Doug Henwood Talks

From: “Robert Naiman ” naiman@justforeignpolicy.org Date: August 17, 2006 1:47:56 PM EDT Just Foreign Policy News August 17, 2006

In this issue: 1) Already Falling Behind 2) Bombs Aimed at G.I.’s in Iraq Are Increasing 3) Hizbullah Rejects Syrian Position 4) Lebanon Sends National Army to Patrol South 5) Cabinet members spar over proposed weapons compromise 6) Stocks Scandal Spells Doom of Embattled Israeli Army Chief 7) Deputy PM Prescott denies calling Bush “crap” 8) Iranian Says Talks Can Cover Uranium 9) President Joins in G.O.P. Attacks on Democrats About Terrorism 10) Democrats Counter G.O.P. and Lieberman on Iraq 11) Foreign Workers Flee War-Ravaged Country 12) South Lebanon Towns Reclaim Their Dead and Hold Funerals 13) Afghanistan: U.S. To Pay Families for Deadly Attack 14) For Many Israelis, a Bitter Homecoming: Border Areas Reflect
National Sentiment Over Failure to Eliminate Hezbollah 15) Iraqi speaker derails Bush’s dreams 16) Hezbollah vs. Halliburton 17) Bloomberg Spins the Bolivia Gas Story: A Good Example of Bad
Journalism 18) Poll Shows Lamont Gaining Support, But Still Trailing Lieberman

Contents: 1) Already Falling Behind Editorial New York Times August 17, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/17/opinion/17thur1.html Hezbollah is taking charge of reconstruction in south Lebanon, while
the world is dithering over the makeup of a peacekeeping force. Large
swaths of the country are in ruins. Hundreds of thousands of people
are without homes. Many Lebanese are furiously blaming the United
States as well as Israel for their suffering. Whatever anger they may
also harbor toward Hezbollah is being more than neutralized by the
militia’s swift on-the-scene response and the large piles of cash it
is handing out, courtesy of Iran. The Bush administration provided
$30 million in relief aid in the midst of the war, but got little
credit while it was doing nothing to stop Israel’s bombing. Last week
Washington committed another $20 million, and officials say they’ll
pledge a lot more at a conference at the end of this month. Promises
can’t compete with the visible aid Hezbollah is already delivering.
Washington’s pledges must be quickly translated into tangible on-the- ground help or Hezbollah will clinch the battle for Lebanese hearts
and minds even before the peacekeepers arrive. It may turn out that
the most that can be hoped for is a slow political marginalization of
Hezbollah. Even that will take all the outside aid, technical support
and spine-stiffening for Lebanon’s government that the international
community can provide. The race has begun, and Hezbollah is already
ahead.

2) Bombs Aimed at G.I.’s in Iraq Are Increasing Michael R. Gordon, Mark Mazzetti And Thom Shanker New York Times August 17, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/17/world/middleeast/17military.html The number of roadside bombs planted in Iraq rose in July to the
highest monthly total of the war, offering more evidence that the
anti-American insurgency has continued to strengthen despite the
killing of the terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. Along with a
sharp increase in sectarian attacks, the number of daily strikes
against American and Iraqi security forces has doubled since January.
The deadliest means of attack, roadside bombs, made up much of that
increase. In July, of 2,625 explosive devices, 1,666 exploded and 959
were discovered before they went off. In January, 1,454 bombs
exploded or were found. The bomb statistics compiled by American
military are part of a growing body of data and intelligence analysis
about the violence in Iraq that has produced somber public
assessments from military commanders, administration officials and
lawmakers on Capitol Hill. “The insurgency has gotten worse by almost
all measures, with insurgent attacks at historically high levels,”
said a senior Defense Department official. “The insurgency has more
public support and is demonstrably more capable in numbers of people
active and in its ability to direct violence than at any point in time.” A separate report by the Defense Intelligence Agency details
worsening security conditions inside the country and describes how
Iraq risks sliding toward civil war.

3) Hizbullah Rejects Syrian Position Juan Cole, citing al-Zaman Informed Comment (Cole’s blog) Thursday, August 17, 2006 http://www.juancole.com/#115580499108906603 Hizbullah declined to adopt the position of Syrian President Bashar
al-Asad in accusing the reformist politicians of standing against
Hizbullah and the resistance in Lebanon. (Bashar has a feud with the
14 March group, but Hizbullah joined it in a national unity
government.) Husayn al-Hajj Hasan, a Hizbullah member of parliament
said, “we reject the idea of considering the 14 March group to be
agents of Israel and America.”

4) Lebanon Sends National Army to Patrol South John Kifner And Robert F. Worth New York Times August 17, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/17/world/middleeast/17mideast.html The Lebanese Army moved into the country’s south on Thursday, but
finessed the delicate issue of disarming Hezbollah. At several
points, soldiers crossed the Litani River into the long-held separate
realm of Hezbollah. Hezbollah fighters were not expected to resist
the soldiers, nor to hand over their weapons. Instead, they probably
would simply put their weapons into hiding and melt away into the
civilian population. “Just like in the past, Hezbollah had no visible
military presence and there will not be any presence now,” a
Hezbollah field commander said Wednesday. He said Hezbollah would
maintain its presence without displaying its arms and that since
Israeli tanks were still in Lebanon, the guerrillas reserved the
right to respond accordingly. A Hezbollah representative in
Parliament said that his organization would not pull back over the
Litani and that the fate of its arsenal was not open to public
debate. In Israel, skepticism about the plan was evident. Still, the
Israeli Army said Wednesday it had started to hand over positions in
Lebanon to UN troops. Hezbollah guerrillas have operated in the south
for years. They are almost entirely local men hardened by 18 years of
Israeli occupation after its 1982 invasion. During that time, they
lived and worked in their native villages, building an elaborate
social-service network and extensive underground fortifications and
stashes of modern weaponry that astounded Israel in a month of bitter
fighting. “For the next two or three years, Hezbollah will be like
the Salvation Army, tied up in rebuilding,” said Michael Young, the
opinion editor at The Daily Star in Beirut. “But the party cannot put
Shiites through such trauma again for the foreseeable future, maybe a
decade, which means its ability to attack Israel will be limited. The
reason Hezbollah is so eager to rebuild is that they know the
condition of Shiites today could turn the community against them if
it’s not dealt with effectively.” Amid the growing debate in Israel
over the handling of the war, Israel’s defense minister appointed a
panel to investigate how the military and the ministry had performed.

5) Cabinet members spar over proposed weapons compromise Nada Bakri and Therese Sfeir Daily Star (Beirut) Wednesday, August 16, 2006 http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp? editionid=1&categid=2&article_id=74774 A compromise agreement currently being hammered out between Hizbullah
and the Lebanese government is expected to allow the party to keep
hidden weapons in South Lebanon, the London-based Al-Hayat newspaper
reported Tuesday. While Hizbullah would need to keep the weapons it
possesses south of the Litani River hidden, an agreement for areas
north of the river would be “left to a long-term solution,” the paper
said. If the proposed compromise is accepted by Premier Fouad
Siniora’s Cabinet, it would violate the terms of UN Security Council
Resolution 1701. And it is also a violation of the “one weapon”
principle of Siniora’s seven-point plan. Resolution 1701 calls for
Israel and Lebanon to support a solution based on previous UN
resolutions requiring “the disarmament of all armed groups in
Lebanon” apart from state security forces.

6) Stocks Scandal Spells Doom of Embattled Israeli Army Chief Marius Schattner Agence France Presse Wednesday, August 16, 2006 http://www.commondreams.org/headlines06/0816-06.htm Israel’s army chief, under fire for selling shares hours before
launching an offensive in Lebanon, was looking set to become the
first head to roll in the outcry over the state’s handling of the
month-long war. Israel’s media have piled opprobrium on Dan Halutz
since the Maariv newspaper revealed Tuesday that he had sold shares
hours before the start of the Israeli offensive in Lebanon. The story
has focused the anger of many in a country struggling to come to
terms with the less than decisive outcome of its war against the
Hezbollah militia.”There’s an old Romanian saying that goes like
this: ‘the country is burning, but grandma is combing her hair.’ The
country was on fire, and all that interested Halutz was his
investment portfolio,” member of parliament Colette Avital said
Tuesday. Resignation calls have come from parliament but also from
the highest circles of the defense establishment.

7) Deputy PM Prescott denies calling Bush “crap” BBC News 2006/08/17 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4800827.stm Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott has denied saying the Bush
administration had been “crap” on the Middle East road map. Labour MP
Harry Cohen said the remark came during a meeting with fellow Labour
MPs. The White House said Bush had been called worse. Asked about
Prescott’s denial, Cohen told the BBC he did not think it was a
“gaffe” by the deputy PM and that Prescott should not be embarrassed.
Cohen said he believed Prescott’s comment had been “an honest and
good point well made”. Asked why Prescott might deny it, Cohen
claimed it might be politically expedient “not to upset the
Americans”. He said he thought many of his fellow MPs and the wider
population would agree that more should have been done by the US in
pushing forward the Middle East road map in recent years. He said
Prescott claimed he had only supported the Iraq war “because they
were promised the road map”. Colin Brown, the deputy prime minister’s
biographer, said “the fact is, a lot of people are cheering him on.”
Former ministers were “right behind him on this”, Brown added, and
the deputy prime minister had “never been more popular than he is
now” as a result. For the Liberal Democrats, Norman Lamb said: “John
Prescott does not always use the most appropriate language, but if
these reports are to be believed then his instincts on the Middle
East are certainly preferable to Tony Blair’s.”

8) Iranian Says Talks Can Cover Uranium New York Times August 17, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/17/world/middleeast/17iran.html Iran’s foreign minister said Wednesday that Iran was willing to
discuss suspending uranium enrichment during negotiations with
European countries and China. The foreign minister, Manouchehr
Mottaki, spoke two weeks before the Aug. 31 deadline set by the UN
Security Council for Iran to halt the enrichment or face sanctions.
Other Iranian officials, including President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad,
have responded defiantly to the demand to suspend the program, which
Iran says is intended to make fuel for nuclear power plants and is
not a cover for a secret effort to make nuclear weapons. Iran has
said it will respond by Tuesday to a European-led offer of incentives
to suspend enrichment. “We declared that the best way is to resume negotiations,” Mr.
Mottaki said. “We can even discuss the issue of suspension, which is
not acceptable based on any logic,” he added. “The Islamic Republic
of Iran will not back down from its rights under any circumstances.”

9) President Joins in G.O.P. Attacks on Democrats About Terrorism Jim Rutenberg New York Times August 17, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/17/washington/17bush.html President Bush Wednesday picked up his party’s attack against
Democrats for having the wrong approach to the fight against
terrorism. But his was a kinder, gentler approach than the one used
by Vice President Dick Cheney and others in recent days. Referring to
the war in Iraq, Bush said: “There’s some good people in our country
who believe we should cut and run. They’re not bad people when they
say that, they’re decent people.” But he added, “I just happen to
believe they’re wrong, and they’re wrong for this reason: this would
be a defeat for the US in a key battleground in the global war on
terror.” It was Bush’s first public political address since news
broke last week that the British had disrupted a major terrorism
plot. The White House and the Republican Party had pounced on that
news, along with the defeat of Joseph Lieberman in the Connecticut
Democratic primary by antiwar candidate Ned Lamont, to paint
Democrats as weak on national security. Cheney had gone so far as to
imply that the defeat of Lieberman would embolden “Al Qaeda types.”
There was no mistaking the president’s target when he said success in
Iraq was crucial in the fight against terrorism, adding, to loud
applause: “They want us to leave. They want us to cut and run.” Phil
Singer, a spokesman for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee,
responded, “Misstating the Democrats’ position on Iraq doesn’t change
the fact that the White House’s Iraq policy has been a tragic failure.”

10) Democrats Counter G.O.P. and Lieberman on Iraq Jennifer Medina New York Times August 17, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/17/nyregion/17conn.html Democratic leaders supporting Ned Lamont’s Senate campaign struck
back yesterday at attacks suggesting that their party’s support of
him portrayed the Democrats as weak on national security. Lamont’s
campaign has sought to identify Lieberman with the Republicans,
saying that the senator’s criticism of Lamont shows his alignment
with the Bush administration’s policy in Iraq. Senator Hillary
Clinton said she had “deep regret that there’s any effort to
politicize the war on terror.” Lamont held a press conference
Wednesday afternoon specifically to counter the attacks from
Republicans, calling them “outrageous” and “disrespectful” of
Connecticut voters. “We don’t need any sermons on the meaning of
9/11,” Lamont said of remarks by Vice President Cheney, adding that
Lieberman was “becoming more and more the de facto Republican
candidate.” Senator John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, sent a
fund-raising appeal via e-mail to millions of his supporters,
imploring them to send contributions to Lamont, along with Senator
Menendez of New Jersey and Senator Akaka of Hawaii. “Each of these
candidates is making the mess in Iraq a central issue in their
campaigns for the Senate,” Kerry wrote. “In the Senate,” he added, “Ned Lamont will go head to head with Don
Rumsfeld, and our troops will benefit from Lamont’s leadership. He
knows that patriotism isn’t reserved for those who defend a
president’s position; patriotism is doing what’s right for our troops
and our country.”

11) Foreign Workers Flee War-Ravaged Country Many Found Themselves Trapped in Lebanon Nora Boustany Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, August 17, 2006; A21 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/16/ AR2006081601901.html At times of peace and at times of war, they are the invisible people.
They are the migrant workers who slog at hard jobs in strange lands.
In Lebanon, they are everywhere. “They are not part of the collective
consciousness,” said Jean-Philippe Chauzy of the International
Organization for Migration. Chauzy has been helping to evacuate
foreign workers who were trapped in the war zone with no means to
escape. Some have no legal documents. Chauzy said, “We have to talk
about this migratory dimension in human terms, but unless they are
Canadians or Americans, few people want to hear their story.” With
assistance from its member states and the Lebanese authorities, the
IOM has been able to secure the safe passage of about 10,000 people
in recent weeks. But the group’s coffers are running dry, and it has
said it may be forced to suspend its evacuations of foreign nationals
later this week. It has appealed for more funding. More foreign
workers want to leave. Sister Amelia Torres, from the Daughters of
Charity order, came to Lebanon to tend to wounded fighters and
civilians in the mid-1980s. “Those treated as second-class citizens
have to leave,” she told an international relief worker. “Now, some
Lebanese women may have to clean their own toilets.” While some
foreign workers describe wretched conditions, others had made
comfortable lives here and earned the gratitude of their employers.
One Lebanese woman was seen carrying her housekeeper’s duffel bag to
a collection point; she started crying when she saw that the
housekeeper would have to sleep on the floor as she waited for her
turn to leave on a bus.

12) South Lebanon Towns Reclaim Their Dead and Hold Funerals Hassan M. Fattah New York Times August 17, 2006 http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/17/world/middleeast/17burial.html For weeks the bodies were symbols of the helplessness many felt in
the face of Israel’s bombs. But on Wednesday, Lebanon’s dead became
symbols of closure as towns and villages throughout the south began
burying their loved ones. Families mourned for relatives and towns
honored the bodies of Hezbollah fighters in ceremonies in the rubble- strewn villages of the south, vowing never to forget the price they
paid in the fight against Israel.

13) Afghanistan: U.S. To Pay Families for Deadly Attack August 17, 2006 Agence France-Presse http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/17/world/asia/17briefs-003.html The US military said it would pay $90,000 in compensation to the
families of victims of an air attack in May that killed at least 16
civilians in Tulokan, in the Panjwayi district of Kandahar. But a
military spokesman said the compensation process — “family
assistance, reconstruction and projects in the village” — would not
start until security in Kandahar improved. The airstrike came amid
intense fighting with Taliban forces. While the military and the
Afghan government put the death toll from the strike at 16, the
Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission and local residents say 37
people were killed.

14) For Many Israelis, a Bitter Homecoming: Border Areas Reflect
National Sentiment Over Failure to Eliminate Hezbollah Doug Struck Washington Post Foreign Service Thursday, August 17, 2006; A21 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/16/ AR2006081601811.html Thousands of Israelis are returning now to their homes near the
Lebanese border. They are bitter and angry about what many call a
futile war, and what others call an outright loss. “Israel lost big- time,” said Ravit Ben-Simon, glumly reopening her cellphone store on
Wednesday in Kiryat Shemona. “It wasn’t a worthwhile war at all. It
all started because of the kidnapped soldiers. Where are they now?
Still kidnapped. It was all for nothing.” That view was reflected in
a national poll released Wednesday, showing that public support for
the government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert has plummeted.
The poll by the Maariv newspaper showed that Olmert’s support had
dropped from 78 percent on July 19, shortly after the war began, to
40 percent.

15) Iraqi speaker derails Bush’s dreams The sunny scenario of Sunni Arab political integration gets dimmer as
speaker al-Mashhadani takes a hard line against Shiites — and the U.S. Juan Cole Salon http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2006/08/17/mashhadani/index_np.html When George Bush met the speaker of the Iraqi parliament, he liked
him. During his June trip to Baghdad, Bush sang the praises of Dr.
Mahmoud al-Mashhadani. “I was impressed by him,” said Bush during a
press conference. “He’s a fellow that had been put in prison by
Saddam and, interestingly enough, put in prison by us. And he made a
decision to participate in the government. . . . It was interesting
to see a person that could have been really bitter talk about the
skills he’s going to need to bring people together to run the
parliament.” But when the Iraqi parliament reconvenes next month, the
first item on their agenda will be firing al-Mashhadani. He has put
his foot in his mouth too many times. Considering what he’s been
saying about the United States since his moment with the president,
the end of his tenure should come as a relief to the Bush
administration. “Who destroyed Iraq? Who plundered Iraq?” exploded al- Mashhadani in a recent interview. “It is none other than the blue
jinn whose name is: the American Occupation.”

16) Hezbollah vs. Halliburton Robert Weissman Huffington Post 8.16.2006 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-weissman/hezbollah-vs- halliburtonb27370.html What does it say that Hezbollah can organize efficient reconstruction
– commencing as soon a ceasefire was announced, but the U.S.
contractors in Iraq have utterly botched reconstruction there? Sure,
security problems in Iraq have made the contractors’ work extra
challenging — and by now, perhaps impossible in many cases — but
that’s only part of the story. And it doesn’t explain the failure to
successfully undertake reconstruction projects early in the
occupation. The real issue is that the U.S. contractors, on the
whole, saw their mission as corruptly siphoning as much Iraqi and
U.S. taxpayer monies as they could, rather than doing actual
reconstruction. And their U.S. government overseers — to the extent
even this function wasn’t privatized — didn’t care. In fact, they
too were interested in facilitating the cronyism.

17) Bloomberg Spins the Bolivia Gas Story: A Good Example of Bad
Journalism Gretchen Gordon The Democracy Center Sunday, August 13, 2006 http://www.democracyctr.org/blog/2006/08/bloomberg-spins-bolivia-gas- story-good.html Bloomberg posted an article on problems facing the Bolivian
government’s oil and gas “nationalization” efforts. The article
references a report in the La Paz-based newspaper La Razon. The
Bloomberg article paints an entirely different picture of Bolivia’s
oil and gas nationalization. La Razon’s says: “…the participation
of [Bolivia’s state oil company] in the entire chain of production of
the [oil and gas] sector ‘is temporarily suspended, due to the lack
of economic resources.’”Bloomberg says La Razon says: “Bolivia
temporarily suspended a plan to seize oil and natural gas fields
controlled by foreign companies, saying the state oil company lacks
the necessary funds to execute the process, La Razon reported.”
Between La Razon and Bloomberg, Bolivia’s state company
“participating” in the chain of production becomes the government
“seizing” oilfields and assets. The La Razon article is devoted to
laying out in detail just how little has changed since Bolivia’s
“nationalization” decree. The Bloomberg article goes on to tell how
“Bolivian President Evo Morales seized the assets of Petrobras and
other international oil companies on May 1.”

18) Poll Shows Lamont Gaining Support, But Still Trailing Lieberman Associated Press August 17 2006, 7:42 AM EDT http://www.courant.com/news/politics/hc-lamont-lieberman- poll-0817,0,6520516.story

Ned Lamont, whose anti-war campaign rattled the political landscape
by toppling Sen. Joe Lieberman last week in Connecticut’s Democratic
primary, is gaining support in November’s three-way Senate race,
according to a poll released Thursday. But the Quinnipiac University
poll shows Lamont still has an uphill battle against Lieberman, now
running as an independent. Lieberman leads Lamont among registered
voters 49% to 38%. Republican Alan Schlesinger gets support from 4%.
That’s an improvement for Lamont, who trailed Lieberman 51% to 27% in
a three-way race in a July 20 Quinnipiac poll. That survey of
registered voters showed Schlesinger with 9%. Thursday’s poll quizzed
both registered voters and voters likely to cast ballots in the
general election. The July 20 poll only questioned registered voters.
Among likely voters in Thursday’s poll, Lieberman was supported by
53%, compared to Lamont’s 41% and Schlesinger’s 4%. Lieberman’s
advantage comes from broad support among unaffiliated and Republican
voters. “Senator Lieberman’s support among Republicans is nothing
short of amazing. It more than offsets what he has lost among
Democrats,” poll director Douglas Schwartz said. When pollsters asked
if Lieberman should drop out of the race because he lost the
Democratic primary, 58% of all those surveyed said no, but among
Democrats, 56% said he should. Some Senate Republicans are throwing
their support behind Lieberman instead of Schlesinger. Thursday’s
poll showed Lieberman with 75% of the Republican vote, compared to
13% for Lamont and 10% for Schlesinger. Among unaffiliated voters,
Lieberman garners 58%, compared to 36% for Lamont and 3% for
Schlesinger. Among Democrats, Lamont leads Lieberman with 63%.
Lieberman gets 35% of Democratic voters.

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Robert Naiman Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org

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