Summary: U.S. David Sanger, writing in the New York Times, notes that three years ago, Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld asked, is our strategy successfully killing or capturing terrorists faster than new enemies are being created? The newly declassified National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism concludes that the administration has failed the Rumsfeld test.
Portions of a National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism the White House released under pressure on Tuesday said the invasion and occupation of Iraq had become a "cause célèbre" for jihadists.
A New York Times editorial says the three declassified pages from the report told us what any American should already know: he invasion of Iraq was a cataclysmic disaster. The situation will get worse if American forces leave. But neither the report nor the president provide any suggestion about how to avoid that inevitable disaster.
A panel of European data security officials on Tuesday put off a final report on the legality of an American program to monitor millions of international banking transactions. But they agreed to investigate further whether EU laws were being violated.
Congress Tuesday was moving closer to passage of legislation on the handling of terrorism suspects while all but giving up hope of agreeing on a final bill to authorize the administration's eavesdropping program. Democrats expressed rising concerns about changes to the proposal for military trials.
Three foes of the habeas provision - Senators Specter, Leahy, and Smith - introduced yesterday an amendment to overturn the administration provision by allowing foreign nationals in military or CIA custody to challenge the legality of their detentions after one year.
Juan Cole writes that the real scandal is that the NIE was classified at all. He notes that Bush repeated that the US was not in Iraq when al-Qaeda hit the World Trade Center. But that al-Qaeda had other grievances before does not mean that Bush's invasion and occupation of Iraq cannot now generate more terrorism. Also, the US was "in Iraq" in the 1990s. It is estimated that the US/UN sanctions killed 500,000 Iraqi children. This was something that radical Muslim terrorists of the late 1990s were definitely exercised about.
Iran Iran's president vowed Wednesday not to give up the right to nuclear technology, as EU and Iranian diplomats met to see if Tehran might suspend uranium enrichment and avoid the threat of sanctions. A European diplomat confirmed a report from German magazine Der Spiegel, which said the EU3 would be willing to begin preliminary talks with Iran even if it has not suspended enrichment first.
Iraq A strong majority of Iraqis want U.S.-led military forces to immediately withdraw from the country, saying their swift departure would make Iraq more secure and decrease sectarian violence, according to new polls by the State Department and independent researchers. In Baghdad, nearly three-quarters of residents polled said they would feel safer if U.S. and other foreign forces left Iraq, with 65 percent favoring an immediate pullout.
Palestine The Israeli human rights group B'Tselem published Wednesday a report on the bombing of the power plant in Gaza on June 28th. The group concluded that the Israeli bombing of the plant was a war crime under international law.
John Dugard, UN special rapporteur on Palestinian human rights, criticized Israel for turning Gaza into "a prison" and criticised Canada, Europe and the US for cutting funds to the Palestinian Authority.
Afghanistan Afghanistan suffered two deadly bombings on Tuesday that killed 20 people, providing another sign of the increasing size and power of suicide attacks and roadside bombs by insurgents. Civilians increasingly have been paying the price of the more frequent and devastating attacks. More than 150 civilians have been killed by suicide bombings this year, the head of the UN mission in Afghanistan, Tom Koenigs, said recently, before the attacks on Tuesday.
Turkey Fifty-six Kurdish mayors stood trial Tuesday, accused in Turkey's latest freedom-of-speech case on charges of helping terrorists by arguing to keep a Kurdish TV station on the air. The mayors were indicted after writing a letter to the Danish Prime Minister asking him not to pull the plug on the TV station. The mayors pleaded innocent to the charges and defended their letter as ''free speech.'' A Turkish prosecutor demanded 15 years in prison for the mayors.
Ecuador The front-runner in the October 15 presidential election said Monday he is proud to call Venezuelan President Chavez his friend. He said he would not extend the U.S. military's use of the Manta air base unless Washington allowed an Ecuadorean military base in Miami. Correa, a U.S.-trained economist with a doctorate from the University of Illinois at Urbana, said he would seek to renegotiate Ecuador's foreign debt service, but would not rule out a moratorium on payments. "The world is recognizing that the IMF and World Bank have not been a part of the solution, but rather the problem," he said.
Argentina President Kirchner and his wife, set out to win support internationally last week as they have at home, by appearing beholden to no one, the Washington Post reports. While he was trying to assure New York's financial establishment Kirchner was crediting his country's recent economic growth to the fact that his government defies the recommendations of the IMF. When Cristina Kirchner was pressed to explain Argentina's close ties with Venezuela's government, she responded: "Nobody tells Argentina which friends to choose."
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-------- Robert Naiman Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org
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