.jpg)
Washington's + Israel's fingerprints, are all over the West wing's " Murder Inc."
Nagi N. Najjar
Nagi N. Najjar was born in
Obviously , the change in the Belgian law, came after the elimination of Mr. Elie Hobeika, because the "process" in coming to Belgium with such law suit,was part and Parcel of the manipulation to eliminate Elie Hobeika, and we know ALL the persons/tools in this process as well. More Later.
http://phoeniciaphoenix.blogspot.com/
File: Syrian Military Intelligence Officers in Lebanon
compilation:2002
Maj. Gen. Ghazi Kanaan (head of Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon, based in Anjar in the Beqaa Valley)Suicided in 2005.
Brig. Gen. Adnan Balloul (deputy head of Syrian military intelligence in Lebanon)
Col. Youssef al-Abed (head of the Anjar detention center)
Col. Amir Kanaan (Anjar)
Col. Berhan Kaddour (Anjar)
Col. Youssef Abdallah (Anjar)
Lt. Col. Ali al-Sagheer (Anjar)
Col. Roustom Ghazali (in charge of Beirut)
Col. Jameh Jameh (in charge of UNESCO-Beaurivage area of Beirut)
Col. Suleiman Shablak (Beirut Airport)
Col. Farid al-Hakim (Ras Beirut)
Col. Samir Mahmoud (Khaldi area, south of Beirut)
Col. Said Rabah (South Metn area)
Lt. Col. Mohammad Jabbour (Saofer area on the Beirut-Damascus Highway)
Major Housam Sukkar (Aley-Shouf region)
Col. Abdallah al-Hariri (North Metn)+Qashaami later.
Col. Nassar Faraj (South Lebanon)
Col. Bassam Mustapha (Deir al-Ahmar)
Lt. Col. Yehya Haddad (Al-Qa'a-Ras Baalbek area)
Major Jamal Ali (North Beqaa)
Col. Mustapha Barraq (Western Beqaa)
Col. Ali Safi (Baalbek)
Brigadier General Mouin Zhazha (South Beqaa)
Col. Nizar Sakr (Zahleh)
Major Mahmoud Hasan (Mashgara, Western Beqaa)
Col. Toufic Haidar (Shtoura)
Lt. Col. Samih al-Kasha'mi (Talya, the Beqaa)
Col. Mohammad Khallouf (head of North Lebanon region)
Col. Nabil Heshaimi (Tripoli)
Col. Mohammad Mefleh (Akkar, North Lebanon)
Major Ahmad Ibrahim (Batroun district)
Col. Feras (Al-Menyeh, north of Tripoli)
Major Ali Suleiman (Alqubayyat-Wadi Khalid area of Akkar)
Lt. Col. Faris Asfouri (Bcherri district)
Col. Jihad Sefatly (Political and Field operations)
Col.Sameeh Al-Qashaami ( Bolonia ) 2004/2005...
Just Imagine...
Imagine for just a moment that, instead of a stubborn and belligerent President in the White House, instead of an impotent UN Security Council, a divided Europe, a squabbling Israeli cabinet and a seething Muslim world, there were a benevolent angel able to wave a healing wand over the Middle East.
What would he (or perhaps she, because we don't know the sex of angels) do?
The angel might begin with Lebanon because, in spite of appearances, it could be the easiest crisis to solve. The heart of Lebanon's problem would seem to be that the Shi'ite community, mainly located in the south of the country and in the southern suburbs of Beirut, has for long been denied its fair share of state power. Since independence sixty years ago, this community has been neglected by the central government, marginalized and under-represented in Lebanon's institutions. It is now demanding its rightful place.
The discrimination the Shia have suffered is all the more striking because today they constitute the largest single community in Lebanon and, virtually single-handed, have defended the country against Israel's repeated assaults and invasions from the 1970s to the present.
For several decades, South Lebanon has been a key battlefield in the Arab-Israeli confrontation. The Shia were the main victims of Israel's two full-scale invasions of Lebanon in 1978 and 1982, and also of Israel's 22-year occupation of the south which followed. They were once again the prime target of Israel's war against Hizballah last summer,
Lebanon's National Pact of 1943, a power-sharing agreement between Maronites and Sunnis which was amended at Taif in 1989, no longer reflects Lebanon's demographic and political realities. A new pact is required which will ensure a better representation of all communities in the country's institutions.
Ideally, the Lebanese should decide to abolish the confessional system altogether, which has been the source of many conflicts, and replace it by a new model of secular citizenship, in which any capable Lebanese -- man or woman, Christian or Muslim - should be able to accede to the highest positions in the State.
Twenty-one years ago, in January 1986, former President Amin Gemayel proposed that a post of Vice-President of the Republic should be created for the Shi'ites. That proposal was not adopted. Today, a still more radical reform is required to overcome the sterile ideological quarrels which are tearing Lebanon apart.
Such a reform should not be seen as a threat to Lebanon's other communities or to the interests of any external power. On the contrary, by consolidating Lebanon's national unity, it would be a major contribution to the stability of the entire region.
The angel would also need to direct his or her attention to healing Lebanon's relations with Syria, which have been severely battered over the past couple of years. Yet, a permanent estrangement between Beirut and Damascus is unthinkable. Carved out of the same flesh, the two countries are indispensable to each other. Ties across the common border of family, friendship and commerce are so dense as to rule out the possibility of divorce.
But, for the current hostility to be overcome, mistakes must be corrected. Officials of both countries responsible for past crimes and abuses must be punished. Syria must recognize Lebanon's sovereign independence, while Lebanon must acknowledge Syria's strategic interest in preventing a hostile power establishing itself in Beirut, which would be seen by Damascus as a grave threat to its national security.
The angel would probably recommend that senior officials from both countries - perhaps at prime ministerial level -- should arrange to meet soon, in a neutral country like Switzerland, to put an official end to their quarrel and hammer out the terms for future coexistence. Diplomatic relations should be established on a basis of dialogue not coercion, and ambassadors exchanged.
History and geography dictate that Syria and Lebanon are bound together by a 'special relationship', unique in the region. The immediate task is to put these relations on a healthy basis.
Resolving Israel's conflict with the Palestinians and with Syria may require not just a single supernatural mediator but an entire heavenly host of angels and archangels. The problem is that Israel has so far been unable to produce a government willing and able to do what is necessary -- namely withdraw from the occupied Palestinian territories, including Arab Jerusalem, dismantle the settlements and come down from the Golan. All hope, however, is not entirely lost.
Several Israelis have urged the Olmert Government to respond to Syria's repeated calls for peace talks, and some Israeli officials have even started to refer positively to the Arab peace plan of March 2002, which offered Israel normal relations with all 22 Arab countries once it agreed to withdraw to the 1967 borders. Peace is not an impossible dream.
Ehud Barak, the former Israeli prime minister, came very close to a deal with Syria in 2000. He is now back on the political scene, seeking to oust the unfortunate Amir Peretz from the Defence Ministry, and even perhaps from the leadership of the Labour Party.
Barak does not seem to enjoy much popularity in Israel. But he has had time to ponder the reasons for his failure to advance the peace process in 1999-2000. For a hundred meters on the north-east corner of the Sea of Galilee, he threw away the chance of peace with Syria. If he is lucky, he may get a second opportunity. And, this time, if he shows courage and vision, he might conceivably grow into a leader able to lead Israel out of its present black hole.
As for U.S. President George W Bush, it is reliably reported that he is causing much despair among the community of angels. Instead of seeking to resolve Middle East conflicts by encouraging Israel to seek peace with its neighbours and by engaging Iran and Syria in dialogue, he is doing the very opposite.
A shadowy group of Washington officials drawn from the State Department, the National Security Council, the Pentagon and the CIA has been plotting to bring about 'regime change' in Syria, by providing generous funding to opposition groups, and at the same time cripple Iran by undermining its banking system and preventing foreign firms from investing in and developing its oil fields.
The war in Iraq is by far President Bush's biggest headache. But he is evidently not yet ready to acknowledge defeat and wind up this disastrous adventure. All the indications are that, against the sage advice of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group, he is still intent on pursuing his bankrupt 'victory strategy' - a doomed enterprise in which more lives and much treasure will be thrown away.
But that is not the end of Bush's mischief. Driven by such neo-conservative hawks as Eliott Abrams at the National Security Council, the U.S. is seeking to destabilize Hizballah in Lebanon - in effect, to complete the job Israel failed to do last summer. To achieve this goal, the U.S. has been arming the Internal Security Forces of the Seniora government and has put great pressure on General Michel Aoun, the Christian leader of the Free Patriotic Movement, to break with Hizballah.
The U.S. seems equally determined to destroy the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas by supplying arms, training and tens of millions of dollars to its Fatah rival. Egypt and Jordan have also been roped in to supply thousands of rifles and millions of rounds of ammunition to Fatah forces loyal to the Palestinian Authority President, Mahmud Abbas. This appears to be another covert program conceived by Eliott Abrams,
who is the Architect of the Assassinations in Lebanon since 2000, and implemented on the ground by David Welsh and others xxxxx ....more later, a senior State Department official.
Rather than bringing peace to the troubled region, these programs will fan the flames of war. Little wonder that the angels are said to shake their heads in despair at the folly of men. There is even talk that they may give up their healing mission in disgust. Instead of deaming up new wars, this is what they should be focusing on in
Washington DC, after solving the M.E. issues immediately.
A new set of policies are emerging in Washington DC, and the expectations
worldwide are that these policies should be certainly more realistic than
Baker-Hamilton.
The reality is that they are neither realistic, nor clairvoyant. This said,
I can't refrain myself from thinking that the mess we are all in stems
mainly from the fact that our threshold of tolerance to violence has
increased tremendously since 9/11. For decades, as the world lived in the
shadow of a possible East-West nuclear Armageddon and the two sides agreed
on the rules of engagement so as to prevent it, the Great Game was played on
the basis of diplomacy, crypto-diplomacy, intelligence, conspiracies,
disinformation, dirty tricks and plots. All of which kept violence at a
bearable level. Then came the collapse of the Soviet Union and with it, the
collapse of the "nuclear check" and the rule of the Global Market which
unleashed our hubris. 9/11 is a sheer act of hubris and, alas for us, the US
decided to respond to it with another act of hubris. Worse is still to come
now that the hubris has pervaded China for the first time since the 16th
Century. To my mind, nothing can change for the better unless new rules of
engagement are agreed upon by all and this cannot happen under the present
US administration as confidence-building measures are needed beforehand.
Only a new American president can hope to do this, should the thought enter
his or her mind.
It is noteworthy that the State Department's list of global terrorist
incidents for 2002 worldwide failed to list the car bombing attack on
Hobeika and his party.... But Listed a small Hand Grenade thrown at a
U.S. franchise in the middle of the night when the place was closed, empty
and no one was hurt? The White House wanted to ensure the terror attack
on Mr. Elie Hobeika, and his party of three young men with families, was
censored from the report. The reason was simple: this attack ultimately had
Washington's and Israel's fingerprints all over it....
Ever since this story came Online, there was a tremendous interest in
reading this article 1052, by very noteworthy INTELLIGENCE sources,
as outlined below:
This is some of the evidence for you and for the World...article&sid=1052
************************************************************************************************
~encrypted/logs/access ====>> INTELLIGENCE Agencies Servers footprints.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Not to mention hundreds of private companies and governments........!
See Below : INTELLIGENCE Agencies , sources and Methods :
************************************************************************************************
Lines 10-36 of my logfiles show a lot of interest in this article: =1052
# grep sid=1052 /encrypted/logs/access_logawk '{print$1,$7}'sed-n'10,36p'.
spb-213-33-248-190.sovintel.ru /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
Soviet/Russian Intelligence services...
ext1.shape.nato.int /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
NATO Intel.
server1.namsa.nato.int /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
Nato Intel.
ns1.saclantc.nato.int /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
Strategic Air Command US Intel.
bxlproxyb.europarl.eu.int /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
European Parliament Intel. Unit
wdcsun18.usdoj.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
USA Department of Justice...
wdcsun21.usdoj.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
USA Department of Justice...
tcs-gateway11.treas.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
USA Treasury Department
tcs-gateway13.treas.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
USA Treasury Department
relay1.ucia.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
CIA Langley
relay2.cia.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
CIA Langley
relay2.ucia.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
CIA Langley
n021.dhs.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
USA Department of Homeland security Intel.
legion.dera.gov.uk /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
British Intel.
gateway-fincen.uscg.mil /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
Pentagon US.
crawler2.googlebot.com /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
Intel....
crawler1.googlebot.com /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
Intel.....
gateway101.gsi.gov.uk /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
British Intel.
gate11-quantico.nmci.usmc.mil /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
USA Marine Corps Quantico Virginia Intel.
gate13-quantico.nmci.usmc.mil /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
USA Marine Corps Quantico Virginia Intel.
fw1-a.osis.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
US Intel SIS.
crawler13.googlebot.com /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
Intel....
fw1-b.osis.gov /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
US Intel. OSIS.
bouncer.nics.gov.uk /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
British Intel.
beluha.ssu.gov.ua /modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052
Ukrainian Intelligence.
zukprxpro02.zreo.compaq.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=1052....
Intel....
This is just a sample, and I have many more...
http://newhk.blogspot.com/
"The significance of this masterpiece is not only the divulsion of facts,
but the focus it's made on the covert cooperation between the parties who
are playing enemies.... "
Covert CIA program withstands new furor , Anti-terrorism effort continues to grow... Hence more and more Rogue OPS.
By Dana PriestThe Washington PostUpdated: 11:43 p.m. ET Dec. 29, 2005
The effort President Bush authorized shortly after Sept. 11, 2001, to fightal Qaeda has grown into the largest CIA covert action program since the height of the Cold War, expanding in size and ambition despite a growingoutcry at home and abroad over its clandestine tactics, according to formerand current intelligence officials and congressional and administrationsources. The broad-based effort, known within the agency by the initials GST, iscompartmentalized into dozens of highly classified individual programs,details of which are known mainly to those directly involved. GST includes programs allowing the CIA to capture al Qaeda suspects withhelp from foreign intelligence services, to maintain secret prisons abroad,to use interrogation techniques that some lawyers say violate internationaltreaties, and to maintain a fleet of aircraft to move detainees around theglobe. Other compartments within GST give the CIA enhanced ability to mineinternational financial records and eavesdrop on suspects anywhere in theworld. Over the past two years, as aspects of this umbrella effort have burst intopublic view, the revelations have prompted protests and officialinvestigations in countries that work with the United States, as well ascondemnation by international human rights activists and criticism bymembers of Congress. Still, virtually all the programs continue to operate largely as they wereset up, according to current and former officials. These sources say Bush'spersonal commitment to maintaining the GST program and his belief in itslegality have been key to resisting any pressure to change course. 'Dirty details'"In the past, presidents set up buffers to distance themselves from covertaction," said A. John Radsan, assistant general counsel at the CIA from 2002to 2004. "But this president, who is breaking down the boundaries betweencovert action and conventional war, seems to relish the secret findings andthe dirty details of operations." The administration's decisions to rely on a small circle of lawyers forlegal interpretations that justify the CIA's covert programs and not toconsult widely with Congress on them have also helped insulate the effortsfrom the growing furor, said several sources who have been involved. Bush has never publicly confirmed the existence of a covert program, but hewas recently forced to defend the approach in general terms, citing hiswartime responsibilities to protect the nation. In November, responding toquestions about the CIA's clandestine prisons, he said the nation mustdefend against an enemy that "lurks and plots and plans and wants to hurtAmerica again." This month he went into more detail, defending the National SecurityAgency's warrantless eavesdropping within the United States. That program isseparate from the GST program, but three lawyers involved said the legalrationale for the NSA program is essentially the same one used to supportGST, which is an abbreviation of a classified code name for the umbrellacovert action program. 'In the name of self-defense'The administration contends it is still acting in self-defense after theSept. 11 attacks, that the battlefield is worldwide, and that everything ithas approved is consistent with the demands made by Congress on Sept. 14,2001, when it passed a resolution authorizing "all necessary and appropriateforce against those nations, organizations, or persons [the president]determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks." "Everything is done in the name of self-defense, so they can do anythingbecause nothing is forbidden in the war powers act," said one official whowas briefed on the CIA's original cover program and who is skeptical of itslegal underpinnings. "It's an amazing legal justification that allows themto do anything," said the official, who like others spoke on the conditionof anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issues. The interpretation undergirds the administration's determination not towaver under public protest or the threat of legislative action. For example,after The Washington Post disclosed the existence of secret prisons inseveral Eastern European democracies, the CIA closed them down because of anuproar in Europe. But the detainees were moved elsewhere to similar CIAprisons, referred to as "black sites" in classified documents. The CIA has stuck with its overall approaches, defending and in some casesrefining them. The agency is working to establish procedures in the event aprisoner dies in custody. One proposal circulating among mid-level officerscalls for rushing in a CIA pathologist to perform an autopsy and thenquickly burning the body, according to two sources. In June, the CIA temporarily suspended its interrogation program after acontroversy over disclosure of an Aug. 1, 2002, memorandum from the JusticeDepartment's Office of Legal Counsel that defined torture in anunconventional way. The White House withdrew and replaced the memo. But thehold on the CIA's interrogation activities was eventually removed, severalintelligence officials said. The authorized techniques include "waterboarding" and "water dousing," bothmeant to make prisoners think they are drowning; hard slapping; isolation;sleep deprivation; liquid diets; and stress positions -- often used,intelligence officials say, in combination to enhance the effect. Behind the scenes, CIA Director Porter J. Goss -- until last year theRepublican chairman of the House intelligence committee -- has gatheredammunition to defend the program. McCain's measureAfter a CIA inspector general's report in the spring of 2004 found that someauthorized interrogation techniques violated international law, Goss askedtwo national security experts to study the program's effectiveness. Gardner Peckham, an adviser to then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.),concluded that the interrogation techniques had been effective, said anintelligence official familiar with the result. John J. Hamre, deputydefense secretary under President Bill Clinton, offered a more ambiguousconclusion. Both declined to comment. The only apparent roadblock that could yet prompt significant change in theCIA's approach is a law passed this month prohibiting torture and cruel andinhumane treatment of prisoners in U.S. custody, including in CIA hands. It is still unclear how the law, sponsored by Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.),will be implemented. But two intelligence experts said the CIA will berequired to draw up clear guidelines and to get all special interrogationtechniques approved by a wider range of government lawyers who hold a moreconventional interpretation of international treaty obligations. "The executive branch will not pull back unless it has to," said a formerJustice Department lawyer involved in the initial discussions on executivepower. "Because if it pulls back unilaterally and another attack occurs, itwill get blamed." The originsThe top-secret presidential finding Bush signed six days after the Sept. 11attacks empowered the intelligence agencies in a way not seen since WorldWar II, and it ordered them to create what would become the GST program. Written findings are required by the National Security Act of 1947 beforethe CIA can undertake a covert action. A covert action may not violate theConstitution or any U.S. law. But such actions can, and often do, violatelaws of the foreign countries in which they take place, said intelligenceexperts. The CIA faced the day after the attacks with few al Qaeda informants, a tinyparamilitary division and no interrogators, much less a system fortransporting suspected terrorists and keeping them hidden for interrogation. Besides fighting the war in Afghanistan, the agency set about to put inplace an intelligence-gathering network that relies heavily on foreignsecurity services and their deeper knowledge of local terrorism groups. Withbillions of dollars appropriated each year by Congress, the CIA hasestablished joint counterterrorism intelligence centers in more than twodozen countries, and it has enlisted at least eight countries, includingseveral in Eastern Europe, to allow secret prisons on their soil. Working behind the scenes, the CIA has gained approval from foreigngovernments to whisk suspected terrorists off streets or out of policecustody into a clandestine prison system that includes the CIA's black sitesand facilities run by intelligence agencies in other countries. The presidential finding also permitted the CIA to create paramilitary teamsto hunt and kill designated individuals anywhere in the world, according toa dozen current and former intelligence officials and congressional andexecutive branch sources. In four years, the GST has become larger than the CIA's covert actionprograms in Afghanistan and Central America in the 1980s, according tocurrent and former intelligence officials. Indeed, the CIA, working withforeign counterparts, has been responsible for virtually all of the successthe United States has had in capturing or killing al Qaeda leaders sinceSept. 11. Bush delegated much of the day-to-day decision-making and the creation ofindividual components to then-CIA Director George J. Tenet, according tocongressional and intelligence officials who were briefed on the finding atthe time. "George could decide, even on killings," one of these officials said,referring to Tenet. "That was pushed down to him. George had the authorityon who was going to get it." The lawyersTenet, according to half a dozen former intelligence officials, delegatedmost of the decision making on lethal action to the CIA's CounterterroristCenter. Killing an al Qaeda leader with a Hellfire missile fired from aremote-controlled drone might have been considered assassination in a priorera and therefore banned by law. But after Sept. 11, four former government lawyers said, it was classifiedas an act of self-defense and therefore was not an assassination. "If it wasan al Qaeda person, it wouldn't be an assassination," said one lawyerinvolved. This month, Pakistani intelligence sources said, Hamza Rabia, a topoperational planner for al Qaeda, was killed along with four others by amissile fired by U.S. operatives using an unmanned Predator drone, althoughthere were conflicting reports on whether a missile was used. In May,another al Qaeda member, Haitham Yemeni, was reported killed by a Predatordrone missile in northwest Pakistan. Refining what constitutes an assassination was just one of many legalinterpretations made by Bush administration lawyers. Time and again, theadministration asked government lawyers to draw up new rules and reinterpretold ones to approve activities once banned or discouraged under thecongressional reforms beginning in the 1970s, according to these officialsand seven lawyers who once worked on these matters. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, deputy director of national intelligence, hasdescribed the administration's philosophy in public and private meetings,including a session with human rights groups. "We're going to live on the edge," Hayden told the groups, according tonotes taken by Human Rights Watch and confirmed by Hayden's office. "Myspikes will have chalk on them. . . . We're pretty aggressive within thelaw. As a professional, I'm troubled if I'm not using the full authorityallowed by law." Not stopping another attack not only will be a professional failure, heargued, but also "will move the line" again on acceptable legal limits tocounterterrorism. When the CIA wanted new rules for interrogating important suspectedterrorists, the White House gave the task to a small group of lawyers withinthe Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel who believed in anaggressive interpretation of presidential power. The White House tightened the circle of participants involved in these mostsensitive new areas. It initially cut out the State Department's generalcounsel, most of the judge advocate generals for the military services andthe Justice Department's criminal division, which traditionally dealt withinternational terrorism. "The Bush administration did not seek a broad debate on whethercommander-in-chief powers can trump international conventions and domesticstatutes in our struggle against terrorism," said Radsan, the former CIAlawyer, who is a professor at William Mitchell College of Law in St. Paul,Minn. "They could have separated the big question from classified details tooperations and had an open debate. Instead, an inner circle of lawyers andadvisers worked around the dissenters in the administration and one-uppedeach other with extreme arguments." At the CIA, the White House allowed the general counsel's job, traditionallyfilled from outside the CIA by someone who functioned in a sort of oversightrole, to be held by John Rizzo, a career CIA lawyer with a fondness forflashy suits and ties who worked for years in the Directorate of Operations,or D.O. "John Rizzo is a classic D.O. lawyer. He understands the culture, theintelligence business," Radsan said. "He admires the case officers. And theytrust him to work out tough issues in the gray with them. He is like acorporate lawyer who knows how to make the deal happen." These lawyers have written legal justifications for holding suspects pickedup outside Afghanistan without court order, without granting traditionallegal rights and without giving them access to the International Committeeof the Red Cross. CIA and Office of Legal Counsel lawyers also determined it was legal forsuspects to be secretly detained in one country and transferred to anotherfor the purposes of interrogation and detention -- a process known as"rendition." Lawyers involved in the decision making acknowledge the uncharted nature oftheir work. "I did what I thought the best reading of the law was," onelawyer said. "These lines are not obvious. It was a judgment." Credit and blameOne way the White House limited debate over its program was to virtuallyshut Congress out during the early years. Congress, for its part, raisedonly weak and sporadic protest. The administration sometimes refused to givethe committees charged with overseeing intelligence agencies the detailsthey requested. It also cut the number of members of Congress routinelybriefed on these matters, usually to four members -- the chairmen andranking Democratic members of the House and Senate intelligence panels. John D. Rockefeller IV (W.Va.), ranking Democrat on the Senate SelectCommittee on Intelligence, complained in a 2003 letter to Vice PresidentCheney that his briefing on the NSA eavesdropping was unsatisfactory. "Giventhe security restrictions associated with this information, and my inabilityto consult staff or counsel on my own, I feel unable to fully evaluate, muchless endorse, these activities," he wrote. Rockefeller made similar complaints about the CIA's refusal to allow thefull committee to see the backup material supporting a skeptical report bythe CIA inspector general in 2004 on detentions and interrogations thatquestioned the legal basis for renditions. Some former CIA officers now worry that the agency alone will be heldresponsible for actions authorized by Bush and approved by the White House'slawyers. Attacking the CIA is common when covert programs are exposed andcontroversial, said Gerald Haines, a former CIA historian who is a scholarin residence at the University of Virginia. "It seems to me the agency istaking the brunt of all the recent criticism." Duane R. "Dewey" Clarridge, who directed the CIA's covert efforts to supportthe Nicaraguan contras in the 1980s, said the nature of CIA work overseasis, and should be, risky and sometimes ugly. "You have a spy agency becausethe spy agency is going to break laws overseas. If you don't want it to dothose dastardly things, don't have it. You can have the State Department." But a former CIA officer said the agency "lost its way" after Sept. 11,rarely refusing or questioning an administration request. The unorthodoxmeasures "have got to be flushed out of the system," the former officersaid. "That's how it works in this country." Researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report.
C 2005 The Washington Post Company C 2005
MSNBC.com URL: <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10644533/>
Maronite Patriarch Elias Hoyek, a man of Honor, Integrity, dedication and courage.
False Flag Operations, and Assassinations EXPERT.
DIVERSION TACTICS
KILLERS, MURDERERS, ASSASSINS, LIARS.
The Neoconservatives (1) Kabal of American Likudnik Jews of the Extremist Variety...
Jihad el Khazen
When I and others said that a cabal had hijacked American foreign policy and began to run it in order to serve Israel, we were accused of promoting the idea of the "conspiracy." However, the then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell denied the existence of a cabal, which confirmed that it did exist. Recently, Powell's top aide, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson, acknowledged the existence of this cabal.More than 90% of this cabal's members are American Likudnik Jews, of the extremist variety. Sometimes they are the most venal of people, although the current leadership is held by two of the giants of the traditional American right, namely Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. Usually, a person starts out with idealistic aspirations, on the left, and ends up on the right. However, these two individuals began on the right, so it's natural that they end up on the extreme right. A friend of the Bush family, Brent Scowcroft, who was the National Security Council adviser under George HW Bush, wrote a frank article in which he said that he no longer knew Cheney, with whom he served in Bush's Cabinet.As for the Likudist background of the cabal, I'll rely on the work of Shadia Drury, a professor of philosophy at the University of Regina, in Canada, and specifically her book "Leo Strauss and the American Right," published in 1999, her later articles, and studies by her and on her. I was particularly impressed by an article of hers in which she warns of the striving for democracy around the world, which the Bush administration has used as a pretext for aggression and hegemony. I telephoned Professor Drury last week and discovered that she's an Arab, of Egyptian origin. She wrote a book entitled "Terror and Civilization: Christianity, Politics and the Western Psyche." In it, she defends Islam (she's a Christian) and discusses the past and history or Christianity, making her a target of the extreme right.Perhaps I have summed up the political thought of Leo Strauss based on my reading of Shadia Drury's works: Strauss called for a system of rule managed by a cabal of philosophers, which reminds us of today's cabal. Strauss hated liberal democracy to the extent that this hatred became central to this thought. He linked it to the democracy of the Weimar Republic in Germany between the wars, whose weakness led to the rise of Hitler and Nazism. Strauss, like many Jews, fled to the US and to the University of Chicago, where he convinced people like Allan Bloom, Henry Jaffa, Irving Kristol (the father of William Kristol), Paul Wolfowitz and many others of the evils of liberal democracy.Shadia Drury says that liberalism doesn't mean that people are equal. Rather, each person is given an equal opportunity to work as much as possible for himself or herself; liberalism favors individual development over that of the group. Since liberalism doesn't believe in the absolute, but in the individual and his or her capabilities, it finds difficulty in grouping the society around common principles. Therefore, it remains weak and divided against itself - a demagogic leader like Hitler can easily dominate liberal democracy and follow it with Nazism and all of its crimes. Thus, Strauss saw liberal American democracy as a revival of the Weimar Republic, threatening all of humanity.To quote from Dr. Drury: The students of Strauss and their students held high-ranking posts in the Reagan and George HW Bush administrations, and they continue to play an essential role in the Republican Party. The most prominent of such individuals were Paul Wolfowitz, the US ambassador to Indonesia and then Deputy Secretary of Defense (and now president of the World Bank); Seth Cropsey, the speechwriter of Caspar Weinberger (Defense Secretary during the Reagan administration); John Agresto, the vice president of the National Endowment for the Humanities; Carnes Lord, National Security Council advisor; Alan Keyes, assistant secretary of state for international organizations; Judge Robert Bork; Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas; former Education Secretary William Bennett; and finally, William Kristol the editor of The Weekly Standard, the mouthpiece of the neoconservatives, and chief of staff of former Vice President Dan Quayle.As for myself, my interest in the neoconservatives began at the end of the 1980s, when Stephen Bryan was caught passing secret documents on Saudi military bases to a visiting Israeli delegation. Instead of being tried in court, Richard Perle brought him to the Pentagon, where there are even more secret documents. Since then, I've been following the interconnected interests of these members of the cabal.If I draw on other sources, I can say that members of the cabal produced by the University of Chicago, along with Wolfowitz (Ph.D. 1972), are Ahmad Chalabi (Ph.D., 1969), Abram Shulsky, who headed the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans, which cooked the intelligence information to justify the war against Iraq (Ph.D. 1972), and Zalmay Khalilzad, US ambassador to Afghanistan and then Iraq (Ph.D. 1979). Preceding this group were Saul Bellow and Allan Bloom, in the field of education, and I'll come back to these two later.Dr. Drury says that the neoconservatives aren't a conservative movement, but a radical, reactionary one. This appears in the group's rejection of the bases of the American state and their attempt to start over. They are reactionary in their opposition to the existing situation and try to go back to a "golden age" that didn't exist in reality.Strauss' recipe to fight the evils of liberalism is creating a single state religion as a means of returning to the absolute and fighting free thought, while strengthening the cohesiveness of society. Thus, Strauss always rejected pluralism when it came to religions or society's goals, out of a fear that society would disintegrate.Such a regime is led, overtly, by "gentlemen" from the best families, promoting the values of honesty and fairness. However, they are figureheads and at the top of the pyramid, as Strauss would have it, is a cabal of atheist philosophers who know that religion is nonsense and only constitutes something for the ignorant masses to consume.Dr. Drury is a professor of philosophy and her explanation might not keep the interest of the average reader. I'll suffice by saying that the proposed political regime doesn't differ much from Nazism or a communist system, with the existence of a secret cabal running things; this cabal's goal involves resisting the virus of liberalism.If there were more space, I'd like to review some of the thought of Allan Bloom, a student of Strauss, and who in turn was a teacher of Wolfowitz. However, the topic is too complex to be treated in a few lines. Bloom has written a famous book about the defects and shortcomings of America, entitled "The Closing of the American Mind." He then became the focal point of a novel by Saul Bellow, in which he exposed his friend and intellectual partner as a person falling apart, and full of homosexuality. Bloom's partisans claim that he defends American family values, while his personal life, until his death from AIDS, was the exact opposite of this picture.Bellow's novel is entitled "Ravelstein," i.e. Bloom, and Wolfowitz appears as a character named Phillip Gorman, Bloom's friend. I encourage people to read this novel ....
Back to the Neoconservatives (2)
Jihad el Khazen
What do Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, and David Wurmser have in common? We know that they're in the cabal of neocons, who want to destroy the Middle East in order to benefit Israel. But what they specifically have in common, after the fall of Iraq, is their hostility toward Syria.When he was Deputy Secretary of Defense, Wolfowitz launched the White House's campaign against Syria. He was the first one to accuse the Syrians of giving haven to leaders of the former Iraqi regime and possessing weapons of mass destruction. Wolfowitz accused Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in particular of practicing "extreme violence" and said, "there should be change in Syria."Perle, meanwhile, supported Israel air strikes against Syria in 2003 and said that "I am happy to see the message was delivered to Syria by the Israeli Air Force, and I hope it is the first of many such messages." He expressed his "hope" that the US would strike Syria.Wurmser is not the most important of the three, but he's an Israeli Likudnik to the bone, like his Israeli wife Meyrav. Wurmser's disastrous presence in the Bush administration was founded on his calls for an attack on Syria, his incitement against Syria, and his promoting the venality of the neoconservatives when it came to weapons of mass destruction.You would think that someone like this extremist, with his loyalty to a foreign power, wouldn't be able to enter any US administration. However, he was recently appointed an advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney within the National Security Council, with responsibility for the Middle East.What's Wurmser's policy? There's no secret in it. His name has been linked to Richard Perle's since the mid-1990s, involved in incitement against Iraq, then Syria. They've been trying to out-do Benjamin Netanyahu when it comes to extremism. When the latter was Israeli prime minister from 1996-1999, he worked within the Oslo Accords, which the neoconservatives said should be rejected; they also called for preventing the establishment of an independent Palestinian state.I've mentioned on several occasions in this column a study of the cabal that appeared in 1996, entitled "Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm." It contains a call for removing the Saddam Hussein regime, followed by attacking Syria and finding an alternative to Yasser Arafat.This study became the Bush administration's policy after 11 September 2001. Since the part related to Iraq has been achieved, the cabal is now working to implement the portion concerning Syria.Iran remains a final goal, but Iran is very strong and the US needs to isolate all of its allies (such as Syria) and disarm them (such as Hezbollah), before taking on the Islamic Republic.The study called on Israel to ally with Turkey and Iran and strike at Syria through Lebanon, just as Wurmser has written time and time again calling for joint US-Israeli efforts against Syria. Wurmser repeated this call in 2000 in another study that involves incitement against Syria, and also in a book published in 1999.This is the person who Cheney appointed as his advisor on Middle East affairs. We don't have to imagine the type of advice that this extremist Likudnik will offer - we can guarantee it. The Vice president is an extremely venal individual. His top aide, Lewis Libby, resigned under pressure from the Plamegate scandal, as he faces official charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. Cheney chose David Addington to succeed Libby; Addington produced a famous study that condones the torture of prisoners, while John Hannah is from the same cabal and was selected as Cheney's national security adviser.Whatever I say about Wurmser isn't sufficient to describe how dangerous he is for the Palestinians, Syria and every Arab country. He's absolutely Israeli; he wants the US to wage Israel's wars in the Middle East. Wurmser's name has been linked to the Office of Special Plans, which Douglas Feith at the Pentagon created to shape intelligence supporting a war against Iraq when the intelligence organizations failed to provide the necessary lies. Wurmser worked as an advisor to John Bolton at the Pentagon and the two try to outdo each other in peddling lies about Syria and inciting the Bush administration against it. Bolton moved to the United Nations, where Bush appointed him Washington's ambassador in the face of congressional opposition, and during its summer recess. Wurmser, meanwhile, moved to Dick Cheney's office and both continued to spread their poison against Arabs and Muslims. Iraq was one step, and Syria was another. The cause is Israel and how it can dominate the region in the face of a huge majority of peoples that the cabal is trying to strip of their independence.I hope readers appreciate the fact that I'm not exaggerating, because it is difficult to exaggerate the danger posed by an Israeli apologist like Wurmser to Arab interests. The older study called specifically for striking Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah, and proposed that the US help Israel. The cabal has changed nothing of this policy; instead it encouraged the bringing down of the Saddam Hussein regime. All of Wurmser, Perle and Feith's statements since the 1990s until the present have repeated these same positions.There is no difference between Netanyahu or Wurmser being Cheney's adviser. If there's any hope of ridding ourselves of the danger of the vice president and his advisers, it lies in the investigation by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald into the leaking of CIA agent Valerie Plame's name to the media, to exact revenge against her husband, Joseph Wilson, who returned from Niger to say that reports of Iraqi attempts to purchase uranium yellow cake were trumped up.We know that the investigation has gotten rid of Libby and threatens the position of Karl Rove, Bush's adviser or "brain." However, I read that the special prosecutor is interested in the role of Wurmser, who has agreed to provide information in order to protect himself. There's also suspicion that he and Bolton leaked Plame's name when the former was the latter's adviser at the Pentagon, and that the leak took place thanks to advice "from above."Personally, I think that the charges will reach Cheney himself in the end, but I await the results of the official investigation. Then we will see.
"The significance of this masterpiece is not only the divulsion of facts,
but the focus it's made on the covert cooperation between the parties who
are playing enemies.... " At the very Least in Lebanon and Syria.
Why U.S. Intelligence Failed, ReduxBy Robert ParryFebruary 13, 2006Paul Pillar, the CIA's senior intelligence analyst for the Middle Eastfrom 2000 to 2005, has written a critique of the Bush administration'shandling of pre-war intelligence on Iraq that, in effect, corroboratesthe British "Downing Street Memo" in accusing the Bush administrationof rigging the evidence to justify the invasion.The British memo recounted a July 23, 2002, meeting in which RichardDearlove, chief of the British intelligence agency MI6, told PrimeMinister Tony Blair about discussions in Washington with George W.Bush's top national security officials. "Bush wanted to remove Saddam,through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism andWMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around thepolicy," Dearlove said, according to the minutes.After the "Downing Street Memo" was revealed in Great Britain in 2005,Bush's spokesmen heatedly denied its claims and major U.S. newsoutlets dismissed its significance. But in the upcoming issue ofForeign Affairs magazine, Pillar offers a matching account. He wrotethat the administration didn't just play games with the traditionalnotion that objective analysis should inform responsible policy, but"turned the entire model upside down.""The administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making,but to justify a decision already made," Pillar wrote. "The Bushadministration deviated from the professional standard not only inusing policy to drive intelligence, but also in aggressively usingintelligence to win public support for its decision to go to war. Thismeant selectively adducing data -- 'cherry-picking' -- rather thanusing the intelligence community's own analytic judgments."These two accounts -- which are further bolstered by first-handstatements from former counterterrorism chief Richard Clarke, formerTreasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Colin Powell's former chief ofstaff Lawrence Wilkerson -- reveal an administration long determinedto invade Iraq and assembling reasons that would scare the Americanpeople into supporting an unprovoked war.Yet, while the American public has a right to be furious about gettingtricked into a war that has killed nearly 2,300 U.S. soldiers and tensof thousands of Iraqis, there are other concerns about why the U.S.intelligence community let itself be so manipulated, staying silentwhen a strong protest to Congress might have derailed Bush's scheme.On Oct. 23, 2003, Consortiumnews.com addressed this longer-rangequestion of why U.S. intelligence failed. That story, which isreprinted in an updated form below, shows that the politicization ofintelligence has been a goal of neoconservative operatives for threedecades. They have long understood the value of turning the principleof objective analysis on its head:In Tom Clancy's political thriller "Sum of All Fears," the UnitedStates and Russia are being pushed to the brink of nuclear war byneo-Nazi terrorists who have detonated a nuclear explosion inBaltimore and want the Americans to blame the Russians.CIA analysts have pieced together the real story but can't get it tothe president. "The president is basing his decisions on some reallybad information," analyst Jack Ryan (Ben Affleck) pleads to a U.S.general. "My orders are to get the right information to the people whomake the decisions."Though a bit corny, Ryan's dialogue captures the credo of professionalintelligence analysts. Solid information, they believe, must be thefoundation for sound decisions, especially when lives and the nationalsecurity are at stake. The battle over that principle is the real backstory to the dispute over Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction.It is a story of how the CIA's vaunted analytical division has beencorrupted or "politicized" by right-wing ideologues over the pastquarter century.Some key officials in George W. Bush's administration from formerDeputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to Vice President Dick Cheney have long been part of this trend toward seeing intelligence as anideological weapon, rather than a way to inform a full debate. Otherfigures in Bush's circle of advisers, including his father, the formerpresident and CIA director, have played perhaps even more centralroles in this transformation. [More on this below. Also see RobertParry's Secrecy & Privilege.]For his part, the younger George Bush has shown little but disdain forany information that puts his policies or "gut" judgments in anegative light. In that sense, Bush's thin skin toward contradictioncan't be separated from the White House campaign, beginning in July2003, to discredit retired Ambassador Joseph Wilson for publiclydebunking the Bush administration's claim that Iraq had tried to buyyellowcake uranium from Niger. That retaliation included the exposureof Wilson's wife as an undercover CIA officer.Dating Back to WatergateThough one cost of corrupting U.S. intelligence can now be counted inthe growing U.S. death toll in Iraq, the origins of the currentproblem can be traced back to the mid-1970s, when conservatives wereengaged in fierce rear-guard defenses after the twin debacles of theVietnam War and Watergate. In 1974, after Republican President RichardNixon was driven from office over the Watergate political-spyingscandal, the Republicans suffered heavy losses in congressional races.The next year, the U.S. backed government in South Vietnam fell.At this crucial juncture, a group of influential conservativescoalesced around a strategy of accusing the CIA's analytical divisionof growing soft on communism. These conservatives led by the likesof Richard Pipes, Paul Nitze, William Van Cleave, Max Kampelman,Eugene Rostow, Elmo Zumwalt and Richard Allen claimed that the CIA'sSoviet analysts were ignoring Moscow's aggressive strategy for worlddomination. This political assault put in play one of the CIA'sfounding principles objective analysis.Since its creation in 1947, the CIA had taken pride in maintaining ananalytical division that stayed above the political fray. The CIAanalysts confident if not arrogant about their intellectual skills prided themselves in bringing unwanted news to the president's door.Those reports included an analysis of Soviet missile strength thatcontradicted John F. Kennedy's "missile gap" rhetoric or the debunkingof Lyndon Johnson's assumptions about the effectiveness of bombing inVietnam. While the CIA's operational division got itself into troublewith risky schemes, the analytical division maintained a fairly goodrecord of scholarship and objectivity.But that tradition came under attack in 1976 when conservativeoutsiders demanded and were granted access to the CIA's strategicintelligence on the Soviet Union. Their goal was to contest theanalytical division's assessments of Soviet capabilities andintentions. The conservatives saw the CIA's tempered analysis ofSoviet behavior as the underpinning of then-Secretary of State HenryKissinger's strategy of dtente, the gradual normalizing of relationswith the Soviet Union. Dtente was, in effect, a plan to negotiate anend to the Cold War or at least its most dangerous elements.This CIA view of a tamer Soviet Union had enemies inside Gerald Ford'sadministration. Hard-liners, such as William J. Casey, John Connally,Clare Booth Luce and Edward Teller, sat on the President's ForeignIntelligence Advisory Board. Another young hard-liner, Dick Cheney,was Ford's chief of staff. Donald Rumsfeld was then as he is today the secretary of defense.Team BThe concept of a conservative counter-analysis, which became known as"Team B," had been opposed by the previous CIA director, WilliamColby, as in inappropriate intrusion into the integrity of the CIA'sanalytical product. But the new CIA director, a politically ambitiousGeorge H.W. Bush, was ready to acquiesce to the right-wing pressure."Although his top analysts argued against such an undertaking, Bushchecked with the White House, obtained an O.K., and by May 26 [1976]signed off on the experiment with the notation, `Let her fly!!," wroteAnne Hessing Cahn after reviewing "Team B" documents that werereleased more than a decade ago. [See "Team B: The Trillion DollarExperiment," The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.]The senior George Bush offered the rationale that Team B would simplybe an intellectual challenge to the CIA's official assessments. Theelder Bush's rationale, however, assumed that Team B didn't have apre-set agenda to fashion a worst-case scenario for launching a newand intensified Cold War. What was sometimes called Cold War II woulddemand hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayers' money formilitary projects, including big-ticket items like a missile-defensesystem. [One member of Team B, retired Lt. Gen. Daniel Graham, wouldbecome the father of Ronald Reagan "Star Wars" missile defense system.]Not surprisingly, Team B did produce a worst-case scenario of Sovietpower and intentions. Gaining credibility from its access to secretCIA data, Team B challenged the assessment of the CIA's professionalanalysts who held a less alarmist view of Moscow's capabilities andintentions. "The principal threat to our nation, to world peace and tothe cause of human freedom is the Soviet drive for dominance basedupon an unparalleled military buildup," wrote three Team B membersPipes, Nitze and Van Cleave.Team B also brought to prominence another young neo-conservative, PaulWolfowitz. A quarter century later, Wolfowitz would pioneer thepost-Cold War strategy of U.S. preemptive wars against countriesdeemed potential threats by using the same technique of filtering theavailable intelligence to build a worst-case scenario. In 2001, GeorgeW. Bush made Wolfowitz deputy secretary of defense under Rumsfeld.Though Team B's analysis of the Soviet Union as a rising power on theverge of overwhelming the United States is now recognized byintelligence professionals and many historians as a ludicrous fantasy,it helped shape the national security debate in the late 1970s.American conservatives and neo-conservatives wielded the analysis likea club to bludgeon more moderate Republicans and Democrats, who saw adeclining Soviet Union desperate for arms control and other negotiations.Reagan's RiseScary assessments of Soviet power and U.S. weakness also fueled RonaldReagan's campaign in 1980, and after his election, the Team Bhard-liners had the keys to power. As Reagan and his vice presidentialrunning mate, George H.W. Bush, prepared to take office, thehard-liners wrote Reagan's transition team report, which suggestedthat the CIA analytical division was not simply obtuse in its supposedfailure to perceive Soviet ascendancy, but treasonous."These failures are of such enormity," the transition team reportsaid, "that they cannot help but suggest to any objective observerthat the agency itself is compromised to an unprecedented extent andthat its paralysis is attributable to causes more sinister thanincompetence." [For details, see Mark Perry's Eclipse.]With Reagan in power, the Team B analysis of Soviet capabilities andintentions became the basis for a massive U.S. military buildup. Italso was the justification for U.S. support of brutal right-winggovernments in Central America and elsewhere.Since Soviet power was supposedly on the rise and rapidly eclipsingthe United States, it followed that even peasant uprisings against"death squad" regimes in El Salvador or Guatemala must be part of alarger Soviet strategy of world conquest, an assault on the "softunderbelly" of the U.S. southern border. Any analysis of these civilwars as primarily local conflicts arising from long-standing socialgrievances was dismissed as fuzzy thinking or worse.In the first few months of the Reagan administration, the hard-liners'animosity toward the CIA's analytical division intensified as itresisted a series of accusations against the Soviet Union. The CIAanalysts were obstacles to the administration's campaign to depictMoscow as responsible for virtually all acts of internationalterrorism, including the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul IIin Rome in 1981.With William Casey installed as CIA director and also serving inReagan's Cabinet, the assault on the analytical division moved intohigh gear. Casey put the analytical division under the control of hisprotg, Robert Gates, who had made his name as an anti-Soviethard-liner. Gates then installed a new bureaucracy within the DI, orDirectorate of Intelligence, with his loyalists in key positions."The CIA's objectivity on the Soviet Union ended abruptly in 1981,when Casey became the DCI [director of central intelligence] and thefirst one to be a member of the president's Cabinet. Gates becameCasey's deputy director for intelligence in 1982 and chaired theNational Intelligence Council," wrote former CIA senior analyst MelvynGoodman. [See Foreign Policy magazine, summer 1997.]Analysts Under FireUnder Gates, CIA intelligence analysts found themselves the victims ofbureaucratic pummeling. According to several former CIA analysts whomI interviewed, analysts faced job threats; some were berated or evenhad their analytical papers thrown in their faces; some were subjectedto allegations of psychiatric unfitness.The Gates leadership team proved itself responsive to White Housedemands, giving serious attention to right-wing press reports fromaround the world. The Reagan administration, for instance, wantedevidence to support right-wing media claims that pinned Europeanterrorism on the Soviets. The CIA analysts, however, knew the chargeswere bogus partly because they were based on "black" or falsepropaganda that the CIA's operations division had been planting in theEuropean media.The attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II in 1981 was viewed asanother opportunity to make propaganda points against what Reagancalled the "evil empire." Though the attack had been carried out by aneo-fascist extremist from Turkey, conservative U.S. writers andjournalists began to promote allegations of a secret KGB role. In thiscase, CIA analysts knew the charges were false because of the CIA'spenetration of East Bloc intelligence services.But responding to White House pressure in 1985, Gates closeted aspecial team to push through an administration-desired paper linkingthe KGB to the attack. Though the analysts opposed what they believedto be a dishonest intelligence report, they couldn't stop the paperfrom leaving CIA and being circulated around Washington.As the CIA's traditions of analytical objectivity continued to erodein the 1980s, analysts who raised unwelcome questions in politicallysensitive areas found their jobs on the line.For instance, analysts were pressured to back off an assessment thatPakistan was violating nuclear proliferation safeguards with the goalof building an atomic bomb. At the time, Pakistan was assisting theReagan administration's covert operation in Afghanistan, which wasconsidered a higher priority than stopping the spread of nuclearweapons. In Afghanistan, the CIA's operations division and thePakistani intelligence service were helping Islamic fundamentalists,including Osama bin Laden, battle Soviet troops.One analyst involved in the Pakistan nuclear-bomb assessment told methat the CIA higher-ups applied almost the opposite standards thatwere used two decades later in alleging an Iraqi nuclear program. Inthe Pakistani case, the Reagan administration blocked warnings about aPakistani bomb "until the last bolt was turned" while more recently onIraq, speculative worst-case scenarios were applied, the analyst said.One consequence of giving Pakistan a pass on proliferation was thatPakistan did succeed in developing nuclear weapons, which havecontributed to an escalating arms race with India in South Asia. Italso has created the potential for Islamic extremists to gain controlof the Bomb by taking power in Pakistan.Missing the FallThe politicization of intelligence in the 1980s had other effects.Under pressure always to exaggerate the Soviet threat, analysts had noincentive to point out the truth, which was that the Soviet Union wasa decaying, corrupt and inefficient regime tottering on the brink ofcollapse. To justify soaring military budgets and interventions inThird World conflicts, the Reagan administration wanted the Sovietsalways to be depicted as 10 feet tall.Ironically, this systematic distortion of the CIA's Sovietintelligence assessments turned out to be a political win-win forReagan and his supporters.Not only did Congress appropriate hundreds of billions of dollars formilitary projects favored by the conservatives, the U.S. news medialargely gave Reagan the credit when the Soviet Union "suddenly"collapsed in 1991. The CIA did take some lumps for "missing" one ofthe most significant political events of the century, but Reagan'ssuccess in "winning the Cold War" is now enshrined as conventional wisdom.The accepted version of events goes this way: the Soviets were on theascendance before Reagan took office, but thanks to Reagan's strategicmissile defense program and his support for right-wing insurgencies,such as arming contra rebels in Nicaragua and Islamic fundamentalistsin Afghanistan, the Soviet Union fell apart.A more realistic assessment would point out that the Soviets had beenin decline for decades, largely from the devastation caused by WorldWar II and the effective containment strategies followed by presidentsfrom Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower to Gerald Ford and JimmyCarter. The rapid development of technology in the West and the lureof Western consumer goods accelerated this Soviet collapse.But the U.S. news media never mounted a serious assessment of how theCold War really was won. The conservative press corps naturallypressed its favored theme of Reagan turning the tide, while acomplacent mainstream press offered little additional context.'Politicization'The plight of the CIA analysts in the 1980s also received littleattention in Washington amid the triumphalism of the early 1990s. Thestory did surface briefly in 1991 during Gates's confirmation hearingsto become President George H.W. Bush's CIA director. Then, a group ofCIA analysts braved the administration's wrath by protesting the"politicization of intelligence."Led by Soviet specialist Mel Goodman, the dissidents fingered Gates asthe key "politicization" culprit. Their testimony added to doubtsabout Gates, who was under a cloud for his dubious testimony on theIran-Contra scandal and allegations that he had played a role inanother covert scheme to assist Saddam Hussein's Iraq. But the elderGeorge Bush lined up solid Republican backing and enough accommodatingDemocrats particularly Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman DavidBoren to push Gates through.Boren's key staff aide who limited the investigation of Gates wasGeorge Tenet, whose behind-the-scenes maneuvering on Gates's behalfwon the personal appreciation of the senior George Bush. Thosepolitical chits would serve Tenet well a decade later when the youngerGeorge Bush protected Tenet as his own CIA director, even after theintelligence failure of Sept. 11, 2001, and embarrassing revelationsabout faulty intelligence on Iraq's WMD.In the early 1990s. with the Cold War over, the need for objectiveintelligence also seemed less pressing. Political leaders apparentlydidn't grasp the potential danger of allowing a corrupted U.S.intelligence process to remain in place. There was a brief window foraction with Bill Clinton's election in 1992, but the incomingDemocrats lacked the political will to demand serious reform.The "politicization" issue was put squarely before Clinton's incomingnational security team by former CIA analyst Peter Dickson, who wrotea two-page memo on Dec. 10, 1992, to Samuel "Sandy" Berger, a topClinton national security aide. Dickson was an analyst who sufferedretaliation after refusing to rewrite a 1983 assessment that notedSoviet restraint on nuclear proliferation. His CIA superiors didn'twant to give the Soviets any credit for demonstrating caution on thenuclear technology front. When Dickson stood by his evidence, he soonfound himself facing accusations about his psychological fitness.Dickson urged Clinton to appoint a new CIA director who understood"the deeper internal problems relating to the politicization ofintelligence and the festering morale problem within the CIA." Inurging a housecleaning, Dickson wrote, "This problem of intellectualcorruption will not disappear overnight, even with vigorous remedialaction. However, the new CIA director will be wise if he realizes fromthe start the dangers in relying on advice of senior CIA officemanagers who during the past 12 years advanced and prospered in theircareers precisely because they had no qualms about suppressingintelligence or slanting analysis to suit the interest of Casey andGates."The appeals from Dickson and other CIA veterans were largely ignoredby Clinton and his top aides, who were more interested in turningaround the U.S. economy and enacting some modest social programs.Although Gates was removed as CIA director, Clinton appointed JamesWoolsey, a neo-conservative Democrat who had worked closely with theReagan-Bush administrations. Under Woolsey and Clinton's subsequentCIA directors, the Gates team sans Gates consolidated its bureaucraticpower.The old ideal of intelligence analysis free from political taint wasnever restored. Clinton's final CIA director was George Tenet, who waskept on by George W. Bush in 2001. In violation of the CIA'slong-standing tradition of avoiding even the appearance ofpartisanship, Tenet happily presided over the ceremony that renamedthe CIA's Langley, Va., headquarters the George Bush Center forIntelligence, after George Bush senior.The Iraq DebacleTenet also has proved himself a loyal bureaucrat to the second Bushadministration. For instance, in February 2003 when Secretary of StateColin Powell addressed the United Nations Security Council aboutIraq's alleged WMD program, Tenet was prominently seated behindPowell, giving the CIA's imprimatur to Powell's assertions that turnedout to be a mixture of unproved assertions, exaggerations and outrightlies. At one point in his speech, Powell even altered the text ofintercepted conversations between Iraqi officials to make theircomments appear incriminating. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com's"Bush's Alderaan."]"If one goes back to that very long presentation [by Powell], point bypoint, one finds that this was not a very honest explanation," saidGreg Thielmann, a former senior official in the State Department'sBureau of Intelligence and Research, in an interview with PBSFrontline. "I have to conclude Secretary Powell was being a loyalsecretary of state, a `good soldier' as it were, building theadministration's case before the international community." [Fordetails, see Frontline's "Truth, War and Consequences."]In the Foreign Affairs article, Pillar noted that Powell's U.N. speechalso compromised the objectivity of the CIA on Iraq because "theintelligence community was pulled over the line into policy advocacy-- not so much by what it said as by its conspicuous role in theadministration's public case for war. This was especially true whenthe intelligence community was made highly visible (with the directorof central intelligence literally in the camera frame) in [Powell's]intelligence-laden presentation."Pillar added that the CIA also was compromised "in the fall of 2002,when, at the administration's behest, the intelligence communitypublished a white paper on Iraq's WMD programs -- but withoutincluding any of the community's judgments about the likelihood ofthose weapons' being used."Though Tenet's primary responsibility should have been to theintegrity of the intelligence product, he was helping Powell and theWhite House present a largely bogus case before the U.N.After the March 2003 invasion, as the case for Iraq's possession oftrigger-ready WMD fell apart, the Washington debate turned to who wasat fault for the shoddy intelligence.In testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee on June 25,2003, Army Lt. Gen. John Abizaid offered a clue when he compared theaccuracy of tactical intelligence in the Iraq war versus the faultystrategic intelligence."Intelligence was the most accurate that I have ever seen on thetactical level, probably the best I've ever seen on the operationallevel, and perplexingly incomplete on the strategic level with regardto weapons of mass destruction," said Abizaid, who heads the U.S.Central Command, which is responsible for Iraq.In other words, the intelligence handled by low-level personnel wasexcellent. It was the intelligence that went through senior levels ofthe Bush administration that failed.The WMD issue really came down to two questions: Was the CIA'sintelligence analysis that bad or did the White House cherry-pick theintelligence that it wanted to march the country off to war? Theanswer appears to be that both points were true. A thoroughlypoliticized CIA slanted the intelligence in the direction that Bushwanted and the White House then trimmed off any caveats the CIA mayhave included.The CIA's internal complaint that it was just the victim ofadministration ideologues was undercut by its own analytical products,including a post-invasion report claiming that two captured Iraqitrailers were labs to produce chemical or biological weapons. Thatclaim later collapsed as evidence emerged to show that the labs werefor making hydrogen for artillery weather balloons. [For an earlycritique of this CIA report, see Consortiumnews.com's "America's Matrix."]Plus, while Tenet and other CIA officials noted that they objected toother bogus administration claims, such as the assertion that Iraq wasseeking yellowcake uranium from Niger, those protests were mostlyhalf-hearted and made behind closed doors. Bush was only forced toback off the yellowcake claim, which he cited in his 2003 State of theUnion Address, after former Ambassador Wilson went public withevidence that the allegation was a fraud.'Stovepipe'Yet it's also true that the Bush administration didn't want to chancehaving its Iraqi WMD allegations vetted by any serious intelligenceprofessionals. So, at the State Department, Pentagon and White House,senior political officials created their own channels for accessingraw or untested intelligence that was then used to buttress the charges.In a New Yorker article about CIA analysts on the defensive,journalist Seymour Hersh described this "stovepiping" process ofsending raw intelligence to the top. Intelligence agencies havehistorically objected to this technique because policy makers willtend to select unvetted information that serves their purposes and useit to discredit the more measured assessments of intelligenceprofessionals. "The analysts at the CIA were beaten down defending theirassessments," a former CIA official told Hersh. "And they blame Tenetfor not protecting them. I've never seen a government like this." [SeeHersh's "The Stovepipe," The New Yorker, Oct. 27, 2003]Pillar wrote that the battle between the intelligence analysts and thepolicymakers came to a head over the White House desire to assert thatSaddam Hussein was connected to al-Qaeda, a claim that theintelligence analysts had rejected despite repetitious demands fromVice President Cheney's office that the CIA corroborate the supposed link."The administration's rejection of the intelligence community'sjudgments became especially clear with the formation of a specialPentagon unit, the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group," Pillarwrote. "The unit, which reported to Undersecretary of Defense DouglasFeith, was dedicated to finding every possible link between Saddam andal-Qaeda, and its briefing accused the intelligence community offaulty analysis for failing to see the supposed alliance."But the intelligence analysts weren't the only ones coming underattack for pointing out evidence that didn't conform to the Bushadministration's propaganda. From the start of its drive to invadeIraq, the administration treated going to war like a giant publicrelations game, with the goal of manufacturing consent or at leastsilencing any meaningful opposition.Evidence that undermined Bush's conclusions was minimized ordiscarded. People who revealed unwanted evidence were personallydiscredited or intimidated. When former Ambassador Wilson reportedthat he had been assigned by the CIA to investigate the Nigeryellowcake claims and found them bogus, administration officialsleaked the fact that Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame, was an undercoverCIA officer. The leak destroyed Plame's career and may have put atrisk agents who worked with her.'Slime and Defend'Though Bush publicly denounced the leak, an unnamed Republican aide onCapitol Hill told the New York Times that the underlying White Housestrategy was to "slime and defend," that is to "slime" Wilson and"defend" Bush. [NYT, Oct. 2, 2003]The "slime and defend" strategy has been carried forward byconservative news outlets with the Wall Street Journal editorial pageand Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Washington Times attacking Wilson's motives,even as Wilson's debunking of the Niger allegations has been borne outby other investigations."Joseph C. Wilson IV, the man accusing the White House of a vendettaagainst his wife, is an ex-diplomat turned Democratic partisan,"declared a front-page article in the Washington Times. "Mr. Wilsontold the Washington Post he and his wife are already discussing whowill play them in the movie." [Washington Times, Oct. 2, 2003]The Washington Times returned to its anti-Wilson campaign several dayslater. "As for Mr. Wilson himself, his hatred of Mr. Bush's policiesborders on the pathological," wrote Washington Times columnist DonaldLambro on Oct. 6, 2003. "This is a far-left Democrat who has beenrelentlessly bashing the president's Iraq war policies. The mysterybehind this dubious investigation is why this Bush-hater was chosenfor so sensitive a mission."The Wall Street Journal also raised questions about Wilson's motives."Joe Wilson (Ms. Plame's husband) has made no secret of his broaddisagreement with Bush policy since outing himself with an op-ed," theJournal wrote in a lead editorial on Oct. 3, 2003.Strangely, these attacks on Wilson's alleged bias (which he denies)continued even as Bush's hand-picked Iraqi weapons inspector David Kaywas confirming Wilson's findings. In his report to the CIA andCongress, Kay acknowledged that no evidence has been found to supportthe stories about Iraq seeking African uranium."To date we have not uncovered evidence that Iraq undertooksignificant post-1998 steps to actually build nuclear weapons orproduce fissile material," Kay said.The disconnect between fact and spin apparently has grown so completeamong Bush's allies that they can't stop attacking Wilson's findingsas biased even when the facts he uncovered are being confirmed by oneof Bush's own investigators.The clumsy attempt to discredit or punish Wilson eventually led todisclosures that Bush's chief political adviser Karl Rove and Cheney'schief of staff Lewis Libby took part in revealing Plame's identity toreporters. In 2005, Libby was indicted on charges of obstructingjustice and lying to investigators about the leak. Rove apparentlyremains under investigation.'Freedom Fries'But the attacks on Wilson do not stand alone. In the drive to limitdebate about Bush's case for war, his allies ostracized virtually allmajor critics of the administration's WMD claims, including the U.N.'schief weapons inspector Hans Blix and former U.N. weapons inspectorScott Ritter.Blacklisting campaigns also were mounted against celebrities, such asactor Sean Penn and the music group Dixie Chicks, for criticizingBush's rush to war. When France urged more time for U.N. weaponsinspections, Bush's supporters organized boycotts of French products,poured French wine in gutters and renamed "French fries" as "FreedomFries."As with the Wilson case, Bush and his supporters didn't let thefailure to find the alleged trigger-ready WMD stop their efforts todiscredit these critics. Instead of apologies, for instance, Rittercontinued to suffer from conservative smears about his patriotism.In one particularly smarmy performance on June 12, 2003, Fox Newsanchor Bill O'Reilly teamed up with Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., to airsuspicions that Ritter had been bribed by the Iraqis to help themcover up their illegal weapons. Neither O'Reilly nor Pence had anyevidence that Ritter accepted a bribe, so they framed the segment as ademand that the FBI investigate Ritter with the purported goal ofclearing him of any suspicion of treason.The segment noted that a London newspaper reporter had found Iraqidocuments showing that Ritter had been offered some gold as gifts forhis family. "I turned down the gifts and reported it to the FBI when Icame back," Ritter said in an interview with Fox News.Though Ritter's statement stood uncontradicted, O'Reilly and Pencedemanded that the FBI disclose what it knew about Ritter's denial."Now, we want to know whether that was true," said O'Reilly aboutwhether Ritter had reported the alleged bribe. "The FBI wouldn't tellus." O'Reilly then asked Pence what he had done to get the FBI toinvestigate Ritter."After that report in the British newspaper, many of us on CapitolHill were very concerned," Pence said. "Candidly, Bill, there's no onewho's done more damage to the argument of the United States that Iraqwas in possession of large stores of weapons of mass destructionleading up to Operation Iraqi Freedom other than Scott Ritter, and sothe very suggestion that there's evidence of treasonous activity oreven bribery, I believe, merits an investigation. I contacted theattorney general about that directly."Pence's point was clear that Ritter's role as a skeptic about Bush'sWMD claims made him an appropriate target for a treason investigation.[Fox News' "The O'Reilly Factor," June 12, 2003]Backward FilterTime and again, Bush and his administration have replaced theprinciple that good intelligence makes for good policy with thenear-opposite approach: you start with a conclusion and then distortall available information to sell the pre-ordained policy to agullible, ill-informed or frightened public.The WMD intelligence was pushed through a kind of backward filter.Instead of removing the imprecision that comes with raw intelligence,the Bush administration's intelligence process shoved through the dross as long as it fit with Bush's goal of bolstering political support for the war and removed the refined intelligence that undercut his desired actions.Unlike the fictional president in Tom Clancy's "Sum of All Fears" who was tricked into that "really bad information" Bush and his teamhave actively sought out the bad information and assembled it as justification for going to war. This administration, which can sometimes act in a manner stranger-than-fiction, didn't just peer into the fog of war. It set up the fog machine.
KINTBURY, England In the autumn of 68 B.C. the world's only military superpower was dealt a profound psychological blow by a daring terrorist attack on its very heart. Rome's port at Ostia was set on fire, the consular war fleet destroyed, and two prominent senators, together with their bodyguards and staff, kidnapped.
The incident, dramatic though it was, has not attracted much attention from modern historians. But an event that was merely a footnote five years ago has now, in our post-9/11 world, assumed a fresh and ominous significance. For in the panicky aftermath of the attack, the Roman people made decisions that set them on the path to the destruction of their Constitution, their democracy and their liberty. One cannot help wondering if history is repeating itself.
Consider the parallels. The perpetrators of this spectacular assault were not in the pay of any foreign power: No nation would have dared to attack Rome so provocatively. Like Al Qaeda, these pirates were loosely organized, but able to spread a disproportionate amount of fear among citizens who had believed themselves immune from attack.
What was to be done? Over the preceding centuries, the Constitution of ancient Rome had developed an intricate series of checks and balances intended to prevent the concentration of power in the hands of a single individual. The consulship, elected annually, was jointly held by two men. Ordinary citizens were accustomed to a remarkable degree of liberty: the cry of "Civis Romanus sum" - "I am a Roman citizen" - was a guarantee of safety throughout the world.
But such was the panic that ensued after Ostia that the people were willing to compromise these rights. The greatest soldier in Rome, the 38-year- old Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus (better known to posterity as Pompey the Great) arranged for a lieutenant of his, the tribune Aulus Gabinius, to rise in the Roman Forum and propose an astonishing new law, the Lex Gabinia.
"Pompey was to be given not only the supreme naval command but what amounted in fact to an absolute authority and uncontrolled power over everyone," the Greek historian Plutarch wrote. "There were not many places in the Roman world that were not included within these limits."
Pompey eventually received almost the entire contents of the Roman Treasury to pay for his "war on terror," which included building a fleet of 500 ships and raising an army of 120,000 infantry and 5,000 cavalry. Such an accumulation of power was unprecedented.
Once Pompey put to sea, it took less than three months to sweep the pirates from the entire Mediterranean. Even allowing for Pompey's genius as a military strategist, the suspicion arises that if the pirates could be defeated so swiftly, they could hardly have been such a grievous threat in the first place.
But it was too late to raise such questions. By the oldest trick in the political book - the whipping up of a panic, in which any dissenting voice could be dismissed as "soft" or even "traitorous" - powers had been ceded by the people that would never be returned. Pompey stayed in the Middle East for six years, establishing puppet regimes throughout the region, and turning himself into the richest man in the empire.
Those of us who are not Americans can only look on in wonder at the similar ease with which the ancient rights and liberties of the individual are being surrendered in the United States in the wake of 9/11. The vote by the Senate on Thursday to suspend the right of habeas corpus for terrorism detainees, denying them their right to challenge their detention in court; the careful wording about torture, which forbids only the inducement of "serious" physical and mental suffering to obtain information; the licensing of the president to declare a legal resident of the United States an enemy combatant - all this represents an historic shift in the balance of power between the citizen and the executive.
An intelligent, skeptical American would no doubt scoff at the thought that what has happened since 9/11 could presage the destruction of a centuries-old constitution; but then, I suppose, an intelligent, skeptical Roman in 68 B.C. might well have done the same.
It may be that the Roman republic was doomed in any case. But the disproportionate reaction to the raid on Ostia unquestionably hastened the process, weakening the restraints on military adventurism and corrupting the political process. It was to be more than 1,800 years before anything remotely comparable to Rome's democracy - imperfect though it was - rose again.
The Lex Gabinia was a classic illustration of the law of unintended consequences: It fatally subverted the institution it was supposed to protect. Let us hope that vote in the United States Senate does not have the same result.
Robert Harris is the author, most recently, of "Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome."
Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers
Forum on armed groups
and the involvement of children in armed conflict...
SAMIR GEAGEA IS USING TODAY IN LEBANON, THE EXACT SAME TACTICS OF RECRUITMENT
FOR HIS NEW MILITIA , SPONSORED AND PAID FOR BY CIA, AND BKERKE IS DOING NOTHING TO DENOUNCE HIS METHODS AND GOALS....
__________________________________________________________________________________
Lebanon
The South Lebanon Army (SLA) and child recruitment
Putting the pressure on whom?
Catherine Hunter *
A civil war with foreign protagonists
The Lebanese civil war broke out in 1975, after years of tensions between national confessional groups,1 mainly Maronite Christians, Sunni and Shi’a Muslims and Druze. Each of the groups had built up their own power bases and militias outside the weak central state and the arrival of further Sunnis, in the form of Palestinian refugees in 1948 and 1970, only served to exacerbate this uneasy balance.2 Only a few serious incidents were needed to trigger a full-scale civil war.
The early part of the conflict mainly involved Maronite Christian militias against Sunni and Druze militias and their Palestinian allies in the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). By 1976, government control had deteriorated to the extent that the Christian President, Suleiman Franjieh, asked Lebanon’s larger neighbour, Syria, to intervene. Syria responded with a major offensive and the dispatch of troops around most of northern and central Lebanon. However, while Syrian intervention brought some initial stability, it also served to regionalize the conflict, notably in the south, where Israel began to take a far greater interest in Lebanese affairs. In 1978, Israel launched Operation Litani, its first major military offensive in Lebanon, in an effort to drive Palestinian militants back from the border and keep Syrian influence at bay.
The international response to Israel’s intervention came in the form of UN Security Council Resolutions 425 and 426 (1978), which established the UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) to take control of the border area on behalf of the
* Catherine Hunter is a Middle East analyst; she is the author of some of the Middle East entries in the Child Soldiers Coalition’s Global Report 2004. This paper is the result of a field trip to Lebanon and Israel by the Coalition in April 2005 and to Israel by Catherine in February 2006. The present paper is written in the author’s individual capacity and does not necessarily reflect the views of the Child Soldiers Coalition.
1 “The main element of heterogeneity of Lebanese society is its subdivision among confessional groups, six of which are of major importance. Three are Muslim (Sunnis, Shi’ites and Druze); three are Christian (Maronites, Greek Orthodox and Greek Catholics). These groups constitute sets of kinship, religious and communal loyalties to which one belongs by virtue of birth.” Simon Haddad, The Palestinian Impasse in Lebanon: The Politics of Refugee Integration, London: Sussex Academic Press, 2003, http://www.sussex-academic.co.uk/PDFs/Haddadp1-11.pdf.
2 UN Department of Public Information (DPI), The Question of Palestine & the United Nations, Chapter 4, “Palestinian Refugees in Lebanon”, DPI/2276, March 2003, http://www.un.org/Depts/dpi/palestine/ch4.pdf.
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Catherine Hunter: Lebanon – The SLA and child recruitment
Lebanese government and oversee an Israeli withdrawal.3 However, Israel handed over control of the area to its own proxy militia, the South Lebanon Army (SLA), which was made up of units of the former Lebanese national army and local recruits from Christian and Shi’a villages in South Lebanon. This prevented UNIFIL from fulfilling its remit.4
In the south of the country, Israel's continued occupation aroused greater activism from the majority Shi’a community. Israel pulled back some of its forces in 1985, although it continued to occupy a “security zone” in the south, with the support of the SLA. The conflict continued until 1989-1990, when a Saudi-backed initiative gained the support of nearly all sides, setting in place a new formula for Lebanon’s government. All war-time militias were disbanded, with the exception of Hizbullah in the south and the SLA. Israel's inability to either secure the border or defeat its opponents eventually led to its withdrawal in 2000. At this time, the SLA collapsed: around 1,600 SLA personnel gave themselves up to the Lebanese authorities, while another 6,000 or more (including their families) sought refuge in Israel.5 After the Israeli withdrawal, Hizbullah remained the sole militant group from the civil war era still allowed by the Lebanese government to bear arms, on the premise that it was acting as a national resistance group against Israel. Under continued international pressure, Syria withdrew all of its military forces from Lebanon in 2005.
A militia to defend “the national character of Lebanon”, at the service of Israel
The South Lebanon Army militia emerged out of a battalion of the former Lebanese army, after the dissolution of the national army along confessional lines in 1976. It was first known as the “Free Lebanon” militia, before it was renamed the South Lebanon Army, although the UN referred to it as the de facto forces (DFF) in South Lebanon.
The SLA originated among Lebanese army members drawn from the Christian minority in South Lebanon, particularly around the Marjayoun and Qalaya regions, and it drew its core support base from those areas.6 At the start of the conflict, the SLA was almost wholly Christian, although its make-up changed over time, with Shi'a and non-Christians forming around 60 to 70 per cent of the forces by 2000, when the group was disbanded.7
The group’s principal stated objective was to preserve or defend what it saw as the national character of Lebanon, namely the pre-war character where Christians held the most important positions in a confessional system of government. At the practical level, this translated into extreme hostility to all outsiders in Lebanon, notably Palestinian militants and refugees, but also Syrian troops, both also enemies of Israel; hence, the establishment of links and coordination with Israel. This
3 UN Security Council Resolutions 425 and 426, 19 March 1978, http://www.un.org/documents/sc/res/1978/scres78.htm.
4 UN Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), "Background", http://www.un.org/Depts/dpko/missions/unifil/background.html.
5 Nicholas Blanford, “New Reality for Lebanon”, Jane’s Defence Weekly, 31 May 2000.
6 Nicholas Blanford, “The quandary of an SLA amnesty”, The Daily Star, 16 August 2005.
7 Coalition interviews with former SLA members, February 2006.
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Catherine Hunter: Lebanon – The SLA and child recruitment
relationship strengthened over time to the extent that the SLA was almost entirely reliant on Israel for logistical, military and financial support from the late 1970s. This dependence also meant that the SLA was directly drawn into carrying out Israel’s objectives in South Lebanon, including the maintenance of a buffer region on the border and later a “security zone” to prevent attacks on Israel by Palestinian militants and (after their expulsion) by Hizbullah.8
At a more basic level, the SLA also acted as a civil protection force for the Christian minority and affiliated Druze and Shi’a villages in South Lebanon, who had been caught up in the cross-fire and were occasionally targeted by Palestinian and later Hizbullah forces.
The SLA had around 3,000 fighters at its peak, although numbers rose and fell throughout the conflict, depending on funds and morale. It was initially led by Major Sa’ad Haddad, commander of the Lebanese Army border unit, based in Marjayoun. After his death in 1984, he was replaced by retired General Antoine Lahd. Both men worked in close coordination with Israeli forces. Indeed, the first head of UNIFIL, Ghana’s Lieutenant-General Emmanuel Erskine, noted that “hardly anyone ever met [Major] Haddad formally without ... Israeli liaison officers being present”.9
From a guerrilla group to an organized army
In the early years of the civil war, the organization’s command structure was extremely loose, made up of former army personnel and their cohorts operating in their own home towns or villages.10 Over time, Israeli financial and logistical support provided it with the resources necessary to reconstitute itself over a broader region of South Lebanon, supported by the Israeli invasion of 1978. More sustained Israeli support in the early 1980s paved the way for the emergence of a professional fighting force, both in terms of equipment and conduct. SLA fighters were given three months’ training at an academy in Marjayoun and were given formal ranks and staff numbers. Further specialist and officer training took place in Israel.11 According to one former senior official, there was total supervision by the Israeli Defence Forces (IDF). “The IDF always had an officer in every base – we were directly responsible to the IDF. We couldn’t do anything without asking them.”12
This level of investment reflected Israel’s desire to withdraw some of its own frontline troops from Lebanon, which it did in 1985, and leave behind an effective friendly force to defend its interests. After this point, Israel continued to keep between 1,000 and 3,000 of its own troops in Lebanon, working alongside the SLA, although the SLA bore the brunt of frontline duties and casualties.13 In 1998, the Israeli
8 Gal Luft, “Israel's Security Zone in Lebanon - A Tragedy?”, Middle East Quarterly, September 2000, http://www.meforum.org/meq.
9 E.A. Erskine, Mission with UNIFIL: An African Soldier's Reflections, London: Hurst, 1989, p. 67.
10 Coalition interview with former head of SLA training, Israel, February 2006.
11 Coalition interview with former SLA fighter, Israel, February 2006.
12 Coalition interview with former head of SLA training, Israel, February 2006.
13 Raschka, Marilyn, “A Bit Like Bosnia: UN Peacekeepers in South Lebanon”, Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October/November 1995, http://www.washington-report.org/html/94-95.html.
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Catherine Hunter: Lebanon – The SLA and child recruitment
Ministerial Committee for National Security announced that Israel would abide by UN Security Council Resolution 425 and “restore [Lebanon's] effective control over territories currently under IDF control”, thus admitting that the IDF had been the main authority in the occupied areas.14
Using their own children in war
The South Lebanon Army was responsible for using under-18s in combat and support roles at various points during the civil war. In the late 1970s, children from around the age of 14 were enlisted, with the only requirement being that they were strong enough to “bear arms”.15 At this stage, there were between 150 to 200 minors in a force of around 1,500.16 In addition, boys and girls as young as 13 ferried equipment, food and messages to SLA frontline positions, mostly close to populated areas.17 Children were generally treated in the same way as adult recruits and they were often related to adult SLA members.18
As a general rule, the SLA increased its efforts to recruit children in times when it was difficult to recruit and retain adults. This generally corresponded to the financial resources available to the organization and to prevailing morale and was closely related to its operational success in the field.19 The SLA was not only responsible for the forcible recruitment of children during these periods, but also for other serious human rights violations and violations of international humanitarian law such as the bombing of populated areas, extrajudicial killings, illegal detentions and the systematic use of torture.20
Observers state that membership of the SLA was more popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s when it was focused on combating Palestinian militants in the area. Later, desertions increased and SLA members called a strike over delayed payments.21 However, belonging to the group brought many benefits to members and their relatives, including having access to jobs and healthcare in Israel. SLA membership offered a source of income in an isolated area where wages were rare: by 2000, some members received up to US$ 600 per month.22
Former SLA members state that in the early stages of the civil war, child recruitment was seen as a necessity, given limited manpower and the sense that
14 Human Rights Watch, Persona Non Grata: The Expulsion of Civilians from Israeli-Occupied Lebanon, New York, 1999, Chapter 3, http://www.hrw.org/reports/1999/lebanon.
15 Coalition interview with former SLA trainer, Israel, February 2006.
16 Coalition interview with former SLA trainer, Israel, February 2006.
17 Coalition interview with former head of SLA training, Israel, February 2006.
18 Coalition interviews with former SLA members, Israel, February 2006.
19 Coalition interview with former head of SLA training in Lebanon, Israel, February 2006.
20 See, for example, UN Commission on Human Rights, 49th session, Resolution 1993/67, Situation of human rights in southern Lebanon, UN Doc. E/CN.4/RES/1993/67, 10 March 1993, http://ap.ohchr.org/documents/mainec.aspx.
21 E.A. Erskine, Mission with UNIFIL, op. cit., pp.133-4.
22 Report by the Association for Rural Development, Regional socio-economic development program for south Lebanon, 2000, see http://www.adr.org.lb/ENG/accueil_an.htm.
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Catherine Hunter: Lebanon – The SLA and child recruitment
communities were under siege from Palestinian militants and fighting for their very survival.23
When Israel provided the SLA with the funds, support and resources to become a more professional fighting force in the mid-1980s, a more formal system of recruitment came into place. This included adopting a more selective approach to adult recruits and the enforcement of age restrictions on enlistment, in line with Israeli regulations.24 The recruitment of under-18s was reduced as a result, although a few 15 and 16 year olds were recruited.25
However, after the Taif peace agreement of the 1990s, the SLA again turned to the systematic forcible recruitment of children from the age of 15,26 and in some cases even as young as 12.27 In the 1990s, feeling increasingly isolated and threatened by rising Syrian influence and actions by Hizbullah in South Lebanon, the SLA returned to forcible recruitment of adults and children to maintain troop numbers, as it had done in the late 1970s.28
Parents were sometimes able to make payments to avoid the conscription of their children, or sent their offspring outside SLA areas or overseas to avoid enlistment. However, this happened on an individual level and the communities were not involved in protecting the children from enforced recruitment.29 Some children also wanted to join the group as a means of supporting their families in the absence of economic alternatives in an isolated area.30
The use of children in combat roles in the early stages of the war seems to have been more a case of “all hands on deck” rather than a systematic policy by the SLA. In addition, the location of SLA bases in populated areas encouraged the use of children (and other family members) in logistical support roles until 1984, when SLA bases were relocated further away from civilian areas.31 Later in the war, under-18s were the only expanding group in a limited population base of fewer than 100,000 people. This may have provided a demographic logic for targeting younger children, particularly as the civilian population was eroded through successive waves of migration out of the SLA area.
23 Coalition interview with former head of SLA training in Lebanon, Israel, February 2006.
24 Coalition interviews with former SLA members, Israel, February 2006.
25 Coalition interview with former SLA trainer recruited as a minor, Israel, February 2006.
26 Third periodic report of Lebanon to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child (CRC), UN Doc. CRC/C/129/Add.7, 25 October 2005, http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/(Symbol)/f41bd308098869ecc12570fb0034dfc7.
27 Human Rights Watch, Persona Non Grata, op. cit. p. 35.
28 Coalition interview with former SLA trainer, Israel, February 2006; see also E.A. Erskine, Mission with UNIFIL, op. cit., pp.133-4.
29 Second periodic report of Lebanon to the CRC, UN Doc CRC/C/70/Add.8, 26 September 2000, http://www.unhchr.ch/tbs/doc.nsf/(Symbol)/d11949f24a039688c1256ace00329028.
30 Coalition interview with former head of SLA training, Israel, February 2006.
31 Coalition interview with former head of SLA training, Israel, February 2006.
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Catherine Hunter: Lebanon – The SLA and child recruitment
An official child recruitment policy drawn from Israeli regulations
Former SLA members state that the group was bound by Lebanese army regulations and Lebanese law, which restricted recruitment to those over 17 years of age. Between 1984 and 1986, when Israel’s direct influence over the SLA grew, the group abided by the regulations of the IDF, which viewed 17 as the minimum age of recruitment.32
However, monitoring and implementation of the law seems to have been left to individual commanders, given that the institutions of the Lebanese state, such as the judicial system and the police force, were weak or non-existent, operating mainly in a state of war.33 In areas where the Israeli forces had no specific interest and therefore no direct control, the SLA appeared to have been “self-regulating”, modifying its own guidelines to fit the situation, although former SLA members have been reluctant to agree on this point.34
Given its dependence on Israel for funding and equipment, the SLA proved far more responsive to Israeli policies on recruitment than to the desires of the local communities. When Israel demanded (and financed) a more professional fighting force in the mid-1980s, the SLA modified its practices. In the words of one former child soldier recruited in the early 1980s, “They [the Israelis] didn’t want children”.35 This may have been a pragmatic consideration on the part of the SLA, rather than a moral position, since some children were able to remain with the group while others left the organization.36
Trying to influence the SLA on child recruitment
The SLA had very limited dealings with international agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs), in particular with UNIFIL forces, the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and Caritas.37 Israel blocked ICRC access to prisons under SLA control for ten years between 1985 and 1995, although the ICRC was allowed some sporadic access afterwards.38 This illustrates the difficult operating conditions for foreign humanitarian agencies working in Lebanon and the hostility of the key actors in the region, Israel and Hizbullah, to outside intervention.39
The ICRC made continued efforts to ensure the implementation of the Geneva Conventions in South Lebanon. It approached both Israel and the SLA regarding alleged failures to “respect international humanitarian law on the part of the
32 Coalition interview with former head of SLA training, Israel, February 2006.
33 Coalition interview with former SLA trainer, Israel, February 2006.
34 Coalition interviews with former SLA members, Israel, February 2006.
35 Coalition interview with former head of SLA training in Lebanon, Israel, February 2006
36 Coalition interview with former head of SLA training in Lebanon, Israel, February 2006.
37 Coalition interview with former head of SLA training in Lebanon, Israel, April 2005.
38 B’Tselem, Israeli Violations of Human Rights of Lebanese Civilians, January 2000, http://www.btselem.org/English/index.asp.
39 Coalition interviews, 2005 and 2006.
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Catherine Hunter: Lebanon – The SLA and child recruitment
IDF and the SLA”,40 including the SLA’s recruitment of children. A former SLA officer told the Child Soldiers Coalition in 2006 that this message had been referred to senior commanders.41 The ICRC also worked to deter recruitment drives in SLA-controlled areas, including the detention and torture of children who had been accused of desertion or opposition to SLA or Israeli forces.
Pressure over child recruitment made senior SLA officers aware that this was an issue of grave concern for the international community. However, the SLA felt throughout the conflict that it had been “betrayed” by the international community and that it had no obligations to anyone except to some members of the Lebanese Christian leadership in Beirut and to Israel.42 Without Israel’s support, there was little chance for the ICRC to successfully engage the SLA over the issue of child recruitment.
On other humanitarian issues, the ICRC only had some limited impact on SLA policy when Israel was onside.43 The ICRC’s ongoing pressure on the systematic torture and ill-treatment of prisoners, including children, at the al-Khiyam prison, right up to when SLA guards abandoned the facility in 2000,44 shows the resilience of the group to outside pressure. Former SLA members have stated that the group was practically subordinated to Israel’s position on human rights: “If the IDF broke human rights, so did the SLA”.45
Human Rights Watch also highlighted child recruitment as a major concern in its reports on South Lebanon. In the mid-1990s, Human Rights Watch had focused on children as victims of attacks by the SLA and Israeli forces, campaigning for all sides to respect the protected status of civilians. In its 1999 report it highlighted the recruitment of children as one of the factors behind the expulsions and flight of civilians from South Lebanon.46 It recommended that Israel as the de facto power in South Lebanon investigate the forced conscription of Lebanese adults and children by the SLA, and bring the practice to an immediate halt. It reiterated these recommendations in an open letter to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in November 1999.47 Ahead of the Israeli withdrawal in 2000, Human Rights Watch prepared a briefing document for journalists on the human rights dimensions of the Lebanon occupation, including forcible child recruitment.48
40 International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), Annual Report, 30 May 2005, http://www.icrc.org/Web/Eng/siteeng0.nsf/iwpList140/B823511615EC1750C1256B66005900E8.
41 Coalition interview with former head of SLA training in Lebanon, Israel, February 2006.
42 Coalition interviews with former SLA members, Israel, February 2006.
43 Former Khiyam inmate, Souha Bechara, quoted by Alexander G. Higgins, “Red Cross, feeling the pressure to go public, convinced its quiet approach is best”, Associated Press, 11 May 2004.
44 Second periodic report of Lebanon to the CRC, op. cit.
45 Coalition interview with former head of SLA training, Israel, February 2006.
46 Human Rights Watch, Persona Non Grata, op. cit.
47 Letter from Hanny Megally, Executive Director, Middle East and North Africa Division, Human Rights Watch to Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak, 5 November 1999, http://hrw.org/english/docs/1999/11/05/isrlpa1957.htm.
48 Human Rights Watch, Israel’s Withdrawal from South Lebanon: The human rights dimensions, May 2000, http://www.hrw.org/campaigns/lebanon/israel051000.htm.
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Catherine Hunter: Lebanon – The SLA and child recruitment
However, international NGOs focused their attention on the issue of child recruitment by the SLA at a relatively late stage in the conflict, when Israel was close to withdrawing its troops from the area and when the SLA itself was in disarray. Moreover, the advocacy efforts of Human Rights Watch were on wider abuses by the SLA, including forced expulsion. By not focusing on child recruitment in itself, it limited the impact of its campaign on this issue in Lebanon. The documentation of abuses by the SLA, however, was used effectively to advocate for the drafting and adoption of the Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the subsequent work by the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers.
Stopping child recruitment and use – actions and missed opportunities
During the civil war era, there was only a limited focus on the SLA's child recruitment by the international human rights and humanitarian community. Perhaps the most important reason for this was the scale of human rights abuses committed by all parties to the conflict which dominated the attention of international organizations and demanded all available resources. Such abuses by the SLA and Israel included shelling and attacks against civilians and failure to abide by UN Security Council Resolutions, as well as attacks on UN forces in the area.49
However, the failure of key political powers at that time to take effective action against serious human rights violations or hold Israel to account meant that the international humanitarian community had very little impact on events in the SLA areas. Reports of the UN Commission on Human Rights often stated that “no [Israeli] reply had been received at the time of the preparation of the present report”. Meanwhile, UN forces on the ground “faced the dilemma of being caught in the middle of fighting without the authority or the means to force Israel to withdraw and to disarm the SLA”.50 Given that state of affairs, child recruitment seemed to have been fairly low down the list of priorities.
Another factor undermining efforts to stop child recruitment was limited external access to South Lebanon by governmental and non-governmental organizations, as a result of both Israel’s and Hizbullah’s opposition to foreign involvement. Also, the conflict took place at a time when child rights in general and child recruitment in particular had not yet been given a more prominent place on the international human rights agenda.
Given the particular situation in South Lebanon, international NGOs missed an opportunity to campaign and take action against child recruitment. This could have been achieved by by putting pressure on Israel as the occupying power in the region, rather than on the SLA, and appealing to Israeli public opinion on this and other issues of abuse in Lebanon. As it was, the Israeli public had little interest in reported cases of human rights violations in Lebanon and tended to regard these issues as “up to the Lebanese who had their own standards in battle”, according to one observer.51 However, by 2000, one Israeli human rights group, B’Tselem, had
49 For example, Robert Fisk, Pity the Nation: Lebanon at War, 2001, p. 138 and E.A. Erskine, Mission with UNIFIL, op. cit., p. 87.
50 Questions and Answers with UNIFIL Information and Press Officer, Dalgeet Bagga, 1998, see http://www.un.org/Pubs/CyberSchoolBus/peacekeeping/bagga.html.
51 Coalition interview with Amos Harel, Haaretz Defence Correspondent, February 2006.
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Catherine Hunter: Lebanon – The SLA and child recruitment
started to investigate cases of abuse of detainees and other human rights violations by Israeli armed forces. This had come too late for child soldiers within the SLA, given the decision to withdraw from South Lebanon later that year.
While the SLA was most responsive to Israeli pressure, they also had allegiances within Lebanon which could have been called on to limit abuses. The Greek Catholic and Maronite churches remained an important influence on the SLA leadership and approaches to the SLA through their leaders might have had an impact on the group’s thinking on child recruitment.52 However, some leaders may have been reluctant to take part in such approaches, given the role of some clergy in exacerbating sectarian tensions rather than helping end the war.
Further points for discussion
• The SLA counted on the support of the Israeli government and armed forces and only modified some of its policies when the Israeli government reacted to external and internal pressure. It remains to be seen how effective pressure can be applied on third parties/governments that support armed opposition groups in another country in order to make these groups stop recruiting children and committing other human rights abuses.
• According to former SLA commanders, the use of children was unavoidable when whole populations had to be mobilized for their own protection. Others argue, however, than there should never be a situation that could justify the use of children in conflict.
• The SLA, like many other armed opposition groups, had a very strong religious component, as the vast majority of its leaders were Maronite Christians. Religious leaders could have played a very important role in persuading the SLA to stop child recruitment and religious/inter-confessional arguments could have been employed against their use.
52 Coalition interviews with former SLA members, dec. 2006.
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