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Today's
Stories
July
18, 2007
Col.
Dan Smith
How the US Could "Lose" Saudi
Arabia
Tom
Johnson
The Long Road ... to Nowhere
Paul
Craig Roberts
A Free Press or a Ministry of Truth?
July
17, 2007
Patrick
Cockburn
Just Another Day in Iraq: 100 Fathers,
Mothers and Children Killed
Marjorie
Cohn
Out of Control: Executive Power Plays
Evelyn
Pringle
Inside Bush's FDA
David
Rosen
Moral Hypocrisy on the Hill: the Christian Right, Sexual Scandal
and the Pleasures of the Courtesan
Susan
Miller
Width Matters: Displacement and Israel's Wall
Franklin
Lamb
Did the UN Cave to Israel on Lebanon's Shabaa Farms?
Don
Monkerud
Considering Victory in Iraq
Harvey
Wasserman
Nuclear Surge
Russell
Hoffman
Japan Dodges a Radioactive Bullet
Dave
Lindorff
Feingold Turns to Dross
Dave
Zirin
Reclaiming Sports as True Fiction
Website
of the Day
Che at the UN: 1964
July
16, 2007
Gary
Leupp
Cheney Urges Bush to Strike Iran
Ellen
Cantarow
The Untold Story of Iraqi Women
Paul
Craig Roberts
Impeach Now
Allan
J. Lichtman
The D.C. Madam's Public Service
Dan
Bacher
Cheney and the Klamath: Was the Veep Behind the Nation's Worst
Salmon Kill?
Patrick
Cockburn
The Killing of Khalid W. Hassan
Manuel
Garcia, Jr.
Property is Racism
James
Brooks
AIPAC and Mahmoud Abbas: the Undemocratic Road to Defeat
Liaquat
Ali Khan
The Judicial Crisis in Pakistan
Julie
Flint
Suleiman Jamous in Limbo
Website
of the Day
Free Suleiman Jamous!
July
14 / 15. 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
Support Their Troops?
Andy
Worthington
Gitmo's Tangled Web: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, Majhid Khan, Dubious
US Convictions and a Dying Man
Ralph
Nader
Lawlessness, Waste and Incompetence
Robert
Fantina
The Illegalities of the Iraq War
Ron
Jacobs
Architecture as Military Strategy
Joshua
Frank
Eat, Fight, Screw, Pray: An Interview with Joe Bageant
Conn
Hallinan
Guns, Foundations and Free Trade: How the Right Targets Africa
Dr.
Susan Rosenthal, MD
War and Dissociation
John
Ross
No En Nuestro Nombre!: a Letter to the Mexican Antiwar Movement
Fred
Gardner
Who's Afraid of Cannabidiol?
Rannie
Amiri
A Primer on Israeli Doublespeak
Charles
Modiano
ESPN's Rap Sheet: Pacman as Black Man
Anthony
DiMaggio
America's Parochial Press
China
Hand
Executive Orders and Coercive Diplomacy
Missy
Comley Beattie
Reprobate Rhetoricians
Dr.
James J. Murtagh, Jr.
Harry Potter Battles Big Brother
Kenneth
Rexroth
On Thomas More's "Utopia"
Poets'
Basement
Engel, Davies and Orloski
Website
of the Weekend
GOP Sex Hypocrites: a Slideshow
July
13, 2007
Patrick
Cockburn
The Decider in Denial
Winslow
T. Wheeler
Bush's Iraq Benchmarks Assessment: Grading on a Curve for the
Wrong Test
Imran
Khan
When Dictators Serve US Interests
Todd
Chretien
The Wal-Mart of Garbage
Sam
Husseini
Killing the Constitution
Dr.
Herman Mindshaftgap
Why, in Truth, There is No Surge
Anthony
Papa
The Hard Road Home
D.
K. Wilson
The Wonderful World of Mike Greenberg and Barry Bonds
David
Michael Green
In the Last Throes, Judiciously
Website
of the Day
Strange Attraction: Mrs. Thompson and Mr. Wolfowitz
July
12, 2007
Paul
Craig Roberts
Restoring the People's Power
Robert Jensen
Lessons
from the Lal Masjid Tragedy
Dr. Susan Block
Hookergate II: The Senator and the Veep
Joshua Frank
The Liberal Thrashing of Ward Churchill
John Chuckman
How Terror Lost Its Meaning
Corporate Crime
Reporter
The Problem with Bribeline
Mike Whitney
Demonizing Putin
Nicola Nasser
Will New Delhi's Palestinian Policy be Neutralized?
Richard Rhames
Requiem for the Paxilated
William S.
Lind
Not Fourth Generation Warfare
Website of the Day
Video: World's Largest Nuclear Explosion
July
11, 2007
Patrick
Cockburn
The Benchmark Blame Game
Richard
Neville
Is This Man a Psychopath? Bomber McNeill, the Faceless Pol Pot
of the Sky
Debra
McNutt
Privatizing Women: Military Prostitution and the Iraq Occupation
John
V. Walsh
A Plea to Ralph Nader
Scott
Liebertz
Where's the Outcry? Mexico's Monitor Radio vs. RCTV
George
C. Wilson
Beware the Iran Hawks
James
McEnteer
My Impossible Dream Candidate
Philip
Rizk
Submission or Resistance in Gaza?
Johnny
Hazard
Mexico Commemorates a Fraud
Dave
Lindorff
On the Road with Impeachment
Website
of the Day
Sly Stone's Higher Power
July
10, 2007
James
Ridgeway
True North: Big Oil in the Arctic
Tariq
Ali
New Clashes in Islamabad: Judges and Jihadis Torment the Regime
Javed
Hussein
Pakistan's Waco?: The Storming of the Red Mosque
William
Blum
Neocons, Theocons, Demcons, Excons and Future Cons
Ralph
Nader
Grown in China
Jay
Arena
New Orleans, Public Housing and the Non-Profit Industrial Complex
Anthony
DiMaggio
A Begrudging Reversal: The New York Times and the "Anti-War"
Turn
Eva
Liddell
Has Ann Coulter Got the Hots for John Edwards?
Jerry
Kroth
Democratic Defectors and the Israel Lobby
Alice
Woodward
White Supremacy and the Jena Six
Nikolas
Kozloff
Where's Jerry?: On Cheney Impeachment, Rep. Nadler's a No Show
Paul
Shannon
It's Time to Reform Sex Offender Laws
Website
of the Day
March for Remembrance
July
9, 2007
Fidel
Castro
The Killing Machine: Reflections from
a Target of the CIA
Diana
Johnstone
King Sarko the First
John
Walsh
Will the Greens Seize the Moment?
Uri
Avnery
The Jordanian Option
Ramzy
Baroud
The Palestinian Left: a Lost Opportunity?
John
Ripton
The New West Bank Palestinian State
Stephen
Lendman
Making Gaza Scream
Bruce
Jackson
Bush Going Down: the Correct Way to Affix a Stamp
Michael
Donnelly
What's the Matter with Winchester?
Doug
Giebel
Wanted: Old Men with Nothing to Lose
Website
of the Day
Ron Paul on This Week with George
July 7 / 8, 2007
Saul
Landau
Blame the Puppet
Ismael
Hossein-zadeh
Parasitic Imperialism
Fawzia
Afzal-Khan
What Lies Beneath: Dispatches from the Frontlines of t he Burqa
Brigade
Alan
Maass
Will "Sicko" Spark a Movement?: a Film, Militant Nurses
and a New Opportunity for Single Payer Health Care
John
Ross
The Fire Last Time
Pat
Williams
The Supreme Court and Mr. Peanut
Rannie
Amiri
The Unbreakable Mordechai Vanunu
Farzana
Versey
Does the Taj Mahal Deserve to be a Wonder of the World?
Bart
Gruzalski
Bush, the Revolution and the Iraq War
Paul
Rockwell
An Army of None
Reza
Fiyouzat
Tax Cuts for the Rich Only Benefit the Economy of the Rich
Monica
Benderman
Americans, Honestly!
Kenneth
Couesbouc
Total War: From Clausewitz to Clinton and Bush
Dave
Lindorff
Poll: Impeach the Bastards
Charles
Modiano
History's Hit Job on Thomas Paine
Missy
Beattie
King Cretin
Dal
LaMagna
A Peacemaker's View of Baghdad
Jean
Gerard
Those So-Called Oil Contracts in Iraq
Anne
Dachel
Autism: an Epidemic of Fairly Recent Origin
Ron
Jacobs
Modes and Melodies of Resistance
Poets'
Basement
Gibbons, Orloski, Engel and Buknatski
Website
of the Day
Van Morrison and Bob Dylan in Athens
July 6, 2007
Daniel
Ellsberg
When the Crimes of the White House
are Unpunishable
Gary
Leupp
The Cracks in Cheney's World
Harvey
Wasserman
Leonard Peltier vs. Scooter Libby: the Hero and the Henchman
Omer
Subhani
Our Dead are Not the Same: Ignoring Civilian Deaths in Afghanistan
Marjorie
Cohn
Compassion, Conspiracy and Commutation
Christopher
Brauchli
Kingly Edicts: Bush's Executive Orders
David
Michael Green
Scalia Time: the Wrecking Ball Court
China
Hand
Catfish Blues: Food Safety, the FDA and the Emerging Trade War
with China
Renee
Saucedo
and Todd Chretien
The New Challenges Facing the Immigrant Rights Movement
Corporate
Crime Reporter
The Crime Wave Behind the Media Curtain
Website
of the Day
Jean Bricmont on the Humanitarian Interveners
July
5, 2007
Andy
Worthington
Two Americas, Both Unjust: Scooter
Libby vs. the "Enemy Combatants"
Mike
Stark
Double Standards of North Carolina "Justice"
Norman
Solomon
The Keyboard Hawks: a Bloody Media Mirror
Michael
Schwartz
Killing 10,000 Iraqis Every Month
Susie
Day
Killer Lesbians Mauled by Killer Court (and Media Wolfpack)
Jacob
Hornberger
A Tangled Web of Lies: Bush and the Libby Case
Bill
Hatch
Smoking with Arnold: The Strange Return of Toxic Mary Nichols
Don
Fitz
When Building Green Ain't So Green
John
Wright
The Crisis of Imperialism
Website
of the Day
Anti-Flag and Tom Morello: "This Land is Your Land"
July
4, 2007
St.
Clair / Frank
Obama's Nuclear Ambitions
Vijay
Prashad
Democrat (Punjab): Obama and Outsourcing
Carl
G. Estabrook
The Declaration of Independence and the Right to Exist
Ron
Jacobs
Texas Wants to Kill Another Man, the Law be Damned: the Disturbing
Case of Kenneth Foster
David
R. Dow
The Quality of Bush's Mercy: the Ghosts of Texas
Claudia
Johnson
Is My Doctor a Terrorist?
William
S. Lind
What Israel's Defeat in Lebanon Means for Defense Industry Fat
Cats
Gregory
Afghani
Truth and Tenure: Finkelstein and the Perils of Impeccable Scholarship
Paul
Edwards
End It Now!
D.
K. Wilson
The Sliming of Tank Johnson
Niranjan
Ramakrishnan
Thank You, Mr. President: Bush/Cheney for Dummies
Thomas
Jefferson
The Spirit of Resistance: Lethargy is the Forerunner of the Death
of Public Liberty
Cindy
Sheehan
Call Out the Instigator
Website
of the Day
Springsteen: 4th of July, Ashbury Park
July 3, 2007
Bill
Quigley
Injustice in Jena: Black Nooses Hanging
from the "White" Tree
Gary
Leupp
Civil Strife in Palestine: a Broader Context
Lynda
Brayer
Norman Finkelstein and the Catholic Church
Richard
Thieme
Mind Wars: Brain Research, Nanotech and the Military
Helen
Redmond
They Don't Come Back the Same: the Mind of the Returning Iraq
War Vet
David
Swanson
Scooter and the Commuter: When Presidents Pardon Their Own Crimes
Jacob
Hornberger
Martha Stewart vs. Scooter Libby: Commutation as Cover-Up
Ayesha
Ijaz Khan
Pakistan's New Jihad
Franklin
Lamb
The Edginess of Lebanon
Ray
McGovern
Unimpeachably Impeachable: Start with Cheney
Kevin
Zeese
The Air Force vs. Rev. Lennox Yearwood
Dave
Lindorff
Nancy Pelosi and the Low Bar Democrats
Website
of the Day
A Military Guide to the Iraq War
July 2, 2007
Andy
Worthington
The Guantánamo Whistleblowers
Nina
Serrano
The Assassination of a Poet: Memories of Roque Dalton
Jack
Hirschman
The Nation and the Assassin: a Shameful Blunder
Paul
Craig Roberts
Enter Turkey
Bill
Williams
The Commissar Two-Step at DePaul
Anthony
Papa
A Taste of the Gulag: What Paris Learned
Sonja
Karkar
Who Will Save Palestine?
Louay
Safi
Steve Emerson's Fantastic Obsession
Anthony
Gregory
When Killer Cops Walk
Monica
Benderman
In Consideration of War
Website
of the Day
Dylan's Masters of War, at West Point, 1990
June
30 / July 1, 2007
John
Ross
Free Frida Kahlo!
Alan
Farago
Fakery, Inflation and the Housing
Market
Peter
Quinn
The Political Paranoia Over Immigration: Two Centuries and Counting
Christopher
Brauchli
Cheney Does the Constitution
Robert
Fisk
Abu Henry and the Mysterious Silence
Uri
Avnery
A Dark Summit
Judith
Siers-Poisson
The Politics and PR of Cervical Cancer
Saul
Landau
Israel is Bad for Jewish Ethics
Abbas
Zaidi
The Ad Hominem World of Pakistan Politics
Ron
Jacobs
Ending the War, Organizing for Change
Ralph
Nader
Move Over Oprah: a Summer Reading List
Donald
Worster
Which City is Worse Off Today, New York or New Orleans?
Mike
Whitney
The Fed's Role in the Bear Stearns Meltdown
Jacob
Hill
Fast Track to Trade Failure
Kenneth
Couesbouc
Why Global Trade is Rarely Fair
Missy
Beattie
Kakistocracy
Mohammad
Kamaali
Envoy for the Quartet
Ramzy
Baroud
Finding Lessons in Gaza's Bloodshed
Leonard
Peltier
A Gathering at Oglala
Phyllis
Pollack
Seven Hours of Banging with the Stones
Poets'
Basement
Reed, Orloski and Buknatski
Website
of the Weekend
A Podcast Interview with Cpt. Ward Boston on the USS Liberty
June
29, 2007
St.
Clair / Frank
Toward a New Environmental Movement
Brian
Cloughley
Losing the War in Afghanistan: One Civilian Massacre at a Time
Patrick
Cockburn
End the Occupation: an Open Letter to Gordon Brown
Gilad
Atzmon
The Peace Envoy: Tony Blair on Work Release
Dave
Lindorff
Subpoenas, Executive Privilege and Liberal Pipedreams
Jennifer
Matsui /
Carl Kandutsch
Electric Larryland
Kevin
Zeese
A Different Kind of Peace Candidate
Daniel
Klimek
Fasting for Justice at DePaul
David
Michael Green
The Founding Fathers Never Met Dick Cheney
John
Chuckman
The London Car Bomb
Website
of the Day
BAM!
June
28, 2007
Bill
Quigley
How to Destroy an African American
City in 33 Steps
Vijay
Prashad
Once More on the New York Times
Margaret
Kimberley
The Whitening of Marianne Pearl: When White Actors Play Black
Characters
Winslow
T. Wheeler
House of Pork: Changing Lightbulbs in the Democrats' Bordello
Philip
Rizk
The Failing of Gaza
D.
K. Wilson
The Black Villains Club
Bill
Williams
Strange Calculus at DePaul
Mahmoud
El-Yousseph
The Deportation of Yardlin Jimenez
Richard
Rhames
The Liberation of Paris
Paul
Krassner
Bong Hits for Repression: the Giant Sucking Sound of the Supreme
Court
Website
of the Day
Free
Lightnin' Hopkins
June 27, 2007
Marjorie
Cohn
Targeting Dissent: FBI Spying on the
National Lawyers Guild
Dr.
Susan Rosenthal, MD
Sick and Sicker: Two Models of Health Care Rationing
Alan
Farago
Bush and the Everglades: Rebranding Failure as Success
Carla
Blank
"America, the Beautiful": the Queen, Jamestown and
the Eye of the Beholder
Matthew
Abraham
The Smearing of Robert Trivers, Dershowitz-Style
Sunsara
Taylor
The Deadly Consequences of Compromise: Abortion Rights Under
Assault, Where's the Women's Movement?
Russell
D. Hoffman
16 Dirty Secrets About Nuclear Power
Robert
Weissman
Blackstone and Capital's Grand Scam
Sen.
Russ Feingold
Secrecy and the Federal Death Penalty
Paul
Buchheit
The Footprints of Democracies
Website
of the Day
Anarchy for the USA: an Interview with Josh Wolf
June
26, 2007
Jonathan
Cook
Divide and Rule, Israeli-Style
Ralph
Nader
Sicko and the Politics of Health Care
Corporate
Crime Reporter
Which Side Are You On, Michael Moore?
Ron
Jacobs
Are the Neocons Really Going?
Martha
Rosenberg
Mad Cow in God's Country
John
Chuckman
China's New Weapons
Denny
Haldeman
Ethanolics Anonymous
Anthony
DiMaggio
Free Speech Hypocrisy at the Supreme Court
Stephen
Fleischman
The Tightrope Economy
William
S. Lind
Legitimacy, Toujours Legitimacy
Website
of the Day
The CIA's Family Jewels
June 25, 2007
Paul
Craig Roberts
Goodbye to the City on the Hill
Jennifer
Loewenstein
The Triumph of US / Israeli Policy
in Palestine
Bob
Anderson
The Grooming of Bill Richardson: New Mexico's Nuclear Governor
Robert
Pollin
The Realities of Microlending
Patrick
Cockburn
Chemical Ali Faces the Hangman: the Life and Crimes of al-Majid
Eva
Liddell
Why They Want to Fire Ward Churchill
Dan
Bacher
Democrats and the School of the Americas: 42 House Democrats
Back Torture Academy
Larry
Atkins
The Case of the Judge and the $54 Million Pair of Pants: an Embarrassment,
Not an Argument for Tort Reform
Mark
Brenner
SEIU Ends Nursing Home Partnership
James
Rothenberg
Hillary Does Iraq
Website
of the Day
"A Long Train of Abuses"
June
23 / 24, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
Zyklon B on the US Border
Jeff
Taylor
The Foreign Policy of Barack Obama
Oren
Ben-Dor
Israeli Apartheid is the Core of the Crisis in Gaza
Gary
Leupp
In Defense of Academic Freedom: the Ward Churchill Case
Robert
Fisk
The Bumbling Envoy
David
Rosen
The Hidden Cost of War: Genital Injuries, Prosthetic Devices
and the War on Terror
Russell
Mokhiber
Ins and Outs for 2008: Up with Spoilers!
Alison
Weir
USA Today and the USS Liberty
Robert
Fantina
The Floundering Congress
D.
K. Wilson
Of Gangstas and Spearchuckers, Sex and Zulus
Nicole
Colson
Litigating Gitmo
Stephen
Soldz, Steven Reisner and Brad Olson
Torture, Psychologists and Colonel
James
Dave
Lindorff
Exodus of the Puppets: Bush's Incredible Shrinking Coalition
Benjamin
Dangl
Cerámica de Cuyo: a Profile of Worker Control in Argentina
Michael
Dickinson
The Catholicization of Tony
Poets'
Basement
Davies, Engel, Gerard and Orloski
Website
of the Weekend
Incarcerex: a Drug War Video
June
22, 2007
Andy
Worthington
A Tunisian in Gitmo: the Story
of Prisoner 660
Sherwood
Ross
Corporate America's Deadliest Secret: the Big Profits in Biowarfare
Research
Eliana
Monteforte
The Torture Academy
Robert
Weissman
Things Can Be Different
Richard
Rhames
Farmer Preservation
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Uighurs: an Encounter in Albania
Ramzy
Baroud
Chronicle of a Chaos Foretold
Ehud
Krinis, David Shulman and Neve Gordon
Facing an Imminent Threat of Expulsion: Palestinians in S. Hebron
Hills Need Your Help!
David
Michael Green
If Reid Were Rove
Kathryn
Webber
Boycotting DePaul
Website
of the Day
Stop Me Before I Vote Again!
June
21, 2007
Peter
Linebaugh
The Day of the Rope
Natsu
Saito
The Regents and Ward Churchill: Now is the Time to Speak Out
Ron
Jacobs
The Intimidation of a Vet
Saree
Makdisi
The West Chooses Fatah, But Palestinians Don't
John
Stauber
Blessed Unrest: an Interview with Paul Hawken
Scott
Liebertz
Fox News and Venezuela: an Analysis of How the Network Deliberately
Misinforms Its Viewers
Tom
Clifford
The Ghost Prisoners
Robert
Jensen
The Last Sunday?
Michael
J. Smith
Who Among Us Will Step Up to Destroy the Democratic Party?
Jeb
Sprague
Pain at the Pump in Haiti
Website
of the Day
Dion: Hey Paris
June 20, 2007
Omar
Barghouti
A Secular-Democratic State Solution
Andy
Worthington
Repatriated to Torture
Margaret
Kimberley
Supreme Injustices: the Bush Court
Robert
Weissman
Sicko, Part One: the Human Tragedy
Russell
D. Hoffman
Time to Choose: Meltdowns or Solar Power?
Rannie
Amiri
Mideast Alight
Stephen
Lendman
The New York Times vs. Hugo Chavez
Dave
Lindorff
Democratic Disconnect
David
Swanson
Booing Hillary: Platitudes from the Drone Machine
Anne
Dachel
Autism & Vaccines: Why are They Afraid to Look?
Website
of the Day
Revolution By the Book
June
19, 2007
Ralph
Nader
Hillary's Stock and Trade: the NAFTA
Two-Step
Dr.
Shepherd Bliss
Torture's Long Reach
Bill
and Kathleen Christison
Demostrating Against the Catholic Church in Santa Fe
Jeff
Leys
Swarming Congress: Building a Resistance to the 2008 Iraq War
Supplemental Funding Bill
Dave
Zirin
The Unforgiven: Barry Bonds and Jack Johnson
Chris
Floyd
Hitchens Takes a Roll in the Hay
Ben
Terrall
Iraq Union Leaders Speak Out Against the Occupation
Anthony
Papa
Veronica's Story: a Dying Wish to Governor Spitzer
VIPS
Countering Terrorism: How Not to
Do It
Linda Flores
Criminalizing the Classroom
Website
of the Day
Sign On to the Iraq Moratorium
June 18, 2007
John
Ross
The Annexation of Mexico
Paul
Craig Roberts
The Reign of the Tyrants is at Hand
Martha
Rosenberg
Let Cheney at Him: Richardson the Oryx Hunter
Norman
Solomon
War at the Remote
Don
Santina
Memo to the Queen: Bobby Sands Died for Your Sins
Isabella
Kenfield
Landless Rural Workers Confront Lula
James
Brooks
America's Guilty Silence
Eva
Liddell
Planning to Lose: Democratic Stratagems
Sam
Husseini
Clinton Health Care Scam Revisited
Akiva
Eldar
Ariel Sharon's Dream
Website
of the Day
Frank
Zappa: the Cop Interview
June 16 / 17, 2007
Alexander
Cockburn
The Psychopathology of Shrinks
John
Halle
Finkelstein and "The Progressive"
Robert
Fisk
Welcome to "Palestine"
Andy
Worthington
Return to Torture?
Uri
Avnery
The Gaza Cage
Fred
Gardner
Paris Hilton's Punishment: a False
Parable
Saul
Landau
Our Gang of Thugs: The 1970s as a
Context for Terrorist Violence
P.
Sainath
Heaven Can Wait: Creditors and the
Widows of Vidharbha
Missy
Comley Beattie
Calling Evil Its Name
Alan
Gregory
When ADM Comes to Town: Killer Tax
Breaks for Wildlife Destruction
Walter
Brasch
Bush and the Philosophy of Swiss Cheese
Website
of the Weekend
Obama Girl
June
15, 2007
Alan
Farago
View from the Construction Crane:
Sex, Taxes and Real Estate Scams in Miami
Andy
Worthington
The Ordeal of Ali al--Marri
Michael
Simmons
Terrorizing Artists in the USA
Franklin
Lamb
Blowback Across Lebanon: The Failed
Sunni Army Solution
Gary
Leupp
The Day After We Attack Iran
John
Ross
Ballot Burning Time in Ol' Mexico
Website
of the Day
The American Rationalist
June 14, 2007
Michael
Donnelly
Charred SUVs and the End of Citizen
Eco--Activism
Faisal
Kutty
Scare Canada: The No--Fly List's False
Sense of Security
Harry
Browne
Ireland's Green Party Sells Out
Charles
Jonkel
From the Arctic to Yellowstone: Bears in a World of Indifference
Steven
Higgs
Murder in a Small Town: "Gay Panic"
in Indiana?
Bruce
Dixon
Black Power Through Low Power Radio
Bruce
K. Gagnon
What Do We Do Now? A 10--Step Plan
for Antiwar Activists
Website
of the Day
Finkelgate
June 13,
2007
Glen Ford
Obama's
Siren Song
Marjorie Cohn
Repression
in Oaxaca
Bill Christison
A Grave Injustice at DePaul University
Charles Jonkel
Bears in a World of Indifference
Silvia Cattori
"I Was Not Prepared for the Horrors I Saw": an Interview
with Hedy Epstein
Richard Gott
Racism and TV in Venezuela
Firmin DeBrabander
How the Neocons Misread Machiavelli
William S. Lind
The Perfect (Sine) Wave: Bombing Railroad Stations in Iraq
Keith Rosenthal
Workers Score a Victory at Harvard
Website of the Day
GOP and Monty Python Explain: "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques"
June 12,
2007
Jeffrey St.
Clair
How
to Sell a War
Paul Craig
Roberts
The Neocon Threat to American Freedom
P. Sainath
India's
Plutocrats and the Press
Ralph Nader
The Biggest Scam in the World
Omar Waraich
A Black Day for Pakistan's Press
Dave Lindorff
Things Your Media Momma Didn't Tell You
Harvey Wasserman
Confessions of an Anti-Nuke Jerk
Malini Johar
Schueller
It Takes a Bomb
Ramzy Baroud
War Foretold: Mark Twain and the Sins of Empire
Website of
the Day
Palestinian Chronicle Needs Our Help!
June 11,
2007
Patrick Cockburn
The
War on Journalists
Paul Craig
Roberts
Losing the Economy to Mythology
Uri Avnery
40 Bad Years: the Rot of Occupation
Norman Solomon
The Silence of the Bombs
Eva Liddell
Paris Hilton Doesn't Do Dishes: How Barbie Stood Up to Allen
Ginsberg
Rannie Amiri
Groundhog Day in Pakistan
Rachel Voss
Poetry and Politics in Nassau County
Christopher
Brauchli
A Wild West Tale, Starring Rev. Dobson and Bill O'Reilly
D. K. Wilson
Untangling Michael Vick from the Dogs
Website of
the Day
Paris, Mixed Up
|
July
18, 2007
A
CounterPunch Special Report
Widening Fissures
How
the US Could "Lose" Saudi Arabia
By Col. DAN SMITH
"There are people out
there calling for democracy. Now isn't that the silliest thing
you ever heard."
Saudi Arabia's
King Faisal, 1922
"Ignorance is preferable
to error, and he is less remote from the truth who believes nothing
than he who believes what is wrong."
Thomas Jefferson
It is March 2008; U.S. forces in Iraq
have been maintained at "surge" levels. The government
of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has been replaced twice in
the in last nine months. The current cabinet, a coalition dominated
by technocrats and secularists, includes military officers who
hold the Defense and Internal Security portfolios as well as
former Baathists. Even so, its hold on power is shaky as the
sectarian militias of the religious parties still pose a possible
security threat--a threat that that continues to roil the politics
of the Gulf and the larger Middle East.
There is some good economic
news: oil production finally is above pre-March 2003 levels--and
has shown a small but steady increase in each of the last four
months.
Next door in Iran, the Supreme
Ruler and his inner circle have grown weary of what it sees as
U.S. stalling tactics on ending sanctions against Tehran (the
quid pro quo for Tehran's full cooperation with the International
Atomic Energy Agency). Moreover, even though the coalition troops
are half-way through their final six month UN-endorsed "stability
operation" in Iraq, the U.S. still has not announced whether
it will ask the Iraq government for permanent basing rights.
Sensing an opportunity to affect
the future balance of power in the Gulf as the coalition military
forces leave Iraq, the Iranians secretly approachSaudi Arabia
with a proposal to stabilize political-economic conditions in
the Persian Gulf--Caspian Sea oil fields. The core of the proposal
calls for Riyadh and Tehran to pressure Baghdad diplomatically
(with the sectarian militias always in the background) to reject
any form of a residual U.S. military presence in Iraq. In return,
both Iran and Saudi Arabia would assist the re-development of
Iraq's oil sector, enabling the three countries to form a powerful
sub-OPEC triumvirate.
Such a scenario might seem
far-fetched given the history of ethnic and religious sectarianism
that Westerners associate with Islam in general and with the
Gulf and the Greater Middle East in particular. However, to totally
ascribe the widespread violence to the historical Shi'a--Sunni
sectarianism completely ignores the gross mishandling by the
U.S. and its coalition partners of the post-October 2001 and
post-March 2003 political, military, and economic realities in
Afghanistan and Iraq, respectively. That the initial occupation
"model" was post-World War II Germany rather than an
insurgency merely accentuates the error.
What is disheartening is that many in the Bush administration
and in Congress, regardless of the number of "fact-finding"
excursions they make, cannot get beyond the original limitations
of the Bush policy toward Afghanistan, Iraq, and the other countries
bordering the Persian Gulf. Under such circumstances, one is
hard-pressed to distinguish between willful ignorance and persistent
error, both of which--Jefferson notwithstanding--can be devastating
when Congress legislates in the foreign policy and national defense
arenas.
Few would deny that first-hand
information is especially crucial when the nation is at war.
Probably far fewer would subscribe to the premise that such information
is at least as critical in times of peace as a barrier to war.
But first-hand knowledge may be most important when a country
attempts to chart a path from uncivil civil war to peace--especially
should outside parties seek to sabotage progress toward peace
for whatever reason.
The physical processes of moving
from civil war to peace--disengagement, disarmament, re-integration,
and sustainable development on an equitable basis for all--are
not at issue because the basic structures and methods need only
be adapted, not created from scratch, in each instance. The challenge
is to identify and understand the underlying belief systems as
these are reflected in the values, ethics, and morés of
a society and its culture as well as their influence on the traditions,
laws, and institutions of governance developed by a society.
The key element, the sine qua non on which everything
depends, is the ability to find a common basis for mutual trust
among cultural groups and subgroups, whether tribal, clan, ethnic,
racial, sectarian, political, economic, or any other divide.
In that the fundamental datum in question is the individual,
the basis for developing trust must also begin with the individual--the
acceptance of the inherent dignity and equality of every person--after
which it can (and must) become politically "universal"
as the foundation for whatever form of governance is chosen.
PART 1
A VISION
CORRUPTED: FDR AND GWB
Among the many efforts in the
last century to express these principles, Franklin Delano Roosevelt's
January 6, 1941 address to Congress captured both the universality
of these principles and the real possibility that they were within
reach despite the wars raging in Europe and Asia. This speech
contained Roosevelt's "Four Freedoms"--of speech and
religion, from want and fear--with a brief elaboration of each
" in world terms" that clearly reflected the president's
extensive international experience. If freedom was "the
supremacy of human rights everywhere," as Roosevelt claimed,
then freedom from fear "translated into world terms, means
a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such
a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit
an act of physical aggression against any neighbor--anywhere
."
For Americans, the collapse
of the Soviet empire and then the implosion of the Soviet Union
itself in December 1991 seemed to be the achievement of Roosevelt's
freedom from fear "in world terms." Yet 10 months before
the implosion, another event occurred whose repercussions were
to last for a dozen years and, once again, frustrate Roosevelt's
vision of a world free from fear of aggression.
The January-February 1991 U.S. led, UN approved Operation Desert
Storm that evicted Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait is a case
study in the restrained use of military power by the community
of nations to uphold international law. It arguably reflected
the extensive international experience and first-hand-knowledge
of President George H. W. Bush and his advisors.
Twelve years later, another
Bush--George W.--is in the White House and is at war. Judging
from the résumés of his advisors and those he selected
to implement the administration's policies and programs, first
hand knowledge of international affairs is as plentiful as in
1991. Yet without question, after 6_ years of the presidency
of George W. Bush, the international standing of the United States
is at rock-bottom. Determining exactly how this nadir was reached
lies in the future, but two possibilities have already emerged:
a distinct absence of that first hand knowledge of international
relations and other cultures possessed by the first President
Bush; and, perhaps more debilitating to the decision-making process,
a studied narrowness in understanding, interpreting, and integrating
all available information in the bureaucracy--especially information
that contradicts his personal views.
From the very beginning of
his presidency, George W. Bush has harbored a most singular,
almost-messianic purpose: to instigate a world of ever-expanding
democracies led by the United States and by George Bush. For
this president, spreading democracy is not an option but a duty,
one arising from and rooted in the nation's divinely-ordained
"manifest destiny." Ironically, considering that Bush
"sat out" the Vietnam war, his "new" Middle
East seems to be little more than an inversion of the Vietnam-era
domino theory. All the U.S. has to do is plant one vibrant democracy
in the Middle East and eventually all other countries will "fall"
into the ranks of democratic nations. And as democracy spreads,
so too will peace.
Unfortunately, Bush's idea
of what is best for the region's countries might not be what
the region's peoples and current rulers envision. As it is, nearly
six years after invading Afghanistan and 4_ years after invading
Iraq, there is little prospect for an end to the fighting in
or for the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces from these countries.
These struggles have deflected efforts to find compromises that
would end the long-running (and recently rekindled) violence
among Palestinian factions and between Palestinians and Israelis.
And at what might be referred to as eleventh-hour discussions,
Iran and the U.S. are finally exploring their overlapping or
diverging views of events in and the future role of each nation
in the Gulf-Caspian Sea arenas.
SAUDI ARABIA,
THE U.S., AND OIL
Seemingly left out of the post-September
11, 2001 Gulf picture, strangely, is Saudi Arabia, for the past
seven decades a close U.S. ally. Can it be that this once highly-favored
U.S. partner--ranked by some analysts as third in importance
to the U.S. behind Britain and Israel--has lost its privileged
position with the Bush White House and the U.S. Congress? Or
is there a post-9/11 calculated, mutually beneficial, unofficial
and unwritten "understanding" in operation? That is,
the U.S. government won't highlight those "un-democratic"
aspects of the desert kingdom that, when founding other countries,
in other countries are frequently and extensively condemned by
the U.S. and serve to "inspire" regime change legislation--in
return for which the Saudi oil spigot will be kept open indefinitely.
After nearly six years of continuous
war involving the United States in what is Saudi Arabia's back
yard, this "arrangement" may be crumbling. Under the
current plan, there is still no realistic time horizon within
which a viable central government of any type, let alone a western
style democracy, can emerge in Baghdad. Across the Gulf, the
anti-American theocratic regime in Tehran has re-emerged as a
regional player that other Gulf and Middle East countries cannot
ignore.
Of all the Gulf countries,
Saudi Arabia may well be experiencing the most significant changes.
Although the subject rarely is broached, many in the U.S. Congress
and the U.S. public have had the uneasy sense that Riyadh's vast
oil resources and the ever-increasing U.S. dependence on petroleum
imports has provided the Saudi's a veritable Sword of Damocles
that hints at the use (as in 1973) of oil as a weapon by which
the kingdom might try to restrain or otherwise influence U.S.
policy and presence in the Persian Gulf-Caspian Sea areas. (Of
course, the counter argument is that the Saudis have to sell
their oil because they have no other income source--thus producing
a deadlock that neither side would want nor could sustain.
That said, the shifting sands
of scientific discoveries and international relations seem poised
to unhinge the current Saudi-U.S. combine than at any other time
since the end of the Cold War. Scientifically, the need for countries
everywhere to become involved in counteracting the effects of
global warming will require changes in a carbon-based life style
and quality of life that will have to be balanced by some still-to-be-determined
mechanism to preclude massive disruption of social order within
countries and to mediate international disputes more effectively
than in the past. And there still is the possibility, however
remote, of a major breakthrough in non-carbon energy sources
that would revolutionize economies around the world--and revenue
flows as well.
Diplomatically, Washington's
unwavering support of (or blanket neutrality toward) Israel in
every dispute with its neighbors (support that arguably has encouraged
a certain reckless disregard by Israeli authorities of the rights
of non-combatants in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank) seemed--until
June of this year--to be driving Riyadh to adopt a more prominent
role in the Israeli-Palestine dispute. As for the Persian Gulf
itself, simply to maintain their national sovereignty in a neighborhood
with two other oil-rich but more populous countries, the Saudis--essentially
tribal, autocratic, and sitting on the largest proven oil reserves
in the world--had to align themselves with a "protective"
power or create (and effectively dominate) a regional defensive
consortium -- in this case the Gulf Cooperation Council that
includes the other states, sheikdoms, and emirates on the Arabian
Peninsula.
This dependence on foreign oil to power the economy and to maintain
and deploy military forces when and where needed, drove successive
administrations to cultivate Saudi leaders. When strains in the
relationship developed and threatened to become public, both
sides worked to conceal the extent of the disagreement beneath
diplospeak. Transient disputes left bi-lateral relations "warm,
robust, and close." More contentious meetings that failed
to resolve issues were "frank, friendly, and fraternal."
TERROR
FROM THE SKIES: SEPTEMBER 11, 2001
September 11, 2001 swept all
"issues" off the table. Within hours, fifteen of the
nineteen hijackers had been identified as Saudi citizens. Not
knowing but fearing a backlash once the American public knew
the countries of origin of the hijackers, the Saudi embassy advised
business representatives, students, and other Saudis living in
or visiting the U.S. to leave as rapidly as possible. An October
2003 FBI memo that was made public at the end of June 2007 acknowledges
that Saudi diplomats, other Middle East nationals, and even members
of bin Laden's family residing in the U.S. were whisked out of
the U.S. on six chartered planes on September 19, 2001. Moreover,
even on the day of the attack itself, a Saudi-chartered jet was
airborne in U.S. airspace although all aircraft other than Air
Force One were supposed to be grounded.
Clearly, the Saudis panicked--possibly
because George Bush had been in office only seven months and
was untested on the world stage. And while the Bush family were
no strangers to the Saudi royals, it is not difficult to picture
the profound uncertainty about how the "cowboy" president
would react to the unprecedented assault--the location of the
targets, the origin and means used to carry out the plot, the
number killed and injured, and the physical destruction. Apparently,
even the long-serving (22 years) Saudi ambassador to Washington,
Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who knew the American psyche better
than any other member of the top-tier of Saudi royalty--could
not predict whether the U.S. would blame Saudi Arabia for the
tragedy. (This failure may well account for the apparent lessening
of Bandar's influence in the Saudi government under King Abdullah,)
That so many Saudis fled the
United States after September 11 should have been a red flag
for Washington as to the depth of uncertainty and even fear in
many Islamic countries about how and against whom the U.S. might
use its military power. In their world, the U.S. has intervened
with bombs and bullets in Lebanon and Libya in the 1980s, in
Iraq and Sudan in the 1990s, and in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen,
and Somalia in the first decade of the 21st century. On the "Arab
street," the U.S. is seen as a weapons- and war-obsessed
country whose uncontrolled "gunfighter" mentality bespeaks
a culture with seemingly little regard for life--one liable to
strike out in any direction and at any time.
The obvious question is which
way will U.S.-Saudi relations develop? In that few top U.S. officials
really understand the country--just as few Saudis really understand
the U.S.--to even hazard a tentative conclusion borders on insanity.
Yet by identifying trends that are reasonably expected to affect
the course of events, it becomes easier to see the problem holistically
and to formulate a meaningful reply that incorporates both perspectives
to the degree that these are publicly evident.
In the early Cold War, after
the Chinese Communists drove the remnants of the Nationalist
Chinese armies off the Mainland, Washington politicians--many
knowing little if anything about China--began a frenzied hunt
for those who "lost China." The same question, after
substituting Iraq for China, is being asked more and more often
today as people wonder what condition Iraq will be in when the
U.S. military units finally leave.
For their part, the Saudis
seem to have decided not to give unguided fate a free hand in
determining their future. The House of Saud cannot afford to
be seen as a military "lap dog" of the United States,
especially since their chief claim to legitimacy in the Islamic
world is their position as the Protector of the Two Holy Cities
in Arabia from which Islam spread. They have to oppose the continuing
occupation of Iraq and the parallel occupation of Palestine if
they are to retain credibility in the Islamic world. And whereas
the U.S. is geographically remote, the Saudis must live with
a resurgent Iran as a neighbor, regardless of what else happens
in the rest of the world.
The one arena of international
relations where non-believers and Saudis can mingle without incurring
condemnation is commerce. Even the ayatollahs in Iran understand
business.
PART 2
CULTURAL
DEVELOPMENT AND DISTANCE.
How a country and a people
develop and internalize as a "second nature" the social,
political, philosophical, and even economic structures within
which day-to-day life unfolds depends on prevailing geographical,
environmental, and historical conditions--and how these intersect
and integrate at crucial times in the formation of or in a radical
change to a culture. This process, even when more evolutionary
than revolutionary, is never uniform or straightforward, largely
because the ascendancy (or decline) of a culture occurs coincident
with the development and use (or the waning) of military power
relative to other societies and their cultures. Moreover, how
the dominant power of the day acts toward both its allies and
its enemies can alter the development of its own culture. The
"best" case arguably has the ruling class in the dominant
country fully cognizant of and preparing for the eventual inflexion
of military supremacy by having the foresight to share power
and responsibility--a more reliable formula than war for prolonging
dominance--as a member of consortia of countries with similar
cultures.
Perhaps this explains in part
the Saudi reaction to September 11, 2001. As complicated as relationships
can be between neighboring countries that share essentially the
same philosophical and cultural foundations, the complexity of
relationships is magnified when countries whose social and cultural
evolution flow from distinctly different, even contradictory,
bases attempt to form meaningful alliances and forge complex
compacts with each other. I suggest, for example, that the Pentagon
and State Department regarded the Saudi relationship to be, firstly,
economic and secondarily (albeit a close second) national defense.
The Saudi's priorities would be the reverse. Moreover, in light
of the strong residual influence of the tribal structure on which
rests the kingdom's sense of being one nation, when 9/11 struck,
the collective Saudi subconscious reverted to the primordial
"flight" instinct through which safety in numbers could
be achieved. At base, this "choice" was triggered by
the recognition that "they" (Americans) are not "us"
(Saudis), and therefore, in extremis, "we" cannot
be sure just what "their" reaction will be to disaster.
For most of the 20th century,
the Saudi-U.S. compact skirted the more sensitive subjects: individual
rights versus traditional societal norms; rights of women and
professions women could pursue; strict enforcement of societal
expectations and mores rather than tolerance of diverse standards
introduced by contact with outsiders. The fissures that did appear
did not go to core values, so the ruling elite could quickly
and quietly deal with them.
Less than a year into the 1990s
found western armies in Saudi Arabia and two or more aircraft
carrier battle groups sailing in or just outside the Persian
Gulf every day of the year. Core issues, in particular the components
that make up a society's self-identity--mythology, religion,
philosophy, and political structures--suddenly came under intense
pressure, and the longer the foreign troops, especially the non-Islamic
foreign troops, remained in the kingdom, the greater the strain.
Again, economics dominated the U.S. viewpoint with international
law an important added consideration. For the Saudis, on the
surface this was a matter of national defense--immediate
national defense after U.S. intelligence had briefed the king
on the disposition of the Iraqi forces in Kuwait and Saddam Hussein's
possible intent. (Ironically, it was on September 11, 1990, that
President George H.W. Bush told the U.S. public and the world
that satellite photography confirmed other reports that large
numbers of Iraqi troops and tanks were in Kuwait and poised on
the Saudi border. When commercial satellite photography of Kuwait
on September 11 and September 13, 1990 became available in 1992,
there was little indication of an Iraqi presence in Kuwait while
on the same photos the dispositions of the lead elements of the
U.S. 82nd Airborne Division in northern Saudi Arabia are quite
discernable.)
What few Americans understood then (and too many still do not
understand) was that Gulf politics had a very prominent historical
and religious dimension that the Saudi elite had to factor into
their response. Like most Arab countries, Saudi Arabia has a
significant Shi'a minority. If it is an accident of history that
the largest liquid petroleum reserves lie in an arc around the
Persian Gulf, it is an accident of demographics that the most
significant Saudi oil fields are beneath areas inhabited by Shi'a.
(Similar demographics and the fortunes of war created the geographical
distribution of the minority Shi'a that gave them control of
Iran and a population majority in Iraq but not control of the
government--at least not while Saddam Hussein's Baath party ruled.)
In the end, realpolitik carried the day, but at a price
no one imagined.
FORGING
THE MODERN SAUDI STATE
Modern Saudi Arabia emerged
from an early 19th century political-religious alliance between
Muhammed Ibn Saud and Muhammed al-Wahhab that led to the first
conquest of the Arabian peninsula by the "House of Saud."
Al-Wahhab, a Bedouin like Ibn Saud, considered himself heir to
the teachings and traditions of Ibn Taymiya, a 13th century iconoclastic
Islamic scholar and jurist of the strict Hambali school of Sunni
Islam. Taymiya interpreted the disastrous fall of Baghdad and
the Abbysid caliphate to Mongol invaders in 1258 CE as God's
judgment on the faithful who had strayed from the strictures
and practice of Islam as found in the Quran and Ibn Taymiya's
Book of Unity. By extension, any Muslim who did not belong
to al-Wahhab's "Call to Unity" cult or disagreed with
his analysis was anathema and Islam's enemy.
The very aggressive religious
stance of the Wahab-Saud alliance drove other Sunnis and all
Shi'a communities to oppose the desert upstarts. In 1818, the
powerful Egyptian caliph militarily crushed the political aspirations
of the Saudis, nearly obliterating the tribe. Surviving Saudi
tribesmen regrouped in the desert and began re-building their
numbers, eventually again conquering a great amount of the Arabian
peninsula, including the two holy cities of Mecca and Medina.
By the 1930s, most of the peninsula was reclaimed--and with it
the vast petroleum reserves that would become the fuel of the
world's engine of commerce.
WHAT RELIGION
DIVIDES, COMMERCE COMBINES
Uniting most of the Arabian
Peninsula did not solve all of the Saudi's challenges. The kingdom's
relatively small population drove the royal family to seek reliable
allies to help ensure its continued sovereignty and prosperity.
This need for dependable allies was one of the first lessons
the Saudis drew from World War II as that war unfolded. What
may have saved the Saudis in the end was not anything they did
but what the Soviet 62nd Army did: it held at Stalingrad, thereby
blocking the Nazi advance on the oil-rich Caucasus and the northern
Gulf oil fields.
When the war ended, it looked
as though nothing had really changed except that the pre-war
British presence in Iran was now a post-war Soviet and British
presence. This change originated in 1941 when Churchill and Stalin
forced Iran's ruler, Reza Shah, to abdicate to prevent him from
siding with the Axis and interfering with the "Persian Corridor"
supply line to the Red Army.
Although Britain removed its troops after the war ended, the
Soviets did not withdraw completely until May 1946. But the Saudis
soon were confronted by a unified, nationalistic Iran, strongly
supported by (some would say "under the thumb of")
the U.S. And while the Saudis had more oil than Iran, they didn't
have the most important asset to be Washington's favorite: geography.
Iran was doubly "blessed" in this regard. On its north
and northwest, it was the country blocking Soviet access to a
warm water port (assuring reliable maritime-based trade), while
its southwest flank bordered the Strait of Hormuz, the crucial
chokepoint on the all-maritime route to the vast oil fields of
the interior Gulf. Iran's high-water mark--and arguably Saudi
Arabia's low point--came during the presidency of Richard Nixon.
Under the so-called Nixon Doctrine, a number of "regional
military hegemons" armed, trained, and beholden to the Pentagon,
were to help the U.S. maintain world order. Iran was the country-of-choice
in the Gulf, and Tehran under the Shah was Washington's favorite.
With the overthrow of the Shah
Reza Pahlavi in 1979, the take-over by students of the U.S. embassy
in Tehran and the ensuing captivity of 52 embassy staff for 444
days, and the ascendancy to political power of Islamic clerics,
U.S - Iranian cooperation evaporated. The diplomatic shake-up
was only intensified--and perhaps prolonged--by the outbreak
of a mutually devastating eight-year war (1980-1988) between
Iran and Iraq.
With Shi'a Iran in disarray
and badly bloodied, and with Iraq's Shi'a majority still dominated
by the nominally Sunni Saddam Hussein, the Saudi's could claim
a special role in the custodianship of Islam's holiest shrines.
In sum, Saudi Arabia was the
last one standing, the number one power in the Gulf. Arms purchases
from the West that used to flow to Tehran now flooded Riyadh.
The dangerous and aggressive superpower to the east and north
had been forced out of Afghanistan after ten years of fighting
by a largely Saudi-funded indigenous guerrilla resistance.
As for the great superpower
to the west, its ever-increasing addiction to oil gave Riyadh
influence (some would say enormous clout) on evolving U.S. policy
in the Persian Gulf. But this influence was muted and relegated
to the shadows of day-to-day events so that few would notice--or
care. As for the Persian Gulf, Riyadh had no objections to the
nearly constant presence of at least one U.S. aircraft carrier
battle group, which effectively made the Gulf an American lake.
Yes, looking out on the world
as 1989 drew to a close, the Saudis could claim to be at the
top of their form. But events were soon to change drastically.
PART 3
THE SAUDI
- U.S. DISCONNECT: "CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?"
The placid surface of Gulf
economic, military, and diplomatic relations concealed roiling
depths that soon placed tremendous stresses on the Saudi-U.S.
alliance. One of the more recent but no longer unique pressures
is economic: the high cost of fuel for automobiles. This strain,
of course, can be ameliorated (at least until oil production
peaks) to the extent that refining capacity increases. But a
potentially more divisive issue, divisive because it involves
realpolitik consequences that flow from and are inherent
in personal and national self-identity, is the relationship between
religion, politics, and economics in societies whose fundamental
concept of the individual's place and role in society is rooted
on differing premises.
In the first 300 years since
the end of the religious wars in Europe in 1648, religion in
the West, especially in Northern Europe and the colonies in North
America, has been either formally separated from and subordinated
to or only nominally headed by the ruling political structure.
In turn, in the aftermath of World War II, political divisions
have become increasingly irrelevant to the economic power wielded
by transnational corporations. In contrast, the evolution of
Islam, particularly the highly conservative tradition practiced
in Saudi Arabia and absorbed by Osama bin Laden and his supporters
and followers, melds the religious and the secular into daily
life and duty, with religion superior to and informing the political
and economic spheres.
(At a less conceptual level,
some social commentators believe that a culture's dominant architecture
reveals what it values most. That is, for what purposes does
a society spend time and money constructing "important"
buildings? In the West, dominant structures initially were churches,
then palaces and "capitals," but since the last century,
transnational corporate headquarters and financial institutions.
This progression from church to state to corporation did not
happen in Islam. There, the minaret still dominates.)
SOWING
THE SEEDS OF DIVISION
This philosophical divide was
irrelevant until Islam and Christianity, both heirs to Judaism,
collided in Palestine. Both accepted--and among the converts
to each were those who embraced--the use of force against armed
opponents.
Initially, Christianity followed
a less militant path, but after the end of the persecutions in
the 4th century CE, it took up the sword under the "just
war" theory of Augustine of Hippo. It was still a "tool"
of the church hierarchy in the 11th century when the Orthodox
churches separated from Rome and the Latin churches and again
in the 16th and the 17th centuries with the rise of Protestantism.
Under the Prophet, Islam burst
from the Arabian peninsula absorbing by conversion or the sword
as it gained dominance in most of the Near and Middle East, Africa
north of the Sahara Desert, and eventually large swatches of
the Byzantine Empire. For 200 years, starting in 1095 CE, Western
Christianity directly opposed Islam in the on-and-off Crusades.
In 1453 CE, Constantinople fell to the Turks who, a mere 76 years
later, were knocking at the Gates of Vienna (1529 CE). No one
answered; the spread westward into Europe was checked as it had
been eight centuries earlier (732 CE) at Tours, France.
Where Islam held sway, religion was the dominant organizing principle
for the society. This was both its strength--a consistency in
values and community focus--and its weakness an absence
of an alternate explanation or a "fall back" source
of power other than Allah to hold accountable when life is overcome
by obstacles.
As with most new faiths, the
fervor of the "reborn" can fuel a determination to
"share" the newly discovered spirituality. The more
militant the faith, the more ferocious the treatment meted out
to those who oppose the new faith or--even worse--who deviate
from the true path. The resulting schisms and "reformations,"
once laid bare, can divide so deeply that they become a dominant
part of the forces that shape traditions, laws, cultural norms,
and commerce--and frustrate initiatives that would help resolve
ancient disputes.
TWENTIETH
CENTURY U.S.--SAUDI RELATIONS
Despite a number of irritants
in the U.S. - Saudi relationship over the years, available diplomatic
histories suggest that none rose to a level that threatened a
vital national interest of either the U.S. or the Saudi kingdom
prior to 1990-1991. The irritants that did exist--the rush to
recognize diplomatically the new Jewish state of Israel in 1948;
the virtually one-sided, unwavering U.S. support for Israel against
Muslim countries in general and Palestinians in particular; the
"oil shocks" of 1973 and 1979 which saw oil prices
"skyrocket" in comparison with the existing "steady-state"
costs, spotlighting just how dependent the Western world was
on a steady flow of cheap petroleum to keep economies afloat--were
not "make-or-break" disputes for the U.S., although
maintaining a reliable and inexpensive flow of petroleum was
an important priority for every U.S. administration.
The kingdom, however, did have
something to hide, and for the better part of the 20th century
it succeeded by projecting a façade of economic development
and modernity beneath which lay a rigid social conservatism that
was enforced by the equally rigid Wahab school of Sunni Islam.
Few Westerners, even those who lived and worked in the U.S. foreign
military training program known as SANG--Saudi Arabian National
Guard--grasped the depth of commitment to religious purity represented
by this combination of mosque and monarch. (The SANG, the best
equipped and best trained Saudi troops, are under the direct
command of a senior member of the royal family. They are a modern
Praetorian Guard whose mission is to protect the Saudi royal
family from the country's regular army.)
This idyllic relationship lasted
less than a year, and one suspects that the Saudis quietly fault
the U.S. for its foreshortened existence. On August 2, 1990,
a few days after the U.S. ambassador in Baghdad told Iraq's President
Saddam Hussein that the U.S. had no position on a border dispute
between Iraq and Kuwait, Saddam sent his army into what he termed
Iraq's nineteenth province, quickly overrunning the emirate while
being careful not to cross into Saudi Arabia--at least not until
he had a tight grip on Kuwait and saw the world's reaction to
this violation of international law.
Saddam's invasion of Kuwait
set in motion a chain of events that lasted a dozen years:
-the 1991 Operation Desert
Storm that restored Kuwait's ruling family to their throne also
saw the introduction of foreign troops and construction of "permanent"
military facilities built for these non-believers in the land
of the two most sacred cities of Islam. The rejection by the
Saudi royal family of Saudi businessman-turned-mujahideen Osama
bin Laden's offer to lead a jihad against Saddam Hussein in lieu
of the foreign troops is seen as the point at which bin Laden
turned against his family and his country.
-the intrusive UN searches
for weapons of mass destruction, interrupted at least twice by
U.S. bombing campaigns that grew out of Operations Northern and
Southern Watch;
-the imposition of devastating
sanctions on Iraq, albeit eventually with exceptions on humanitarian
grounds for food and medicine and gradually becoming more focused
against Iraq's ruling cabal;
- the intentional mis-management
of the UN "Oil for Food" program which helped maintain
Saddam Hussein in power;
- "abandonment" by
the U.S. of the Marsh Arabs and the Kurds when they rebelled
against Saddam's oppression, expecting the U.S. would come to
their aid; and
- the continuing presence of U.S. military men and women in Saudi
Arabia which bin Laden considered an abomination.
Forced from Sudan in 1996,
bin Laden settled finally in Afghanistan. During the ensuing
half-decade, al-Qaeda operatives struck U.S. embassies in Africa
and a U.S. destroyer in Aden Harbor. In the background, planning
went forward for the most spectacular and successful terror attack
in modern times: the destruction of the twin World Trade Towers
in New York City and part of one wing of the Pentagon by crashing
hijacked passenger jets into the buildings. Nearly 3,000 people
were killed that September 11.
Refusing to surrender bin Laden
to either the U.S. or to an international court, Afghanistan's
ultra-conservative ruling Taliban faction quickly learned the
meaning of President Bush's ultimatum to the world: "you
are either with us or against us." Within a month, the U.S.
was bombing Afghanistan; in less than three months, with reportedly
no more than 50 or 60 Special Forces personnel coordinating B-52
bomber runs and other fighter - bomber support for indigenous
rebel groups, the Taliban government crumbled.
What the U.S. public didn't
know at the time--and it is unclear when the Saudis were informed--was
that the Taliban and Afghanistan were only a momentary diversion
from the Bush administration's real target, one left over from
the 1991 Kuwait fiasco: Saddam Hussein. According to former Central
Intelligence Agency head, George Tenet--on September 12, 2001
CE, with the wreckage from the previous day's suicide strikes
still smoldering, top White House staff were pushing for regime
change not in Kabul but in Baghdad.
DIVERGING
PRIORITIES, POLICIES, AND PROGRAMS--THE FISSURES WIDEN
One of bin Laden's stated early
goals--forcing the removal of all non-Islamic and, indeed, all
foreign military forces, from the Land of the Two Holy Mosques,
was substantially completed before the end of 2002 CE when a
new forward headquarters for USCENTCOM opened in Qatar. This
was both an operational change and--perhaps more significantly--a
psychological change. With the foreigners gone, the royal family
could restore its claim to be the sole protector of Islam's most
holy sites and mend the traditional mosque-state relationship
that had prevailed before the first Gulf War brought the non-believers.
But in turning inward, Riyadh drifted into a torpid mentality
that seemed to mirror the mental and physical condition of the
aging senior royals.
On May 1, 2003 CE George Bush
told the world, in effect, "mission accomplished: Saddam's
regime had fallen (although Saddam was still free) and major
combat had ended. That was the operational high point, for almost
immediately significant parts of the population went from welcoming
the American and British liberators to welcoming the opportunity
to liberate anything and everything that came to hand. The U.S.
decision to disband Iraq's security forces, the inability or
unwillingness of the coalition to control, let alone eliminate,
anti-occupation nationalists, former Baathists, and "enemy
combatants" (lawful or unlawful), or to force the disbandment
of Shi'a militias and death squads, is now perceived as a catastrophic
strategic error that has prolonged the civil unrest and trapped
coalition forces and governments in a very public and very divisive
morass.
The inability of the United
States to make any significant inroad into the insurgencies in
Afghanistan and especially in Iraq seems to have re-awakened
the Saudis to the potential for disaster that always exists when
petroleum and power clash. Although they prefer to work and influence
events far from the scrutiny of the world's press, they have
been forced to assume a more public persona in the last few years.
Probably the most significant recent instance of "going
public" came at the March 29-30, 2007 CE Arab League summit
in Riyadh. Among the opening commentaries, the most trenchant
was that of the summit's host, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah.
The king pulled no punches, at one point going so far as to decry
the Bush administration's Iraq presence as an "illegal foreign
occupation."
Media accounts portrayed Washington
as surprised by the king's characterization, with administration
spokespersons noting that the multinational force in Iraq has
a mandate from the UN and is in Iraq at the "request"
of the Iraqi government. While technically true, these circumstances
are "after the fact" of the original invasion and occupation
of Iraq which were done without UN authorization and for reasons
that many countries believe the Bush administration knew or should
have known were not true--as post-invasion events proved.
That the Bush administration
expressed surprise is itself a surprise, given that the White
House has been encouraging the Saudis to become more transparent
in their diplomacy. Apparently, Bush and his advisors thought
the king would dutifully press Washington's viewpoint, forgetting
Lord Palmerston's caution that nations have no permanent allies,
only permanent interests.
In fact, the king's remarks
were but one in a series of cautionary signals the White House
failed to note. Riyadh is also unhappy with the treatment--rather
mistreatment--of Saudi nationals who were picked off the battlefields
in Afghanistan and Iraq and interrogated by CIA operatives employing
"enhanced" techniques. To counter the understandable
resentment if not hatred created by the ill treatment (which
the prisoners might assume Riyadh approved), the Saudis reportedly
have set aside billions of dollars (one estimate is $65 billion)
to conduct psychological evaluations of returned detainees, providing
free occupational training or education and a job at the end
of the rehabilitation period. An estimated 2,000 Saudi's have
participated in the program.
Other substantive divisions
have also become public. Washington has avoided contacts with
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while King Abdullah invited
the Iranian to visit Saudi Arabia. The king also has been open
to discussions with another "terror" organization,
Hezbollah, about the future role of the organization in Lebanese
politics and Lebanon's relations with Israel. When the U.S. refused
to release the "Irbil Five" (Iranian diplomats "arrested"
by the U.S. military while searching for ranking Baathists),
the Saudis were active in persuading Tehran not to boycott the
early May foreign ministerial conference on security in Iraq
convened by Egypt at Sharm el-Sheik. Riyadh reportedly is incensed
that Washington continues to hold the five Iranians despite representations
by both Iraqi and Saudi government officials who fear Tehran
may use the continued detention of their people as an excuse
to boycott future meetings with the U.S.
The May conference did agree
to some measure of economic relief for Baghdad, although less
than the United States had hoped would materialize going into
the meeting. In particular, the U.S. had been working to get
Iraq's creditors to write off the country's entire foreign debt
of $56 billion in return for which the Iraqi government would
agree to meet "benchmarks" described in a five-year
"International Compact on Iraq." In the end, only $32
billion was forgiven, with Kuwait ($15 billion) and Saudi Arabia
($3.6 billion) holding 76 percent of the remaining $24 billion.
Kuwaitis still remember the seven-month occupation by Iraqi forces
in 1990-1991, and neither Kuwait nor Saudi Arabia, both Sunni
majority countries, fully trust Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki,
a Shi'a.
These developments were overshadowed
by the much anticipated meeting between Syrian Foreign Minister
Walid al-Muallim and U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice--the
first in two years at this level--and a meeting of U.S. and Iranian
"experts." Riyadh had to be pleased but wary about
the side-meetings at Sharm el-Sheik and the subsequent announcement
that the Baghdad-based ambassadors from Tehran and Washington
would meet at the end of May to discuss security measures for
Iraq.
PALESTINE-ISRAEL
While the continuing violence
in Iraq was one of the more significant topics at the March Arab
League and the May Sharm el-Sheik summits, the Saudis regard
resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute as crucial to peace
in the region--a peace that Riyadh increasingly seems to believe
is beyond Washington's ability to deliver. Although the Saudis
do not want to "fly solo" on this issue, they decided
to revive a five-year old formula for settling the outstanding
issues and pushed the Arab League at their March summit to reaffirm
the organization's united backing of the proposal. That plan
offered Israel unconditional recognition by all 22 members of
the Arab League in exchange for Israel returning to its pre-1967
war borders, accepting the designation of East Jerusalem as the
capitol of the Palestinian state, and recognizing the "right
of return" of Palestinians to homes inside Israel proper.
Tel Aviv has taken note of the renewed offer, but wants the League
to make changes to the offer, particularly on the right of return
and the total return of captured territory. The League has countered
with a call for Israel to accept the plan and then negotiate
the changes it wants.
Riyadh also stepped in to mediate
the intra-Palestinian rifts that the U.S. is unwilling or unable
to dampen. Early this year, with factional fighting on the rise
in the Gaza strip between supporters of Palestinian President
Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas Prime Minister Isma'il Haniyeh, the Saudis
not only brokered a general (if fragile) cessation in the fighting,
they also succeeded in pushing the two factions into an uneasy
"unity government."
Riyadh certainly didn't expect
to be praised by Tel Aviv and Washington for ending the violence
and re-laying the groundwork for a functioning government in
the Palestinian territory. But neither was it prepared for the
harsh reaction from the two democracies for salvaging the elected
presidency and the elected parliament. Washington (and Tel Aviv)
toughened already punitive sanctions against Palestinians in
Gaza in an effort to force the resignation or dismissal of the
Hamas-dominated government because Hamas refuses to explicitly
recognize Israel's right to exist and to abjure violence. In
imposing more sanctions on the Palestinians, the U.S. spurned
Saudi King Abdullah's call for the U.S. and Israel to reduce
if not remove all sanctions against Palestinians residing in
the Occupied Territories and Gaza.
Clearly, factions in both Fatah
and Hamas--as well as in Israel and the U.S.--were bent on unraveling
the Mecca accord. After three months, the unity government went
down in a hail of gunfire that killed hundreds in Gaza. President
Abbas declared the Palestinian parliament and cabinet dissolved
and, from the West Bank, named a Fatah-dominated cabinet. The
Bush administration quickly recognized the new cabinet as the
sole legitimate government for both the West Bank and Gaza. Israel,
for its part, released some of the tax revenues it had impounded
to the "Fatah" cabinet to pay salaries to government
workers on the West Bank with the stipulation that money was
to go to Gaza.
While the Saudis were displeased
by the tightened sanctions and other U.S. punitive actions against
the unity government, they continued to work quietly until the
collapse of the agreement could no longer be denied. At an emergency
Arab League meeting June 15, the Saudis signaled support for
Abbas and the new government he selected. Their reasoning, as
explained by Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal in
a CNN International interview on June 19, is that Mahmoud Abbas
has the power under the Palestinian Charter to dissolve parliament
and set the date for new elections. What he does not have the
power to do is to select the cabinet.
(Because the Saudis tend to
avoid public disputes, gauging the true depth of their commitment
to a policy or reaction to policies of other countries may show
only in peripheral ways. But it was in the very important Arab
traditions governing hospitality extended to and received from
visitors, and not international politics, that the depth of Saudi
displeasure could be surmised. Reportedly, the Bush administration's
blatant effort to overturn Hamas' election victory was a major
factor in King Abdullah's refusal to attend a formal White House
state dinner in his honor planned for mid-April. Administration
spokespersons denied such an event was scheduled--probably true
technically as the king apparently was thoughtful enough to decline
before the date was entered into the president's calendar of
events.)
Another long-running grievance
is Israel's de facto veto of the sale of U.S. high technology
military weapons to the kingdom. In particular, the Israelis
have been able to preclude the sale of long-range air-to-air
missiles for U.S. F-15 fighter aircraft sold to the kingdom as
well as fuel and radar pods whose capabilities would put Saudi
aircraft almost on par with equipment the U.S. sold to Israel.
On its own terms, such "second class treatment" could
be overlooked, but when other disagreements between the Saudis
and Israelis are factored in (e.g., funding to support whatever
governing authority comes to power in Gaza and in the West Bank),
Riyadh has little incentive to formally recognize Israel or even
turn to Tel Aviv despite their mutual goal of curbing the expansion
of Tehran's sphere of influence.
In fact, despite Abdullah's
pledge that Saudi Arabia will intervene in Iraq if the U.S. precipitously
withdraws and the Sunni population comes under sustained attack
by Iraqi Shi'as, he may well strike an understanding--a trans-sectarian
"grand bargain"--with his neighbors. Essentially, the
Saudi's would accede to Shi'a rule in Iraq with guarantees for
political and economic security for Sunnis who choose to remain
in Iraq. In return, Iran and Iraq would not fund, supply, or
otherwise seek to undermine Syria's President Bashar al-Assad
and his ruling minority Alawite sect (Syria's population is 84
percent Sunni) or interfere in Lebanon--which would mean the
end of Tehran's support for Hezbollah.
On a practical level, should
the Saudis strike the bargain and should it work--two large "ifs,"
to be sure--the political landscape in the Middle East would
be altered.
- Conceivably, an Israel-Palestine
peace plan could be brokered within the region and without U.S.
"help"--although this seems implausible in the near
term given the breakdown of the unity government and the virtual
civil war between Fatah and Hamas.
- The UN "mandate"
for the occupation of Iraq would not be needed and would not
be renewed--nor would U.S. troops be allowed to own, lease, have
on loan, or occupy in any way military bases in Iraq.
- Tehran would be allowed to
produce nuclear power under IAEA supervision and even be permitted
to enrich uranium for energy production.
- Tehran would contribute to
the "Peaceful Arab Center for Using Nuclear Energy"
proposed by Jordan as a means to help modernize Arab countries.
RELIGIOUS
RETREAT OR RELIGIOUS RENEWAL
But this is the Middle East,
and in this region lie three faith traditions whose emotive power
to move adherents to act or not act can complicate if not countermand
the logic of realpolitik. But these two processes need
not be opposed to one another. A hint as to how they can re-enforce
each other--and become part of the landscape of the Middle East--is
to be found in the criticism leveled by King Abdullah at the
collective failure of the leaders of Arab League countries to
unite the "Arab nation" and their refusal "to
walk the path of unity," thereby opening the way for intervention
by outside powers in the affairs of the region.
That phrase--the "path
of unity"--is, I suggest, the Saudi vision of the future
of the Gulf, the wider Middle East, and even the entire Islamic
world--and, if so, defines the nature and extent of Islam's interactions
with the West.
The Saudi vision would embrace
a "re-unified" Islam in the sense that sectarian divisions
would be submerged in favor of the development of a "singular"
spiritual/material path that derives its values and ethics from
the Qu'ran and its institutions, laws, civil system, and administrative
functions of the "state" from a series of "experiments"
in the art of governance that best provides for the welfare of
the people.
The U.S. role in such an endeavor
would be limited to the practicalities of building the institutions
that emerge from the internal Islamic colloquies. Bush's appointment
of a special envoy to the 57-member Organization of the Islamic
Conference is an appropriate move in this context. So too would
be a renewed and more even-handed push to move Israeli-Palestinian
dialogue and actions back to the two-state solution and to initiate
the process of withdrawing U.S. and other foreign military forces
from Iraq and Afghanistan.
In all three conflicts, the
U.S. can assist in the search for ways to resolve remaining disagreements,
but the solutions in the end must rise from the people involved.
They cannot be mandated by outside non-Islamic powers. Those
who try, more often than not, succeed only in unifying the warring
Islamic factions against the interloper.
And that brings us back to
King Faisal's 1922 observation about democracy in the Middle
East and President Bush's obsession with spreading democracy
around the world.
Traditional societies are by
definition those that have existed for eons. Their oral and written
histories reflect the triumphs and tragedies of war and of other
momentous events that shape their laws, religion, and personal
and collective psychology. The forms of governance--e.g. selection/election
of those empowered to rule--are less important than the evolution
of societal organizations that guarantee meaningful participation
in the processes of governance because all humanity is "equal
in creation."
American history and experience
are far too short and underdeveloped to qualify as "traditional."
Nonetheless, the Islamic concept of being "equal in creation"
is easily recognized in the "inalienable rights" which
the U.S. Founders averred were bestowed on every person. Yet
even as the Saudis call for the path of unity, the Bush administration
seems intent on curtailing the sense of "equality in creation"
that has been a characteristic of the American system of government
from the very start.
This is not a question of a
new vision. It is a question of having the wisdom to recognize
that the application of this principle can and indeed ought to
take different forms across various cultures and traditions as
humanity evolves through time. For as Henry David Thoreau once
observed: "A man is wise with the wisdom of his time only,
and ignorant with its ignorance."
Col. Dan Smith is a military affairs analyst for
Foreign Policy In Focus ,
a retired U.S. Army colonel, and a senior fellow on military
affairs at the Friends Committee on National Legislation. Email
at dan@fcnl.org.
SOURCES
Brigadier Furrukh B Ali, "Rediscovering
Islam," The Athenaeum, 2006
"International
Conference on The Implementation of Shari'ah in a Democracy:
The Nigerian Experience," Center for the Study of Islam
and Democracy, January 2006
Shaker Nabulsi, "Civil-religious
divide brings new debate on Saudi future," September
8, 2006
Scott Ritter, "Calling
Out Idiot America," Truthdig, March 23, 2007
Ian Black, "Arabs
unite at summit to renew peace offer to Israel," Guardian
(UK), March 29, 2007
Karen Eliot House, "Saudi
Balancing Act," Wall Street Journal, April 4, 2007
(p. 15)
David S. Cloud and Helene Cooper,
"Israel's Protests Are Said To Stall Arms Sale," New
York Times, April 5, 2007 (p.1)
Hannah Allam, "To
slow spread of radical Islam, Saudi Arabia woos detainees,"
McClatchy Newspapers, April 29, 2007
Helene Cooper and Jim Rutenberg,
"U.S.
puzzled by diminished clout of Saudi prince," International
Herald Tribune, April 29, 2007
Rebecca Solnit, "The Thoreau
Problem," Orion Magazine, May-June, 2007
Helene Cooper, "Few Good
Options For U.S. On Palestinian Violence," New York Times,
June 14, 2007 (p. 19)
Mara Rudmon and Brian Katulis,
"Averting
a Deeper Crisis," Middle East Progress, June
15, 2007
Matt Renner, "FBI's
9/11 Saudi Flight Documents Released," Truthout Report,
June 22, 2007
Michael A. Fletcher, "Bush
Plans Envoy To Islamic Nations," Washington Post,
June 28, 2007 (p.3)
Michael Hirsh, "Iran Has
A Message. Are We Listening?" Washington Post, July
1, 2007 (p. B1)
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