Ask your Representative to Co-Sponsor the DeFazio and Jones "Iran War Powers" Resolutions Representative DeFazio (D) and Representive Jones (R) have introduced resolutions re-affirming that President Bush cannot attack Iran without Congressional authorization. At this writing 36 Members of Congress are on at least one of these resolutions. Ask your Representative to support them. http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/involved/warpowers.html
Summary: U.S./Top News 1) Senator Kennedy, speaking yesterday on "Meet the Press", suggested that Congress might have to cut off funding for the Iraq war if the President continues to defy the will of Congress and the American people, note Mark Weisbrot and Robert Naiman on Huffington Post. He also criticized those who claim that cutting off funds for the war would endanger American troops, saying that Congress would ensure an orderly withdrawal and make sure that withdrawing troops were adequately supplied.
2) Development and human rights organizations, including Oxfam and Amnesty International, criticized U.S. and Ethiopian air strikes in Somalia last week, writes Aaron Glantz. Oxfam says the strikes killed 70 nomadic herdsmen who had no connection to any international terrorist group.
3) The Bush Administration, after days of unrelenting criticism from Congress, are warning the Iraqi government that continuing funding for an American troop increase and other elements of Bush's new Iraq strategy will be contingent on Prime Minister Maliki's delivery on promises to quell violence, the New York Times reports. What's striking about this is that at the same time that supporters of the Administration argue that it would be unthinkable for Congress to restrict funding, the Administration is using the same threat on the Iraqi government.
4) Some historians and Middle East experts say "losing Iraq" might not be a disaster, reports Ron Hutcheson for McClatchy News. Previous presidents made similar arguments about Vietnam that Bush and his aides are making about Iraq. Yet the US lost the battle in Vietnam but won the war against communism anyway.
5) Stretched thin from fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, the U.S. military has sharply reduced its role in the war on drugs, leaving significant gaps in the nation's narcotics interdiction efforts, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Iran 6) In an apparent response to increasing Western military pressure, Iran's Revolutionary Guards will test-fire missiles in a military exercise expected to begin Monday, Iranian television said. The maneuvers followed the recent American decision to deploy a second aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf, effectively doubling the US presence there, and to extend deployments of Patriot antimissile defense systems in Kuwait and Qatar. The British Navy is also sending more ships to the gulf, the New York Times reports.
7) Senator John Rockefeller, the new chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Friday sharply criticized the Bush administration's increasingly combative stance toward Iran, saying that White House efforts to portray it as a growing threat are uncomfortably reminiscent of rhetoric about Iraq before the American invasion of 2003, the New York Times reports.
8) In 2003, Bush Administration hawks rejected a detailed Iranian offer to work together to capture terrorists, to stabilize Iraq, to resolve nuclear disputes, to withdraw military support for Hezbollah and Hamas, and to moderate Iran's position on Israel, in exchange for the U.S. lifting sanctions and warming up to Iran, notes Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times. Kristof notes that while multilateral sanctions appear to be strengthening the position of the Iranian government's domestic critics, a military confrontation would likely stifle these forces.
9) President Bush's presidency is running out of time, but the US is not, notes Jim Hoagland (no dove!) in the Washington Post. An all-or-nothing confrontation with Iran that has to be resolved before Bush leaves office is an artificial concept that will deepen American problems abroad.
Iraq 10) Kurdish soldiers from northern Iraq are deserting the army to avoid the civil war in Baghdad, a conflict they consider someone else's problem, McClatchy News reports.
Syria 11) Iraqi President Talabani said he will push for dialogue between the US and Syria, which he said was helping Iraq clamp down on terrorism, Reuters reports.
Pakistan 12) Western diplomats in Pakistan and Afghanistan and Pakistani opposition figures say that Pakistani intelligence agencies have been supporting a Taliban restoration, Carlotta Gall reports for the New York Times. More than two weeks of reporting along the border leaves little doubt Quetta is an important base for the Taliban, and found many signs Pakistani authorities are encouraging the insurgents, if not sponsoring them, she writes.
Colombia 13) The government of President Uribe, a major recipient of U.S. aid, is ensnared in a widening scandal as revelations surface of a secret alliance between some of the president's most prominent supporters and paramilitary death squads, writes Simon Romero for the New York Times. The scandal could influence discussions in Congress of aid to Colombia and a trade agreement awaiting Congressional approval. [Kudos to this article for not referring to it as a "free trade" agreement.]
Bolivia 14) As President Morales celebrates his first year in office, he remains determined to launch a "democratic revolution," Monte Reel reports for the Washington Post. But rising public unrest - by opponents and supporters - has forced the government to come up with new ways to try to get there. To try to defuse the conflicts between regional districts and the central government, Vice President García Linera last week proposed holding referendums that would allow voters to replace controversial governors elected in December 2005.
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- Robert Naiman Just Foreign Policy www.justforeignpolicy.org