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Summary: U.S./Top News President Bush could choose military action over diplomacy and bomb Iran's nuclear facilities next year, AFP reports. "I think he is going to do it," said John Pike of Globalsecurity.org, suggesting Bush would bomb Iranian nuclear facilities next summer. Seymour Hersh has said that White House hawks led by Vice President Cheney were intent on attacking Iran with or without the approval of the US Congress. Joseph Cirincione of the Center for American Progress also believes the US government could decide to attack Iran. "It is not realistic but it does not mean we won't do it," he said. "If you look at what the administration is doing, it seems that it is going to inevitably lead us to a military conflict," he said, adding that no alternative solution was being sought, including discussions with Iran on Iraq, which could lead to talks on Iran's nuclear program and role in the region.
The Pentagon is drafting its own new options for winning in Iraq, in part, to give President Bush counterproposals in case the Iraq Study Group comes up with ideas he does not like, the Washington Times reports.
The US use of snipers is proving less successful in many areas of Iraq than had been hoped, the New York Times reports. Many of the best sniping positions are already well known to insurgents.
Some experts say the assassination of Pierre Gemayel in Lebanon shows the weakness of the U.S. in the region, the Washington Post reports. Gemayel was closely associated with the Bush Administration. U.N. Ambassador Bolton seemed to suggest that Syria was behind the assassination. Syria's U.N. ambassador denied his government had a hand in the killing, saying Syria condemned the assassination as a "horrible" crime.
The assassination attempt against the speaker of Iraq's parliament was one of the most serious breaches of security yet within the Green Zone, the New York Times reports.
Illinois Senator Barack Obama Monday excoriated the Bush administration for its "misguided" war in Iraq and supported dialogue with US adversaries in the region, the Chicago Tribune reports. He said the U.S. should begin reducing troops in the next 4-6 months and pressure Iraqis to work out agreements among warring factions. Obama said Iraq should convene a regional conference including Syria and Iran. His plan positions him among centrist Democrats in Congress supporting a slow and careful withdrawal of troops, rather than a quick exit or a build-up of military personnel, says the Tribune.
Just Foreign Policy board member Tom Hayden, writing in Huffington Post, recounts diplomatic moves by the U.S. to negotiate with the Iraqi insurgency that have been reported in Arabic news media.
Inside Higher Ed reports on the controversy around campaigns to prevent universities from hiring faculty who criticize policies of the Israeli government. The Middle East Studies Association has expanded the work of its academic freedom committee - which had focused on helping scholars in the Middle East - to engage in efforts on behalf of colleagues in the US. Juan Cole, president of MESA, characterized the groups' activities as "the privatization of McCarthyism" and said that they represented the most serious threat today to academic freedom in the US.
Turning conscripts into battle-ready troops would take a year or more in the unlikely event the government revived the draft, USA Today reports. Rep. Charles Rangel has said he will reintroduce a bill that would reinstate the draft. Military leaders call a draft neither necessary nor practical. Rangel doesn't expect Congress or Bush to support reviving the draft, says a spokesman, but wants to spark a discussion.
Iran Denying Iran's request for assistance at Arak is a no-brainer, says the New York Times in an editorial castigating some IAEA board members for wanting to defer the decision rather than reject the request outright. But the editorial calls for the Bush Administration to offer Iran explicit security guarantees in exchange for giving up technology that could support a nuclear weapons program.
Right-wing Israeli politician Avigdor Lieberman will be hosted by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations in new his capacity as deputy prime minister in charge of strategic threats, the Jewish Daily Forward reports. Lieberman is known for his proposal to transfer part of Israel's Arab population. But he is slated to speak about Iran. The admirable spirit of dialogue expressed in the article by Lieberman's liberal Jewish critics contrasts sharply with the view of some groups towards the prospect of US dialogue with Iran, or towards the notion that critics of US or Israeli government policies should be able to freely express their views.
Iraq Iraqi government officials acknowledge that their efforts have been mostly a failure, the Los Angeles Times reports. Iraq's officials have been unable to overcome mistrust of one another and improve security or tackle major political and economic issues - from murderous cops to sewage. Officials say Baghdad's authority has been undermined by the ubiquity of U.S. troops and by militias, and the sectarian balance on which the government was formed has made it impossible make big decisions or ferret out corruption or incompetence.
The UN said Wednesday that 3,709 Iraqi civilians were killed in October, the highest monthly toll since the March 2003. The UN tally was more than three times higher than the total AP had tabulated for the month.
British forces may hand over security responsibilities in Basra to Iraqi forces by the spring, Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett said Wednesday. The leader of the Liberal Democrats criticized the government for not saying if this would lead to a reduction of British troops in Iraq, accusing the government of being "unduly subject to American influence."
Lebanon The White House is under pressure domestically and abroad to engage with Syria and Iran to quell the violence in Iraq, notes the New York Times. But suspicion that Syria is trying to destabilize Lebanon will make it hard for the US to send a full ambassador back to Syria without appearing to have abandoned the Lebanese government. Syrian officials and their Lebanese allies said the only beneficiaries of Gemayel's death were anti-Syria forces.
Ecuador Mark Weisbrot of the Center for Economic and Policy Research says the outcome of the presidential election in Ecuador won't adversely affect Ecuador's economy, regardless of who wins. A CEPR report says the economic crisis of the late 1990s is not likely to be repeated, since the conditions that caused it are no longer present. Among other changes, the country has adopted the dollar as its national currency, which eliminates the currency risk and instability that played a central role in the 1998-2000 economic collapse. The report notes that the US has not followed through on threats to punish Nicaraguans for re-electing Daniel Ortega.
Mexico Mexican authorities have quietly released a report that describes how three Mexican governments killed and tortured political opponents from the late 1960s until 1982, reports the Washington Post. The new report is posted on the web site of the National Security Archive.
Contents: http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/newsroom/blog/ - Robert Naiman Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org
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