9, 2008

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Shiite Hezbollah gunmen seized nearly all of the Lebanese capital's Muslim sector from Sunni foes loyal to the U.S.-backed government on Friday in the country's worst sectarian clashes since the 15-year civil war.

At least 11 people have been killed and more than 20 wounded in three days of street battles in West Beirut between the Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah fighters and gunmen to the government, security officials said.

The satellite TV station affiliated with the party of Lebanon's top Sunni lawmaker, Saad Hariri, was forced off the air. Gunmen set the offices of the party's newspaper, Al-Mustaqbal, on fire in the coastal neighborhood of Ramlet el-Bayda.

Hariri and Druse leader Walid Jumblatt were besieged in their West Beirut residences. Prime Minister Fuad Saniora and several ministers holed up in Saniora's downtown office surrounded by troops and police.

Gunmen loyal to the Syrian Social Nationalist Party set ablaze a two-story building where Hariri's Future TV has its archives in the western neighborhood of Rawche, about 100 yards from the Saudi embassy. The secular pro-Syrian group, a longtime ally of Hezbollah, has dozens of its own gunmen in the streets.

A rocket-propelled grenade hit the fence of Hariri's heavily protected residence, security officials said on condition of anonymity because they were not allowed to speak to the media.

Pro-government majority officials held an emergency meeting in a mountain town in the Christian heartland northeast of Beirut, according to LBC TV, a pro-government Christian station.

"Even if Hezbollah's militia took everything we remain the constitutional authority," Cabinet Minister Ahmed Fatfat told Al-Arabiya TV from Saniora's compound.

The unrest shut down Lebanon's international airport and barricades set up by both side closed major highways. The seaport also was closed, leaving one land route to Syria as Lebanon's only link to the outside world.

Arab foreign ministers called an emergency meeting for Sunday in Cairo, Egypt to discuss the crisis, Egyptian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hossam Zaki said.

About 100 Shiite Hezbollah militants wearing camouflage uniforms and carrying assault rifles marched down Hamra Street, a normally vibrant commercial strip in a mainly Sunni area of Beirut. They took up positions in corners and sidewalks and stopped the few cars braving the empty streets to search their trunks.

On nearby streets, dozens of fighters from another Hezbollah-allied party appeared, some wearing masks and carrying rocket-propelled grenade launchers.

Lebanon's army, which has stayed out of the sectarian political squabbling that has paralyzed the country for more than a year, did not intervene in the clashes, which had largely tapered off into sporadic gunfire by early afternoon.

Troops then began taking up positions in some Sunni neighborhoods abandoned by the pro-government groups. A senior security official said the army would soon take over the Sunnis' last stronghold of Tarik Jadideh.

In some cases Hezbollah handed over newly won positions to Lebanese troops.

The sectarian tensions are fueled in part by the rivalry between predominantly Shiite Iran which sponsors Hezbollah, and Sunni Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

The leaders of Syria, Hezbollah's other major backer, and Qatar, which supports the Lebanese government, met in Damascus and Syria's official news agency said both agreed the conflict was an internal affair and hoped the feuding parties would find a solution through dialogue.

France's Foreign Ministry said an evacuation of its citizens in Lebanon was not planned, but warned against travel to the country.

In an online briefing, Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Pascale Andreani called on French nationals in Lebanon to act with the "utmost prudence."

The Lebanese government, which is allied with the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, has only a slim majority in parliament. The two sides have been locked in a power struggle that has kept government at a standstill and the country without a president since November.

The eruption of the long-simmering tensions appeared to be triggered by the government's decision this week to confront Hezbollah by declaring its private communications network illegal and replacing the Beirut airport security chief for alleged ties to the militants.

Hezbollah first blocked roads in Beirut on Wednesday. Confrontations quickly spread and became more violent. Factions threw up roadblocks and checkpoints dividing Beirut into sectarian enclaves, and the chattering of automatic weapons and thumps of rocket-propelled grenades echoed across the city overnight.

Street clashes exploded into gunbattles in parts of Beirut on Thursday afternoon after Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah accused Lebanon's Western-backed government of declaring war on his group. It was the militant leader's strongest comments since Lebanon's political crisis erupted 17 months ago.

Hariri later went on television urging Hezbollah to pull its fighters back and "save Lebanon from hell." He proposed a compromise that would involve the army, one of the sole national institutions respected by Lebanon's long deadlocked factions.

But Hezbollah and its allies swiftly rejected the offer.

Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war left 150,000 dead and much of the city devastated and carved into warring sectarian enclaves.
___

Associated Press writer Scheherezade Faramarzi contributed to this report.

U.S. Embassy in Beirut warns citizens against being targeted

chinaview.cn, March 6, 2008

BEIRUT (Xinhua) -- American embassy in Beirut sent a warning to its citizens in Lebanon to take "responsible security measures," stay away from public places, and avoid any appearance that show they are Americans, local Elnashra website reported Thursday.

The U.S. embassy, explained in a statement that the "unstable situation and explosions in recent months" have urged its staff to take maximum precautious measures, said the report.

The warning pointed to the media coverage of American warship presence in the east of the Mediterranean "aimed at preserving stability in the region," as another reason that could trigger "fundamentalist groups" to target American citizens and interests.

The embassy also asked its citizens to report any suspicious attitudes.

Local press reported earlier that Saudi Arabian embassy in Lebanon had asked its citizens to leave the country "as soon as possible."

Lebanese presidential seat has been vacant since former president Emile Lahoud ended his term on Nov. 24, and the sharply divided Lebanese parliament has delayed the elections for 15 times without a consensus.

The presidency deadlock deepened the Lebanese political crisis as fears are mounting that failure in reaching a deal on the presidential candidate could result more violence in the country.

US Makes Show of Force at Sea in Mideast

By PAULINE JELINEK, The Guardian, March 5, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. Navy switched out warships patrolling in the Mediterranean on Wednesday, maintaining a show of strength during a period of tensions with Syria and political uncertainty in Lebanon.

Officials said it was a routine, planned deployment but it was an action sure to draw attention in the Mideast, where an announcement on U.S. presence last week caused a political stir in Lebanon.

The USS Cole guided missile destroyer and support ships passed through the Suez Canal at midday Wednesday, heading from the Mediterranean Sea into the Red Sea, canal officials said. In Washington, a Navy official said the Cole had been relieved by the guided missile destroyer USS Ors and the guided missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea.

Both the canal official and navy official spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of talking about ship movements.

``It's a sign of our commitment to stability in the region ... a stabilizing force and commitment to our allies,'' Defense Department spokesman Bryan Whitman said Wednesday of the U.S. presence.

``I think it prevents miscalculations,'' he told Pentagon reporters.

The deployment of the USS Cole had sparked criticism from Hezbollah and from pro-Syrian groups in Lebanon, who are locked in a political standoff with the pro-U.S. government. It also sparked criticism from Syria.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Saniora has said his government did not ask for the ships and that they were not in territorial waters. Some in his coalition said they were surprised by the deployment.

Syria has said the deployment threatened security in the region. Syria's foreign minister warned the U.S. it cannot impose its own solutions to the political crisis in Lebanon. Syria's foreign minister and the pro-Syrian groups in Lebanon also reminded Washington of the bloody consequences of its 1980s intervention in Lebanon.

Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters last week that the deployment should not be viewed as threatening or in response to events in any single country in that volatile region.

The decision to send the ships appeared to be a not-too-subtle show of U.S. force in the region as international frustration mounts over a long political deadlock in tiny, weak Lebanon. The U.S. blames Syria for the impasse, saying Syria has never given up its ambitions to control its smaller neighbor.

The presidential election in Lebanon has been delayed 15 times. It is now pushed back to March 11.

National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe had called the deployment of the Cole ``a show of support for regional stability'' and said President Bush is concerned about the situation in Lebanon.

---

Associated Press writer Salah Nasrawi in Cairo, Egypt, contributed to this report.

Lebanon: The Unknown Crisis - What is the USS Cole doing off the Lebanese coast?

Justin Raimondo, Antiwar.com, March 3, 2008

The USS Cole isn't engaged in a sightseeing tour of the Eastern Mediterranean: its sudden deployment just "over the horizon" near Lebanon – in tandem with two other warships – is a clear sign that the Americans are preparing for something big. That's what the Arab world seems to believe, anyway, if you listen to al-Jazeera and the chatter coming from other Arab news outlets. The Saudis, the Kuwaitis, and the government of Bahrain have all warned their citizens to get out of Lebanon, pronto. What's curious, however, is that, while it's big news in the Arab world, this "visit" by a guided-missile destroyer and accompanying flotilla has received scant attention in the U.S. news media. What's going on?

Well, it depends on what U.S. government spokesman is speaking on what day: "I would not specifically relate this to any kind of events in Lebanon or any place else," said State Department spokesman Tom Casey on Friday. However, according to White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe, it is "a show of support for regional stability." Responding to the accusations of Hezbollah, the Muslim resistance organization that sits in the Lebanese parliament, that this amounts to interference in Lebanon's internal political affairs, Johndroe averred: "I would express some of our own concerns with Hezbollah's actions."

These actions consist of opposing the government of Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, which has locked the opposition out of all governmental decisions, and effectively defending the country against the Israelis during the 30-Day War.

The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Michael Mullen, was a bit blunter, responding to the question of whether the Cole was showing the flag off the Lebanese coast in order to influence the outcome of elections scheduled for March 11: "To say it is absolutely tied would be incorrect, although certainly we are aware elections are due there at some point in time." Those elections have already been postponed on no less than 15 occasions, and no one is betting that they'll come off this time – although that is certainly the result desired by the U.S. Department of State. The idea is that the poll will strengthen the Siniora government and lay Hezbollah low, but this latest move – a provocation, really – is almost guaranteed to have the opposite effect. So much so that Siniora was forced to distance himself from the Americans, denying that the ships were in Lebanon's territorial waters and declaring that his government did "not ask anyone to send warships."

Everyone knows which government asked Washington for the warships: the same one that is now slaughtering children in Gaza and has threatened the besieged city with an Arab holocaust, the government whose deputy defense minister recently warned that the response to continued rocket attacks would be a Palestinian "shoah." The Palestinians, he brayed on state radio, are "bringing upon themselves a greater shoah because we will use all our strength in every way we deem appropriate, whether in air strikes or on the ground."

The Lobby's line is that the whole thing is a misunderstanding based on a mistranslation. National Review's Tom Gross espies a radical difference between "a shoah" and "the Shoah." "It is like confusing a 'white house' with 'The White House,'" he writes – and furthermore, this was no innocent mistake. The whole brouhaha, in his considered opinion, is evidence of an anti-Semitic conspiracy by major American news organizations.

Such an interpretation can only succeed, however, if we wear the special blinders that the Lobby would have us don, which blank out the context in which this rhetoric is being uttered. The use of the word "shoah" against the backdrop of a major military operation in Gaza – one that seems to be escalating in ferocity – amounts to the very real threat of genocide. Any alternative explanation seems on the same factual and moral plane as garden-variety Holocaust denial. If, God forbid, the Israelis ever carry out their deputy defense minister's threat, these folks will morph into little David Irvings, busily spinning out heavily footnoted disquisitions on why it never happened.

Gaza, however, is just one prong in the U.S.-Israeli "surge." The main immediate target is Syria, not Gaza or Lebanon – and, standing behind them, Iran. The Americans and their Israeli allies have tried every sort of provocation to stir the Lebanese pot and lure the Syrians back into Lebanon, where a proxy war is brewing. With the Americans supplying cover by sea and air, the IDF may get revenge for its ignominious defeat in the 30-Day War by taking out Hezbollah once and for all, and then hitting Damascus – or so the most optimistic scenario would have it.

The USS Cole and accompanying warships are not merely making a strong gesture; they have also effectively blockaded the Lebanese coast and will surely be intercepting any arms coming from Turkey or elsewhere, readying the battleground for the Israeli incursion.

The first stages of the coming conflict with Iran will be fought as a proxy war in Lebanon against Hezbollah and Syria, as anticipated in this space on at least one occasion. In terms of predictive ability, however, my prognosis was hardly Nostradamus-like.

After all, the Israelis and their American sympathizers long ago set down in writing, and in plain English, the plan to do just what they are now doing. One need only consult "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," written in 1996 by an influential group of future Bush administration officials as advice for then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to make sense of recent U.S.-Israeli war moves.

While "A Clean Break" famously laid out a strategic rationale for deposing Saddam Hussein, it also offered a blueprint for "securing the northern border" that parallels what is happening and has been happening since the launching of the 30-Day War:

"Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An effective approach, and one with which Americans can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon, including by: [1] paralleling Syria's behavior by establishing the precedent that Syrian territory is not immune to attacks emanating from Lebanon by Israeli proxy forces, [2] striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper."
That's what's on the agenda of the radical Likud wing of the Israeli ruling elite, as represented in America as well as in Israel. The dogs of war are straining at the leash.

The War Party has never been shy about proclaiming its intentions. If only its ostensible opponents were half as bold. Yet we hear nothing – nothing – from either Barack Obama (or Hillary "Bring Them Home" Clinton) about the most significant and ominous American military mobilization since U.S. warships engaged in a massive show of force off the Iranian coast around this time last year. Of course, we don't have to ask John McCain where he stands on this deployment: he's for it. What the sudden outbreak of a major war in the Middle East will do for McCain's presidential prospects – currently rather dim – is a factor that is undoubtedly being considered by this White House.

Both Obama and Clinton have been mum on the Gaza shoah, and the coming storm in Lebanon seems not to have fazed them. Clinton can be relied on to keep her mouth shut, what with her support from the hawkish wing of the party. What we do know about Obama is that he, like Hillary, supported the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, albeit not with a degree of enthusiasm sufficient to impress the Lobby. However, if that invasion was okay, then why not the Gaza sweep? And why not invade Lebanon again? According to the logic of Obama's past positions, one would expect him to hop aboard the "Clean Break" express and ride it all the way to World War III (or is that IV?). But I guess we won't know until war breaks out and he gets that 3 a.m. call – from his campaign manager.

None of this is inevitable, of course. We don't have to wind up in a proxy war with Iran in the Levant, a conflict that could escalate until the entire region is aflame. Public pressure on Congress to hold hearings regarding the looming Lebanon intervention, including an inquiry into U.S. covert meddling in Lebanon's internal politics, would focus attention on the issue. We also need to pressure the candidates to at least issue statements on this rapidly developing situation.

I suppose we'll have to wait until the media declares this an official "crisis," but by that time the shooting will have already started – far too late to do anything about it. Which suits Obama and Clinton just fine – and, ultimately, serves McCain best of all.

Hizbullah slams deployment of US warships off coast

Moussa visits Damascus ahead of arab summit
By Hussein Abdallah, The Daily Star - Lebanon, March 01, 2008

BEIRUT: A US deployment of warships off the coast of Lebanon further sharpened tensions in the crisis-plagued country on Friday, as Hizbullah condemned the move and the Lebanese government said it did not ask for the ships to be sent. Hizbullah on Friday denounced Washington's dispatch of the USS Cole and two other vessels to waters off Lebanon as military interference.

Hizbullah's condemnation came as pro-government newspapers in Beirut said the deployment was a clear signal to Syria, which is accused by the ruling coalition of blocking a presidential vote in Beirut.

A senior Hizbullah official, Ghaleb Abu Zeinab, told The Daily Star on Friday that the US decision to send the warships was an "unhelpful" one.

"It is not the first time the US uses such tactics. It seems they have not learned the lessons of the past," he said, hinting at the attacks on US targets that followed the naval shelling of Lebanese areas during the Civil War.

"The US failed to take over the region despite its occupation of Iraq. Sending warships would not change anything," Abu Zeinab added.

The United States acknowledged on Thursday that it had sent the guided-missile destroyer and two other ships to the waters off Lebanon, which has been embroiled in a paralyzing political crisis for months.

It is "a show of support for regional stability" because of "concern about the situation in Lebanon," a US official said on condition of anonymity, declining to say whether the show of force was aimed at Syria or Iran.

The US also played down Hizbullah's criticism of the deployment, insisting that the show of force was meant to promote stability.

"On Hizbullah's concerns, I would express some of our own concerns with Hizbullah's actions. So I'll just leave it at that," White House national security spokesman Gordon Johndroe told reporters.

Johndroe sidestepped questions about comments from Lebanese Premier Fouad Siniora, who said Friday that his government did not ask Washington to send warships to the area.

"We have regular consultations with Prime Minister Siniora and his government, as well as our allies, both in the immediate region, as well as in Europe on the situation in Lebanon," said the spokesman.

"There's constant communication at various levels. But let's be clear: The purpose of the US Navy ships in the Eastern Mediterranean is a show of support for regional stability," amid Lebanon's political crisis," Johndroe said.

"I know we share with Prime Minister Siniora a desire for the situation in Lebanon to be resolved, and resolved by the Lebanese people," he added.

Siniora, whose government is backed by the West and most Arab countries, had stressed earlier during a meeting with Arab ambassadors that Beirut did not ask for the warships and had summoned a top US diplomat for "clarifications."

"We did not ask anyone to send warships," Siniora said, adding that no US warship was in "Lebanese waters."

Earlier, Siniora summoned US Charge d'Affaires Michel Sison "to ask her to clarify the presence of the USS Cole" in the Mediterranean, a government source told AFP.

"Mrs. Sison assured him that the warship was in international waters and had been dispatched to guarantee regional stability," the source added.

Meanwhile, a media officer for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon, Neeraj Singh, said on Friday that UNIFIL forces had not been informed of the United States' sudden move.

Elias Hanna, retired general and political science professor at the Notre Dame University, told The Daily Star on Friday that some reactions to the US move were extremely exaggerated.

"The move is not more than a political message," he said.

"If the US wants to go to war, the deployment would be followed up by other escalatory military measures. We need to watch the buildup before we can make any judgment," he added.

As the deployment stirred new tensions in Lebanon, the country was still waiting to receive an official invitation to take part in the upcoming Arab summit in Damascus.

Midnight Friday was the deadline for receiving invitations to take part in the summit, scheduled for March 29 and 30. No invitation was reported to have been received by the time The Daily Star went to press.

Well-informed sources said the invitation might be handed over to Lebanon's representative in the Arab League, since Syria is unlikely to invite Siniora. Normally, an invitation would be delivered to the president, but the Siniora government has assumed presidential powers since former Emile Lahoud left office last November and no replacement was elected.

Arab League chief Amr Moussa headed to Damascus on Friday to meet President Bashar Assad and make some arrangements for the summit.

"Inter-Arab relations are very tense ahead of the upcoming summit," Moussa said before heading to the Syrian capital. - With agencies

Political crisis deepens in Lebanon

By ZEINA KARAM, AP, Nov. 24, 2007

BEIRUT, Lebanon - Lebanon awoke a republic without a president Saturday amid mounting worries over a power vacuum that has intensified the nation's yearlong political turmoil.

The capital was calm and shops opened for business as usual the morning after a tumultuous day that saw President Emile Lahoud depart without a successor after announcing he was handing over security powers to the army.

Lahoud's final announcement saying the country is in a "state of emergency" was rejected by the rival, pro-Western Cabinet of Prime Minister Fuad Saniora.

The government rejection created fresh confusion in an already unsettled situation, which many Lebanese fear could explode into violence between supporters of Saniora's government and the pro-Syria opposition led by the Shiite militant group Hezbollah.

"Lahoud's term ends in a republic without a president," read the headline of Lebanon's leading An-Nahar newspaper. Another daily, Al-Balad, printed an empty photo frame on its front page, symbolizing the political vacuum.

The departure of Lahoud, a staunch ally of the Syrian regime during his nine years in office, was a long-sought goal of the government installed by parliament's anti-Syria majority, which has been trying to put one of its own in the presidency.

Hezbollah and other opposition groups have blocked legislators from electing a new president by boycotting ballot sessions, leaving parliament without the required quorum.

The fight has put Lebanon into dangerous, unknown territory: Both sides are locked in bitter recriminations, accusing the other of breaking the constitution, and they are nowhere near a compromise on a candidate to become head of state.

The army command refused to comment on the developments. The military, under its widely respected chief, Gen. Michel Suleiman, has sought to remain neutral in the political chaos, and Lahoud's statement did not give it political powers.

Even before the president's vague announcement, the military was in place to guard against the two sides' supporters taking the conflict to the streets. On alert for days, hundreds of soldiers stood with tanks, armored personnel carriers and jeeps in the area around the downtown parliament building as well as on roads leading into Beirut.

Lahoud stepped down when his term expired at midnight.

Before getting into his car to go, he blasted Saniora's government, calling it "illegitimate and unconstitutional. They know that, even if (President) Bush said otherwise."

In the capital, some 2,000 government supporters gathered in a Sunni Muslim neighborhood cheered his departure, setting off fireworks, beating drums and shouting, "Lahoud Out!"

His departure left the presidency vacant after parliament failed again to convene earlier Friday to vote on a successor.

Lahoud's vaguely worded final statement, two hours before midnight enflamed tempers with his reference to a "state of emergency" in Lebanon.

The constitution requires the cabinet to approve any state of emergency, and Saniora's government quickly rejected the announcement as "worthless."

Saniora signaled earlier that his government planned to assume the powers. His top ally, the United States, said Friday that was the proper path.

The anti-Syria camp has sought to capture the presidency to seal the end of Syria dominance of Lebanon, which lasted for 29 years until international pressure and mass protests forced Damascus to withdraw Syrian troops in 2005.

Hezbollah, which is an ally of Syria and Iran, and its opposition allies have been able to stymie the government's hopes by boycotting parliament, as they did Friday afternoon.

Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri, who is aligned with the opposition, scheduled another session for Nov. 30 to give the factions more time to try to find a compromise candidate — something they failed to do in weeks of talks mediated by France's foreign minister and others.

Rice: U.S., France Seek Iran Sanctions

By DESMOND BUTLER, AP, Washington Post, Sept. 21, 2007

WASHINGTON -- The United States and France agree on how to pressure Iran to abandon its nuclear ambitions, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said Friday.

At a joint news conference Rice gave with French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner, both officials spoke of the need for new sanctions against Iran.

"I think that there's, essentially, no difference in the way that we see the situation in Iran and what the international community must do," Rice said.

Warm words between the two foreign policy counterparts marked a narrowing of differences since the days that Kouchner's predecessor, Dominique de Villepin, helped block a United Nations resolution sought by the United States on Iraq.

Since taking power in May, Kouchner's boss President Nicolas Sarkozy has set a very different tone of cooperation with the United States than Villepin and former President Jacques Chirac. But Kouchner's visit and France's recent moves on Iran seemed to illustrate that the change was more than tone.

The two countries were preparing the groundwork for a new U.N. Security Council resolution at a meeting in Washington on Friday of political directors from six major nations that have been trying to negotiate with Iran _ Russia, China, Britain and Germany, as well as France and the United States.

Afterward, speaking for the group, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns said their discussions were serious and constructive. They will reconvene next Friday in New York, Burns said.

On Friday, Italy also called for sanctions.

"There is still room for a strong initiative that can on one end put pressure through sanctions, even more severe sanctions, and on the other end really offer the possibility for negotiations and agreement," Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema said in an interview on Italian state TV.

The French government's tougher line has brought it closer to the Bush administration, which has made a renewed U.S. push to tighten sanctions.

Rice said that she had also discussed Middle East peace efforts, Kosovo, Afghanistan and Lebanon. Standing next to Rice, Kouchner read a joint statement condemning the murder of Lebanese lawmaker Antoine Ghanem, killed in a powerful bomb blast two days ago. Ghanem, of the right-wing Phalange Party, was the fifth Christian to be killed in a wave of assassinations targeting anti-Syrian personalities.

"What is at stake, today, is the will of the murderers to disrupt the constitutional life of Lebanon, to deprive the Lebanese people and communities of their political rights in the framework of a united, sovereign and democratic Lebanon," Kouchner said.

During his two-day Washington visit, Kouchner has expanded on an earlier recommendation made by his boss, President Sarkozy, for tightening international sanctions against Iran.

Asked what kind of sanctions the United States would like to see through approved by the U.N. Security Council, Rice was vague.

"We have explored and have used various freezes on assets of individuals. We have used visa bans," she said. "I think that there are any number of ways that we can expand those efforts."

Kouchner also addressed his country's recent call for European Union sanctions against Iran. He said that European countries are discussing sanctions that would be targeted against banking and industrial interests in Iran.

In a speech Thursday, Kouchner said that France sees a nuclear-armed Iran as a threat to global security.

"To those who say that we should handle Iran with kid gloves, since it could destabilize the region, I say this: look at its adventurism today and imagine what it would be like if Tehran thought itself one day protected by a nuclear umbrella," he said.

The tougher position has been welcomed in Washington, where Kouchner also met lawmakers, as well as Defense Secretary Robert Gates and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.

In the joint news conference, Rice noted improved relations.

"It's an excellent relationship," she said. "I think there are many, many things that France and the United States are going to be able to do together."

Kouchner agreed, but said differences remain.

"Having good relations doesn't mean that we are in complete agreement every day, everywhere," he said. "But we have excellent relations."

The Peace Conference Pilgrimage (October 26-November 12)

A remarkable opportunity to tour Israel and her neighbors this fall from October 26th through November 12th is still open for applications for members of CNI and supporters of the CNI Foundation until September 15. This tour will come only weeks or possibly days before the projected peace conference called by President Bush. It will be a unique opportunity to see the preparations and reactions to the conference in Israel, Palestine, Lebanon, Syria and Jordan. Don't miss this unique chance to represent your country as a "citizen diplomat" meeting with and interviewing both government and opposition leaders in these countries.

The delegation members will meet in Washington DC on the morning of October 26 for a briefing at the DACOR Bacon House and members will depart for Tel Aviv on October 27. Former Ambassador Robert Keeley, a 34-year career in the Foreign Service of the United States from 1956 to 1989, will lead the delegation through the region. The trip will cost $6,000, which includes all airfare, ground transportation, hotel accommodations and meals.

Again, registration for the trip will close September 15, and please call Shannon O?Hara at 202-863-2951 x301 to indicate your interest in joining the group. More information about the trip and the application forms are available on our website www.cnifoundation.org.

Lebanon camp refugees in despair over ruins

IOL, Sept. 5, 2007

Beddawai, Lebanon - The Lebanese may be rejoicing at the crushing of an Islamist militia after three months of fighting at an impoverished refugee camp but the massive destruction inflicted during the standoff has left its Palestinian residents in utter despair.

"Sixty years of hard work have gone in smoke," said Akram, a refugee from Nahr al-Bared who fled the day the battle erupted on May 20 to seek shelter with friends in the nearby Beddawi camp.

The army took full control of Nahr al-Bared on Sunday following a failed bid by besieged Al-Qaeda-inspired Fatah al-Islam militants to flee, but the fighting has left the camp in ruins.

Most of its registered 31 000-strong population of Palestinian refugees fled when the fighting broke out, with many now crammed into Beddawi some 10km to the south.

Akram, an accountant who once made a decent living, today finds himself and 10 members of his family living and sleeping in a room of about 50m².

"There were big fortunes in the camp. It was a vital market, not only for the residents, but for all of Lebanon. Nothing could compensate for this loss," said the 50-year-old.

He said does not even believe the promise made by Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora who has called for an international donors' conference on September 10 in Beirut to secure aid for the reconstruction of Nahr al-Bared.

The seaside shantytown, now off-limits to civilians, has been left in ruins, with houses bombed-out, pockmarked with shell and bullet holes, and multi-storey buildings collapsed into mangled piles concrete and rubble.

The United Nations Relief Works Agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) said more than 500 000 cubic metres of rubble should be cleared from the camp before the reconstruction.

"We are happy that the army got rid of the rabble Fatah al-Islam, but would it have destroyed the camp like this if it was a Lebanese city?" wondered Saeed, a 40-year-old electrician.

Saeed now lives with his wife and 10 children in a garage along one of the winding alleys covered with sewage in Beddawi.

His family sleeps in the garage on mattresses and a sofa offered by camp residents.

"At night, I send my eight sons to sleep at various places in the camp. We used to be all together, today we are all dispersed," he said.

From time to time, charity associations offer them food, but in insufficient quantities.

"We cannot bear this situation for longer. Reconstruction should start immediately," he said.

The refugees remain in complete desperation, particularly that they do not seem to have any proper authority to turn to.

"The situation was chaotic in Nahr al-Bared over the last few years," said Abu Mahmud. "Foreigners were coming in at will, and the Palestinian organisations gave the impression that they were not controlling the situation."

Asked if the refugees would accept a government decision to keep the camp under Lebanese authority, he said: "Maybe, but only if the army is ready to defend us, like it does for the Lebanese."

Audio: Crossing the Line gets reports from Nahr al-Bared

Electronic Intifada, June 26 2007

This week on Crossing The Line, as the crisis in the Nahr al-Bared refugee camp enters its fifth week, host Chris Brown gets two reports from correspondents Dr. Marcy Newman and Sharif Bibi who are in Lebanon working with Palestinian refugees from Nahr al-Bared.

Brown also speaks with Kathryn Webber, a student leader at DePaul University who is part of an ongoing protest to rescind the tenure denial of Professor Norman G. Finkelstein. And finally Paul Larudee from the International Solidarity Movement talks about the Free Gaza Movement which is an action set to test Israel's sea-occupation of the Gaza Strip by internationals who will attempt to sail to the Gaza Strip from Cyprus in August 2007.

Listen Now [MP3 - 41.6 MB, 45:23 min]

With Washington’s blessing Lebanese Army pounds Palestinian refugees

By Joyce Chediac, www.workers.org
Published Jun 11, 2007 12:33 AM

June 5—Under the pretext of ridding Lebanon of groups that do not have the support of the Palestinians, the Lebanese Army’s wholesale bombardment of Palestinian homes has spread to a second refugee camp.

A new front was opened June 3 against the Ain al-Hilweh Palestinian camp in southern Lebanon. Palestinian families there were caught in a fierce rifle and grenade exchange between an armed group and the Lebanese Army.

The army had already laid siege to the Nahr al-Bared Palestinian refugee camp for 17 days, pounding it with missiles and machine-gun barrages.

While Palestinian homes are destroyed, Washington praises the Lebanese Army for acting in a “legitimate manner” and has sent the Beirut regime eight planes filled with weaponry.

In the midst of this massive assault, on May 30 the U.N. Security Council approved an international tribunal to investigate the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. This U.S.-backed tribunal has nothing to do with bringing justice to Lebanon and everything to do with bashing Syria and strengthening Lebanon’s right-wing.

These combined events pose a grave danger for Lebanon and the entire region. Unable to win in Iraq, Washington is desperately seeking to tighten its grasp in the strategic and oil-rich Middle East, no matter what the cost to the people who live there.

U.N. cover for U.S. aggression

While the U.N. does nothing to stop the assault against the Palestinian camps in Lebanon, its tribunal on Hariri’s death, falling under Chapter VII of the U.N. Charter, will have an unusual bite. Its resolutions will be binding, the U.N. will be able to indict and interrogate officials, and military action may be used to “restore international peace and security.” Washington means this tribunal to be the political cover for U.S. intervention, and possibly a war on Syria.

The Security Council resolution calling for the tribunal was passed 10 to 0. However, China, Qatar, Indonesia, Russia and South Africa abstained on a technicality. They objected to placing the tribunal under Chapter VII, as it requires political consensus in the country in question. No such consensus exists in Lebanon.

Hezbollah, which leads the progressive opposition in Lebanon, called the resolution “illegal and illegitimate” and “a violation of the sovereignty of Lebanon and an aggressive interference in its internal affairs.” Hezbollah and other groups’ demands for equal representation in the Lebanese government have fallen on deaf ears. Six months of mass demonstrations, trade union strikes and sit-ins by the progressive coalition, however, have ground the Lebanese government to a halt.

New threat to Syria

The U.S. utilized the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in 2005 to increase its control in Lebanon. However, Washington is still blaming Syria for the killing. The tribunal is a dagger aimed at Syria. It would provide imperialism with cover to violate Syrian sovereignty, witch-hunt its government and demand entry and inspections, much as it did in Iraq prior to the Desert Storm invasion. These are pre-war moves.

Meanwhile, Palestinian civilians are being bombed indiscriminately and the Lebanese Army is keeping reporters far away from the camps, according to many press sources.

Approximately 6,000 civilians are trapped in the Nahr el-Bared camp and their situation is “dire,” says the Red Cross. (New York Times, June 5) The majority remaining are the elderly and disabled. “Approximately 150 people are in wheelchairs. ... Since the [latest army] offensive began on Friday, no relief supplies have made their way into the camp.” The army is striking deeper in the camp, further destroying homes and the civilian infrastructure. (Aljazeera.net June 3)

Franklin Lamb on Live from Lebanon, which is podcast online, interviewed refugees from Nahr al-Bared coming to Beddawi camp. On May 28 he said the residents of al-Bared were reporting sniper fire into the camp from private militias located on the slopes above army positions. Additionally, many young Palestinian men are being arrested as they leave al-Bared, said Lamb.

Palestinians say they are main target

“Not one Palestinian in either camp or observer I know believes that the goal is for the army to ‘wipe out the terrorists’ and ‘protect our Palestinian brothers,’” Lamb continued. “Rather, the Palestinian community in Lebanon believes that the whole Fatah al-Islam, a very strange case, was designed to assault their 420,000 population here.”

It is widely reported in the international press that the two armed groups in question, Jund al-Sham and Fatah al-Islam, which are based in Palestinian camps and recently attacked Lebanese Army positions, are not Palestinian and have no popular standing. Even the Washington Post, no friend to the Palestinians, said they “hide out in the country’s 12 crowded [Palestinian] camps.” (June 4)

Appearing on the Democracy Now radio show May 24, investigative journalist Seymour Hersh accused the Lebanese and U.S. governments of secretly backing the groups. This March, Hersh had reported in the New Yorker magazine that the U.S. and Saudi governments were covertly backing Sunni-based groups like Fatah al-Islam as a buffer against Iran and growing Shia influence in the area.

Palestinians say that they, not these groups, are the main target, and implicate the government in these groups’ having a presence in the camps.

Interviewed on electroniclebanon.net May 28, Kaled Yamani, a youth organizer for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in Biddawi camp, explained that “Fatah al-Islam originally [was] here in the Baddawi camp.” It clashed with Palestinian security and a Palestinian was killed. “Two of those caught were handed to the Lebanese government, a Saudi and a Syrian, and they were moved into Nahr al-Bared,” where the various factions of the Palestine Liberation Organization do not have arms or power.

Hajj Rif’at, director of media for Fatah and Lebanon spokesperson for the PLO, said Fatah al-Islam “was imposed on the camps. ... From the start, when this group first arrived in the [Biddawi] camp ... we raised our voice as Fatah and the PLO and we said that this group poses a danger on Lebanese-Palestinian relations. But unfortunately, no one listened to us until we found ourselves in the bind that we’re in now.” (electroniclebanon.net, May 28)

Palestine & Lebanon face new crisis, U.S.-Israeli tactics provoke clashes

By Sara Flounders
Published May 24, 2007 12:47 AM workers.org

The urgent need for solidarity with the Palestinian struggle was put in sharpest terms this May.

Israeli air strikes targeted apartment houses, cut off vital supplies and carried out a new round of targeted assassinations in Gaza. The Israeli army moved tanks and soldiers over the Gaza border and carried out eight air strikes on May 17 and 18.

This week in the West Bank the Israeli army invaded the Jenin refugee camp and the nearby Kufer Dan village in the northern part of the West Bank and clashed with members of the local resistance.

On May 21 the Israeli army also invaded Nablus and nearby villages, attacked Palestinian media outlets in the city and confiscated media equipment. Troops also attacked the southern West Bank cities of Bethlehem and Hebron, searching homes and kidnapping four civilians.

While Israeli forces attacked Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, the U.S.-backed Lebanese government surrounded and shelled a refugee camp housing more than 30,000 Palestinians in northern Lebanon, outside Tripoli. More than 60 people are dead. Electricity and water have been cut off to the camp and health workers are not permitted in to evacuate the injured.

In the face of these attacks it is more important then ever to increase the support and defense of the Palestinian people and their heroic struggle for sovereignty, self-determination and the full right of return.

Despite decades of occupation and the most extreme use of imprisonment, torture and mass displacement, the Israeli state has been unable to defeat the Palestinian resistance. This present crisis in Gaza is rooted in the U.S./Israeli policy of using every means—military, political and economic—to exacerbate factional differences within the Palestinian movement.

Since the democratic election of a Hamas-led government in Gaza, Israel has attempted to break the national resistance, starve the entire population and sow dissention. The Israelis have stepped up bombing and assassinations in combination with a financial blockade.

By withholding tax revenues and promised funds, they have cut off wages to the Palestine Authority’s civil servants, teachers, and security forces. More than one-third of the population in Gaza is dependent on this income for survival. Israel’s seizure of Palestinian funds has impacted on schools, hospitals, sanitation, water, electricity and the most basic urban maintenance.

Media reports of military clashes between Hamas and Fatah forces—the two major Palestinian organizations—seem to reflect the same U.S./Israeli divide and rule tactics. Fatah National Security Advisor Mohammed Dahlan initiated the breakdown of the Palestinian Unity Government and provoked the latest round of fighting.

The Bush administration was opposed to the formation of a National Unity Government in Gaza including both groups and opposed to the decision of the president of the Palestine Authority, Mahmoud Abbas, to join the coalition government with Hamas in order to end the crisis in Gaza.

Israel tried to further envenom the divisions and factional clashes by opening a bombing campaign in the midst of the fight between the two Palestinian factions. Hamas and other resistance forces responded by firing Qassem rockets from Gaza into Israel.

The left secular forces—the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP)—have organized joint demonstrations in both northern and southern Gaza demanding national unity and calling on both Hamas and Fatah to end the clashes and “point the guns at the occupation.”

In the face of Israeli bombing, President Abbas and Prime Minister Ismail Haniya of Hamas have agreed to a new ceasefire as of May 22.

War on defenseless in Lebanon

Meanwhile the Lebanese government has opened attacks on the Nahr el-Bared Palestinian refugee camp in northern Lebanon. Over 450,000 Palestinian refugees within Lebanon have lived in the most oppressed and impoverished conditions in 13 refugee camps for almost 60 years. The government claims the attack is in response to a bank robbery carried out by an isolated group called Fatah El Islam which lacks popular support and is allegedly linked to Al Qaeda.

This Lebanon army offensive against the most oppressed sector in Lebanese society comes at a time when the shaky and illegitimate Lebanese government is trying to again focus attention and blame on Syria rather than the U.S. and Israel for the continuing crisis in Lebanon.

Lebanese Prime Minister Fuad Siniora’s weak, divided government—an ally of U.S. imperialism—is in the midst of a political crisis. The Lebanese Parliament has not met in months. A broad opposition coalition led by Hezbollah and including secular, progressive and some Christian forces has called for the resignation of Siniora’s government for nine months. Lebanon’s capital, Beirut, has been the scene of ongoing massive political street protests and a giant encampment in front of Parliament that has lasted for months. This opposition is a united force that cannot be politically marginalized or ignored.

Hezbollah, the Lebanese Communist Party and other groups opposing the government have continually warned that Washington and reactionary Lebanese forces backing the weakened government may try to enflame civil war and sharpen religious, sectarian and national differences in order to break up the progressive opposition.

The attack took place when Washington was again pushing the U.N. Security Council to initiate a war crimes tribunal to charge Syria with the assassination two years ago of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri.

The Bush administration immediately issued messages of support for the Lebanese government’s attack. The BBC described the clashes as “Lebanon’s bloodiest internal fighting since the country’s civil war ended 17 years ago.”

Hezbollah issued a statement on May 22 that said: “We feel that there is someone out there who wants to drag the army to this confrontation and bloody struggle ... to serve well-known projects and aims. We are hearing calls for more escalation and fighting, which will ultimately lead to more chaos and confrontation in Lebanon.” The statement called for a political solution to the crisis.

This crisis is still developing. Little is known of the group under attack. What is known is that U.S. policy in the region has always been to attempt to divide the resistance and enflame the situation when faced with a crisis.

New understanding of old tactics

The British Empire achieved world domination in the 19th and early 20th century through a sophisticated and cynical policy of divide and rule in every region of its empire. The British Colonial Office’s 1917 Balfour Declaration, which opened Palestine to Zionist settlement, was the expression of this policy in the Arab world.

The state of Israel was from the beginning an instrument of British and then U.S. control in Western Asia. In 1948 with the establishment of Israel, British troops were withdrawing and there were no U.S. troops in the region. At the time of the June 1967 Arab/Israel War, there were no U.S. troops or bases in the area. By arming and supplying Israel, U.S. imperialism was able to attack Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Jordan again and again and set back social and political gains.

A sea change has now developed in the consciousness of the masses. Despite decades of occupation, road blocks, walls and hundreds of check points, Israel was forced to withdraw from Gaza in 2005. The Israelis’ many efforts to break and demoralize the Palestinian resistance have also failed in the occupied West Bank despite even more extreme walls, ghettos and land confiscation.

The Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the summer of 2006, despite a massive bombardment of the entire country, faced a powerful, well-organized resistance and failed to secure a position even one mile inside Lebanon.

This all means that despite an endless supply of the most high-tech weapons in the Pentagon’s arsenal and an endless line of credit, Israel is no longer able to carry out the very tasks for which the U.S. has funded and supported it for decades.

Not only has the Israeli position changed, but U.S. imperialism can no longer rely on Israel to successfully police the region in U.S. interests. Now Washington must send its own forces and become the focus of global hatred.

But the Iraq experience has shown that even this drastic step is no sure solution for Washington. Despite stationing 150,000 troops in Iraq and 100,000 private contractors—that is, mercenaries—tens of thousands of other forces in the region, a whole series of bases and aircraft carriers, the U.S. has been unable to secure control of Iraq. Despite doing all in its power to create and intensify sectarian divisions in the Iraqi population, U.S. imperialism faces an irresolvable disaster in its attempt to occupy Iraq.

The high-tech weapons of the Pentagon are ever more destructive and deadly. But they no longer have the ability to create massive panic and chaotic flight. Their political weapon of division, while still dangerous and combustible, is also losing its impact.

The resistance in Palestine, in Lebanon and in Iraq deserves the full support of all progressive forces who struggle for unity and human solidarity.