FDD

From Beijing to "Londonistan" (RWC)

Chinese security officials are gearing up for the possibility of radical Islamic terrorist attacks against the Olympic Games in Beijing in late summer.

There is a fear of the use of radioactive material being used in the form of a “dirty bomb”.

The head of nuclear security at the International Atomic Energy Agency, based in Vienna, said last week that “there is a threat at some level” that this could happen.

The International Atomic Energy Agency has been providing training and technical expertise to the Chinese as a normal preventative measure.

The next games are in London in 2012 and security planning is already under way in quite an industrious fashion, as authorities involved in British Security, at MI 5, Scotland Yard, and MI 6  are concerned about “homegrown” support for an attack.

That city is not called “Londonistan” for no reason.

Too Tough? (CM)

Stuart Taylor writes in National Journal:

Should it be illegal for CIA interrogators to try to scare the man into talking by yelling at him? By threatening to slap him? By pretending to be from Egypt's brutal intelligence service? What about turning up the air conditioner to make him uncomfortably cold? Or denying him hot food until he talks, while giving him all the cold food he can eat?

These methods would all apparently be illegal under a rider that the House-Senate conference committee added to the annual intelligence authorization bill. It would bar the CIA from using any interrogation practice not authorized in the Army field manual's rules for military interrogators. This would mean prohibiting almost all forms of coercive interrogation, including many potentially effective techniques that come nowhere near torture and are now clearly legal.

More here.

Can We Rely on the NIE? (CM)

Former French intelligence operative Claude Moniquet makes these points:

·         U.S. intelligence services have so far failed to predict the nuclearization of a single foreign nation.

·         They foresaw neither the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 nor the collapse of the Soviet Union two years later.

·         In Afghanistan, during the 1980s, while other friendly services, among them the French, urged the CIA to support more "moderate" tribal chiefs in the fight against the Red Army, the agency relied on the enlightened advice of its Saudi friends and supported the most extreme Islamists. U.S. troops are fighting and dying today for that blunder.

·         The report's most controversial conclusion -- that Iran ceased its covert nuclear program -- is based on the absurd distinction between military and civilian. Iran itself admits -- no, boasts -- that it continues enriching uranium as part of its "civilian" program. But such enrichment can have only a military purpose.

·         With this sleight of hand, though, the intelligence services effectively sabotaged the Bush administration's efforts to steer its allies toward a tougher position on Iran. ·         Paris in particular won't be amused about what appears almost like a betrayal. President Nicolas Sarkozy took a great political risk when he turned around French foreign policy and became Europe's leading opponent of a nuclear Iran. He even warned of a possible armed conflict with Iran -- not the most popular thing to do in France.

·         The agencies say in the report that they don't "know" whether Tehran is considering equipping itself with nuclear arms. …With their multibillion-dollar budget, one might certainly expect the agencies to "know" these sorts of things.

·         What everybody "knows" -- and not only those in the intelligence community -- is that Tehran has made it pretty clear that it wants nuclear arms and that it has very concrete plans for their deployment: to erase Israel from the map. Everybody also "knows" that nuclear arms would make the Islamic Republic almost untouchable, turning it into a regional superpower that could dictate its will on the Gulf states -- the world's suppliers of oil and gas. And everybody "knows" that this is an unacceptable prospect for the Gulf countries, practically forcing them to get the bomb as well. Over time the Middle East, not a very stable region, would become completely nuclearized.

More in this Wall Street Journal op-ed. 

UK National Defense Association (RWC)

My friend Glenmore Trenear-Harvey in London has just become an officer of a worthy UK effort that relates to the issue of a common defense of the West against attacks by radical Islam, a subject that concern us all.

Whatever the differences between the US and the UK, they are small compared to what we have in common.  The British are our “cousins” and we have a special relationship with them.

The British commitment to the war in Iraq is much smaller than ours, but it is after all a tiny island country, and the British military is much overextended in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Its military equipment is suffering badly from unanticipated over-use.

Glenmore gave me a letter from-Harvey Winston S. Churchill, the prime minister’s grandson, a distinguished public figure in his own right, and now a man himself in his 60’s, which enumerates worrisome points about the British military:

Large government cuts are planned for Royal Navy ships and aircraft.  The Royal Air Force is now suffering from an absence of “heavy lift capability.”  ELINT aircraft are bordering on un-serviceability from fatigue faults and there is a “woeful lack of helicopter’s to support the British Army.”

British soldiers have long been complaining about flimsy, unsuitable equipment being used by them in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Secrecy & Government at NYU Thursday (AM)

If you happen to be, or can be, in lower Manhattan on Thursday, April 12, NYU's Center on Law and Security will be holding what looks to be a very interesting program on "Secrecy & Government."  On the menu are a number of prominent journalists (e.g., Dana Priest, Adam Liptak, Walter Pincus, Nat Hentoff, et al), some academics from both ideological sides who really know this area (e.g., Elaine Cassel, Jack Goldsmith, Burt Neuborne, et al), and some practitioners who've dealt with these cases (like Josh Dratel, who's represented terrorists, and federal judge Ken Karas, my friend and colleague when we were prosecutors).

The day-long event has been organized by NYU's excellent Prof. Karen Greenberg, who runs the Center and, in my experience, is very conscientious about making sure all views are represented. Details can be found here.

Ana Belen Montes (RWC)

The former US Intelligence officer Ana Belen Montes, a long-time spy for Cuba now serving time in a federal prison for espionage against her native America, caused the death of a US Army Special Forces sergeant twenty years ago.

That news has just surfaced in a new book by Defense Intelligence Agency counter-spy Scott Carmichael. Ana Montes was arrested as a spy for Cuba six years ago.

Carmichael says that Montes, working the Cuban desk of the DIA itself, visited a secret US Special Forces Camp in El Salvador in 1987.

She turned detailed information about the camp over to her Cuban handlers almost immediately.  A few weeks later on March 31, 1987, pro-Castro guerillas from the Marxist group Farabundo Marti National Liberation attacked the camp in a precisely planned early morning assault.

US Army Sgt Greg Fronius, who won a Silver Star for his heroism that morning, died from wounds received in the attack.  The terrorists were guided by information that came directly from US intelligence officer Ana Montes at DIA.

The book is being published by the prestigious US Naval Institute Press. All of the proceeds are being given to Sgt. Fronius’ family.

The author, Carmichael, played a role in uncovering Montes as a spy, although the FBI was already aware that someone in DIA was leaking to the Cubans and were investigating.

Montes was arrested ten days after 9/11, the day before she would have been told about secret plans for the US military incursion against the Taliban in Afghanistan and was already under heavy FBI surveillance.  US authorities were fearful she would deliver the Afghan operations plans to the Cubans so they moved in and grabbed her.

Ana Belen Montes is serving a 25 year- long prison sentence.  Not long enough in the minds of some.

Andrew McCarthy Debates Domestic Surveillance

On April 18, Andrew C. McCarthy, director of FDD's Center for Law & Counterterrorism, will participate in an Oxford-style debate presented by Intelligence Squared (IQ2 US). Mr. McCarthy will join with best-selling author David Frum of the American Enterprise Institute and University of California Berkeley Law Professor John Yoo, an author and former high-ranking official in the Bush Justice Department, as proponents of the motion: "Better More Domestic Surveillance Than Another 9/11." 

Opposing the motion will be former U.S. Congressman Bob Barr, George Washington University Law Professor Jeffrey Rosen, an author and Legal Affairs Editor at The New Republic, and New York Law School Professor Nadine Strossen, the President of the American Civil Liberties Union. The debate will be moderated by Chris Bury, an Emmy Award-winning veteran correspondent of ABC News.

IQ2 US is an initiative of The Rosenkranz Foundation, based on the highly successful London debate program, Intelligence Squared. The debate will be held in New York City at the Asia Society and Museum (725 Park Avenue at 70th Street). There will be a cocktail reception at 6 p.m., with the debate beginning at 6:45 p.m. and concluding at 8:30 p.m. Details about the program are available on the IQ2 US website. 

The Problems at the FBI Are Overblown (AM)

For reasons previously noted, I'm not a big fan of National Security Letters. But, that said, media accounts of the DOJ Inspector General's report about problems with the FBI's use of NSL's have blown those problems way out of proportion. That's the conclusion of an analysis by Ron Kessler today at NewsMax. Kessler is worth heeding on this — he has followed the FBI for years and has not pulled punches in criticizing the Bureau when they've had it coming.

As Kessler points out, the IG stressed that the problems here are sloppy mistakes, not "abuses" — as the privacy obsessives in the press claim. There's no indication whatsoever that the Bureau has engaged in Big Brother tactics to spy on innocent Americans. 

What they've basically done is two-fold: they've accidentally transposed (or otherwise gotten wrong) phone numbers for which calling-activity records were sought (meaning they got the records for the wrong number), and they've accepted from overly cooperative NSL recipients information that went beyond what the NSL requested. 

As human error is not going to be eliminated any time soon, it should come as no surprise that either of these problems can — and frequently do — happen even when government pursues information by subpoena, the method preferred by critics (including me). Anyone who has ever dialed a wrong number should be able to understand that. Indeed, as Kessler notes, the Washington Post, in its breathless page-one story on the IG report, included a table which inadvertently stated that the IG had examined a total of 273 NSLs over a three-year period. The number was actually 293 (as the Post had correctly stated in its accompanying story). Don't hold your breath waiting for a page-one story on media errors.

The Bureau has made the sorts of mistakes here that make its usual defenders (like me) cringe. Without a malevolent bone in their bodies, agents failed to keep adequate records of what they'd initially asked for and failed to go carefully through what was disclosed to them to make sure it was limited to what they really needed.  hese are dumb mistakes. They happen too often, but they are not sinister. And to its credit, the FBI did its own internal review, found and forthrightly reported 26 other errors that the IG had not uncovered, and put in place an improved training and record-keeping regime to avoid a recurrence of these problems.

So let's get a grip. The errors are worthy of being criticized. But the suggestion that Director Mueller or AG Gonzales should be made to walk the plank over this controversy is absurd.

Mullah Omar Sighted in Pakistan (RWC)

There is new word that Mullah Omar, once head of the Taliban, has been seen hiding in Pakistan.

The Afghan intelligence service says that Omar is living near Quetta, Pakistan, with the assistance of the ISI, the Pakistani Intelligence Service.

This is not surprising. The complexities of who is doing what to whom in Pakistan boggle the mind. Consider the same week Pakistani troops were moving against Taliban members in heavy fighting.

I tried to see Mullah Omar for an interview in October of 2001, soon after the 9/11 attacks and just a few days before the US began heavy bombing of Afghanistan, which, of course, toppled the Taliban. I was in Islamabad and had been given Omar’s cell phone number by a mutual friend. I did go up to Peshawar preparative to going across the border but my timing was bad and it was impossible to cross and too dangerous if I had succeeded.

A tribute to Jeane Kirkpatrick (AV)

I was awakened this morning by a call from a friend informing me that Jeane Kirkpatrick had died. Ambassador Kirkpatrick, until fairly recently, was a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, where I interned last year, and her office was only a few steps away from my bay on the 11^th floor. She later went on to help found the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.

Jeane would make a point of stopping for a chat every time she passed my bay at AEI, and we had many fascinating conversations about foreign policy, and I was constantly struck by her powerful mind, on which, mercifully, age was not taking its toll.

Being a somewhat bumptious sort, I would try to tease out her views on the issues facing us today—at the time, it was the floundering Iraq mission—and it was clear that her contributions deserved a more public airing. Fortunately, prior to her death, Jeane had finished writing a new book on foreign policy. Though I have not yet had the pleasure to read it (it will be published shortly), I am told by those whose judgment I trust that it is excellent.

I remember one particular conversation with Jeane during which, and this was the Tory in me speaking, I quizzed her about her role in the Falklands crisis, which had received unfavorable reviews in Margaret Thatcher's memoirs Downing Street Years. Jeane displayed her characteristic graciousness, explaining the basis for her skepticism at being too supportive of Britain's pursuit of its territorial claim, while conceding that hindsight showed her fears were too severe.

Jeane explained that she was worried that an embarrassment of the Argentinean government over the Falklands might lead to its replacement by a communist one. Jeane's thinking flowed from the powerful, and powerfully American traditions of the Monroe Doctrine, as well as her own thesis in Dictatorships and Double Standards, which foreign policy thinkers today, especially those specializing in the Middle East, are I think admonished to read. (A link to the original essay is here, and its book form here).

In vivid detail, Jeane explained that hindsight had vindicated Lady Thatcher's decision, not her own. Yet, in this concession, Jeane's graciousness and honor came through, and I came to see that any sensible policymaker in her place would have had the same fears as her, and would probably have come to the same decision: I, with all my sympathies for the Anglosphere and the old order, certainly would have.

Jeane then spoke to me about the profound ambiguity of foreign policy idealism that animated her Dictatorships and Double Standards thesis, subtly calling attention to a particular weakness in my own foreign policy thinking. I would say that if there is one essay that those who are called neoconservatives should read, it is Dictatorships and Double Standards.

Ultimately, difficult policy decisions cannot be entirely based on ex ante normative ideals, but prudential concerns, animated by history. Fortunately, this underscores the need for powerfully smart, and idealistic, statesmen, of which Jeane Kirkpatrick surely was one. Withal, Jeane's contribution to U.S. foreign policy was very significant, and her death is serious and in many ways sad, but she leaves behind many friends, a goodly number of acolytes, and a very, very significant legacy. May she rest in peace.

Iran, Hizballah Making Moves to Topple Lebanon, Expert Says

Recent quotation from CNSNews article by Julie Stahl reads:

The recent Democratic takeover of the U.S. Congress emboldened Syria, Iran and Hizballah (Iran's proxy) because they view it as the defeat of President Bush, said Walid Phares, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for the Defense of Democracies. The rest is here

Spy vs. Spy (CM)

Ex-CIA agent (and my fellow ISG advisor) Reuel Marc Gerecht takes a hard look at ex-CIA agent (and ISG principal) Robert Gates.

Key excerpts:

The primary problem in Iraq since May 2003 has not been that Mr. Rumsfeld has been at war with his generals, whose advice he's supposedly refused to listen to. It's been that he and his generals, for sometimes differing reasons, have been in accord. Will Mr. Gates be inclined to reverse the strategy and tactics of Messrs. Rumsfeld and Abizaid? In other words, can he be a general-defying anti-establishmentarian? Mr. Gates's past -- his meteoric rise in the CIA and the National Security Council, his profound loyalty to his bosses, his presidency of the National Eagle Scout Association -- suggests that he doesn't like making waves. …

Mr. Rumsfeld has rightly been criticized for his lack of interest in postwar planning. He brought to this war and to the conflict in Afghanistan, which also isn't going well, a mania for transformational warfare that at its core says you can do more with less.

Mr. Rumsfeld was undoubtedly right, and his Cold War-educated generals were wrong, about the forces necessary to vanquish Saddam's armed forces. But occupying foreign countries and counterinsurgencies, which both demand large numbers of not particularly sophisticated foot soldiers, are cruel to the secretary's transformational creed -- which seems perfectly sensible if America only aspires to blow things up overseas.

Mr. Rumsfeld also brought to our post-9/11 battlefields a particularly conservative notion that nanny-state welfare-ism is bad for people, and that America's occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, if it were to be protracted or profound, would keep both countries from growing up. When applied to Iraq, however, with its enormous potential for sectarian rage, where U.S. military power was essential to keeping order and the thickly intertwined but stressed bonds between the Shiite and Sunni Arab communities intact, this attitude helped produce the conflagration now destroying the country. …

It is a relief to see that Mr. Gates isn't, so far as the public record shows, enamored of the idea that America's ground forces need to be shrunk and "transformed." If Mr. Gates is defined by service to Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush -- who never gave up on the idea that the U.S. needed to have sufficient ground, naval and air forces to fight two wars simultaneously -- we can only hope that he'll urge the president to reverse Mr. Rumsfeld's less-is-more doctrine, which could not even handle the insurgency of Iraq's minority, revanchist Sunni community when it was small-scale and the Shia hadn't yet gone on a vengeful warpath. …

As will soon be apparent, the Iraq Survey Group, of which Mr. Gates is a member and to which I'm an adviser, has not discovered any way for the U.S. to exit Iraq -- except under catastrophic conditions. Its recommendations will probably be the least helpful of all the blue-ribbon commissions in Washington since World War II because it cannot escape from an unavoidable reality: We either declare defeat and withdraw completely tout de suite, or we surge troops into Baghdad and fight. The ISG will surely try to find some middle ground between these positions, which, of course, doesn't exist.

If one works through the different scenarios, they all return quickly to a Rumsfeldian position that the U.S. needs to do more in Iraq with less -- a position that has been proven flatly wrong since the spring of 2003. This is why Washington has not been able to draw down even though the president, his defense secretary and his generals have dearly wanted to do so. Any meaningful reduction of U.S. forces is very likely to collapse the Iraqi Army into Shiite and Sunni militias and bring on massive carnage, the likes of which the Middle East has not seen since the Iran-Iraq War. If Mr. Gates signs off on the ISG's recommendations, which will probably be completed before he assumes office, he will be party to a doomed strategy -- and everyone in Washington and abroad will recognize it as a failure as soon as they start to work through it -- before he even sets foot in the Pentagon. It may not be easy for Mr. Gates to recover from this initial flop.

The Caliph-Strophic Debate (WP)

October 23, 2006. Published by the History News Network as well as World Defense Review

It seems that the US is having a hard time winning the hearts and minds of Arabs and Muslims, but an equally serious problem can be observed in the intellectual circles of America where some have had a difficulty coming to terms with the terminology of the War of Ideas. If the educated elite of the United States is incapable of identifying the ideology and the strategy of the Jihadists five years after 9/11, we not only have a problem with handling the War in Iraq, but also with the future of American national security as a whole.

Walid Phares in War Stories with Oliver North

War Stories with Oliver North, Fox News Sun., October 15, 2006

FDD Senior Fellow Walid Phares joins Vice President Cheney, Former Director of the CIA and FDD Distinguished Advisor James Woolsey, Bernard Lewis and other experts in the field. In this special report Oliver North explores what every person should know about jihad. In proven "War Stories" tradition, this episode brings historical context to today's events.

To watch the video click on: Part one, Part two, Part three, Part four.

Walid Phares Media Roundup (WP)

Walid Phares on VOA about the worldwide hunt for terrorists. In New York Post comments on Iran and Syria; Ahmadinejad in United Nations; State of affairs in Iraq and other issues.  In Family Security Matters, on U.S. homeland security:is it penetrated and threatened? In the American Chronicle Phares is quoted on the conflict in Darfur. On CTV Canada Phares, talks about the video obtained by Britain's Sunday Times newspaper showing two of the terrorists responsible for the Sept. 11 terror attack laughing and joking together more than 18 months before the attacks. For video click here

FDD Media Roundup

This week's Notes & Comments are now online. Cliff May comments on how the kidnapping and intimidation of journalists influences media coverage of the Palestinian issue He also reports on support for the war on terrorism in Hollywood, the latest news from the Israel-Hezbollah conflict, and the progress of liberal democracy in the Middle East.

Over at TechCentralStation, J. Peter Pham & Michael I. Krauss discuss Europe's Munich moment.

FDD Media Roundup

Cliff May asks whether Americans are up to the challenge of seeing this war through to the end.

Michael I. Krauss and J. Peter Pham highlight the absurdity of the UN ceasefire to the Israel/Hezbollah conflict.

J. Peter Pham discusses the uncomfortable truth that China is currently building alliances with despots the world over to balance against American power.

Iranian official lies about Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (AV)

Ali Larijani, secretary of the Iranian Supreme Council for National Security, recently said:

Article 11 of the NPT states that if we are threatened, we can act in secret. If you want our activity to be transparent, you should not use the Security Council as leverage for your own benefit. If you do so, then according to the NPT, we are required to act in secret, in the face of your threat.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, what Article 11 of the NPT actually says is, "This Treaty, the English, Russian, French, Spanish and Chinese texts of which are equally authentic, shall be deposited in the archives of the Depositary Governments. Duly certified copies of this Treaty shall be transmitted by the Depositary Governments to the Governments of the signatory and acceding States."

Oops...

Did Israel violate the ceasefire? (AV)

Kofi Annan has blamed Israel for violating the ceasefire after it launched a raid against an arms shipment to the Bekka Valley. But Annan's position is not - nor can it be - supported by the actual ceasefire resolution, UNSCR 1701 (2006).

Structurally, UNSCR 1701 does two things: first, it forces an immediate and temporary ceasefire based upon the cessation of actual hostilities; second, it calls for an international presence in southern Lebanon to help Lebanon maintain the ceasefire. Right now, we are somewhere between Stage 1 and Stage 2. So a resort to force is justified if it derives sanction from the actual text of UNSCR 1701 or a right enshrined in the UN Charter or in international law generally. With this as the standard, there is a case to be made that Israel's commando raid against an arms shipment in the Bekaa Valley is lawful.

Israel is pointing out (correctly) that the resolution bans offensive military operations; this is a truism since a Security Council resolution cannot ban defensive operations. Israel is claiming its actions are justified by the right of self-defense, which is given partial expression in Article 51 of the UN Charter. The key requirement here is that Israel's response be necessary and proportional.

It is certainly proportional, since a commando raid that results in little collateral damage is proportional to the threat posed by an arms shipment to Hezbollah, and the proximate relationship between that shipment and an attack on Israel's territorial integrity. But was it necessary? This is a more difficult question, but there is a strong case to be made that the answer is yes.

Operative Clause 8 of UNSCR 1701 calls upon Israel and Lebanon " to support a permanent ceasefire and a long-term solution based on the following principles." It then goes on to define these principles, the support of which is necessary, by the resolution's own language, for a permanent ceasefire: subclauses 2,3 and 5 list those that I think are most relevant: removing armed personnel, assets and weapons unless those authorized by the government of Lebanon from south of the Litani; the disarmament of all armed groups in Lebanon; no sale or supply of arms and related material to Lebanon except as authorized by its government.

Before we reach Stage 2 of the ceasefire, the only parties capable of enforcing the terms of UNSCR 1701 are the governments of Israel and Lebanon, and nothing in the resolution precludes Israel from enforcing its terms, especially if this strengthens Israel's right of self defense. We should note that if the UN Security Council wanted Israel to remain uninvolved in the enforcement of the technical terms of the resolution, it could have done so. For example, when the Security Council authorized a coalition to use force against Iraq to remove it from Kuwait, the resolution was worded such that Israel could not be part of that coalition. Here, in the absence of such wording, Israel is fully justified in enforcing the resolution.

I eagerly await a press release from Kofi Annan criticizing the country that sent that shipment, which assuredly is in violation of UNSCR 1701. It is up to Israel and her allies to rebut the perfidious Kofi Annan when he tries to pin the blame for the collapse of his UN mission on Israel.

NSA program hits speed bump, then drives over it (AV)

There is an excellent editorial on NRO rubbishing Judge Anna Diggs Taylor's decision to strike down the NSA surveillance program.

Judge Taylor's opinion is funny rather than sad, because there is a 0% chance that its rationale will be endorsed by the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals. Judge Taylor, surveying the NSA program, found violations of the First Amendment, the Fourth Amendment, the Separation of Powers, and two federal statutes. If she looked harder, she may very well have found a violation of Roe v Wade, too.

Senator Specter's bill before Congress to, as it were, normalize the NSA wiretap program, will if it is passed, moot the question of whether the program violates FISA, but leave open the question of whether it violates the Constitution. Suffice it to say, for now, that even fierce critics of the NSA program are unwilling to sign up to Judge Taylor's take on that bold claim.

Judge Taylor's opinion is a damp squib; already, her permanent injunction against the NSA program's continued operation has been stayed, so it will, at least for the time being, continue to yield actionable intelligence.

Dispatches from the Danger Zone: "Try not to let the facts get in the way of a good story"

U.S. Bloggers really hung the news agency Reuters out to dry – and about time.

They caught them doctoring a photograph of downtown Beirut after an attack by the Israeli air force.   

Reuters had added an extra amount of smoke and a few extra buildings to make the bombing look more serious and more severe than it really was.

Reuters has admitted the doctoring, done by computer software, and blamed the photographer, one Adnan Hajj, who now has been fired.

He is the same Reuters cameraman who was accused of doctoring photos after an Israeli air attack on the Lebanese town of Qana.   

That picture showed a man, standing in rubble, holding a dead girl, a small child, aloft for the camera lens. A picture taken at 7:21 am shows the dead girl being held above an ambulance.   A picture three hours later, at 10:25am, shows the same girl being loaded in the same ambulance.   Another photo, taken 20 minutes later, shows the same child being carried by a Lebanese rescue worker, no ambulance in sight.

This propaganda, aided by news photographers, is typical of Hezbollah and their friends.  When they report civilian casualties in Lebanon they invariably double the actual figure. 

Dispatches from the Danger Zone: Israeli Intelligence

The Israeli Air Force has been unable to employ targeted killings in the fight against Hezbollah to any significant degree because of a shortage of real-time intelligence, a high-ranking IDF officer told the Jerusalem Post.

The good news is that this has caused the three Israeli intelligence agencies- the Mossad, the Shin Bet and Military Intelligence - to work together in an almost unprecedented way, Israeli’s are saying. Of course, The universal competitiveness of every government’s bureaucratic agencies is both their strength and their weakness and, of course, it is always more difficult to gather intelligence during a war than before the fighting begins.

London: The "Shoe Bomber Factory" Again? (WP)

Quick reaction: British security’s reports about a plot to destroy airliners traveling from London to the US and the decision by UK authorities to ban passengers hand bags on board brings back the whole question of the "factory" again, an issue I have been tiredly raising with legislators and officials on both sides of the Atlantic: From shoes to hand bags, the Jihadists are not letting go of their morbid fantasy: bleeding the skies over the Atlantic. While most investigation will direct itself on the "hand bag" weapon in the next few hours and probably days, the larger question on the mind of Jihadist analysts will certainly be: where do these Jihadists come from and how come there are more of them?

Baghdad Bob in Beirut (AV)

First Reuters, now the Associated Press...

How is Israel faring in its war against Hezbollah? Pretty badly, if the Associated Press is to be believed:

Sunday's deaths brought to 93 the number of Israelis killed, including 45 soldiers, the 12 reservists and 36 civilians. Israel's attacks on Lebanon have killed at least 591 people, including 509 civilians, 29 Lebanese soldiers and 53 Hezbollah guerrillas.

Israeli has suffered greater casualties than Hezbollah? Right...

Frankly, many of those whom the AP calls Lebanese civilians are in fact Hezbollah members; unless, that is, you believe Nasrallah's press releases that Israel is being slaughtered on the battlefield.

Ceasefire proposal - the devil's in the detail (AV)

Dore Gold, Israel's former Ambassador to the United Nations, makes a terrifyingly good point about the proposed ceasefire to the conflict between Israel and Hezbollah that has been embraced by France and the United States. As the New York Sun's Eli Lake reports,

"[T]he draft U.N. resolution sponsored by France and America calls on the establishment of a multinational force under Chapter 7 of the U.N. charter, which deals with grave threats to international peace and security.

As such, the second resolution authorizing the peacekeepers could lead to sanctions or military strikes against Israel should Jerusalem take pre-emptive military action against a Hezbollah militia that the Israel Defense Force is unlikely to be able to disarm by the time the armistice kicks in."

The draft resolution calls for the "immediate cessation by Israel of all offensive military operations." What will happen if the proposed ceasefire fails, the international force sent in is a paper tiger, and Hezbollah begins launching attacks against Israel?

Israel can - again - launch an attack against Hezbollah based on principles of self-defence, but Israel's antagonists will be able to say that Israel is explicitly violating the terms of a UN Security Council resolution. Nothing new there...

What will however be different is that, this time, the resolution will have been passed under Chapter 7 of the UN Charter, which means, in practice, an escalation of the charges against Israel.

Furthermore, since Kofi Annan will be charged with implementing the resolution, and will have an important say in determining whether it is being followed, this proposed resolution may turn out to be yet another cudgel the world uses to bash Israel. A cudgel, I might add, that offers no guarantee of increasing Israel's security.

 

Is international law standing in the way of a ceasefire? (AV)

Professor Eugene Kontorovich has a controversial op/ed in the New York Sun explaining why the latest proposals for a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah violate international law. He writes:

The most surprising aspect of international proposals for a ceasefire in the Israel-Lebanon conflict is their endorsement of Hezbollah's demand that Israel give it territory, known as the Sheba Farms, in exchange for a end to rocket attacks on Israeli cities...What is certain — and yet entirely neglected in the discussion of the issue — is that the proposal violates bedrock norms of international law. Nations cannot enlarge their borders through the use of aggressive force. There are no exceptions to this non-acquisition principle.

Let's leave to one side the wisdom of ceding territory to a terrorist organization like Hezbollah and deal instead with Kontorovich's seductive claim that it violates international law.

It is certainly true that the UN Charter permits no exceptions to the non-acquisitive principle (this is the practical effect of Article 2(4) and Article 51 of the Charter). Still, Kontorovich is overstating his case with regard to international law generally - unless, that is, he is laboring under the mistaken view that international law is whatever the United Nations and Kofi Annan say it is. It isn't, mercifully.

The truth is, although there is a general presumption against the acquisition of territory as a result of aggression, this is a neoteric doctrine - emerging as it did in the 20th century. In the past, conquest was a legitimate way to acquire territory. Of course, during the 20th century we have understandably moved away from this extreme position, but there is no absolute rule of non-acquisition when aggression is involved.

For example, the rule of uti possidetis - the principle that territory vests to the victorious party - has essentially kept the fragile peace in many African conflicts after initial disputes over post-colonial border. The International Court of Justice recognized something approaching this in its deliberations on the land and maritime border dispute between Nigeria and Cameroon. Recently, this led to a truce and subsequently an agreement between these two countries. International law is better discerned from the way states act and their reasons for so acting rather than universalist-abstractions in the UN Charter.

In many ways, Kontorovich reveals the poverty of international law as a dispute resolution mechanism. Its boundaries are unclear, far too many people make authoritative statements when nuanced ones would be more appropriate, and by focusing too much on ex ante rules, it does not concern itself with creating lasting peace.

So, to answer the question posed in the title - International law isn't standing in the way of a ceasefire, the UN Charter is.

Is Reuter's Hijacking Lebanon's Answer to the UN? (WP)

A few hours after a Franco-American draft for a UN Security Council resolution was released, pro-Hezbollah lobbies and allies launched a campaign to hijack the response of Lebanon to the United Nations. As noted by seasoned observers, the campaign started at the top with an alert release by News Agency Reuters written by Lin Noueihed. The article, put out early Sunday has reached the four corners of the Globe and its title has framed the position of the Lebanese people in a "no" to the UN expected resolution. Amazingly enough, Lin Noueihid titles her release "Lebanon rejects draft UN resolution." But when you read the release you realize that the "representative" of all of Lebanon in the eyes of the Reuters reporter is no one other than pro-Syrian, Hezbollah ally, Nabih Berri, the leader of Shiite Movement Amal.    
                  
Noueihid wrote that "Lebanon rejects a draft U.N. Security Council resolution to end 26 days of fighting because it would allow Israeli forces to remain on Lebanese soil, Parliament Speaker Nabih Berri said on Sunday." Basing her entire report on one of the most powerful supporters of the Syrian occupation and who heads a militia allied to Hezbollah, Noueihid gives Berri the full power of the credibility of Reuters. This title will find itself printed from Yahoo to the last local newsletter in the Fidji islands. Evidently, local editors around the world trust Reuters as they trust the Red Cross, and will conclude that indeed "Lebanon" has rejected a UN resolution, while in reality, it is Tehran-Damascus-Hezbollah axis that rejected it, and unfortunately a Reuters writer framed it otherwise.

Fetishizing ceasefires [AV]

A cacophony of calls for a ceasefire confirms the apotheosis of hope over experience in the conflict between Hezbollah and Israel.

Any ceasefire must address the factual predicate for the latest hostilities, namely, the kidnapping of two Israeli soldiers and the constant rocket attacks against Israel from southern Lebanon.

Without the disarmament (and disbandment?) of Hezbollah, or some sort of military presence, whether led by the Lebanese government or the international community, along the Lebanon-Israel border, is it realistic to believe that any ceasefire is durable?

Almost certainly not; which is why fetishizing a ceasefire does nothing to address the reason why this war is being fought in the first place.

Media Roundup

In his latest column, Cliff argues that Hezbollah is a master of psychological operations, and, if not defeated, they will become the dominant player in Lebanon, destroying hope for democracy and opening the door for Syrian occupation again.

J. Peter Pham argues that Ameica has an interest in the politics of West Africa.

NRO's Kathryn Lopez interviews Walid on the crisis in the Middle East.

Human Rights Watch, a study in bias [AV]

Human Rights Watch has issues a scathing attack on Israel's conduct in its war with Hezbollah. The tragedy of this report is that, because it is selective, disingenuous and biased, it undermines Human Rights Watch's credibility, and threatens the organization's noble vision of strengthening the international protection of human rights.

The report's executive summary criticizes Israel for its attacks on Lebanese homes. Human Rights Watch calls them "civilian targets." Tragically, this is only half the story, as many of the homes are also used to store missiles. They are, properly understood, dual-use - and are therefore similar to bridges and roads. That does not per se make them lawful targets, but it does mean that in determining whether Israel is committing war crimes by bombing them one needs to look at the totality of the circumstances, including the likelihood that the area as a whole is dual-use. The Human Rights Watch summary gives only a passing treatment to what is, frankly, the heart of the issue.

More problematically, the Human Rights Watch report, at least in its executive summary, does not adequately consider Hezbollah's obligation to to protect civilians from dangers, and that using civilian shields to protect military assets, as Hezbollah does, is itself a war crime. In fact, a previous Human Rights Watch report - one that was far more fair and balanced - does make this point explicitly.

It is truly worrying that from its previous report (which was good) to its current report (which is bad), Human Rights Watch seems to have abandoned the idea that Hezbollah also has obligations to minimize Lebanese civilian casualties, and that because it is a non-state party to the conflict, Hezbollah is also bound by Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

Managing Savagery (CM)

"The Management of Savagery" is a book written by Abu Bakr Naji, a high-level Al Qaeda strategist.

Naji argues that the jihadis failed in the past to establish an Islamic state because they were focused on toppling local regimes. These efforts were fruitless, he argues, because jihadis were seen as fighting their own people, which alienated the masses. Moreover, the local governments proved impervious to revolution as long as they were supported by the U.S. Based on his understanding of power politics, Naji says that the jihadis had to provoke the United States to invade a country in the Middle East.

This would 1.) turn the Muslims against local governments allied with the U.S.; 2.) destroy the U.S. aura of invincibility, which it maintains through the media, and 3.) create sympathy for the jihadis, who would be viewed as standing up to Crusader aggression. Moreover, the invasion would bleed the U.S. economy and sap its military power, leading to social unrest at home and its ultimate withdrawal from the Middle East.

Naji had hoped that Afghanistan would play out in this manner for the U.S., as it did for the Soviets. Now, Naji places his hopes on Iraq. Once the U.S. withdraws from Iraq, he contends, the jihadis must quickly move to invade neighboring countries.

Some countries are particularly ripe for jihadi incursion: Jordan, Nigeria, Pakistan and Yemen, as well as North West Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. These areas were selected by Al Qaeda because of each region's geographic features, weak central governments, the receptivity of the people and the proliferation of weapons and jihadi propaganda. The plan, according to Naji, is to conduct small- to medium-scale attacks on crucial infrastructure (like oil or tourism), which will cause the government to draw in its security forces. Chaos or "savagery" will erupt in the unpoliced areas.

Then, the jihadis will move into these security vacuums and provide basic services to people, who will welcome an end to the instability. The final goal is to establish a single global state ruled by a pious Muslim dictator, the caliph, who will implement a strict interpretation of Islamic law.

Drawing on the experience of jihadis in Egypt and Algeria, Naji cautions his readers that no plan will succeed unless the jihadis learn how to respond to public opinion and manipulate the media.

More here.

Main Current Israeli Targets in Lebanon (WP)

From an analysis of the observation of Israel's air campaign in Lebanon and its limited incursions in the south at this stage, and based on reporting from Lebanon's military and security sources and analysts, it appears that the strategic targets of Israel's action are as follows:

1. Shelling and bombarding Hezbollah's positions and infrastructures in southern Beirut, the south and the Bekaa, so that the entire Hezbollah-land in Lebanon would be under pressure and no area of re-gathering or stability can serve as a strategic depth. (See map, zones in orange)

2. Concentrating on the Dahiya, Beirut's southern suburb aim at dismantling the so-called murabba'a amni (security square) which comprises the main headquarters, communications systems, bunkers and tunnels of Hezbollah. If the Israeli air strikes continue with no cease fire to interrupt them, the "square" will be non-operational for Hezbollah's leadership, which would lead to one of the following options: 1) moving the Hezbollah's leadership structure deeper in greater Beirut or into the Lebanese army perimeter. Which would lead to engage the Army in the conflict. or 2) moving the leadership to the Bekaa, knowing that the south of the country is insecure for such resettlement. According to experts in Lebanon, the Bekaa option seems to be the most logical for Hezbollah, but according to other analysts, Hezbollah cannot afford leaving Beirut for political reasons.

3. Hence, Nasrallah's organization may recourse to dramatic measures to deter Israeli air raids over Beirut's so that the southern suburb remains a basis for the group. The nature of the "new" measures is unknown: Nasrallah has promised "surprises" a week ago.

4. This Israeli process will shape up the essence of Syro-Iranian, Arab, international and even Lebanese responses to the solution. The location of Hezbollah's leadership and infrastructure will be one of the influential elements in the outcome of negotiations There is a difference as to where is this leadership, inside or outside the capital. Both Israel and Hezbollah knows it.

Media Roundup

Claudia Rosett continues to cover Tongsun Park's trial for NRO.  Park is "charged by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York with having acted as an unregistered agent of the government of Iraq under Saddam Hussein."

Andy McCarthy argues that the Hamdan decision "sounds the death knell for the National Security Agency’s Terrorist Surveillance Program (TSP)," in today's NRO.

Michael Kraus and J. Peter Pham question if Israel's disengagement from Gaza is a mistake in today's NRO.

Cliff's Notes & Comments are available in this week's e-newsletter.

Logistics vs. Strategy? (CM)

Max Boot writes:

[A]ny organization prefers to focus on what it does well. In the case of the Pentagon, that's logistics. Our ability to move supplies is unparalleled in military history. Fighting guerrillas, on the other hand, has never been a mission that has found much favor with the armed forces. So logistics trumps strategy. Which may help explain why we're not having greater success in Iraq and Afghanistan.

More here.

Media Roundup

In USA Today, Claudia Rosett argues that, "In dealing with North Korea's test-firing of a missile designed to hit the USA, our worst mistake would be to rule out pre-emptive military action."

Andy McCarthy reviews Ron Suskind's new book, "The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11" in the The New York Sun.

Michael Krauss and J. Peter Pham discuss "The Hezbollah Nexus," in Tech Central Station.

Freeh & Woolsey (CM)

Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger quotes FDD Distinguished Advisors James Woolsey and Louis Freeh on the "never-ending tensions over civil liberty concerns on one hand and manifest national security threats on the other."

Woolsey notes that "the tough case is what to do with groups that have as their explicit objective, as much of the Muslim Brotherhood does, an Islamic state governing North America? It's hard because it involves raising [security] questions around people who purport that these are their religious beliefs. Our constitutional structure has real problems with that."

More here.

Freeh & Woolsey

Cliff May writes in from the road:

Wall Street Journal columnist Daniel Henninger quotes FDD Distinguished Advisors James Woolsey and Louis Freeh on the "never-ending tensions over civil liberty concerns on one hand and manifest national security threats on the other."

Woolsey notes that "the tough case is what to do with groups that have as their explicit objective, as much of the Muslim Brotherhood does, an Islamic state governing North America? It's hard because it involves raising [security] questions around people who purport that these are their religious beliefs. Our constitutional structure has real problems with that."

More here.

Muslim Perspectives (CM)

Daniel Pipes, analyzes a new Pew poll and concludes that Muslim alienation is strongest "in those countries where Muslims are either the most or the least accommodated, suggesting that a middle path is best - where Muslims do not win special privileges, as in the UK, nor are they in an advanced state of hostility, as in Nigeria."

His column is here.

For more notes & comments, see this week's e-newsletter.

Snow v. Times (CM)

From Treasury Secretary John Snow’s 6/26 letter to NY Times managing editor Bill Keller:

"You have defended your decision to compromise this program by asserting that "terror financiers know" our methods for tracking their funds and have already moved to other methods to send money.  The fact that your editors believe themselves to be qualified to assess how terrorists are moving money betrays a breathtaking arrogance and a deep misunderstanding of this program and how it works."

The rest of the letter is here.

Is Iraq the new Philippines? [AV]

History hardly ever repeats itself, it only appears like it does to those unfamiliar with its particulars. Which is why Ross Douthat's comparison of the Iraq war to the occupation of the Philippines is incorrect. Ross writes, at the American Scene:

[S]o far the military conflict that the Iraq War most resembles isn't Vietnam or World War II, but the TR-boosted Spanish-American War - a quick and painless military victory over a second-rate power, driven by a mix of idealism, jingoism, and power politics, that segued into a long and grueling counter-insurgency campaign [in the Philippines].

What gave the Filipino insurgency its popular appeal is notably absent from the Iraqi insurgency. The Filipino insurgents had a degree of popular support based on its claim that Filipinos should govern the Philippines.

The Filipino insurgents had Emilio Aguinaldo, a Filipinio native, to lead them. Which Iraqi is a leader in the jihadist insurgency? The Iraqi insurgents were led by, before he was killed, Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian. And now they are led by Abu Ayyub al-Masri, an Egyptian. The most hardcore and violent members of the insurgency are foreign jihadists, with no legitimate claim to pan-Iraqi nationalism.

Meanwhile, the United States armed forces are in Iraq today with the consent of the democratically elected government. Furthermore, the goal of the jihadists isn't a return to Iraqi rule, but a continuation of sectarian violence and terror that would extend beyond any U.S. troop withdrawal.

The differences, in this case, are more important than the superficial similarities in Ross' historical analogy. The Iraq war is many things--a replay of the occupation of the Philippines it most assuredly is not.

Monday Morning Media Roundup

Andy McCarthy wonders if "any secrets more important than the New York Times’s sources?" in today's NRO.

Richard Chesnoff discusses last week's two-day Nobel Laureates' Conference in the desert city of Petra in the New York Daily News.

J. Peter Pham & Michael I. Krauss discuss links between Hamas and Saudi Arabia in NRO.

The Korean Dilemma (CM)

William Perry and Ashton Carter, who were, respectively, secretary and assistant secretary of Defense under President Clinton argue here that if North Korea persists in its missile launch preparations, the United States should immediately make clear its intention to strike and destroy the North Korean Taepodong missile before it can be launched.

Gabriel Schoenfeld argues here that “Perry and Carter are now recommending a preemptive U.S. strike while suggesting that a North Korean response will be relatively tame if it comes at all. But when they were in office, their calculations were reversed. They feared even tame U.S. actions would provoke a ferocious North Korean response. … the hawkish advice they today blithely proffer to the Bush administration suggests a measure of historical amnesia.”

But perhaps Perry and Carton have simly  changed their minds.  Perhaps they wish, in retrospect, that the Clinton administration had been more hawkish in response to such threats as that from North Korea (and from Iran, Iraq, the Taliban and al-Qaeda).

Al-Qaeda's Achilles Heel?

In his latest column for World Defense Review, FDD Academic Fellow J. Peter Pham looks at how global arms dealers can be useful in the war against Militant Islamic terrorists:

The networks that supply the terrorists are, in fact, the Achilles heel through which U.S. and allied intelligence and security services can potentially gain access to groups of interest by exploiting the latter's need to purchase the arms from international dealers like Bout and his kind.

Fortuitously, when it comes to shady financial deals, even the most ideologically driven terrorist discovers pragmatism. As Douglas Farah of the Washington Post has exposed, for example, al-Qaeda regularly traded with former Liberian president Charles Taylor; this is significant because the tyrant, as I point out in my own book on the conflict in the West African country, when he wasn't playing Baptist revival preacher was the self-proclaimed "supreme zo (witch doctor) of Liberia" – in either case, hardly a paragon of tawhīd, the rigorous Islamic concept of monotheism.

FDD Media Roundup

Cliff discusses Brazil's home grown terrorism in this week's Scripps Howard column.

Andy McCarthy argues that data-mining is the President's duty in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The Moose on the NSA Data-Mining Controversy (CM)

"As of yet, there is no evidence that the government was eavesdropping on private conversations of innocent citizens. What we know is that it is a collection of phone numbers that were put into super computers to detect patterns of suspect activity. The Bushies were not using information to destroy their political opponents. The NSA is legitimately obtaining data to thwart terrorists."

"Has it been a mere coincidence that the American homeland has not been attacked since 9/11? It is likely that the hard and innovative work of dedicated patriots at the NSA and other national security agencies has kept our nation safe.

"Yes, the Bushies have been misleading and disingenuous when they stated that they were monitoring only overseas calls. That was technically correct, but left the wrong impression about other domestic activities - data mining. The President's widening credibility gap feeds paranoia even when the Administration might be doing the right thing. However, any President who is leading a covert war that must be fought in the shadows is forced to be somewhat deceptive, even with his own people. ...

"In times of war, there is always a delicate balance between security and liberty. And we must be vigilant that certain lines are not crossed. Keep in mind, however, that great Democratic Presidents such as FDR, Truman, JFK and LBJ approved and implemented far more intrusive intelligence programs in the interest of national security. And the Clinton Administration's Echelon program was similar to the NSA data mining effort."

More here.