WhirledView

Israel Has Nuclear Weapons - Updated 4/24/08

by CKR

That is the sentence that cannot be uttered in international relations. The silence distorts much, perhaps most, of our discussion about the Middle East.

That distortion is in today’s news three times over.

Another Nuclear Spy for Israel
A man in New Jersey has been charged with selling US nuclear secrets to Israel in the 1980s. His handler was the same person who got nuclear information from Jonathan Pollard. At the time of Pollard’s arrest and trial, Israel told the United States that there had been no other spies. In Israel, it is being suggested that the arrest is being used to “to loosen support for Israel as the two countries enter a tenacious period of negotiations.”

Ben-Ami Kadish says he shared the information to “protect Israel.” At the time Kadish provided that “protection,” Israel had a nuclear arsenal.

Update (4/24/08): The Israelis respond. Still no mention of their nukes. Emptywheel speculates on how they found Mr. Kadish and his activities.

Clinton Promises to Nuke Iran
Hillary Clinton this week brandished the US’s nuclear arsenal at Iran for a hypothetical attack on Israel with nuclear weapons.

…what our policy should be is to make it very clear to the Iranians that they would be risking massive retaliation were they to launch a nuclear attack on Israel.…their use of nuclear weapons against Israel would provoke a nuclear response from the United States…

“Massive retaliation” was the description of what the United States would do if Russia attacked with nuclear-tipped missiles. Or vice versa. She made that explicit in her later words. She also proposed that the United States offer a “nuclear umbrella” to other states in the Middle East that might feel intimidated by an Iranian nuclear arsenal.

Radio Free What?

By Patricia H. Kushlis

In her April 22 column in The Washington Post, Anne Applebaum laments the lack of support in Congress and the Bush administration for Radio Free Europe (RFE) which she erroneously claims was the “only source of independent information in Eastern Europe” during the Cold War.

Now I’m not either a proponent or opponent of Radio Free Europe or its Russian language counterpart Radio Liberty. Both were surrogate radio stations operated first by the Central Intelligence Agency then when their covers were blown around 1970 - openly by the U.S. government. Their task was to broadcast information in local languages to Eastern European countries and the Soviet Union not available because of Communist government censorship so that the peoples “behind the Iron Curtain” could hear the unvarnished news of what was happening in their own countries in their own languages.

That few Americans knew – or today know – of RFE’s existence let alone support its continued existence does not surprise me.

Its name, by the way, is RFE/RL, a post-Cold War amalgamation of the once-upon-a-time two separate services.

RFE/RL operates under the restrictions of the little known Smith-Mundt Act which supposedly restricts the US government from propagandizing its own citizens. This means a special Congressional dispensation is required for Americans to have access to US government media products produced by and directed at foreigners. This Act, enacted in 1948 and strengthened in 1972, was, I suppose, fine in its day. But with the Internet, satellite broadcasting and the rise of medium wave stations, the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and today’s Europeanization of much of Eastern Europe, Smith-Mundt has now become a 12 inch soft plastic barrier to the American public’s right to know what its government is saying abroad but, as Mountain Runner suggests, it's like the elephant under the table, no one wants to deal with it.

An aside: I was looking at data on Amazon’s Alexa Internet rankings a couple of weeks ago and discovered that the State Department’s newly launched America.gov, an Internet page of indeterminate quality and usefulness aimed at the world outside the US, had a readership that was about 20 percent American. But quiet please, don’t tell anyone in Congress or America.gov’s State Department bosses. America.gov comes under Smith-Mundt and Americans aren’t supposed to know about it or have access to its contents despite the fact our tax dollars fund it along with other entities like RFE/RL.

Tuesday Hummingbird Blogging

by CKR

This is a test photo. It's not the greatest photo ever, just the first from my feeders. It's a male broadtail (Selasphorus platycercus). You can see his gorget better when he sits on the other side of the feeder, facing the camera. But there's some nice detail to his wings in this one.

Two male broadtails have been contesting the territory. They were threatening me, too, with close passes and display flights, but they seem to be getting accustomed to the large mammal in the territory.

I thought I heard the duller sound of a black-chinned male (Archilochus alexandri) today, but didn't see him.

I'll keep my camera handy.

Mission Impossible: A Major War and a Major Debacle

By Patricia H. Kushlis

You wouldn’t know it from The New York Times or, heaven forbid, The Wall Street Journal, but Jonathan Landay and John Walcott of the McClatchy news service’s Washington Bureau did us a favor Thursday by reporting some of the highlights of a recently-released major National Defense University (NDU) report. This 60 page document “Choosing War: The Decision to Invade Iraq and Its Aftermath” strongly questions W’s projections of US victory in Iraq and blames the administration for a myriad of colossal errors.

Here’s the opening line: “Measured in blood and treasure, the war in Iraq has achieved the status of a major war and a major debacle.”

What still gives this report heft – I note it was written November 2007 but only released in April 2008 - is foremost its high level Pentagon connections. First, Joseph Collins, a former senior Pentagon official, was the author. Second, it was based, in part, on interviews “with other former senior and defense and intelligence officials who played roles in prewar preparations.” And third, it was published by NDU’s National Institute for Strategic Studies, a Defense Department research center. Why the report was held six months before it was released to the public, however, is a question that I hope someone in the know will, at some future point, answer.

Here are some of the major findings:

• The US has suffered serious political costs, with its standing in the world seriously diminished.

• The US now spends over $10 billion per month on Iraq, according to the Congressional Research Service, and all comes from deficit spending.

• “No one as yet has calculated the costs of long-term veterans’ benefits or the total impact on service personnel and material.” Note: Collins’ report was written before a RAND study was released last week that indicates over 300,000 returned US military personnel suffer from PTSD or depression and 50% of them are not being treated.

More Sacrificial Lambs for the West Bank

By Patricia Lee Sharpe

Israel continues to dig its grave ever deeper by funneling more Israelis into the occupied West Bank. Not only does this policy further enrage Muslims everywhere. Sympathy for Israel, even in the U.S., is not what it used to be.

Yes. Israel is building 100 more new “housing units” on the West Bank. Assuming that family members per unit may average two adults and two kids, that means sleek modern housing for 400 more Israelis where they shouldn’t be. (Probably twice that number if most of the “units” are inhabited by religious conservatives, since pious types of all persuasions seem to think they have a special dispensation for seeding our over-populated earth with their precious genes.)

Splitting Hairs

The new construction has been subject to protest, of course, but Israeli spokesmen, as usual, have a clever answer. The “settlements” aren’t being expanded, they say. These “housing units” are to be located on land already stolen from the Palestinians—which, needless to say, is not quite how they say it.

"This construction of 50 (housing units) in Ariel and 50 in EL Kana are in the framework of the policy of the government because it will be construction inside the built-up area of existing settlement blocks," said [Prime Minister Ehud] Olmert's spokesman Mark Regev.

"This is consistent with what we said: one, no new settlements; two, no expropriation of land; three, no policy to outwardly expand existing settlement."

Only an official spokesman of the Olmert government could make such a statement with a straight face. Nobody, absolutely nobody, cares about housing units per se. It’s the ever increasing Israeli population on the occupied West Bank that’s the problem. Every additional Israeli is one more person who will have to be extracted (kicking and screaming, no doubt) at some point in the future.

Even so, the settlers themselves are not content with the additional construction:

"Thousands of housing units need to be built to cope with population growth [!!!!]," said Dani Dayan, of the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea and Samaria.”

Already, evidently, some 270,000 Israelis live in the West Bank, with 200,000 more in East Jerusalem.

The Policy of Whining

The official line of the U.S. government is that we keep pleading with the Israelis to cease settlement expansion because it is unhelpful to the Israeli-Palestinian peace process and the ultimate creation of a viable Palestinian state. The Israeli government appears to agree to desist, then does it anyway, at which point the U.S. produces, for PR purposes, a little pro forma whining.

But U.S. aid to Israel doesn’t get cut off. Essentially Israel can do whatever it wants—and the U.S. gets to pay for it.

Ben Franklin Would Roll Over in His Grave: Dr. Rice’s Awards for Public Diplomacy

by John H. Brown, Guest Contributor

I’d like to write a few words about Dr. Condoleezza Rice’s “Benjamin Franklin Awards for Public Diplomacy,” recently in the news . Public diplomacy is defined by the State Department as “engaging, informing, and influencing key international audiences.” As a Foreign Service Officer who practiced public diplomacy for over twenty years, mostly in Eastern Europe, I find it disconcerting that such awards should be given by a person -- the Secretary of State -- who has shown such elementary disregard for foreign public opinion.

One of the favorite occupations of communist leaders during the Cold War was awarding prizes for activities they were unwilling to carry out themselves. They had, for example, a much-hyped Lenin Peace Prize. But what the Soviets really believed in, despite their talk of “peaceful co-existence,” was propaganda-propelled perpetual war, domestically and overseas, as the sure way for them to justify their hold on power. Or at least that it how they -- until, conceivably, Gorbachev -- saw it.

Secretary of State Rice, whose academic specialty is the non-existent Soviet Union, appears to be following the path of the communist Mafiosi she studied in her youth. Like them, the Doctor in her official capacities in the Bush administration has had the dubious distinction of using the basest form of propaganda, shamelessly employing it to mislead the nation into an immoral and wasteful war and occupation of a country that did not attack us -- supposedly in order to “win” an even wider war, the indefinable “war on terror.” Some would say that this seemingly endless conflict and the fears it evoked in the United States are why Mr. Bush, our “war president,” got reelected.

Now Rice -- the holder of a Ph.D. who, by the way, has penned only one book by herself, a superficial volume panned in 1985 by The American Historical Review because it “frequently does not sift facts from propaganda and valid information from disinformation or misinformation” -- is offering her own version of the Lenin Peace Prize.

She’s called it the Benjamin Franklin Awards for Public Diplomacy. Here’s a blurb from the “media note” recently issued by the State Department:

"The creation of the Benjamin Franklin Awards for Public Diplomacy was announced by Secretary of State Rice in January 2007 at the Private Sector Summit on Public Diplomacy to recognize that all sectors of American society -- individuals, schools, foundations, associations, and corporations -- actively contribute to advancing America’s ideals through public diplomacy. The awards highlight that solutions to the challenges of the 21st century will come from these sectors working together."

But were Benjamin Franklin, arguably America’s greatest diplomat, to witness the harm “Condi” has done to America’s relations with the rest of the world (and America’s public diplomacy) through her gross misuse of facts and language and approval of torture, he would roll over in his grave, with much condolence for our country, seeing his name a cover-up for the Bush administration’s failure to reach out to the world in a civilized fashion.

The recipients of the Benjamin Franklin award -- among them the legendary composer and pianist Dave Brubeck, who did so much to introduce jazz in Eastern Europe during the Cold War -- deserve recognition from ordinary Americans for showing, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, “a decent respect to the opinions of mankind.”

But by ordinary Americans, I do not mean Rice and the administration she serves, given the damage they have done, despite the awards they hand out, to America's image and credibility overseas through their neglect of public diplomacy, including educational exchanges and cultural presentations, the best antidote to the appalling propaganda they themselves have promulgated for far too many years.

Author Note: John H. Brown is Adjunct Professor of Liberal Studies at Georgetown University. His most recent articles on line can be found at American Diplomacy.org and Common Dreams.org.

Quick Takes

by CKR

Don't know much about torture: So General Richard Myers, former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff from 2001 to 2005, didn't understand what John Yoo and the other torture lawyers were telling him? Could it be that he's afraid that maybe what was going on at Guantánamo amounts to war crimes? Does he expect anyone to believe he didn't know what was going on?

The FAA wakes up: American Airlines comes close to accusing the FAA of malicious compliance. Reading this article and this one between the lines, I suspect that the explanation is a panicked response from an FAA caught with its pants down (no, not literally this time), although I don't see that it excludes the possibility that there are more shoes to drop.

Rumors fly over North Korea: Last week in Boulder, Joe Cirincione, now president of the Ploughshares Fund and nonproliferation expert, told us that a deal with North Korea was about to be announced in which North Korea would make a declaration of what their uranium enrichment program entailed and the US would respond by removing North Korea from its terrorism list. There was a small flurry of news toward the end of last week that was consistent with Cirincione's report.

But something seems to have gone wrong even as the deal was almost finalized, if Cirincione's and the news sources were correct. No such agreement was announcedToday President Bush is making noises that appear designed to urge North Korea toward such a declaration. But he's not calling anyone names or saying ominously, "They know what they have to do." So I guess he's still using diplomacy, at least his brand of it. The New York Times says he's backed off completely from requiring a declaration of the North Korean uranium enrichment program.

Clearly the rumors are flying. As the Times notes (and my sources have told me), the reactor at Yongbyong is being disabled, which will end North Korea's plutonium production. This is the more imminent danger, the primary route to nuclear weapons that the North Koreans have followed.

A new new thing: This is very well done, and an interesting experiment. But as it parades documents before my eyes, I realize I'd rather read it at my own rate, and check the links at my leisure. The content is important, but I'm going to need to spend more time on it to analyze it than I would if they would have just written it.

Friday Fog Blogging

by CKR

This morning I woke up to a soft fog wrapping the mountains, stretching around into the city. As I made breakfast, two arms of the fog met in the city, softening the streetlights as they were turning off in the dawn. As I ate breakfast, I could watch the fog coalescing into ice crystals on the deck and other woody surfaces. By the time the sun was up, there was no more fog.

Last week, on the way down into Denver on US 285, we encountered a couple of dopey drivers, just meandering along, one almost stopping on the highway for no apparent reason. Were they looking for an address in that area where mountain isolation gives way to weekend cabins? Or admiring the scenery?

A driver flashed his lights at us. Speed trap, we figured. Around a curve, we encountered stopped traffic, on both sides of the road, no cops. Then we saw them.