U.S. rushes production of 30,000 lbs bombs to use on Iran

Bunker buster carries goal of deterring Iran
By SCOTT CANON, The Kansas City Star, Oct. 22, 2009

Even as Washington emphasizes walking softly to pry Iran away from its nuclear ambitions, the Pentagon is speeding the manufacture of its own big stick.

This month, the Defense Department awarded $51.9 million to McDonnell Douglas to more quickly adapt a 30,000-pound bunker buster to the B-2 stealth bomber.

The GBU-57 bomb and the fleet of B-2s — stationed at Whiteman Air Force Base with occasional deployments to Guam and an outpost in the Indian Ocean — are widely seen as the likeliest U.S. military option for setting back Tehran’s hopes for building nuclear weapons.

“There is a certain amount of wise military planning in all this,” said Robert Hewson, editor of Jane’s Air-Launched Weapons, “and a certain amount of saber-rattling.”

The weapon is behind schedule. In 2007, officials at the bomber base east of Kansas City estimated the bomb would be B-2-ready in 2008.

Budgetary hiccups pushed the delivery date to mid-2011.

Now the testing of the bomb and the delicate job of outfitting it for any of the $2.2 billion planes is, as one Pentagon spokesman said, “back on track.” It should now be ready, said Defense Department spokesman Geoff Morrell, “in the coming months.”

About 20 of the bombs are being made.

“This has been a capability that we have long believed was missing from our — our quiver, our arsenal, and we wanted to make sure we filled in that gap,” Morrell said at a press briefing this month. “I don’t think anybody should read anything into it beyond what it is. And I don’t think anybody can divine potential targets or anything of that nature.”

The Iranians have many uranium-enriching centrifuges at an underground location at Natanz. But on a visit to the United Nations last month, President Barack Obama announced the Iranians were building another secret nuclear facility near the holy city of Qum, this one deep in a mountain. Some speculate that the mountain facility is in response to a possible bunker buster.

The disclosure of the new facility may have put the Tehran leadership on defensive. A tentative deal cut this week calls for Iran to ship about three-fourths of its known nuclear fuel stockpile to Russia. Once there, it would be converted into metal fuel rods practical for a nuclear power plant, but not for an atomic warhead.

But the pact is shaky, and like less-successful efforts to stymie North Korea’s nuclear program, short-term advances often see reverses.

That’s where the biggest-yet bunker buster comes in. By the reckoning of military analysts, the bomb is conventional — by which they mean it does not carry a nuclear warhead. But it is unconventionally large.

The GBU-57 has the weight of about two elephants, stretches 20 feet and carries more than 5,300 pounds of explosive. Two will fit in the belly of a B-2.

Previously, the biggest non-nuke in the U.S. arsenal was the MOAB, massive ordnance air blast, or “Mother of All Bombs.” It explodes above its target.

Four tons heavier, the GBU-57 is called a MOP, massive ordnance penetrator.

Dropping such a behemoth is complicated.

“When you let go, all of a sudden the plane is 10 percent lighter than it was a second ago,” said John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org. “Planes have a tendency to pitch up when that happens.”

Some published reports suggest the new bomb can burrow through 200 feet of reinforced concrete before detonating, but many analysts are skeptical. The physics of bunker busting are tricky, and even nuclear bombs can’t punch into the world’s most hardened targets.

Still, the bomb might be enough, if its shock can disturb the spinning centrifuges and make the sensitive devices wobble into self-destruction.

“Once you shake it up, it becomes like the inside of an engine that has thrown a rod. It tears itself apart,” said Owen Cote, a security analyst at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “But that’s not your only issue.”

First, he said, Obama would have to consider if U.S. intelligence is good enough to find the right targets and whether a strike would do enough damage to the Iranian program.

Then the White House would have to calculate the backlash. Iran would have the options of punishing U.S. troops in countries on either side of it, send missiles toward Tel Aviv, Israel, or sink tankers in the Strait of Hormuz.

“If you can delay their nuclear program, that’s good. Time is your friend,” Cote said. “But you have to think about what (the Iranians) will do the day after you bomb them.”


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Is the U.S. Preparing to Bomb Iran?
Is the U.S. Stepping Up Preparations for a Possible Attack on Iran's Nuclear Facilities?

By JONATHAN KARL, ABC News, Oct. 6, 2009

Is the U.S. stepping up preparations for a possible attack on Iran's nuclear facilities?

The Pentagon is always making plans, but based on a little-noticed funding request recently sent to Congress, the answer to that question appears to be yes.

First, some background: Back in October 2007, ABC News reported that the Pentagon had asked Congress for $88 million in the emergency Iraq/Afghanistan war funding request to develop a gargantuan bunker-busting bomb called the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (MOP). It's a 30,000-pound bomb designed to hit targets buried 200 feet below ground. Back then, the Pentagon cited an "urgent operational need" for the new weapon.

Now the Pentagon is shifting spending from other programs to fast forward the development and procurement of the Massive Ordnance Penetrator. The Pentagon comptroller sent a request to shift the funds to the House and Senate Appropriations and Armed Services Committees over the summer.

Click here to see a copy of the Pentagon's request, provided to ABC News.

The comptroller said the Pentagon planned to spend $19.1 million to procure four of the bombs, $28.3 million to accelerate the bomb's "development and testing", and $21 million to accelerate the integration of the bomb onto B-2 stealth bombers.

'Urgent Operational Need'

The notification was tucked inside a 93-page "reprogramming" request that included a couple hundred other more mundane items.

Why now? The notification says simply, "The Department has an Urgent Operational Need (UON) for the capability to strike hard and deeply buried targets in high threat environments. The MOP is the weapon of choice to meet the requirements of the UON." It further states that the request is endorsed by Pacific Command (which has responsibility over North Korea) and Central Command (which has responsibility over Iran).

Is the U.S. Preparing to Bomb Iran?

The request was quietly approved. On Friday, McDonnell Douglas was awarded a $51.9 million contract to provide "Massive Penetrator Ordnance Integration" on B-2 aircraft.

This is not the kind of weapon that would be particularly useful in Iraq or Afghanistan, but it is ideally suited to hit deeply buried nuclear facilities such as Natanz or Qom in Iran.

U.S. military and civilian aid to Egypt for fiscal 2009 is $1.5 billion

"Congress has approved $1.5 billion in U.S. military and civilian aid to Egypt for fiscal 2009..."

"Congressional sources said the U.S. military aid would be dependent on improvements in Egyptian security cooperation with Israel as well as Cairo's human rights record."

Egypt agreed "to intensify security operations along the border with Israel and the Gaza Strip."

-World Tribune, Oct. 10, 2008

Demand immediate passage of the entire Viva Palestina convoy with all its vehicles and supplies to Gaza!

Moving Chess Pieces: The Illusion of Withdrawal in Iraq

By Janet Weil, CODEPINK, Oxdown Gazette, June 30, 2009

Today, all U.S. troops must be withdrawn from Iraqi cities, including U.S. bases in Baghdad, according to the Status Of Forces Agreement (SOFA) between the U.S. and Iraq. The Iraqi government will also take legal responsibility for the actions of U.S. troops and have legal jurisdiction over American soldiers who commit crimes off-base and off-duty, and the SOFA will grant permission to U.S. troops for military operations, as well as ban the U.S. from staging attacks on other countries from Iraq.

While it may seem like a step forward toward ending the six-year occupation of Iraq, the Pentagon is doing what it can to dodge or play down these SOFA stipulations. In recent weeks, it has been re-classifying bases and troops, hiring “corporate security” mercenaries, and preventing Iraq from having jurisdiction over those actions. It'll get away with it too, as Congress never ratified the SOFA, and because many are justifying further occupation under the banner of keeping Iraq secure.

Leading up to the June 30th deadline, the Pentagon has been playing shell games with bases and with soldiers. City limits have been modified to exempt bases from the agreement and soldiers who have moved out of cities are now encircling them. As Erik Leaver points out in his article “A Withdrawal in Name Only,” three thousand troops stationed at the FOB Falcon, located within Baghdad, will not be moving, because Iraqi and American military officials simply decided it wasn’t within the city limits. And thousands of troops in bases sleeping outside the cities will continue to serve in “support” and “advisory” roles in the day.

And while troops may be moving out of the cities, they are not moving out of the country just yet. The military has been expanding and building new bases in rural areas to accommodate the movement of soldiers, and Congress just passed a bill that includes more funding for military construction in Iraq. In reality, only 30,000 troops have left Iraq since September last year and 134,000 troops still remain.

But the 132,000 military contractors in Iraq are the real loophole. How do they fit into the withdrawal plan? How many of them will stay past June 30th? Or past 2011? Military contractors have been used extensively in the War in Iraq to evade legal accountability and hide the true cost – and body count – of the war. In fact, mercenaries may be on the rise and will spark additional violence in the country.

Arab-American journalist Dahr Jamail points out the violence in Iraq has largely been quelled because the U.S. has paid Iraqi resistance fighters to keep the peace, and the increase in violent resistance in May and June is due to many fighters losing their paychecks from the US government. In his blog, MidEast Dispatches, Jamail writes:

“Attacks against U.S. forces are once again on the rise in places like Baghdad and Fallujah, where the Iraqi resistance was fiercest before so many of them joined the Sahwa (Sons of Iraq, also referred to as Awakening Councils) and began taking payments from the U.S. military in exchange for halting attacks against the occupiers and agreeing to join the fight against al-Qaeda in Iraq. Daily we are watching Sahwa members leave their security posts."

He further explains that many Iraqis are rejoining the resistance in protest of losing their paychecks and increasing government attacks, and thus, have stopped targeting al-Qaeda.

Instead of continuing to pay these resistance fighters, the U.S. plans to replace some soldiers and Marines in Iraq with mercenaries -- private U.S. contractors and corporations. This new occupying force will continue to alienate Iraqis and delay any real Iraqi independence.

But despite working all the loopholes, the U.S. never officially committed to playing by the rules of an Iraq withdrawal, anyway. In 2007 and 2009, members of Congress including then-Senator Hillary Clinton believed the SOFA should have been ratified by Senate to be legitimate. During the 2008 presidential campaign, Clinton urged Obama to sign on to her legislation that would have required Bush to bring the SOFA to Senate first. Obama, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, never agreed to do so. But once Clinton dropped her opposition to Obama’s unanimous selection as the Democratic presidential nominee, and was rewarded by being chosen as Secretary of State, she put her SOFA principle aside and now supports an agreement that only one country – Iraq – has ratified. The U.S. Senate's role in ratifying bilateral agreements has been nullified, a development that should worry all who have been concerned about a “unitary executive” and an increasingly weakened Congress.

Even in Iraq, withdrawal plans have been undermined. The Iraqi parliament planned to ratify the SOFA under a national referendum this month. But recently the Iraqi cabinet decided to reschedule to align with the national parliamentary elections in January 2010. The SOFA is widely unpopular and seen as legitimizing the US occupation until 2011. If it goes to a vote, it will likely be defeated. So Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and other Iraqi leaders have colluded with both the Bush and Obama administrations to subvert the will of the Iraqi people.

If by July 31 however the Iraq SOFA is not referendum-ratified or a 12-month cancellation notice issued, it will expire. If it expires, the U.S. will be in Iraq without legal authorization and U.S. forces may be subject to lock down until the matter is resolved. Under these conditions, U.S. troops will no longer have the bilateral protections – effectively left in a legal and political limbo.

Ultimately, the Pentagon must stop playing chess games to slow down a real withdrawal. And our leaders in the White House and Congress – who just passed another $70 billion for the war – must take real leadership to end this war, including withdrawing all our troops, ending the use of military contractors, stop funding any permanent bases in Iraq, and allowing the Iraqi people the space to reclaim their country.

Janet Weil is a CODEPINK staff member based in San Francisco. Her nephew is preparing to be deployed to Afghanistan in November.

Germany, 1939; America, 2009; And Perverted Science

By Sherwood Ross, June 27, 2009

It has become commonplace for Congress to ignore the public’s yearnings for peace and to support the Pentagon’s now habitual wars of aggression. Last November’s anti-war vote illustrates this disconnect between public opinion and public policy. War-weary Americans went to the polls believing they were voting for peace but President Obama has instead merely shifted the focus of military action from Iraq to Afghanistan while planning to maintain a major garrison of 50,000 troops in Iraq, hardly a “withdrawal.”

U.S. taxpayers---who already pay more for wars than the rest of the world combined---are not blood-thirsty. They didn’t want any war against Iraq to begin with and have long preferred diplomacy to conflict. In January, 2003, a CBS News/New York Times poll found 63% of Americans wanted President Bush to find a diplomatic solution to the Iraq crisis compared with just 31% who wanted to intervene militarily. This great cry for peace, not war, arose despite a shower of lies from the White House that Saddam Hussein threatened America with WMD. As for Afghanistan, a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll last February, showed 5l% of respondents opposed to the war in Afghanistan, compared to 47% in favor. Yet, President Obama is plunging ahead against the majority and mindless of the cost to a tottering domestic economy starved for good jobs, good housing, good education, good medical care, and good credit.

Contrast President Obama’s attitude with President Franklin Roosevelt’s careful reading of public opinion in the Thirties that caused him to go slow even in aiding countries threatened by Hitler. FDR never did help the embattled Loyalist government in Madrid fight the insurgent generals led by Franco and their Nazi allies. And he moved slowly coming to Britain’s aid before providing “lend lease” to London. FDR consistently acted in concert with public opinion, reading the lips of an “isolationist” public that did not want to get embroiled in a second European war in 20 years.

The actions of Presidents Bush and Obama that run contrary to public opinion are not unique to America. This disconnect between public and presidential desire recalls the opposition of what likely was a majority of the German people to Hitler in 1939, people who feared to stand up to Hitler and were led to their doom by their Nazi leaders. A joke Germans told at the time asked: “Hitler, Goebbels, and Goering were in a plane that crashed and they were all killed. Who was saved?” The answer: “Germany.”

Back in 1938, ordinary Germans feared Hitler’s aggressiveness would lead to war. Commentator William Shirer, who covered Germany for CBS, wrote in his “Berlin Diary” on Sept. 27, 1938, that when a motorized column paraded through the streets after a Hitler speech, Berliners didn’t both to watch but crowded into the subways to go home. They “refused to look on” and “the handful that did at the curb (stood) in utter silence unable to find a word of cheer for the flower of youth going off to the glorious war.”

Hitler, Shirer recalled, stood on his balcony “and there weren’t two hundred people in the street or in the great square of the Wilhelmsplatz. Hitler looked grim, then angry, and soon went inside, leaving his troops to parade by unreviewed.” Two hundred onlookers in a city of five million souls! Shirer said what he saw rekindled his faith in the German public because “They are dead set against war.” They were right to be, of course. By the time the war was over, Germany lost 5.5-million men and 1.5-million civilians.

The Pentagon recognizes Americans today do not want war, and has devised ways to circumvent the anti-war movement. There are no conscriptions as during Viet Nam. Today’s oil wars are being fought partly by contractors to hold down official military casualties. The Pentagon is also buying good will by farming out billions in biological warfare research to colleges and universities.

The challenge to Americans today is as formidable as that faced by the German people of 1939. We have a moral obligation to stop the Warfare State.

The robot planes now swooping down on Afghanistan and Pakistan are but crude harbingers of future Pentagon technology that will employ weapons of increasing sophistication directed by remote operators seated at surveillance systems like video gamesters. These operators may employ a variety of ever more lethal and/or incapacitating weapons---ranging from guided missiles to tungsten poles hurled down from space platforms at supersonic speeds to destroy victims. Moreover, the Pentagon is pouring over a trillion dollars into new research to refine its sophisticated killing systems. And what may be used on foreigners, may also be used on Americans.

Thus it has come to pass that the nation that gave the world such brilliant inventions as the electric light, airplane, phonograph, telegraph, movies, automobile assembly line, and telephone(all developed at private expense) now sags under the weight of a government war machine that pays fine scientific minds to work at the Devil’s Bench. In his famous address of June 18, 1940, Winston Churchill denouncing Hitler spoke words that sadly apply to America’s Pentagon today: “But if we fail, then the whole world…will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister…by the lights of a perverted science.”

If the American people do not stop the Pentagon war machine, like the German public before them under Hitler they will bear a heavy responsibility for the ensuing calamities caused by their inaction.


Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based public relations consultant for non-profits who formerly worked for the Chicago Daily News and wire services. To contact him or contribute to his Anti-War News Service: sherwoodr1@yahoo.com

The War Party and its Faux-gressive Minions

by Cindy Sheehan, Cindy Sheehan's Soapbox Blog, June 19, 2009

For years now, I have been writing about the duplicity of the Democrats and the shocking similarity between the two parties when it comes to the use of state-sanctioned terrorism against innocent populations.

This past week, after the betrayal of every American who elected Democrats to end the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, I am wondering if there is anyone still in this nation who thinks that there’s any significant difference between the war ideologies of Democrats and Republicans.

I know many faux-gressive entities on the “left” whose silence on this matter is so loud it’s hurting my eardrums. Where was MoveOn.org over these past few weeks when the Dems were bludgeoning their caucus to vote “Aye” to extend the war crimes in the Middle East? Where were Markos Moulitsas (Daily Kos) and his bloggers that day? The day the funding bill passed, I wandered over to The Daily Kos and saw that it was all a-twitter about Senator Ensign (R) having an extra-marital affair. Nancy Pelosi, Steny Hoyer and Harry Reid may, or may not, be loyal spouses, but their calumny will kill, maim, torture or displace thousands of people over the next 4-8 years. I am not so interested in what happens in bedrooms as what happens in Democratic war zones.

Faux-gressives MoveOn.org and The Daily Kos supported me, and my work, as long as it solely focused on the Bush regime and the Republicans. However, when I had a late in life epiphany and figured out that the Democrats were abusing the energy of the anti-war movement to regain power, and I started to speak out against the entire War Party, not just one-half of it, I was kicked off blogging for The Daily Kos and ostracized by the fully co-opted MoveOn.org. Nathan Diebenow of the Lonestar Iconoclast then accused me of “alienating” my friends, to add insult to injury.

I think that I have unfortunately been vindicated by almost every single action that the Democratic Party has taken since 2006 when impeachment was taken “off the table,” but “blank-check” war funding was served up to the Military Industrial Complex on a bloody platter dripping with the flesh and blood of real human beings.

Our politicians have no integrity partly because the organizations in the movements that have the largest emailing lists have no integrity. Wars that were wrong under Bush become acceptable under Obama and the stain of torture fades into the woodwork or is hidden from sight like a demented relation because a Senator has an affair. As I understand it, MoveOn.org was founded to oppose the impeachment of Bill Clinton for the same thing Ensign did…now the gatekeepers of the War Party are going to crucify Ensign to distract their subscribers from real issues?

MoveOn.org sent this out in April 2008 in a fundraising email to its 5 million person list: No matter what happens in Iraq, the Bush Administration and John McCain always have the same answer: 6 more months. They're at it again this week, asking for six more months. But six months won't change anything—except the body count and the price tag.

They were not talking about the Democratic war funding this week. Apparently it’s fine to fund wars if we have a Democratic Despotism, but dangerous for our troops if we have a Republican Regime.

Hey MoveOn.org: ComeBack.org. Come back from the dark side of partisan politics. You look like Move America Forward, now:( a reich-wing organization that irrationally and blindly supports Republicans and unquestioningly supported BushCo). CODEPINK supported Barack Obama, but at least CODEPINK is over in Gaza trying to call attention to that crime, while MoveOn.org ignores the situation and most of the bloggers at The Daily Kos just like to sit behind their computer screens and snarkily criticize anyone who is actually on the streets doing the work.

What Pelosi and her Wrecking Crew did last week was disgraceful, but it’s shameful that people who opposed the exact same policies under BushCo support the same crimes of ObamaCo.

In Congress: 32 Heroes, 21 Frauds

By David Swanson, AfterDowningStreet.org, June 16, 2009

The congressional elections of 2006 and 2008 were almost universally understood as shaped by public desire to end the war in Iraq. Last month, when a war supplemental spending bill (another $97 billion for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) was expected to easily pass in the House with bipartisan support, 51 Democrats sought to please their constituents by voting No. Tuesday evening, when the same bill stood a good chance of failing, 20 of those same Congress members voted Yes and one did not vote. But 30 stood by their vote when it actually meant something. They were joined by 2 more, for a total of 32 Democrats voting No.

A coalition of progressive bloggers had been whipping hard to reach the total of 39 and fell short by 7. In fact, we fell short by 12, because the White House persuaded 5 Republicans to oppose their own party and vote Yes. Most Republicans were voting in opposition to International Monetary Fund spending that had been added into the bill by the Senate. At least one Republican, Ron Paul, and maybe as many as 9, when they voted No were opposing the war funding as well.

These were the 51 Democrats who, along with 9 Republicans, voted No the first time around, when their votes stood no chance of actually blocking the funding: Baldwin, Capuano, Clarke, Cohen, Conyers, Cooper, Costello, Doggett, Edwards (MD), Ellison, Farr, Filner, Frank (MA), Grayson, Grijalva, Gutierrez, Honda, Inslee, Kagen, Kaptur, Kucinich, Lee (CA), Lewis (GA), Lofgren, Markey (MA), Massa, Matsui, McDermott, McGovern, Michaud, Miller, Napolitano, Neal (MA), Oberstar, Payne, Pingree (ME), Polis (CO), Schakowsky, Serrano, Shea-Porter, Speier, Thompson (CA), Tierney, Towns, Tsongas, Velázquez, Waters, Watson, Weiner, Welch, Woolsey.

The procedural vote on the rule to bring the bill up for a vote on Tuesday separated the true heroes from the merely great. Here's the roll call. Only 10 Democrats voted No: Filner, Heinrich, Kaptur, Kratovil, Kucinich, Michaud, Minnick, Mitchell, Rush, Waters. Of these, 5 voted No to oppose war funding (rather than to oppose IMF funding): Filner, Kaptur, Kucinich, Michaud, and Waters. But true heroes are also those who spoke out publicly and/or privately lobbied their colleagues to vote No with them in the days leading up to the vote. That list is even shorter, including -- as far as I know -- only Kucinich, McGovern, and Woolsey opposing the war money, with Filner and perhaps a few other Democrats publicly opposing the IMF funding. As far as I know, only Kucinich spoke on the floor of the House against war funding, and he did so repeatedly. Barbara Lee put out a statement against the war funding after it had passed.

The actual vote on the bill came shortly after the procedural vote, with 32 Democrats voting No. Here's the roll call. Of the original 51, 30 stayed strong: Tammy Baldwin, Michael Capuano, John Conyers, Lloyd Doggett, Donna Edwards, Keith Ellison, Sam Farr, Bob Filner (statement on IMF), Alan Grayson, Raul Grijalva, Michael Honda, Marcy Kaptur, Dennis Kucinich (watch video, read statement, another statement, statement on IMF), Barbara Lee, Zoe Lofgren, Eric Massa, Jim McGovern (watch video), Michael Michaud, Donald Payne, Chellie Pingree, Jared Polis, Jose Serrano, Carol Shea-Porter, Jackie Speier, John Tierney, Nikki Tsongas, Maxine Waters, Diane Watson, Peter Welch, and Lynn Woolsey (watch video, read statement). These 30 were joined by these 2: Brad Sherman, Pete Stark.

These 32 Congress members, in many cases, stood up to threats, promises, and abuse from the White House and Nancy Pelosi. President Obama and several cabinet secretaries, the National Security Advisor, and of course the White House Chief of staff lobbied hard, including threatening to cut off all future electoral support. These members resisted and placed the interests of their constitutents and of the people of America, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iraq, above the interests of the Democratic Party. They are heroes. They are the place to start building a caucus that might achieve peace.

We have citizen heroes too, groups and blogs and individuals who raised their voices and organized against this bill, including but not limited to: Action Center For Justice, After Downing Street, Air America, Alternet, American Friends Service Committee, the Backbone Campaign, Nick Baumann, Blue Mass Group, Brave New Films, Jennifer Brunner, Brendan Calling, Burnt Orange Report, Buzz Flash, Calitics, Cindy Sheehan, Code Pink, Common Dreams, Daily Kos, Dday, Declaration of Peace, Democracy Now!, Democrats.com, Digby, Docudharma, FireDogLake, Bruce Gagnon, Green Mountain Daily, Glenn Greenwald, the Hip Hop Caucus, Howie Klein, Humanists for Peace, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Jeremy Scahill, Just Foreign Policy, The Nation, Cynthia McKinney, Michigan Liberal, Linda Milazzo, Michael Moore, Military Families Speak Out, My Left Nutmeg, Not Larry Sabato, Open Left, Out of Iraq Blogger Caucus, Patriot Daily, Peace Action, Peace No War, Progressive Democrats of America, Jason Rosenbaum, Coleen Rowley, Santa Cruz Progressive Email List, Square State, Jonathan Tasini, True Maine Blue, Doug Tudor, United for Peace and Justice, US Labor Against the War, Veterans for Peace, Voters for Peace, Joan Wile, Win Without War, Marcy Winograd, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, World Can't Wait, the Young Turks.



But here's the Hall of Shame. These Congress members voted No for show when it didn't matter, and voted Yes to fund wars when it came to crunch time: Yvette Clarke, Steve Cohen, Jim Cooper, Jerry Costello, Barney Frank, Luis Gutierrez, Jay Inslee, Steve Kagen, Edward Markey, Doris Matsui, Jim McDermott, George Miller, Grace Napolitano, Richard Neal (MA), James Oberstar, Jan Schakowsky, Mike Thompson, Edolphus Towns, Nydia Velázquez, and Anthony Weiner. And John Lewis, for one reason or another, did not vote.

We have citizen frauds too. These are organizations that, like fraudulent Congress members, acted as if they opposed wars when it didn't much matter, when the government was run by Republicans dedicated to continuing wars. These are blogs and organizations that put the Democratic Party's positions ahead of what's good for the country or the world or -- I would argue -- even the Democratic Party. They did not lift a finger to oppose this war supplemental: Campaign for America's Future, Center for American Progress, Democracy for America, Moveon.org, Talking Points Memo, and True Majority.

Of course the bulk of Congress and the bulk of civic organizations are not mentioned here at all because they are proud war mongers or they are groups that never involve themselves in the struggle for peace even when it's safe to do so. The worst offense is not necessarily hypocrisy. The worst offense is promotion of militarism. But hypocrisy can fool you if you don't focus your vision on it. And it will continue unless we make sure Congress knows we are onto them. We've been phoning Congress nonstop for the past week, but I strongly encourage you to make a few more calls, to thank the heroes and spank the frauds. The arc of justice is long but it only bends if we keep bending it.

--

David Swanson is the author of the upcoming book "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union" by Seven Stories Press. You can pre-order it and find out when tour will be in your town: http://davidswanson.org/book

Tell Democrats To Vote NO on War Supplemental

25 House Progressives Can End the Wars

On Monday, we said just 40 House Progressives could end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan/Pakistan (Af/Pak) by opposing the Pentagon's demand for another $95 billion. That's because all 178 Republicans will vote no over $5 billion for the IMF.

Nearly 10,000 of you emailed your Representatives, and 15 House Progressives responded to you by opposing the $95 billion. So now we need just 25 more.

Tell Congress: Healthcare Not Warfare
http://www.democrats.com/healthcare-not-warfare?cid=ZGVtczE3NTE2NmRlbXM=

For a glimpse of the impact of U.S. bombs on the children of Afghanistan, watch this 1 minute video from our friends at BraveNewFilms:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzyfAHvvXDU

If you have time to call Congress, pick a few from this list:
http://action.firedoglake.com/page/s/Supplemental
Report the response you get using the webform.

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From CODEPINK:

Global weapons sales topped 1 trillion dollars last year, with the U.S. accounting for a whopping $603 billion in military spending in 2008. Can you imagine what $603 billion dollars could do towards eradicating hunger, immunizing children, fixing broken infrastructure, creating sustainable jobs and providing quality education and housing?

Call the Congressional Switchboard at 202-224-3121 and tell your representative (Congressmembers and Senators) to vote NO on the Supplemental.

And here we are again in 2009 about to pour billions of dollars into further death and destruction. Congress will soon vote on the 2009 Supplemental budget bill with $100 billion in continued funding for the military quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan. The bill is also loaded with unrelated junk and pet projects, such as money for a plan to spur domestic car sales, money for military aircraft the Pentagon doesn't want, and $5 billion to back credit lines to the International Monetary Fund.

Now more than ever we need to speak up. Once this money is gone, the war machine can continue on its deadly path. Our country can't afford this Supplemental, and we need to let our representatives know TODAY.

Stop Throwing Our $$$ Away!

Call your representatives at 202-224-3121 today. If your Congressmembers or Senators voted NO on the Supplemental bill the first time it appeared, be sure to thank them and urge her or him to hold strong and continue to vote NO. If they voted YES, please express your disappointment, and tell them to stop buying war and waste and vote NO.

You can find out how your Congressmember voted by clicking here: http://bit.ly/ZQOY7

You can find out how your Senator voted by clicking here: http://bit.ly/q0w3B

Thank you for continuing to speak out. We need to let our elected representatives know that we want our tax dollars to support peace and human needs, not more war.

In solidarity,
Allison, Audrey, Blaine, Dana, Desiree, Farida, Gael, Gayle, Janna, Janet, Jean, Jodie, Liz, Lori, Lydia, Medea, Nancy, Pam, Paris, and Rae


P.S. As Congress prepares to fund an escalation in Afghanistan, we are educating ourselves by listening to the voices of Afghan women. Read the fourth interview in our series "Afghan Women Speak Out": http://bit.ly/wBWaC

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An Invitation to Join the Peace Movement

To: True Majority, Moveon.org, Open Left, David Sirota, TPM, Campaign for America's Future, the Center for American Progress, and Daily Kos

The following groups and individuals are working very hard to block a war supplemental bill in Congress that would fund the continued war and occupation of Iraq and an escalated war and occupation in Afghanistan: Action Center For Justice, After Downing Street, American Friends Service Committee, Nick Baumann, Brave New Films, Jennifer Brunner, Brendan Calling, Cindy Sheehan, Code Pink, Dday, Declaration of Peace, Democrats.com, Digby, Docudharma, FireDogLake, Bruce Gagnon, Glenn Greenwald, the Hip Hop Caucus, Howie Klein, Iraq Veterans Against the War, Just Foreign Policy, The Nation, Cynthia McKinney, Linda Milazzo, Michael Moore, Military Families Speak Out, Out of Iraq Blogger Caucus, Patriot Daily, Peace Action, Progressive Democrats of America, Jason Rosenbaum, Coleen Rowley, Jonathan Tasini, True Maine Blue, Doug Tudor, United for Peace and Justice, US Labor Against the War, Veterans for Peace, Voters for Peace, Joan Wile, Marcy Winograd, World Can't Wait, and the Young Turks.

We could use your help.

We've elected majorities to Congress to get us out of Iraq in 2006 and 2008. But we've allowed Congress to toy with us. 51 Democrats voted against the current war supplemental when they were sure it would pass. Two years ago 89 House Democrats signed a statement committing to voting against any war funding except for a withdrawal. This year 85 have signed onto a bill requiring an exit strategy for Afghanistan. And 73 belong to something called the Out of Iraq Caucus. And yet we are being told that the way to "clear the decks" and "move on" to healthcare and energy is to further fund the wars that elected Democrats claim to oppose and that we all claim to oppose.

What are our chances of success? They are much better in the long term if we push hard in the short term. If we can strip unrelated measures out of war bills, if we can force war bills to be passed primarily by Republicans, if we can create an anti-war caucus with negotiating power, if we can change the discourse to include the peace movement we will be closer to achieving peace. Every day that we delay the current bill is a victory. Will you help us? Will you send an Email to your list and post a blog on your site asking your members to phone Congress and ask for No votes on the war supplemental? Will you be part of a growing peace movement now, when we might succeed, just as you were when we had no chance?

We need you.

In Solidarity,
David Swanson
AfterDowningStreet.org

David Swanson will be speaking in Charlotte on Sept. 1 at 7pm at Park Road Books. See http://charlotteaction.blogspot.com/2009/06/sept-1-david-swanson-book-tour-in.html

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For a list of upcoming events for peace & justice see http://charlotteaction.blogspot.com

Pressure Mounting as War Funding Threatened - Only 40 Dems Needed

Voters For Peace, June 9, 2009

The pressure is on. It will take 40 Democrats to vote against war funding to defeat the supplemental for Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Are there 40 anti-war Democrats willing to stop the wars by stopping the funding?

Why only 40 Democrats? The Republicans plan to vote against the war funding bill because it includes $108 billion in funding for the International Monetary Fund. The Republicans have 178 votes in the House of Representatives. A majority in the House is 218 votes. Therefore in order to stop war funding, all it will take is 40 Democrats to vote against war funding.

On May 14, 2009, 51 Democrats voted against the supplemental funding bill for the war. In addition, there were four Democrats absent for the vote including some additional Democrats opposed to war funding.

Pressure is mounting on the anti-war Democrats from party leadership. They have delayed the vote to pressure Democrats opposed to war because war funding is more fragile than it looks. Democratic leaders do not want to see a vote against war funding. To counter the influence of party leadership, it is urgent that you take action to urge Democrats to vote "no" on war funding. This will give anti-war Democrats greater power in the legislative process.

You can send a letter to your elected Member of Congress by clicking here.

You can also call your Member of Congress at 202-224-3121. This will get you to the congressional switchboard where you can ask for your representative.

Please help stop $96.7 million in more war funding by writing and calling your Member of Congress today. To continue to fund the wars and the IMF the United States will borrow $200 billion and then give it to the IMF and the wars. This puts the U.S. further in debt, mainly to China, and leaves a heavy burden on our children. All this is at a time of economic collapse and a deep recession.

The cost of the war is reason enough to vote against the funding. In addition, the U.S. is doing more harm than good in these wars. The wars undermine our national security by making us new enemies each time another civilian is killed. And, despite promises from the administration, there is no exit plan for Afghanistan nor have we seen any troops withdrawn from Iraq. We need to stop funding of endless wars.

Please take action today. The vote is likely to occur this week. So contact your representative now. Call (202-224-3121) and write your elected representatives and tell them to vote "no" on further war funding.

Defense Spending Increased in North Carolina During the 2008 Fiscal Year

Email from Office of Governor Bev Perdue, June 5, 2009

Gov. Bev Perdue and the North Carolina Military Business Center (NCMBC) announced this week that Department of Defense spending in North Carolina grew by 22 percent and exceeded $3.6 billion in federal fiscal year 2008 – an increase of $657 million from 2007.

“These numbers are yet another indicator that the Tar Heel state is becoming a very significant player in the global military and defense industry cluster,” said Gov. Perdue. “The time to capitalize on this trend is now, to leverage expanding markets, capture federal revenues and grow jobs right here in North Carolina – the most military friendly state in America.”

Gov. Perdue was instrumental, with the General Assembly, in establishing the NCMBC in the Community College System and the Defense and Security Technology Accelerator (DSTA) in Fayetteville. She also spearheaded the development of the North Carolina Military Foundation, a private organization focused on recruiting defense contractors and growing the state’s defense and homeland security economy.

According to a 2008 Department of Commerce study, the military has a $23.4 billion total annual impact on the state economy. Defense procurement in North Carolina, based on place of performance, increased from $2.9 billion in federal fiscal year 2007 to $3.6 billion in 2008. During the same time frame, spending by all federal agencies in North Carolina increased approximately $743 million, or 16 percent, from $4.5 billion to $5.2 billion.

For more information on Department of Defense spending and the North Carolina Military Business Center, please visit www.ncmbc.us.

Major problems found in Iraq spending

By RICHARD LARDNER, AP, June 7, 2009

WASHINGTON – This is one Christmas gift U.S. taxpayers don't need.

Construction of a $30 million dining facility at a U.S. base in Iraq is scheduled to be completed Dec. 25. But the decision to build it was based on bad planning and botched paperwork. The project is too far along to stop, making the mess hall a future monument to the waste and inefficiency plaguing the war effort, according to an independent panel investigating contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In its first report to Congress, the Wartime Contracting Commission presents a bleak assessment of how tens of billions of dollars have been spent since 2001. The 111-page report, obtained by The Associated Press, documents poor management, weak oversight, and a failure to learn from past mistakes as recurring themes in wartime contracting.

The report is scheduled to be made public Wednesday at a hearing held by the House Oversight and Government Reform's national security subcommittee.

U.S. reliance on contractors has grown to "unprecedented proportions," says the bipartisan commission, established by Congress last year. More than 240,000 private sector employees are supporting military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan. Thousands more work for the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development.

But the government has no central data base of who all these contractors are, what services they provide, and how much they're paid. The Pentagon has failed to provide enough trained staff to watch over them, creating conditions for waste and corruption, the commission says.

In Iraq, the panel worries that as U.S. troops depart in larger numbers, there will be too few government eyes on the contractors left to oversee the closing of hundreds of bases and disposal of mountains of federal property.

At Rustamiyah, a seven-acre forward operating base turned over to the Iraqis in March, the military population plunged from 1,490 to 62 in just three months. During the same period, the contractor population dropped from 928 to 338, leaving more than five contractors for every service member.

In Afghanistan, where President Barack Obama has ordered a large increase of U.S. troops, existing bases will have to expand and new ones will be built — without proper oversight unless the Pentagon rapidly changes course.

One commander in Afghanistan told the commission he had no idea how many contractors were on and off his base on a daily basis. Another officer said he had property all over his installation but didn't know who owned it or what kind of shape it was in.

There are questionable construction projects in Afghanistan, too. The commission visited the New Kabul Compound, a building intended to serve as headquarters for U.S. forces in Afghanistan. But members saw cracks in the structure, broken and leaking pipes, sinking sidewalks and other defects.

"The Army should not have accepted a building in such condition," the report says.

The commission cites concerns with a massive support contract known as "LOGCAP" that provides troops with essential services, including housing, meals, mail delivery and laundry.

Despite the huge size and importance of the contract, the main program office managing the work for both Afghanistan and Iraq has only 13 government employees. For administrative help, it must rely on a contractor.

KBR Inc., the primary LOGCAP contractor in Iraq, has been paid nearly $32 billion since 2001. The commission says billions of dollars of that amount ended up wasted due to poorly defined work orders, inadequate oversight and contractor inefficiencies.

In one example, defense auditors challenged KBR after it billed the government for $100 million in costs for private security even though the contract prohibited the use of for-hire guards.

KBR has defended its performance and criticized the commission for making "biased" statements against the company.

"As we look back on what we've done, we're real proud of being able to go into a war theater like that as a private contractor and support 200,000 troops," William P. Utt, chairman of the Houston-based KBR, said in May interview with AP reporters and editors.

KBR is also linked to the dining hall construction snafu, although the commission faults the military's planning and not the contractor. With American forces scheduled to be out of Iraq by the end of 2011, the U.S. will use the new facility for two years at most.

In July 2008, the Army said a new dining facility was badly needed at the Camp Delta forward operating base because the existing one was too small, had a saggy ceiling, poor lighting and an unsanitary wooden floor.

KBR was awarded a contract in September. Work began in late October as American and Iraqi officials were negotiating the agreement setting the dates for the U.S. troop withdrawal

But during an April visit to Camp Delta, the commission learned that the existing mess hall had just been renovated. The $3.36 million job was done by KBR and completed in June 2008. Commission staff toured the renovated hall "without seeing or hearing of any problems or shortfalls," the report says.

The decision to push ahead with the new hall was based on paperwork that was never updated and a failure to review the need for the project after the security agreement was signed. Most of the materials have been ordered and construction is well under way. That means canceling the project would save little money because KBR would have a legitimate claim for payment based on the investment it has already made.

The commission urges commanders in Iraq to review thoroughly all ongoing construction and improvement projects and only continue those essential to the life, health and safety of U.S. troops.
___

On the Net:

Wartime Contracting Commission: http://www.wartimecontracting.gov/

Will Congress get our "80-20 Vision"?

Our government is continuing to hide behind the skirts of Afghan women, using their plight to justify military actions in the region. Yet where is the leadership that will truly support the women of Afghanistan and peace? When only 5% of the $864 billion dollars spent on the War on Terror since 2001 has gone to development, how can we say we're making life better for the women whose countries are being destroyed?

General Petraeus himself has suggested that a counter-insurgency doctrine should be 80% development, 20% military, yet, as the Congressional Progressive Caucus notes, the supplemental funding bill does not come close to reflecting this ratio. Just Monday, leadership of both houses have escalated what was 91 billion to almost 100 billion. Now it is full of earmarks, including eight huge C-17 cargo jets sought by the Boeing Co., that Obama had on his list of eliminations last month. We can't turn our backs for a minute. We and the women of Afghanistan and Iraq are being robbed.

This is a total outrage. As negotiators work on reconciling the supplemental funding bill between the House and the Senate this week, please call your representatives at 1-800-517-5696 and tell them they have spent far too much money on violence, weapons and war; it is time to demand a 80-20 development/military funding ratio.

If you haven't already, please also sign our petition asking for real leadership for the women of Afghanistan here.

To learn more about what we can do to help the women of Afghanistan, be sure to listen to See Jane Do's interview with Sweeta Noori, director of Women for Women in Afghanistan, and see other interviews from our Afghan Women Speak Out interview project on PINKTank!

Thank you for standing in solidarity with our Afghan sisters and standing up against outrageous war funding.

Peace,
Allison, Audrey, Blaine, Dana, Desiree, Farida, Gael, Gayle, Janna, Janet, Jean, Jodie, Liz, Lori, Lydia, Medea, Nancy, Pam, Paris, and Rae

CODEPINK: Women For Peace
http://codepinkalert.org

The Gaza Bombshell

After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, the author reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.

by David Rose, Vanity Fair, April 2008

The Al Deira Hotel, in Gaza City, is a haven of calm in a land beset by poverty, fear, and violence. In the middle of December 2007, I sit in the hotel’s airy restaurant, its windows open to the Mediterranean, and listen to a slight, bearded man named Mazen Asad abu Dan describe the suffering he endured 11 months before at the hands of his fellow Palestinians. Abu Dan, 28, is a member of Hamas, the Iranian-backed Islamist organization that has been designated a terrorist group by the United States, but I have a good reason for taking him at his word: I’ve seen the video.

It shows abu Dan kneeling, his hands bound behind his back, and screaming as his captors pummel him with a black iron rod. “I lost all the skin on my back from the beatings,” he says. “Instead of medicine, they poured perfume on my wounds. It felt as if they had taken a sword to my injuries.”

click here to read the full article

Gen. Dayton admits US is helping Fatah

By HILARY LEILA KRIEGER, Jerusalem Post, May 27, 2009

As violence raged this week in the Gaza Strip between Hamas and Fatah, US officials stressed the importance of American efforts to bolster forces loyal to the latter and said further help was necessary.

"This chaotic situation is why the USSC [United States security coordinator] is focused on the legal, legitimate security forces in our attempts to reestablish law and order," said Lt.-Gen. Keith Dayton, the USCC working with the Palestinians, in testimony Wednesday before the House Subcommittee on the Middle East. But he added, "The legal security forces of the Palestinian president still lack what they need to achieve … law and order."

The State Department has in the past denied that America's non-lethal training of the presidential guard of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah - largely aimed at securing the Karni border crossing and protecting Abbas and other VIPs - amounted to the US taking sides in Fatah's fight with Hamas.

But at the hearing Dayton highlighted the US role in helping Fatah as it faces attacks from the Islamic radicals in Hamas.

"We are leading, through the acts of this Congress, the international effort to possibly affect this worrisome situation," he said. "The security assistance plan that you have authorized me to just begin to implement is pointing the way forward for all international and regional allies."

Congress recently allowed $59 million to be used to further Dayton's efforts at training the presidential guard of Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah.

The money, however, didn't go through the normal appropriation process, as the White House took previously approved funds and simply reallocated them.

Dayton pushed the case for further US assistance to the Palestinian guard, despite months of efforts on the ground that have seemed to have little effect against the well-disciplined and well-supplied Hamas.

"We are entering a rough patch," Dayton acknowledged, "but all is not lost and our regional partners share that sentiment. However, it is critical that those who support the legitimate authority and forces represented by President Abbas receive the critical assistance they need."

Dayton is visiting the US from Israel, where he is based, and testified before the Middle East subcommittee at the behest of its chairman, Gary Ackerman (D-New York).

In response to a question about Israel's security raised by subcommittee ranking member Mike Pence (R-Indiana), Dayton assured the members, "Nothing we do to strengthen the Palestinian's security capability will be targeted against Israel … The presidential guard will not become a threat to Israel."

U.S. military budget saps economy

By Gavrielle Gemma, Workers World, May 22, 2009

Once again the military budget is rising, dashing hopes that the new administration would reverse the course of the Bush years. As many as 100,000 troops are being added to the military, with 22,000 slated to go to Afghanistan.

The annual budget of the Department of Defense will go from $487.7 billion to $527.7 billion this year. However, the cost of the Iraq/Afghanistan invasions and occupations, which is counted separately, will come to at least another $150 billion for the fiscal year.

To get a true measure of the cost of imperialist expansion and intervention, add in the debt payments for past military spending ($263 billion), nuclear weapons paid for through the Department of Energy ($22 billion), Homeland Security ($57 billion), military construction ($25 billion) and the CIA ($48 billion). It all adds up to more than $1 trillion. (Rolling Stone Magazine; Center for Defense Information)

The United States accounts for nearly half of the combined military budgets of the entire planet. The Pentagon budget comes to more than the gross domestic product of all 47 countries in sub-Saharan Africa. (World Bank)

On the same day that the military budget was released, a report came out entitled “Feeding America.” Based on 2005-2007 data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Agriculture Department, it found that in this country 3.5 million children under the age of 5 go hungry. That’s 17 percent of all children in the U.S. But the imperialist priority is to build billions of dollars worth of new weapons each year.

The Pentagon is wholly in the hands of the ruling class. Its function is to secure global markets, loot natural resources and subjugate the workers of each country for the capitalists. Its mission is to destroy any opposition to this from governments and popular rebellions, causing millions to die each year.

The militarists justify these monumental costs in the name of “national security.” But to have real security, all people need jobs, homes, health care, food, education and culture. All this is being sacrificed at the altar of the U.S. military-industrial-banking complex (MIBC). The significance of these mind-numbing figures lies not only in the Pentagon’s brutality and cost but its growing control over every aspect of society.

‘Generals over the White House’

In his book “Generals over the White House” (WW Publishers, 1980), Sam Marcy wrote that “The Military Industrial Complex is an historically inevitable outgrowth of the inherent tendencies in capitalist production in the epoch of imperialism. ... [With] the accelerating degeneration of monopoly capitalism into state monopoly capitalism ... the military in pursuit of its ends constantly needs greater and greater resources of an economic, industrial and technological character.”

Early capitalism, while brutal, expanded industry. Its profits grew with the exploitation of labor globally. Today, with global markets glutted, the capitalists cannot reinvest most of that profit into useful production. Instead, monopoly capitalism is addicted to three pillars of obscene profit: looting public treasuries through debt, military expenditures and a host of money speculation schemes like those that brought on the current bank crisis. None produce anything of value.

Capitalism, unlike socialism, is not a rational, planned system of production and mass distribution. Capitalism goes where the rate of profit is highest and damn the consequences. Any monopoly capitalist wanting to make huge profits must feed at the public military trough.

Weapons and military technology are not bought at a store. Governments buy them, with the people’s money. The MIBC simply robs the treasury with the agreement of the politicians it puts in office—agreement obtained either through threat or bribery. Each year the government borrows money to cover the cost. If it means cutting schools and hospitals, or letting New Orleans be buried in water, so be it.

Can Obama reverse this?

“The military wants to run the state,” wrote Marcy. “It grows out of the evolution of the fusion of the military with the industrial and banking complex. ... Politicians cannot resist.” When Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower left office in 1961 after two terms as president, he warned of the rise of the military-industrial complex, a term he coined. Almost 50 years later, the invasion of the military into all civilian matters has gone much further.

We’re familiar with the revolving door of retired military brass taking executive positions in military companies. The flip side of that is to bring corporate executives in to run the military. In the first Bush-Cheney administration, 32 executives or major shareholders of weapons contractors were appointed to top policy-making positions in the Pentagon, the National Security Council, the Department of Energy and the State Department. (World Policy Institute Special Report, October 2004) They are still there, with hundreds more infiltrating all the councils of the White House and Congress.

A comparison with the Carter administration can shed light on today’s reality. Jimmy Carter ran on a program of cutting the military budget and signing the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT). During his four years in office there was the largest increase in military expenditures thus far. He scrapped SALT. The Carter Doctrine defined the Persian Gulf as an American lake to be defended with “all the force necessary.” The country was in a recession.

Sam Marcy explained that, regardless of Carter’s personal intentions, he could not withstand the pressure and threats of the MIBC. Carter wound up appointing four right-wing Republicans to key posts. Admirals, generals and their close associates ran critical aspects of the government, both inside the White House and out.

A who’s who of President Barack Obama’s administration goes a long way in explaining the call for higher military spending, more troops and continued occupation regardless of Obama’s intentions. First and foremost, Bush Secretary of Defense Robert Gates was kept on the job. Commanding Gen. David Petraeus said, “If President Obama wants to make any dramatic changes in the Pentagon, he’s going to have to do them in the first year, and if he’s got the same secretary, how can Obama do it.” (New York Times, Jan. 21)

Gen. James Jones is Obama’s national security advisor and head of the National Security Council, where Gates and Petraeus also sit. Jones, whose office is practically next to Obama’s, is “a classic, pragmatic conservative,” wrote Robert Dreyfuss. “He’s a titan of the military-industrial complex. He is pro-nuclear. He likes oil drilling. He was on the boards of Boeing and Chevron.” (Rolling Stone Magazine, May 14) Jones opposed a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan and was formerly a deputy to McCain.

Dreyfuss wrote that the National Security Council is changing, but not for the better. “They are giving a far wider range of agencies a seat on the NSC, including key officials involved in trade, energy, economic policy and technology.” The new mission is to take up all aspects of society, military and economic.

“When the president cannot attend, Gen. Jones runs top-level meetings. ... They’re making the decisions there at the White House on everything,” said Leslie Gelb, a former State and Pentagon official.

Military spending doesn’t help workers

Mass layoffs continue and home foreclosures are soaring. But Wall Street felt better when the military budget was announced. Raytheon CFO David Wajsgras said, “There was nervousness. We are encouraged, this budget did very well for the company. Stocks rose 7 percent.” (Wall Street Journal, April 23)

Good for the capitalists, bad for the workers. A trillion dollars a year for the military will not stimulate the economy and produce jobs, but it will further replace civilian production.

Marcy wrote, “Carter conveyed the impression that the defense budget would cushion a recession and curb unemployment. Wall Street was happy.” The Wall Street Journal wrote in January 1980 that it would mean more jobs and an end of recessionary expectations.

Why didn’t that happen, asks Marcy. “Military production, if it is relied on as a stimulant over a protracted period, like any other stimulant ultimately turns into its opposite and becomes a devastating depressant. Militarism is an intractable capitalist disease in which production is destined for a blind market for profit and not for human use.

“Military production in the epoch of imperialism is a special case of commodity production. Marx wrote in ‘Capital’ that ‘The wealth of those societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails presents itself as an immense accumulation of commodities.’

“The products of the MIC are by Marxist definition commodities. However, in addition to having an exchange value, commodities must also have a use value. The process of capitalist production and exchange in the final analysis means that the capitalist, in order to realize a profit, must produce a useful product. If not, it undermines the very process of capital reproduction. The sum total of the products that emanate from the MIC is devoid of usefulness to society.”

Marcy explained that “cranking up the war machine in the 1930s was a stimulus to the capitalist economy, but it was the U.S. appropriation of markets and raw materials from allies and foes that vastly enriched monopoly capitalism at home.” Since Korea “the U.S. imperialist establishment has flooded the U.S. as well as the rest of the world with small bits of paper of decreasing value: indebtedness incurred as a result of the military adventures for which there has been no material return or compensation for the vast expenditures entailed in producing the planes, guns, tanks, etc.”

The “new” bail-out-the-banks philosophy is that saving them and spending on the military will resuscitate the economy. But this warmed-over, trickle-down theory is self-serving and a lie. A funded public jobs program at a decent wage would do much more to stimulate the economy for the workers—but superprofits for a narrow group of monopolists trumps, because they run the government.

In 1967, during the Vietnam War, Sen. Allen J. Ellender of Louisiana said, “The truth of the matter is that in many important respects, the Congress and the nation are in the hands of the military. ... The administration and generals, Department of State seem to have the ways and means of getting just about what they want regardless of the monetary difficulties affecting the nation.”

Militarism may still keep the heart of monopoly capitalism pumping. But it is not as powerful as the global working class could be, fighting shoulder to shoulder to wrest back some of what we need and to liberate humanity once and for all.
Articles copyright 1995-2009 Workers World. Verbatim copying and distribution of this entire article is permitted in any medium without royalty provided this notice is preserved.

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Army chief says US ready to be in Iraq 10 years

By TOM CURLEY, AP, May 26, 2009

WASHINGTON – The Pentagon is prepared to leave fighting forces in Iraq for as long as a decade despite an agreement between the United States and Iraq that would bring all American troops home by 2012, the top U.S. Army officer said Tuesday.

Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff, said the world remains dangerous and unpredictable, and the Pentagon must plan for extended U.S. combat and stability operations in two wars. "Global trends are pushing in the wrong direction," Casey said. "They fundamentally will change how the Army works."

He spoke at an invitation-only briefing to a dozen journalists and policy analysts from Washington-based think-tanks. He said his planning envisions combat troops in Iraq and Afghanistan for a decade as part of a sustained U.S. commitment to fighting extremism and terrorism in the Middle East.

Casey's calculations about force levels are related to his attempt to ease the brutal deployment calendar that he said would "bring the Army to its knees."

Casey would not specify how many combat units would be split between Iraq and Afghanistan. He said U.S. ground commander Gen. Ray Odierno is leading a study to determine how far U.S. forces could be cut back in Iraq and still be effective. Casey said his comments about the long war in Iraq were not meant to conflict with administration policies.

President Barack Obama plans to bring U.S. combat forces home from Iraq in 2010, and the United States and Iraq have agreed that all American forces would leave by 2012. Although several senior U.S. officials have suggested Iraq could request an extension, the legal agreement the two countries signed last year would have to be amended for any significant U.S. presence to remain.

As recently as February, Defense Secretary Robert Gates reiterated the U.S. commitment to the agreement worked out with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki.

"Under the Status of Forces Agreement with the Iraqi government, I intend to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by the end of 2011," Gates said during an address at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina. "We will complete this transition to Iraqi responsibility, and we will bring our troops home with the honor that they have earned."

The United States currently has about 139,000 troops in Iraq and 52,000 in Afghanistan.

Obama campaigned on ending the Iraq war as quickly as possible and refocusing U.S. resources on what he called the more important fight in Afghanistan.

That will not mean a major influx of U.S. fighting forces on the model of the Iraq "surge," however. Obama has agreed to send about 21,000 combat forces and trainers to Afghanistan this year. Combined with additional forces approved before former President George W. Bush left office, the United States is expected to have about 68,000 troops in Afghanistan by the end of this year. That's about double the total at the end of 2008, but Obama's top military and civilian advisers have indicated the number is unlikely to grow much beyond that.

Casey said several times that he wasn't the person making policy, but the military was preparing to have a fighting force deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan for years to come. Casey said his planning envisions 10 combat brigades plus command and support forces committed to the two wars.

When asked whether the Army had any measurement for knowing how big it should be, Casey responded, "How about the reality scenario?"

This scenario, he said, must take into account that "we're going to have 10 Army and Marine units deployed for a decade in Iraq and Afghanistan."

Casey stressed that the United States must be ready to take on sustained fights in the Middle East while meeting other commitments.

Casey reiterated statements made by civilian and military leaders that the situation in Afghanistan would get worse before it gets better. "There's going to be a big fight in the South," he said.

Casey added that training of local police and military in Afghanistan was at least a couple years behind the pace in Iraq, and it would be months before the U.S. deployed enough trainers. There's a steeper curve before training could be effective in Afghanistan, requiring three to five years before Afghanis could reach the "tipping point" of control.

He also said the U.S. had to be careful about what assets get deployed to Afghanistan. "Anything you put in there would be in there for a decade," he said.

As Army chief of staff, Casey is primarily responsible for assembling the manpower and determining assignments. He insisted the Army's 1.1-million size was sufficient even to handle the extended Mideast conflicts.

"We ought to build a pretty effective Army with 1.1 million strength," Casey said. He also noted that the Army's budget had grown to $220 billion from $68 billion before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

He said the Army is two-thirds of the way through a complete overhaul from the Cold War-era force built around tanks and artillery to today's terrorist-driven realities. The Army has become more versatile and quicker by switching from division-led units to brigade-level command.

Casey said the Army has moved from 15-month battlefield deployments to 12 months. His goal is to move rotations by 2011 to one year in the battlefield and two years out for regular Army troops, and one year in the battlefield and three years out for reserves. He called the current one-year-in-one-year-out cycle "unsustainable."

Noam Chomsky on the Global Economic Crisis, Healthcare, US Foreign Policy and Resistance to American Empire

click here for transcript on Democracy Now!

Take Action: Tell Congress--No Arms for Israel

Last week, President Obama sent his FY2010 budget request to Congress and, as expected, included in it $2.775 billion in military aid for Israel, an increase of $225 million from this year's budget.

The budget request now goes to the Senate and House Appropriations Subcommittees on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs for hearings and "mark-ups".

This request for an increase in military aid to Israel comes despite the fact that Israel consistently misuses U.S. weapons in violation of the Arms Export Control and Foreign Assistance Acts.

During the Bush Administration, Israel killed more than 3,000 Palestinian civilians who took no part in hostilities, including more than 1,000 children. During its December-January war on the Gaza Strip alone, Israel killed nearly 1,200 Palestinian non-combatants.

Especially during this acute economic crisis, is this how you want Congress to spend your taxes? If not, then take action below.

TAKE ACTION

1. Send a personalized letter to the Members of Congress on the Appropriations Subcommittee.

Let these Members of Congress know that you oppose the President's FY2010 budget request for $2.775 billion in military aid to Israel. To send your letter, please click here.

2. Get your organization to endorse our open letter to the Appropriations Subcommittees.

The US Campaign is organizing an open letter to the Appropriations Subcommittees opposing the President's FY2010 budget request for $2.775 billion I military aid to Israel. To read and endorse the letter (organizational endorsements only please), click here.

Check out the list of national organizations that are joining with us to launch this open letter:

1. American Jews for a Just Peace

2. Americans United for Palestinian Human Rights

3. Chicago Faith Coalition on Middle East Policy

4. Council for the National Interest

5. Council on American-Islamic Relations

6. Episcopal Peace Fellowship

7. Fellowship of Reconciliation

8. Friends of Sabeel-North America

9. Grassroots International

10. Interfaith Peace-Builders

11. Middle East Research and Information Project

12. Muslim American Society Freedom Foundation

13. New Internationalism Project, Institute for Policy Studies

14. Progressive Democrats of America

15. US Campaign to End the Israeli Occupation

16. Women's International League for Peace and Freedom-U.S. Section

To read the full text of the open letter and to have your organization endorse it, please click here.

3. Spread the word about our campaign.

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4. Sign up to organize to challenge military aid to Israel in your community.

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5. Offset your tax contribution to Israeli military occupation.

Although Tax Day has come and gone, it's not too late for you to make a statement that you don't want your tax dollars going to fund Israel's human rights abuses of Palestinians. According to our research, Israel killed more than 3,000 innocent Palestinians, including more than 1,000 children, during the Bush Administration, often with U.S. weapons.

We're estimating that in FY2010, each individual tax payer will on average be giving $17.75 in military aid to Israel. Offset your tax contribution to Israeli military occupation and human rights abuses by making a tax deductible contribution to us by clicking on the logo below.

Support our work in the North Carolina area by sending donations to:

Action Center For Justice
7100 Mapleridge Dr
Charlotte, NC 28210

(please note Palestine with your donation)

U.S. Covert Operations in Gaza, West Bank, & Egypt Exposed

The Gaza Bombshell
David Rose, Vanity Fair, April 2008 issue

After failing to anticipate Hamas’s victory over Fatah in the 2006 Palestinian election, the White House cooked up yet another scandalously covert and self-defeating Middle East debacle: part Iran-contra, part Bay of Pigs. With confidential documents, corroborated by outraged former and current U.S. officials, David Rose reveals how President Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and Deputy National-Security Adviser Elliott Abrams backed an armed force under Fatah strongman Muhammad Dahlan, touching off a bloody civil war in Gaza and leaving Hamas stronger than ever.

The Al Deira Hotel, in Gaza City, is a haven of calm in a land beset by poverty, fear, and violence. In the middle of December 2007, I sit in the hotel’s airy restaurant, its windows open to the Mediterranean, and listen to a slight, bearded man named Mazen Asad abu Dan describe the suffering he endured 11 months before at the hands of his fellow Palestinians. Abu Dan, 28, is a member of Hamas, the Iranian-backed Islamist organization that has been designated a terrorist group by the United States, but I have a good reason for taking him at his word: I’ve seen the video.

It shows abu Dan kneeling, his hands bound behind his back, and screaming as his captors pummel him with a black iron rod. “I lost all the skin on my back from the beatings,” he says. “Instead of medicine, they poured perfume on my wounds. It felt as if they had taken a sword to my injuries.”

On January 26, 2007, abu Dan, a student at the Islamic University of Gaza, had gone to a local cemetery with his father and five others to erect a headstone for his grandmother. When they arrived, however, they found themselves surrounded by 30 armed men from Hamas’s rival, Fatah, the party of Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. “They took us to a house in north Gaza,” abu Dan says. “They covered our eyes and took us to a room on the sixth floor.”

The video reveals a bare room with white walls and a black-and-white tiled floor, where abu Dan’s father is forced to sit and listen to his son’s shrieks of pain. Afterward, abu Dan says, he and two of the others were driven to a market square. “They told us they were going to kill us. They made us sit on the ground.” He rolls up the legs of his trousers to display the circular scars that are evidence of what happened next: “They shot our knees and feet—five bullets each. I spent four months in a wheelchair.”

Abu Dan had no way of knowing it, but his tormentors had a secret ally: the administration of President George W. Bush.

A clue comes toward the end of the video, which was found in a Fatah security building by Hamas fighters last June. Still bound and blindfolded, the prisoners are made to echo a rhythmic chant yelled by one of their captors: “By blood, by soul, we sacrifice ourselves for Muhammad Dahlan! Long live Muhammad Dahlan!”

There is no one more hated among Hamas members than Muhammad Dahlan, long Fatah’s resident strongman in Gaza. Dahlan, who most recently served as Abbas’s national-security adviser, has spent more than a decade battling Hamas. Dahlan insists that abu Dan was tortured without his knowledge, but the video is proof that his followers’ methods can be brutal.

Bush has met Dahlan on at least three occasions. After talks at the White House in July 2003, Bush publicly praised Dahlan as “a good, solid leader.” In private, say multiple Israeli and American officials, the U.S. president described him as “our guy.”

The United States has been involved in the affairs of the Palestinian territories since the Six-Day War of 1967, when Israel captured Gaza from Egypt and the West Bank from Jordan. With the 1993 Oslo accords, the territories acquired limited autonomy, under a president, who has executive powers, and an elected parliament. Israel retains a large military presence in the West Bank, but it withdrew from Gaza in 2005.

In recent months, President Bush has repeatedly stated that the last great ambition of his presidency is to broker a deal that would create a viable Palestinian state and bring peace to the Holy Land. “People say, ‘Do you think it’s possible, during your presidency?’ ” he told an audience in Jerusalem on January 9. “And the answer is: I’m very hopeful.”

The next day, in the West Bank capital of Ramallah, Bush acknowledged that there was a rather large obstacle standing in the way of this goal: Hamas’s complete control of Gaza, home to some 1.5 million Palestinians, where it seized power in a bloody coup d’état in June 2007. Almost every day, militants fire rockets from Gaza into neighboring Israeli towns, and President Abbas is powerless to stop them. His authority is limited to the West Bank.

It’s “a tough situation,” Bush admitted. “I don’t know whether you can solve it in a year or not.” What Bush neglected to mention was his own role in creating this mess.

According to Dahlan, it was Bush who had pushed legislative elections in the Palestinian territories in January 2006, despite warnings that Fatah was not ready. After Hamas—whose 1988 charter committed it to the goal of driving Israel into the sea—won control of the parliament, Bush made another, deadlier miscalculation.

Vanity Fair has obtained confidential documents, since corroborated by sources in the U.S. and Palestine, which lay bare a covert initiative, approved by Bush and implemented by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Deputy National Security Adviser Elliott Abrams, to provoke a Palestinian civil war. The plan was for forces led by Dahlan, and armed with new weapons supplied at America’s behest, to give Fatah the muscle it needed to remove the democratically elected Hamas-led government from power. (The State Department declined to comment.)

But the secret plan backfired, resulting in a further setback for American foreign policy under Bush. Instead of driving its enemies out of power, the U.S.-backed Fatah fighters inadvertently provoked Hamas to seize total control of Gaza.

Some sources call the scheme “Iran-contra 2.0,” recalling that Abrams was convicted (and later pardoned) for withholding information from Congress during the original Iran-contra scandal under President Reagan. There are echoes of other past misadventures as well: the C.I.A.’s 1953 ouster of an elected prime minister in Iran, which set the stage for the 1979 Islamic revolution there; the aborted 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, which gave Fidel Castro an excuse to solidify his hold on Cuba; and the contemporary tragedy in Iraq.

Within the Bush administration, the Palestinian policy set off a furious debate. One of its critics is David Wurmser, the avowed neoconservative, who resigned as Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief Middle East adviser in July 2007, a month after the Gaza coup.

Wurmser accuses the Bush administration of “engaging in a dirty war in an effort to provide a corrupt dictatorship [led by Abbas] with victory.” He believes that Hamas had no intention of taking Gaza until Fatah forced its hand. “It looks to me that what happened wasn’t so much a coup by Hamas but an attempted coup by Fatah that was pre-empted before it could happen,” Wurmser says.

The botched plan has rendered the dream of Middle East peace more remote than ever, but what really galls neocons such as Wurmser is the hypocrisy it exposed. “There is a stunning disconnect between the president’s call for Middle East democracy and this policy,” he says. “It directly contradicts it.”

Preventive Security
Bush was not the first American president to form a relationship with Muhammad Dahlan. “Yes, I was close to Bill Clinton,” Dahlan says. “I met Clinton many times with [the late Palestinian leader Yasser] Arafat.” In the wake of the 1993 Oslo accords, Clinton sponsored a series of diplomatic meetings aimed at reaching a permanent Middle East peace, and Dahlan became the Palestinians’ negotiator on security.

As I talk to Dahlan in a five-star Cairo hotel, it’s easy to see the qualities that might make him attractive to American presidents. His appearance is immaculate, his English is serviceable, and his manner is charming and forthright. Had he been born into privilege, these qualities might not mean much. But Dahlan was born—on September 29, 1961—in the teeming squalor of Gaza’s Khan Younis refugee camp, and his education came mostly from the street. In 1981 he helped found Fatah’s youth movement, and he later played a leading role in the first intifada—the five-year revolt that began in 1987 against the Israeli occupation. In all, Dahlan says, he spent five years in Israeli jails.

From the time of its inception as the Palestinian branch of the international Muslim Brotherhood, in late 1987, Hamas had represented a threatening challenge to Arafat’s secular Fatah party. At Oslo, Fatah made a public commitment to the search for peace, but Hamas continued to practice armed resistance. At the same time, it built an impressive base of support through schooling and social programs.

The rising tensions between the two groups first turned violent in the early 1990s—with Muhammad Dahlan playing a central role. As director of the Palestinian Authority’s most feared paramilitary force, the Preventive Security Service, Dahlan arrested some 2,000 Hamas members in 1996 in the Gaza Strip after the group launched a wave of suicide bombings. “Arafat had decided to arrest Hamas military leaders, because they were working against his interests, against the peace process, against the Israeli withdrawal, against everything,” Dahlan says. “He asked the security services to do their job, and I have done that job.”

It was not, he admits, “popular work.” For many years Hamas has said that Dahlan’s forces routinely tortured detainees. One alleged method was to sodomize prisoners with soda bottles. Dahlan says these stories are exaggerated: “Definitely there were some mistakes here and there. But no one person died in Preventive Security. Prisoners got their rights. Bear in mind that I am an ex-detainee of the Israelis’. No one was personally humiliated, and I never killed anyone the way [Hamas is] killing people on a daily basis now.” Dahlan points out that Arafat maintained a labyrinth of security services—14 in all—and says the Preventive Security Service was blamed for abuses perpetrated by other units.

Dahlan worked closely with the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., and he developed a warm relationship with Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet, a Clinton appointee who stayed on under Bush until July 2004. “He’s simply a great and fair man,” Dahlan says. “I’m still in touch with him from time to time.”

“Everyone Was Against the Elections”
In a speech in the White House Rose Garden on June 24, 2002, President Bush announced that American policy in the Middle East was turning in a fundamentally new direction.

Arafat was still in power at the time, and many in the U.S. and Israel blamed him for wrecking Clinton’s micro-managed peace efforts by launching the second intifada—a renewed revolt, begun in 2000, in which more than 1,000 Israelis and 4,500 Palestinians had died. Bush said he wanted to give Palestinians the chance to choose new leaders, ones who were not “compromised by terror.” In place of Arafat’s all-powerful presidency, Bush said, “the Palestinian parliament should have the full authority of a legislative body.”

Arafat died in November 2004, and Abbas, his replacement as Fatah leader, was elected president in January 2005. Elections for the Palestinian parliament, known officially as the Legislative Council, were originally set for July 2005, but later postponed by Abbas until January 2006.

Dahlan says he warned his friends in the Bush administration that Fatah still wasn’t ready for elections in January. Decades of self-preservationist rule by Arafat had turned the party into a symbol of corruption and inefficiency—a perception Hamas found it easy to exploit. Splits within Fatah weakened its position further: in many places, a single Hamas candidate ran against several from Fatah.

“Everyone was against the elections,” Dahlan says. Everyone except Bush. “Bush decided, ‘I need an election. I want elections in the Palestinian Authority.’ Everyone is following him in the American administration, and everyone is nagging Abbas, telling him, ‘The president wants elections.’ Fine. For what purpose?”

The elections went forward as scheduled. On January 25, Hamas won 56 percent of the seats in the Legislative Council.

Few inside the U.S. administration had predicted the result, and there was no contingency plan to deal with it. “I’ve asked why nobody saw it coming,” Condoleezza Rice told reporters. “I don’t know anyone who wasn’t caught off guard by Hamas’s strong showing.”

“Everyone blamed everyone else,” says an official with the Department of Defense. “We sat there in the Pentagon and said, ‘Who the fuck recommended this?’ ”

In public, Rice tried to look on the bright side of the Hamas victory. “Unpredictability,” she said, is “the nature of big historic change.” Even as she spoke, however, the Bush administration was rapidly revising its attitude toward Palestinian democracy.

Some analysts argued that Hamas had a substantial moderate wing that could be strengthened if America coaxed it into the peace process. Notable Israelis—such as Ephraim Halevy, the former head of the Mossad intelligence agency—shared this view. But if America paused to consider giving Hamas the benefit of the doubt, the moment was “milliseconds long,” says a senior State Department official. “The administration spoke with one voice: ‘We have to squeeze these guys.’ With Hamas’s election victory, the freedom agenda was dead.”

The first step, taken by the Middle East diplomatic “Quartet”—the U.S., the European Union, Russia, and the United Nations—was to demand that the new Hamas government renounce violence, recognize Israel’s right to exist, and accept the terms of all previous agreements. When Hamas refused, the Quartet shut off the faucet of aid to the Palestinian Authority, depriving it of the means to pay salaries and meet its annual budget of roughly $2 billion.

Israel clamped down on Palestinians’ freedom of movement, especially into and out of the Hamas-dominated Gaza Strip. Israel also detained 64 Hamas officials, including Legislative Council members and ministers, and even launched a military campaign into Gaza after one of its soldiers was kidnapped. Through it all, Hamas and its new government, led by Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, proved surprisingly resilient.

Washington reacted with dismay when Abbas began holding talks with Hamas in the hope of establishing a “unity government.” On October 4, 2006, Rice traveled to Ramallah to see Abbas. They met at the Muqata, the new presidential headquarters that rose from the ruins of Arafat’s compound, which Israel had destroyed in 2002.

America’s leverage in Palestinian affairs was much stronger than it had been in Arafat’s time. Abbas had never had a strong, independent base, and he desperately needed to restore the flow of foreign aid—and, with it, his power of patronage. He also knew that he could not stand up to Hamas without Washington’s help.

At their joint press conference, Rice smiled as she expressed her nation’s “great admiration” for Abbas’s leadership. Behind closed doors, however, Rice’s tone was sharper, say officials who witnessed their meeting. Isolating Hamas just wasn’t working, she reportedly told Abbas, and America expected him to dissolve the Haniyeh government as soon as possible and hold fresh elections.

Abbas, one official says, agreed to take action within two weeks. It happened to be Ramadan, the month when Muslims fast during daylight hours. With dusk approaching, Abbas asked Rice to join him for iftar—a snack to break the fast.

Afterward, according to the official, Rice underlined her position: “So we’re agreed? You’ll dissolve the government within two weeks?”

“Maybe not two weeks. Give me a month. Let’s wait until after the Eid,” he said, referring to the three-day celebration that marks the end of Ramadan. (Abbas’s spokesman said via e-mail: “According to our records, this is incorrect.”)

Rice got into her armored S.U.V., where, the official claims, she told an American colleague, “That damned iftar has cost us another two weeks of Hamas government.”

“We Will Be There to Support You”
Weeks passed with no sign that Abbas was ready to do America’s bidding. Finally, another official was sent to Ramallah. Jake Walles, the consul general in Jerusalem, is a career foreign-service officer with many years’ experience in the Middle East. His purpose was to deliver a barely varnished ultimatum to the Palestinian president.

We know what Walles said because a copy was left behind, apparently by accident, of the “talking points” memo prepared for him by the State Department. The document has been authenticated by U.S. and Palestinian officials.

“We need to understand your plans regarding a new [Palestinian Authority] government,” Walles’s script said. “You told Secretary Rice you would be prepared to move ahead within two to four weeks of your meeting. We believe that the time has come for you to move forward quickly and decisively.”

The memo left no doubt as to what kind of action the U.S. was seeking: “Hamas should be given a clear choice, with a clear deadline: … they either accept a new government that meets the Quartet principles, or they reject it The consequences of Hamas’ decision should also be clear: If Hamas does not agree within the prescribed time, you should make clear your intention to declare a state of emergency and form an emergency government explicitly committed to that platform.”

Walles and Abbas both knew what to expect from Hamas if these instructions were followed: rebellion and bloodshed. For that reason, the memo states, the U.S. was already working to strengthen Fatah’s security forces. “If you act along these lines, we will support you both materially and politically,” the script said. “We will be there to support you.”

Abbas was also encouraged to “strengthen [his] team” to include “credible figures of strong standing in the international community.” Among those the U.S. wanted brought in, says an official who knew of the policy, was Muhammad Dahlan.

On paper, the forces at Fatah’s disposal looked stronger than those of Hamas. There were some 70,000 men in the tangle of 14 Palestinian security services that Arafat had built up, at least half of those in Gaza. After the legislative elections, Hamas had expected to assume command of these forces, but Fatah maneuvered to keep them under its control. Hamas, which already had 6,000 or so irregulars in its militant al-Qassam Brigade, responded by forming the 6,000-troop Executive Force in Gaza, but that still left it with far fewer fighters than Fatah.

In reality, however, Hamas had several advantages. To begin with, Fatah’s security forces had never really recovered from Operation Defensive Shield, Israel’s massive 2002 re-invasion of the West Bank in response to the second intifada. “Most of the security apparatus had been destroyed,” says Youssef Issa, who led the Preventive Security Service under Abbas.

The irony of the blockade on foreign aid after Hamas’s legislative victory, meanwhile, was that it prevented only Fatah from paying its soldiers. “We are the ones who were not getting paid,” Issa says, “whereas they were not affected by the siege.” Ayman Daraghmeh, a Hamas Legislative Council member in the West Bank, agrees. He puts the amount of Iranian aid to Hamas in 2007 alone at $120 million. “This is only a fraction of what it should give,” he insists. In Gaza, another Hamas member tells me the number was closer to $200 million.

The result was becoming apparent: Fatah could not control Gaza’s streets—or even protect its own personnel.

At about 1:30 p.m. on September 15, 2006, Samira Tayeh sent a text message to her husband, Jad Tayeh, the director of foreign relations for the Palestinian intelligence service and a member of Fatah. “He didn’t reply,” she says. “I tried to call his mobile [phone], but it was switched off. So I called his deputy, Mahmoun, and he didn’t know where he was. That’s when I decided to go to the hospital.”

Samira, a slim, elegant 40-year-old dressed from head to toe in black, tells me the story in a Ramallah café in December 2007. Arriving at the Al Shifa hospital, “I went through the morgue door. Not for any reason—I just didn’t know the place. I saw there were all these intelligence guards there. There was one I knew. He saw me and he said, ‘Put her in the car.’ That’s when I knew something had happened to Jad.”

Tayeh had left his office in a car with four aides. Moments later, they found themselves being pursued by an S.U.V. full of armed, masked men. About 200 yards from the home of Prime Minister Haniyeh, the S.U.V. cornered the car. The masked men opened fire, killing Tayeh and all four of his colleagues.

Hamas said it had nothing to do with the murders, but Samira had reason to believe otherwise. At three a.m. on June 16, 2007, during the Gaza takeover, six Hamas gunmen forced their way into her home and fired bullets into every photo of Jad they could find. The next day, they returned and demanded the keys to the car in which he had died, claiming that it belonged to the Palestinian Authority.

Fearing for her life, she fled across the border and then into the West Bank, with only the clothes she was wearing and her passport, driver’s license, and credit card.

“Very Clever Warfare”
Fatah’s vulnerability was a source of grave concern to Dahlan. “I made a lot of activities to give Hamas the impression that we were still strong and we had the capacity to face them,” he says. “But I knew in my heart it wasn’t true.” He had no official security position at the time, but he belonged to parliament and retained the loyalty of Fatah members in Gaza. “I used my image, my power.” Dahlan says he told Abbas that “Gaza needs only a decision for Hamas to take over.” To prevent that from happening, Dahlan waged “very clever warfare” for many months.

According to several alleged victims, one of the tactics this “warfare” entailed was to kidnap and torture members of Hamas’s Executive Force. (Dahlan denies Fatah used such tactics, but admits “mistakes” were made.) Abdul Karim al-Jasser, a strapping man of 25, says he was the first such victim. “It was on October 16, still Ramadan,” he says. “I was on my way to my sister’s house for iftar. Four guys stopped me, two of them with guns. They forced me to accompany them to the home of Aman abu Jidyan,” a Fatah leader close to Dahlan. (Abu Jidyan would be killed in the June uprising.)

The first phase of torture was straightforward enough, al-Jasser says: he was stripped naked, bound, blindfolded, and beaten with wooden poles and plastic pipes. “They put a piece of cloth in my mouth to stop me screaming.” His interrogators forced him to answer contradictory accusations: one minute they said that he had collaborated with Israel, the next that he had fired Qassam rockets against it.

But the worst was yet to come. “They brought an iron bar,” al-Jasser says, his voice suddenly hesitant. We are speaking inside his home in Gaza, which is experiencing one of its frequent power outages. He points to the propane-gas lamp that lights the room. “They put the bar in the flame of a lamp like this. When it was red, they took the covering off my eyes. Then they pressed it against my skin. That was the last thing I remember.”

When he came to, he was still in the room where he had been tortured. A few hours later, the Fatah men handed him over to Hamas, and he was taken to the hospital. “I could see the shock in the eyes of the doctors who entered the room,” he says. He shows me photos of purple third-degree burns wrapped like towels around his thighs and much of his lower torso. “The doctors told me that if I had been thin, not chubby, I would have died. But I wasn’t alone. That same night that I was released, abu Jidyan’s men fired five bullets into the legs of one of my relatives. We were in the same ward in the hospital.”

Dahlan says he did not order al-Jasser’s torture: “The only order I gave was to defend ourselves. That doesn’t mean there wasn’t torture, some things that went wrong, but I did not know about this.”

The dirty war between Fatah and Hamas continued to gather momentum throughout the autumn, with both sides committing atrocities. By the end of 2006, dozens were dying each month. Some of the victims were noncombatants. In December, gunmen opened fire on the car of a Fatah intelligence official, killing his three young children and their driver.

There was still no sign that Abbas was ready to bring matters to a head by dissolving the Hamas government. Against this darkening background, the U.S. began direct security talks with Dahlan.

“He’s Our Guy”
In 2001, President Bush famously said that he had looked Russian president Vladimir Putin in the eye, gotten “a sense of his soul,” and found him to be “trustworthy.” According to three U.S. officials, Bush made a similar judgment about Dahlan when they first met, in 2003. All three officials recall hearing Bush say, “He’s our guy.”

They say this assessment was echoed by other key figures in the administration, including Rice and Assistant Secretary David Welch, the man in charge of Middle East policy at the State Department. “David Welch didn’t fundamentally care about Fatah,” one of his colleagues says. “He cared about results, and [he supported] whatever son of a bitch you had to support. Dahlan was the son of a bitch we happened to know best. He was a can-do kind of person. Dahlan was our guy.”

Avi Dichter, Israel’s internal-security minister and the former head of its Shin Bet security service, was taken aback when he heard senior American officials refer to Dahlan as “our guy.” “I thought to myself, The president of the United States is making a strange judgment here,” says Dichter.

Lieutenant General Keith Dayton, who had been appointed the U.S. security coordinator for the Palestinians in November 2005, was in no position to question the president’s judgment of Dahlan. His only prior experience with the Middle East was as director of the Iraq Survey Group, the body that looked for Saddam Hussein’s elusive weapons of mass destruction.

In November 2006, Dayton met Dahlan for the first of a long series of talks in Jerusalem and Ramallah. Both men were accompanied by aides. From the outset, says an official who took notes at the meeting, Dayton was pushing two overlapping agendas.

“We need to reform the Palestinian security apparatus,” Dayton said, according to the notes. “But we also need to build up your forces in order to take on Hamas.”

Dahlan replied that, in the long run, Hamas could be defeated only by political means. “But if I am going to confront them,” he added, “I need substantial resources. As things stand, we do not have the capability.”

The two men agreed that they would work toward a new Palestinian security plan. The idea was to simplify the confusing web of Palestinian security forces and have Dahlan assume responsibility for all of them in the newly created role of Palestinian national-security adviser. The Americans would help supply weapons and training.

As part of the reform program, according to the official who was present at the meetings, Dayton said he wanted to disband the Preventive Security Service, which was widely known to be engaged in kidnapping and torture. At a meeting in Dayton’s Jerusalem office in early December, Dahlan ridiculed the idea. “The only institution now protecting Fatah and the Palestinian Authority in Gaza is the one you want removed,” he said.

Dayton softened a little. “We want to help you,” he said. “What do you need?”

“Iran-Contra 2.0”
Under Bill Clinton, Dahlan says, commitments of security assistance “were always delivered, absolutely.” Under Bush, he was about to discover, things were different. At the end of 2006, Dayton promised an immediate package worth $86.4 million—money that, according to a U.S. document published by Reuters on January 5, 2007, would be used to “dismantle the infrastructure of terrorism and establish law and order in the West Bank and Gaza.” U.S. officials even told reporters the money would be transferred “in the coming days.”

The cash never arrived. “Nothing was disbursed,” Dahlan says. “It was approved and it was in the news. But we received not a single penny.”

Any notion that the money could be transferred quickly and easily had died on Capitol Hill, where the payment was blocked by the House Subcommittee on the Middle East and South Asia. Its members feared that military aid to the Palestinians might end up being turned against Israel.

Dahlan did not hesitate to voice his exasperation. “I spoke to Condoleezza Rice on several occasions,” he says. “I spoke to Dayton, to the consul general, to everyone in the administration I knew. They said, ‘You have a convincing argument.’ We were sitting in Abbas’s office in Ramallah, and I explained the whole thing to Condi. And she said, ‘Yes, we have to make an effort to do this. There’s no other way.’ ” At some of these meetings, Dahlan says, Assistant Secretary Welch and Deputy National-Security Adviser Abrams were also present.

The administration went back to Congress, and a reduced, $59 million package for nonlethal aid was approved in April 2007. But as Dahlan knew, the Bush team had already spent the past months exploring alternative, covert means of getting him the funds and weapons he wanted. The reluctance of Congress meant that “you had to look for different pots, different sources of money,” says a Pentagon official.

A State Department official adds, “Those in charge of implementing the policy were saying, ‘Do whatever it takes. We have to be in a position for Fatah to defeat Hamas militarily, and only Muhammad Dahlan has the guile and the muscle to do this.’ The expectation was that this was where it would end up—with a military showdown.” There were, this official says, two “parallel programs”—the overt one, which the administration took to Congress, “and a covert one, not only to buy arms but to pay the salaries of security personnel.”

In essence, the program was simple. According to State Department officials, beginning in the latter part of 2006, Rice initiated several rounds of phone calls and personal meetings with leaders of four Arab nations—Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. She asked them to bolster Fatah by providing military training and by pledging funds to buy its forces lethal weapons. The money was to be paid directly into accounts controlled by President Abbas.

The scheme bore some resemblance to the Iran-contra scandal, in which members of Ronald Reagan’s administration sold arms to Iran, an enemy of the U.S. The money was used to fund the contra rebels in Nicaragua, in violation of a congressional ban. Some of the money for the contras, like that for Fatah, was furnished by Arab allies as a result of U.S. lobbying.

But there are also important differences—starting with the fact that Congress never passed a measure expressly prohibiting the supply of aid to Fatah and Dahlan. “It was close to the margins,” says a former intelligence official with experience in covert programs. “But it probably wasn’t illegal.”

Legal or not, arms shipments soon began to take place. In late December 2006, four Egyptian trucks passed through an Israeli-controlled crossing into Gaza, where their contents were handed over to Fatah. These included 2,000 Egyptian-made automatic rifles, 20,000 ammunition clips, and two million bullets. News of the shipment leaked, and Benjamin Ben-Eliezer, an Israeli Cabinet member, said on Israeli radio that the guns and ammunition would give Abbas “the ability to cope with those organizations which are trying to ruin everything”—namely, Hamas.

Avi Dichter points out that all weapons shipments had to be approved by Israel, which was understandably hesitant to allow state-of-the-art arms into Gaza. “One thing’s for sure, we weren’t talking about heavy weapons,” says a State Department official. “It was small arms, light machine guns, ammunition.”

Perhaps the Israelis held the Americans back. Perhaps Elliott Abrams himself held back, unwilling to run afoul of U.S. law for a second time. One of his associates says Abrams, who declined to comment for this article, felt conflicted over the policy—torn between the disdain he felt for Dahlan and his overriding loyalty to the administration. He wasn’t the only one: “There were severe fissures among neoconservatives over this,” says Cheney’s former adviser David Wurmser. “We were ripping each other to pieces.”

During a trip to the Middle East in January 2007, Rice found it difficult to get her partners to honor their pledges. “The Arabs felt the U.S. was not serious,” one official says. “They knew that if the Americans were serious they would put their own money where their mouth was. They didn’t have faith in America’s ability to raise a real force. There was no follow-through. Paying was different than pledging, and there was no plan.”

This official estimates that the program raised “a few payments of $30 million”—most of it, as other sources agree, from the United Arab Emirates. Dahlan himself says the total was only $20 million, and confirms that “the Arabs made many more pledges than they ever paid.” Whatever the exact amount, it was not enough.

Plan B
On February 1, 2007, Dahlan took his “very clever warfare” to a new level when Fatah forces under his control stormed the Islamic University of Gaza, a Hamas stronghold, and set several buildings on fire. Hamas retaliated the next day with a wave of attacks on police stations.

Unwilling to preside over a Palestinian civil war, Abbas blinked. For weeks, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia had been trying to persuade him to meet with Hamas in Mecca and formally establish a national unity government. On February 6, Abbas went, taking Dahlan with him. Two days later, with Hamas no closer to recognizing Israel, a deal was struck.

Under its terms, Ismail Haniyeh of Hamas would remain prime minister while allowing Fatah members to occupy several important posts. When the news hit the streets that the Saudis had promised to pay the Palestinian Authority’s salary bills, Fatah and Hamas members in Gaza celebrated together by firing their Kalashnikovs into the air.

Once again, the Bush administration had been taken by surprise. According to a State Department official, “Condi was apoplectic.” A remarkable documentary record, revealed here for the first time, shows that the U.S. responded by redoubling the pressure on its Palestinian allies.

The State Department quickly drew up an alternative to the new unity government. Known as “Plan B,” its objective, according to a State Department memo that has been authenticated by an official who knew of it at the time, was to “enable [Abbas] and his supporters to reach a defined endgame by the end of 2007 The endgame should produce a [Palestinian Authority] government through democratic means that accepts Quartet principles.”

Like the Walles ultimatum of late 2006, Plan B called for Abbas to “collapse the government” if Hamas refused to alter its attitude toward Israel. From there, Abbas could call early elections or impose an emergency government. It is unclear whether, as president, Abbas had the constitutional authority to dissolve an elected government led by a rival party, but the Americans swept that concern aside.

Security considerations were paramount, and Plan B had explicit prescriptions for dealing with them. For as long as the unity government remained in office, it was essential for Abbas to maintain “independent control of key security forces.” He must “avoid Hamas integration with these services, while eliminating the Executive Force or mitigating the challenges posed by its continued existence.”

In a clear reference to the covert aid expected from the Arabs, the memo made this recommendation for the next six to nine months: “Dahlan oversees effort in coordination with General Dayton and Arab [nations] to train and equip 15,000-man force under President Abbas’s control to establish internal law and order, stop terrorism and deter extralegal forces.”

The Bush administration’s goals for Plan B were elaborated in a document titled “An Action Plan for the Palestinian Presidency.” This action plan went through several drafts and was developed by the U.S., the Palestinians, and the government of Jordan. Sources agree, however, that it originated in the State Department.

The early drafts stressed the need for bolstering Fatah’s forces in order to “deter” Hamas. The “desired outcome” was to give Abbas “the capability to take the required strategic political decisions … such as dismissing the cabinet, establishing an emergency cabinet.”

The drafts called for increasing the “level and capacity” of 15,000 of Fatah’s existing security personnel while adding 4,700 troops in seven new “highly trained battalions on strong policing.” The plan also promised to arrange “specialized training abroad,” in Jordan and Egypt, and pledged to “provide the security personnel with the necessary equipment and arms to carry out their missions.”

A detailed budget put the total cost for salaries, training, and “the needed security equipment, lethal and non-lethal,” at $1.27 billion over five years. The plan states: “The costs and overall budget were developed jointly with General Dayton’s team and the Palestinian technical team for reform”—a unit established by Dahlan and led by his friend and policy aide Bassil Jaber. Jaber confirms that the document is an accurate summary of the work he and his colleagues did with Dayton. “The plan was to create a security establishment that could protect and strengthen a peaceful Palestinian state living side by side with Israel,” he says.

The final draft of the Action Plan was drawn up in Ramallah by officials of the Palestinian Authority. This version was identical to the earlier drafts in all meaningful ways but one: it presented the plan as if it had been the Palestinians’ idea. It also said the security proposals had been “approved by President Mahmoud Abbas after being discussed and agreed [to] by General Dayton’s team.”

On April 30, 2007, a portion of one early draft was leaked to a Jordanian newspaper, Al-Majd. The secret was out. From Hamas’s perspective, the Action Plan could amount to only one thing: a blueprint for a U.S.-backed Fatah coup.

“We Are Late in the Ball Game Here”
The formation of the unity government had brought a measure of calm to the Palestinian territories, but violence erupted anew after Al-Majd published its story on the Action Plan. The timing was unkind to Fatah, which, to add to its usual disadvantages, was without its security chief. Ten days earlier, Dahlan had left Gaza for Berlin, where he’d had surgery on both knees. He was due to spend the next eight weeks convalescing.

In mid-May, with Dahlan still absent, a new element was added to Gaza’s toxic mix when 500 Fatah National Security Forces recruits arrived, fresh from training in Egypt and equipped with new weapons and vehicles. “They had been on a crash course for 45 days,” Dahlan says. “The idea was that we needed them to go in dressed well, equipped well, and that might create the impression of new authority.” Their presence was immediately noticed, not only by Hamas but by staff from Western aid agencies. “They had new rifles with telescopic sights, and they were wearing black flak jackets,” says a frequent visitor from Northern Europe. “They were quite a contrast to the usual scruffy lot.”

On May 23, none other than Lieutenant General Dayton discussed the new unit in testimony before the House Middle East subcommittee. Hamas had attacked the troops as they crossed into Gaza from Egypt, Dayton said, but “these 500 young people, fresh out of basic training, were organized. They knew how to work in a coordinated fashion. Training does pay off. And the Hamas attack in the area was, likewise, repulsed.”

The troops’ arrival, Dayton said, was one of several “hopeful signs” in Gaza. Another was Dahlan’s appointment as national-security adviser. Meanwhile, he said, Hamas’s Executive Force was becoming “extremely unpopular I would say that we are kind of late in the ball game here, and we are behind, there’s two out, but we have our best clutch hitter at the plate, and the pitcher is beginning to tire on the opposing team.”

The opposing team was stronger than Dayton realized. By the end of May 2007, Hamas was mounting regular attacks of unprecedented boldness and savagery.

At an apartment in Ramallah that Abbas has set aside for wounded refugees from Gaza, I meet a former Fatah communications officer named Tariq Rafiyeh. He lies paralyzed from a bullet he took to the spine during the June coup, but his suffering began two weeks earlier. On May 31, he was on his way home with a colleague when they were stopped at a roadblock, robbed of their money and cell phones, and taken to a mosque. There, despite the building’s holy status, Hamas Executive Force members were violently interrogating Fatah detainees. “Late that night one of them said we were going to be released,” Rafiyeh recalls. “He told the guards, ‘Be hospitable, keep them warm.’ I thought that meant kill us. Instead, before letting us go they beat us badly.”

On June 7, there was another damaging leak, when the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that Abbas and Dayton had asked Israel to authorize the biggest Egyptian arms shipment yet—to include dozens of armored cars, hundreds of armor-piercing rockets, thousands of hand grenades, and millions of rounds of ammunition. A few days later, just before the next batch of Fatah recruits was due to leave for training in Egypt, the coup began in earnest.

Fatah’s Last Stand
The Hamas leadership in Gaza is adamant that the coup would not have happened if Fatah had not provoked it. Fawzi Barhoum, Hamas’s chief spokesman, says the leak in Al-Majd convinced the party that “there was a plan, approved by America, to destroy the political choice.” The arrival of the first Egyptian-trained fighters, he adds, was the “reason for the timing.” About 250 Hamas members had been killed in the first six months of 2007, Barhoum tells me. “Finally we decided to put an end to it. If we had let them stay loose in Gaza, there would have been more violence.”

“Everyone here recognizes that Dahlan was trying with American help to undermine the results of the elections,” says Mahmoud Zahar, the former foreign minister for the Haniyeh government, who now leads Hamas’s militant wing in Gaza. “He was the one planning a coup.”

Zahar and I speak inside his home in Gaza, which was rebuilt after a 2003 Israeli air strike destroyed it, killing one of his sons. He tells me that Hamas launched its operations in June with a limited objective: “The decision was only to get rid of the Preventive Security Service. They were the ones out on every crossroads, putting anyone suspected of Hamas involvement at risk of being tortured or killed.” But when Fatah fighters inside a surrounded Preventive Security office in Jabaliya began retreating from building to building, they set off a “domino effect” that emboldened Hamas to seek broader gains.

Many armed units that were nominally loyal to Fatah did not fight at all. Some stayed neutral because they feared that, with Dahlan absent, his forces were bound to lose. “I wanted to stop the cycle of killing,” says Ibrahim abu al-Nazar, a veteran party chief. “What did Dahlan expect? Did he think the U.S. Navy was going to come to Fatah’s rescue? They promised him everything, but what did they do? But he also deceived them. He told them he was the strongman of the region. Even the Americans may now feel sad and frustrated. Their friend lost the battle.”

Others who stayed out of the fight were extremists. “Fatah is a large movement, with many schools inside it,” says Khalid Jaberi, a commander with Fatah’s al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, which continue to fire rockets into Israel from Gaza. “Dahlan’s school is funded by the Americans and believes in negotiations with Israel as a strategic choice. Dahlan tried to control everything in Fatah, but there are cadres who could do a much better job. Dahlan treated us dictatorially. There was no overall Fatah decision to confront Hamas, and that’s why our guns in al-Aqsa are the cleanest. They are not corrupted by the blood of our people.”

Jaberi pauses. He spent the night before our interview awake and in hiding, fearful of Israeli air strikes. “You know,” he says, “since the takeover, we’ve been trying to enter the brains of Bush and Rice, to figure out their mentality. We can only conclude that having Hamas in control serves their overall strategy, because their policy was so crazy otherwise.”

The fighting was over in less than five days. It began with attacks on Fatah security buildings, in and around Gaza City and in the southern town of Rafah. Fatah attempted to shell Prime Minister Haniyeh’s house, but by dusk on June 13 its forces were being routed.

Years of oppression by Dahlan and his forces were avenged as Hamas chased down stray Fatah fighters and subjected them to summary execution. At least one victim was reportedly thrown from the roof of a high-rise building. By June 16, Hamas had captured every Fatah building, as well as Abbas’s official Gaza residence. Much of Dahlan’s house, which doubled as his office, was reduced to rubble.

Fatah’s last stand, predictably enough, was made by the Preventive Security Service. The unit sustained heavy casualties, but a rump of about 100 surviving fighters eventually made it to the beach and escaped in the night by fishing boat.

At the apartment in Ramallah, the wounded struggle on. Unlike Fatah, Hamas fired exploding bullets, which are banned under the Geneva Conventions. Some of the men in the apartment were shot with these rounds 20 or 30 times, producing unimaginable injuries that required amputation. Several have lost both legs.

The coup has had other costs. Amjad Shawer, a local economist, tells me that Gaza had 400 functioning factories and workshops at the start of 2007. By December, the intensified Israeli blockade had caused 90 percent of them to close. Seventy percent of Gaza’s population is now living on less than $2 a day.

Israel, meanwhile, is no safer. The emergency pro-peace government called for in the secret Action Plan is now in office—but only in the West Bank. In Gaza, the exact thing both Israel and the U.S. Congress warned against came to pass when Hamas captured most of Fatah’s arms and ammunition—including the new Egyptian guns supplied under the covert U.S.-Arab aid program.

Now that it controls Gaza, Hamas has given free rein to militants intent on firing rockets into neighboring Israeli towns. “We are still developing our rockets; soon we shall hit the heart of Ashkelon at will,” says Jaberi, the al-Aqsa commander, referring to the Israeli city of 110,000 people 12 miles from Gaza’s border. “I assure you, the time is near when we will mount a big operation inside Israel, in Haifa or Tel Aviv.”

On January 23, Hamas blew up parts of the wall dividing Gaza from Egypt, and tens of thousands of Palestinians crossed the border. Militants had already been smuggling weapons through a network of underground tunnels, but the breach of the wall made their job much easier—and may have brought Jaberi’s threat closer to reality.

George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice continue to push the peace process, but Avi Dichter says Israel will never conclude a deal on Palestinian statehood until the Palestinians reform their entire law-enforcement system—what he calls “the chain of security.” With Hamas in control of Gaza, there appears to be no chance of that happening. “Just look at the situation,” says Dahlan. “They say there will be a final-status agreement in eight months? No way.”

“An Institutional Failure”
How could the U.S. have played Gaza so wrong? Neocon critics of the administration—who until last year were inside it—blame an old State Department vice: the rush to anoint a strongman instead of solving problems directly. This ploy has failed in places as diverse as Vietnam, the Philippines, Central America, and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, during its war against Iran. To rely on proxies such as Muhammad Dahlan, says former U.N. ambassador John Bolton, is “an institutional failure, a failure of strategy.” Its author, he says, was Rice, “who, like others in the dying days of this administration, is looking for legacy. Having failed to heed the warning not to hold the elections, they tried to avoid the result through Dayton.”

With few good options left, the administration now appears to be rethinking its blanket refusal to engage with Hamas. Staffers at the National Security Council and the Pentagon recently put out discreet feelers to academic experts, asking them for papers describing Hamas and its principal protagonists. “They say they won’t talk to Hamas,” says one such expert, “but in the end they’re going to have to. It’s inevitable.”

It is impossible to say for sure whether the outcome in Gaza would have been any better—for the Palestinian people, for the Israelis, and for America’s allies in Fatah—if the Bush administration had pursued a different policy. One thing, however, seems certain: it could not be any worse.

David Rose is a Vanity Fair contributing editor.