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Summary: U.S./Top News The latest lie is that Congress doesn't have the ability to end the war, because if they cut off funding they would jeopardize the safety of our troops, writes Just Foreign Policy board member Dean Baker on Truthout. This argument is garbage. Congress has the authority to require the top military commanders in Iraq to produce a plan for safely withdrawing our troops from the country. It can also require these commanders to give their best estimate of the cost of this plan. It can then appropriate this money, specifying that the funds be used for the withdrawal plan designed by the military.
Rafael Correa, Ecuador's newly elected president, seeks to restructure Ecuador's foreign debt, writes Just Foreign Policy President Mark Weisbrot in the International Herald Tribune. He is looking toward a 75 percent debt reduction, and will use the savings on debt service to increase social spending. Correa understands that foreign capital can contribute to development. But when a country is borrowing simply to pay off debt, it may make more sense to clear some debt off the books and start over. Argentina defaulted on its debt in December 2001. The Argentines were proven right. The economy shrank for only about three months after the default; it has since grown at an annual rate of more than 8 percent.
An administration official admitted that the option of "surging" US troops in Iraq is "more of a political decision than a military one," NBC reports.
School enrollments are up in sub-Saharan Africa, in part because of a reversal of IMF/World Bank policies, the New York Times reports. Dean Baker, writing on his blog "Beat the Press," notes that the article omits the role of the IMF/World Bank in promoting school fees and the international campaign to reverse this policy, which resulted in the passage by Congress in 2000 of a law requiring the US Treasury Department to oppose the practice. The law is still on the books (now Public Law 109-102.) As the NYT article notes, many African countries still implement these school fees, which are well-known, unsurprisingly, to depress enrollment. The NYT article notes that "more than 6 out of 10 primary school-age children are now enrolled." While the improvement is a welcome development, this is a far cry from the universal access to which all international institutions and donor governments are supposedly committed.
The FBI has released documents indicating that FBI agents witnessed mistreatment of the Koran during interrogations at Guantanamo, the Washington Post reports.
Democratic leaders are facing mounting pressure from liberal activists to chart a more confrontational course on Iraq and the issues of human rights and civil liberties, the Washington Post reports.
Iran A secretive group of US officials known as the Iran Syria Policy and Operations Group is preparing for a "showdown" with Iran, the Boston Globe reports. The group's workings have been so secretive that several officials in the State Department's Near Eastern Affairs bureau said they were unaware it existed.
The IAEA is reviewing its technical aid projects in Iran to see if any might violate a new U.N. resolution imposing sanctions on Iran, Reuters reports. Some Western powers want a special IAEA session for the review. Developing nations on the board oppose this as they would see it as a Western gambit to apply restrictive interpretations to the resolution's references to technical aid, a precedent they fear would damage their own nuclear-energy aspirations.
Stay-the-course hawks argue that Iran's price for helping the US in Iraq is too high, notes Trita Parsi in a letter to the Financial Times. But the real question is: What is the price of not talking to Iran? Iraq may slide into a regional war unless the US grants all regional states a stake in the process of stabilising the country. Unfortunately, elements in Saudi Arabia seem to prefer war to an Iraqi democracy with Shiites at its helm. According to Iraqi officials, Saudi Arabia is one of the main financial sources for Sunni insurgents.
Iraq US policy in Iraq seems headed for a repeat of the withdrawal from Vietnam that abandoned people who had worked with the US to a grim fate, suggests David Ignatius in the Washington Post, noting the lack of US plans to resettle Iraqi refugees in the US.
We don't really know what the Iraq war is costing because the Bush Administration is hiding the numbers, notes Gordon Adams in the Chicago Tribune.
The Al-Sadr Bloc in Iraq and leaders of the Sunni minority are in consensus that a timetable should be set for the withdrawal of foreign troops, writes Hassan Hanizadeh in the Tehran Times. Moqtada Sadr has said that his supporters will return to parliament and cabinet sessions if a timetable is set for the withdrawal of foreign troops.
Afghanistan A top Taliban commander says the Taliban will step up attacks on NATO and American troops in Afghanistan this year, Reuters reports.
Somalia Diplomats from the US and other nations in the Somalia Contact Group will meet today to examine ways to quickly install an all-African peacekeeping force in Somalia, the Washington Post reports, amid concern about the US commitment to making such a force a reality. The article quotes a US official as acknowledging that the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia is a diverse group, only some of whom have political links to Al-Qaeda, and saying that the US would be willing to work with some members of the Islamic Courts. A senior U.S. counterterrorism official said that he had seen no intelligence to support reports that legions of foreign fighters landed in Mogadishu last week to support the Islamists.
Contents: http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/newsroom/blog/
- Robert Naiman Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org