Rachel Neuwirth advises, at American Thinker, Don’t Be So Sure There Were No WMD in Iraq.

Before America went to war to topple Saddam Hussein’s regime it was widely believed that he possessed weapons of mass destruction. Today it is widely believed that there were no WMD in Iraq before the war. People of both political parties, the major media, and the intellectual community all appear in strong agreement on that point. Some even charge that the Bush Administration deliberately, and knowingly, misled the nation with false information as a pretext to justify going to war.

The Bush Administration is quietly acknowledging that they made a mistake, albeit not intentional. That admission seems to be the final confirmation that there were no WMD in Iraq. In police work when the accused confesses to making a mistake, it is then assumed that the accusation is true and people consider it to be ‘case closed’.

This widespread belief of no WMD in Iraq is seriously damaging our ability to deal with a growing nuclear threat from Iran. There are those who opposed our toppling mass murderer Saddam Hussein both in 1991 and again in 2003, even after he defied multiple U.N. resolutions and was generally believed to have WMD. Now the ‘peace at any price’ crowd is exploiting the widespread belief of ‘no WMD’ to undermine our war in Iraq. If we fail in Iraq it greatly weakens our ability to deal with Iran, which will become greatly emboldened and infinitely more dangerous as it eventually goes nuclear.

Bill Roggio discussed the reasons for believing that the January 20th Karbala attack was an Iranian operation a week after the event.

ِAn official US release of evidence against Iran was promised January 29, then put on hold two days later.

Now, six months later, the US military has finally decided to confirm Iran’s role.

AP:

Iran’s elite Quds force helped militants carry out a January attack in Karbala that killed five Americans, a U.S. general said Monday. U.S. military spokesman Brig. Gen. Kevin J. Bergner also accused Tehran of using the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah as a “proxy” to arm Shiite militants in Iraq.

The claims were an escalation in U.S. accusations that Iran is fueling Iraq’s violence, which Tehran has denied, and were the first time the U.S. military has said Hezbollah has a direct role.

A senior Lebanese Hezbollah operative, Ali Mussa Dakdouk, was captured March 20 in southern Iraq, Bergner said. Dakdouk served for 24 years in Hezbollah and was “working in Iraq as a surrogate for the Iranian Quds Force,” Bergner said.

The general also said that Dakdouk was a liaison between the Iranians and a breakaway Shiite group led by Qais al-Kazaali, a former spokesman for cleric Muqtada al-Sadr. Bergner said al-Kazaali’s group carried out the January attack against a provincial government building in Karbala and that the Iranians assisted in preparations. Al-Khazaali and his brother Ali al-Khazaali were captured with Dakdouk.

Dakdouk told U.S. interrogators that the Karbala attackers “could not have conducted this complex operation without the support and direction of the Quds force,” Bergner said.

Documents captured with al-Khazaali showed that the Quds Force had developed detailed information on the U.S. position at the government building, “regarding our soldiers’ activities, shift changes and defenses, and this information was shared with the attackers,” Bergner said.

The Karbala attack was one of the boldest and most sophisticated against U.S. forces in four years of fighting in Iraq, and U.S. officials at the time suggested Iran may have had a role in it.

In the assault, up to a dozen gunmen posed as an American security team, with U.S. military combat fatigues, allowing them to pass checkpoints into the government compound, where they launched the attack. One U.S. soldier was killed in the initial assault, and the militants abducted four others who were later found shot to death.

If the United States withdraws from Iraq in defeat and dishonor, it will not be because American military forces became demoralized or failed to perform their mission. American forces will not have been defeated on the battlefield. Nor will American units have been surrounded, cut off from supply, or forced to retreat by superior military forces.

The defeat will not even have taken place in Iraq or the Middle East.

Our defeat will have occurred right here at home in the United States, and the adversary responsible will not be al Qaeda, Iraqi insurgents, or foreign jihadists fighting in Iraq.

When US defeat occurs, that defeat will be at the hands of the Mainstream Media.

One of its members, Tom Ricks, the Washington Post’s (ironical choice of) military correspondent, finds the same point being made in an unspecified recent issue of Armor magazine by Captain William Ault.

Ricks raises his pinky finger delicately in the air, sips his tea, and sneers at the very idea.

Captain Ault wrote:

The media assists insurgent forces by continually maintaining pressure on the supporting government and military establishment. . . . This battlefield is not new. It has gained popularity because it has continually worked against stronger forces. The eventual withdrawal of forces from Vietnam, Beirut, Somalia, and a host of other locations was from an active public opposition, not a decisive military defeat. Erosion of public support through a constant bombardment of media outlets that portray negativity induces a type of mass hysteria in the population that eventually leads to the vocal, and sometimes violent, opposition to the military forces being deployed.

Fred Burton and Scott Stewart, writing for the subscription service Stratfor’s Terrorism Intelligence Report, use several metrics to assess the current condition of al Qaeda’s organizational leadership core. The article is quoted in its entirety by Watch n’ Wait.

Al Qaeda’s media branch, As-Sahab, released a statement by Ayman al-Zawahiri to jihadist Internet forums June 25. In it, al Qaeda’s deputy leader urges Muslims to support Palestinian militants by providing weapons and money, and by attacking U.S. and Israeli interests. Although al-Zawahiri’s message is interesting, especially the fact that he urges support for an organization he has criticized heavily in the past, perhaps most telling about the release is that it contains no new video footage of al-Zawahiri himself. …

The fact that al-Zawahiri chose this format rather than the more engaging and visually powerful video format suggests al Qaeda’s apex leaders are feeling the heat of the campaign to locate and eliminate them. Although many people believe the al Qaeda leadership operates as it pleases along the Pakistani-Afghan border, evidence suggests otherwise.

Last week’s Terrorism Intelligence Report discussed the campaign conducted by the United States and its allies against al Qaeda’s regional and local nodes. Though these efforts have been under way in many parts of the globe, the United States and its partners have been pursuing a concurrent campaign against al Qaeda’s apex leadership, al Qaeda prime. Like the campaign against the regional nodes, the effort against the prime node employs all of the five prongs of the U.S. counterterrorism arsenal: military power, intelligence, economic sanctions, law enforcement operations and diplomacy.

The overall success of this campaign against al Qaeda prime has been hard to measure because there are few barometers for taking al Qaeda’s pulse. By its nature it is a secretive and nebulous organization that, in order to survive, has taken great pains to obscure its operations — especially since the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001 that flushed its leaders from their comfortable and well-appointed refuge inside the Taliban’s Islamic republic.

While bin Laden and al-Zawahiri have escaped U.S.-led efforts to locate them, a large number of second-tier leaders and operatives have been captured or killed. This means the group’s organizational chart has been altered dramatically below the top rung, making it difficult to determine the quality of the individuals who have been tapped to fill in the gaps. … with so many unknown players filling critical positions, it is difficult to determine precisely how much the attrition has affected the prime node’s ability to plan and execute attacks.

Anecdotal evidence, however, suggests that their operational ability has been diminished. The group has not launched an attack using an al Qaeda “all-star team” since 9/11. Meanwhile, outside of Iraq and Afghanistan, the attacks conducted by its regional nodes, or by regional nodes working with operational commanders sent from al Qaeda prime, have decreased in frequency and impact over the past several months. The first six months of 2007 have been quieter than the first six months of 2006 and far more peaceful that the last six months of 2005. And, not to downplay the loss of life in London, Madrid, Bali and other places, but in terms of numbers, the death tolls and financial impacts of all those attacks do not hold a candle to the 9/11 attacks — even when many of them are combined.

Beyond the personnel losses al Qaeda has suffered, the loss of its dedicated training facilities in Afghanistan also has changed the way the prime node works. It is less autonomous and far more dependent on the largesse of Pakistani and Afghan feudal lords who control training camps along the border — and who are key to the security of al Qaeda prime. … Another way to gauge the health of the organization, or at least the comfort level of the group’s apex leadership, is by looking at its public relations efforts and the statements it releases to the public. Al Qaeda prime has produced a steady supply of messages in order to keep local nodes — and perhaps more important, grassroots jihadists around the world — motivated. These releases, however, reveal a change over the last several months in the way al Qaeda communicates to the world.

The number of messages from al Qaeda’s two top leaders has fallen, while the use of video has dropped dramatically. Before the October 2006 missile attack in Chingai, Pakistan, 14 out of 15 messages were released in video format; since then, only three of the nine have included video. The switch to an audio format indicates concern about operational security. It also is noteworthy that bin Laden has not been heard from in any format, audio or video, since July 1, 2006 — nearly a year now. All these factors considered, it is apparent that the apex leadership feels threatened.

Read the whole thing.

Depkafile has a followup on yesterday’s Sun story.

Early this week, Tehran deployed in southern Iraq and southern Iran contingents of Revolutionary Guards Corps of suicide fighters in anticipation of an American attack on Iranian soil.

Those units were posted to fight off a possible US Marines landing in southern Iran. Tehran believes the American force will be assigned with destroying RG bases and infrastructure in the south and sabotaging the oil wells and installations of Iranian province of Khuzestan.

The RG fighters were dropped by helicopter in southern Iraq on June 24 and 25. Their task will be to launch suicide attacks on US and British bases and command posts in the region the moment Iran comes under American attack.

Also in anticipation of a showdown, Tehran announced Tuesday at only two hours notice the rationing of gas for Iran’s private motorists to 100 liters per month. Protesters started torching gas stations Wednesday.

For lack of refining capacity, the oil-rich country imports 40% of its gasoline needs and oil products. Tehran sharply reined in private consumption to free up reserves for the armed forces in case of war and keep power stations and water supplies running in an emergency.

DEBKAfile’s military sources report that these two steps in three days attest to the certainty of Iran’s government and military that a military confrontation with the US is around the corner.

The British Sun newspaper first disclosed the Iranian troop thrust into southern Iraq Monday, June 25, reporting: “It is an extremely alarming development and raises the stakes considerably. In effect, it means we are in a full war with Iran – but nobody has officially declared it.”

DEBKAfile’s military experts add: In effect, the Iranian military incursion of Iraq is the fourth military invasion of foreign territory underway in the Middle East at this very moment. None are officially admitted.

The Sun is reporting:

Iranian forces are being choppered over the Iraqi border to bomb Our Boys, intelligence chiefs say.

Military experts claim this worrying move means we are at WAR with Iran in all but name.

Last night an intelligence source told The Sun: “It is an extremely alarming development and raises the stakes considerably. In effect, it means we are in a full on war with Iran — but nobody has officially declared it.

“We have hard proof that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps have crossed the border to attack us.

“It is very hard for us to strike back. All we can do is try to defend ourselves. We are badly on the back foot.”

Our Boys picked up the Iranian helicopters on radar crossing into empty desert.

The sightings have been confirmed to The Sun by very senior military sources.

Depkafile reports (in non-linkable marquee’ing banner text):

British military source in Basra: We see the Iranians and their helicopters but are under strength to stop them.

But it looks like the Brits won’t be understrength to stop them much longer.

Depkafile also is reporting that third US carrier group, the Enterprise, is approaching the Arabian Gulf:

According to DEBKAfile’s military sources, the US naval build-up off the shores of Iran marks rising military tensions in the region. …

The USS Enterprise CVN 65-Big E Strike Group will join the USS Stennis and the USS Nimitz carriers, building up the largest sea, air, marine concentration the United States has ever deployed opposite Iran. This goes towards making good on the assurances of four carriers US Vice President Dick Cheney offered the Gulf and Middle East nations during his May tour of the region.

The “Big E” leads a strike group consisting of the guided-missile destroyers USS Arleigh Burke DDG 51, USS Stout DDG 55, Forrest Sherman DDG 98 and USS James E. Williams DDG 95, as well as the guided missile cruiser USS Gettysburg CG 64, the SS Philadelphia SSN 690 nuclear submarine and the USNS Supply T-AOE 6>

On its decks are the Carrier Air Wing CVW 1, whose pilots fought combat missions in the Gulf and Arabian Sea during 2006. The Air Wing is made up of F/Q-18 Super Hornet strike craft, the Sidewinders Strike Fighter Squadron VFA-86, the 251st Marine Fighter Attack Squadron MFA, and the Electronic Attack Squadron VAQ 137.

The 32nd Sea Control Squadron VS consists of S-3B Vikings. The Airborne Early Warning Squadron VAQ 3 flies E-2C Hawkeye craft. The Fleet Logistics Support Squadron VRC is based on C-2A Greyhounds.

Liberalism is more than a little inadvertently comedic.

First of all, it operates in an ahistoric context. There is no history. WWII never happened. Thus, it is possible to believe that “planetary morality is the only answer. Force alone is a tool to patch things temporarily, but in the 50-100 year perspective, finding some common ground for coexistence is essential.” Because no one can possibly conquer and subdue, then remake his adversary’s culture by force. “We can’t impose it.” The fact that we did impose it, i.e., democracy, on two peoples a lot tougher than the Arabs mysteriously disappears from the world inhabited by the liberal.

Secondly, with liberalism comes a lack of confidence, a self doubt, which Hamlet could envy. The liberal cannot fight for his own cause and defeat his enemy. He has to have his enemy’s permission. And he can only undertake any effort in the midst of a coalition, a coalition including all of his own rivals and all the states making profits via illegal arms trades with the enemy, too. It would just be too scary to go it alone. The liberal cannot simply make war. Any military operation cannot be for his own country. It must be a philanthropic exercise benefiting the enemy. The Marines will storm their beaches, and then improve their infrastructure. The 82nd Airborne will drop in behind enemy enemies, and build a power plant and a school. If the US invasion fleet steamed up to Normandy in our time, and the Germans in the bunkers on the beaches failed to hold up “Welcome to France – Thanks for Liberating Us!” signs, our liberals would believe we were obliged to turn around, and simply steam away.

What I want to know is: how come this kind of thinking doesn’t apply to domestic conflicts with conservatives and Republicans?

Paul von Zeibauer, writing in the New York Times’ Week in Review, was shocked… shocked to discover that the USMC had issued a memorandum of instructions on how to answer leading questions from the Press without inadvertently assisting them in furthering their own agenda, featuring “a searing view of American journalists conspiring to undermine the war effort.”

One Tim McGirk, a reporter for Time magazine, in January 2006, sent a series of questions to the Second Marine Division in Haditha by email.

Excerpts of the memo:

McGirk: How many marines were killed and wounded in the I.E.D. attack that morning?

Memo: If it bleeds, it leads. This question is McGirk’s attempt to get good bloody gouge on the situation. He will most likely use the information he gains from this answer as an attention gainer.

McGirk: Were there any officers?

Memo: By asking if there was an officer on scene the reporter may be trying to identify a point of blame for lack of judgment. If there was an officer involved, then he may be able to have his My Lai massacre pinned on that officer’s shoulders. …

In the reporter’s eyes, military officers may represent the U.S. government and enlisted marines may represent the American People. Given the current political climate in the U.S. at this time concerning the Iraq war and the current administration’s conduct of the war, the reporter would most likely seek to discredit the U.S. government (one of our officers) and expose victimization of the American people by the hand of the government (the enlisted marines under the haphazard command of our “rogue officer.”) …

One common tactic used by reporters is to spin a story in such a way that it is easily recognized and remembered by the general population through its association with an event that the general population is familiar with or can relate to. For example, McGirk’s story will sell if it can be spun as “Iraq’s My Lai massacre.” …

McGirk: How many marines were involved in the killings?

Memo: First off, we don’t know what you’re talking about when you say “killings.” One of our squads reinforced by a squad of Iraqi Army soldiers were engaged by an enemy initiated ambush on the 19th that killed one American marine and seriously injured two others. We will not justify that question with a response. Theme: Legitimate engagement: we will not acknowledge this reporter’s attempt to stain the engagement with the misnomer “killings.”

McGirk: Were there any weapons found during these house raids — or terrorists — where the killings occurred?

Memo: Again, you are showing yourself to be uneducated in the world of contemporary insurgent combat. The subject about which we are speaking was a legitimate engagement initiated by the enemy. …

McGirk: Is there any investigation ongoing into these civilian deaths, and if so have any marines been formally charged?

Memo: No, the engagement was bona fide combat action. … By asking this question, McGirk is assuming the engagement was a LOAC [Law of Armed Conflict] violation and that by asking about investigations, he may spurn a reaction from the command that will initiate an investigation.

McGirk: Are the marines in this unit still serving in Haditha?

Memo: Yes, we are still fighting terrorists of Al Qaida in Iraq in Haditha. (“Fighting terrorists associated with Al Qaida” is stronger language than “serving.” The American people will side more with someone actively fighting a terrorist organization that is tied to 9/11 than with someone who is idly “serving,” like in a way one “serves” a casserole. It’s semantics, but in reporting and journalism, words spin the story.)

Back on February 13th, the Telegraph (CY refers to March 12th, presumably via a typo) reported that more than a 100 Steyr Mannlicher HS50 .50 caliber sniper rifles sold to Iran had been captured by US forces in raids on insurgent arms caches and safe houses.

The story was widely repeated by media outlets and blogs, and obviously did considerable harm to the public image and reputation of the renowned Austrian arm maker.

Steyr Mannlicher issued a rebuttal on March 29th, which I unfortunately have not previously seen.

But Confederate Yankee more recently looked into the matter, interviewing informed US military sources, and has debunked the story completely.

Personally, I’m delighted to learn that the history of the company succeeding as manufacturer of the illustrious Mannlicher Schonauer remains unblemished, and that we Americans can buy Jeff Cooper-designed Steyr Scout rifles anytime we want without a qualm.

Never Yet Melted extends apologies and best wishes to Steyr Mannlicher GmbH. & Co KG

and to

Ferdinand Ritter von Mannlicher.

Original erroneous post

Christopher J. Fettweis puts America on the couch for a session of (slightly premature) Post-traumatic Iraq Syndrome counseling in the La Times.

Losing hurts more than winning feels good. This simple maxim applies with equal power to virtually all areas of human interaction: sports, finance, love. And war. …

The endgame in Iraq is now clear, in outline if not detail, and it appears that the heavily favored United States will be upset. Once support for a war is lost, it is gone for good; there is no example of a modern democracy having changed its mind once it turned against a war. So we ought to start coming to grips with the meaning of losing in Iraq.

The consequences for the national psyche are likely to be profound, throwing American politics into a downward spiral of bitter recriminations the likes of which it has not seen in a generation. …

The American people seem to understand, however — and historians will certainly agree — that the war itself was a catastrophic mistake. It was a faulty grand strategy, not poor implementation. The Bush administration was operating under an international political illusion, one that is further discredited with every car bombing of a crowded Baghdad marketplace and every Iraqi doctor who packs up his family and flees his country.

The only significant question still hanging is whether Iraq will turn out to have been the biggest strategic mistake in U.S. history. …

Perhaps at some point we will come to recognize that the United States can afford to be much more restrained in its foreign policy adventures. Were our founding fathers here, they would surely look on Iraq with horror and judge that the nation they created had fundamentally lost its way. If the war in Iraq leads the United States to return to its traditional, restrained grand strategy, then perhaps the whole experience will not have been in vain.

Either way, the Iraq syndrome is coming. We need to be prepared for the divisiveness, vitriol, self-doubt and recrimination that will be its symptoms. They will be the defining legacy of the Bush administration and neoconservatism’s parting gift to America.

——————————

Thank you, Neocons, for returning the USA to the grand old pre-WWII philosophy of Isolationism.

——————————

It seems curious to this reader that Mr. Fettweis, an assistant professor of national security affairs at the U.S. Naval War College, in his eagerness to snatch defeat, never actually identifies when and where the US defeat occurred.

Where exactly did the American Blenheim, the American Retreat from Moscow, the American Stalingrad, or the American Dien Bien Phu take place and when did it occur?

Traditionally, nations lose wars when they suffer a major defeat in battle resulting in the destruction or surrender of an entire army.

Alternatively, nations lose wars the way the Confederacy did in 1865 and Germany did in WWI via drastic prolonged losses of manpower, economic exhaustion, and civilian starvation.

We lost 3513 men in Iraq over four years, not the 10-13 thousand Grant lost at Cold Harbor, the 100,000 each France and Germany lost at Verdun, not even the 7000 we lost in less than a month at Iwo Jima.

It can hardly be contended that the loss of 3500 men over four years has brought a nation of 300 million to its knees. The United States lost 3% of its population in the Civil War before one side lost the will to continue the fight. Germany lost more than 1,700,000 in WWI before accepting the Armistice. We lose 26,000 lives in highway fatalities per annum, and we’re not withdrawing from the nation’s roads.

We are obviously not really running out of manpower. Have we exhausted our financial resources?

We’re running a deficit, it’s true, but the deficit as percentage of GDP is low: 1.4%. The average since 1970 is 2.3%.

We haven’t lost any battles. No US army has been annihilated or surrendered. We are hardly running out of manpower. We are neither starving, nor broke. So why are we defeated?

What we are running out of is conviction in the justness of our cause and confidence in our success. Those losses did not occur in Iraq. Those losses were inflicted on the homefront in a highly successful propaganda operation which inflicted the death of a thousand cuts upon American support for the War in Iraq by lovingly detailed news coverage of every American casualty, by the systematic magnification of the enemy’s every trivial ambush or booby trap into a major victory, by the obfuscation and denigration of America’s causus belli and war aims.

American military forces cannot possibly be defeated on the battlefield by the inferior numbers of lightly armed irregular adversaries. But we have been brought very close to defeat, with withdrawal not difficult to imagine, by domestic defeatism and treason.

Before Mr. Fettweis undertakes to talk about Post-Traumatic Defeat Syndrome, he is under an obligation to identify the real character of that defeat.

Six leading liberal international do-gooder organizations, including Amnesty International, Cageprisoners, the Center for Constitutional Rights, the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice and NYU School of Law, Human Rights Watch and Reprieve, have issued a report titled Off the Record, which allegedly identifies 39 individuals secretly detained in the War Against Terror.

The list, compiled on the basis of public sources, government officials (i.e., Pouting and Leaking Spooks), and witness interviews, includes: “off the Record”

Individuals whose detention by the United States has been officially acknowledged and whose fate and whereabouts remain unknown:

1. Hassan Ghul

2. Ali Abd al-Rahman al-Faqasi al-Ghamdi (Abu Bakr al Azdi)

3. Ali Abdul-Hamid al-Fakhiri (Ali Abd-al-Hamid al-Fakhiri, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi)

Individuals about whom there is strong evidence, including witness testimony, of secret detention by the United States and whose fate and whereabouts remain unknown:

4. Mustafa Setmariam Nasar (Abu Musab al-Suri, Umar Abd al-Hakim)

5.& 6. Two, possibly three, Somalis [Names Unknown] (one of whom is either Shoeab as-Somali or Rethwan as-Somali)

7. Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan (Abu Talha, Talaha)

8. Abdul Basit

9. Adnan [Last Name Unknown]

10. Hudaifa

11. Mohammed [Last Name Unknown] (Mohammed al-Afghani)

12. Khalid al-Zawahiri

13. Ayoubal-Libi

14. Abu Naseem

15. Suleiman Abdalla Salim (Suleiman Abdalla, Suleiman Abdalla Salim Hemed, Suleiman Ahmed Hemed Salim, Issa Tanzania)

16. Yassir al-Jazeeri (Yasser al-Jaziri, Abu Yasir al-Jaziri, Abu Yassir Al Jazeeri, Yasser al-Jazeeri)

17. Mohammed Omar Abdel-Rahman (Asadallah)

18. Majid [Last Name Unknown] (Adnan al-Libi, Abu Yasser)

19. Hassan [Last Name Unknown] (Raba’i)

20. [First Name Unknown] al-Mahdi-Jawdeh (Abu Ayoub, Ayoub al-Libi)

21. Khaled al-Sharif (Abu Hazem)*

Individuals about whom there is some evidence of secret detention by the United States and whose fate and whereabouts remain unknown:

22. Osama bin Yousaf (Usama Bin Yussaf, Usama bin Yusuf, Usamah bin-Yusuf)

23. Osama Nazir

24. Sharif al-Masri (Abd-al-Sattar Sharif al-Masri)

25. Qari Saifullah Akhtar (Amir Harkat-ul-Ansar Qari Saifullah)

26. Mustafa Mohammed Fadhil (Moustafa Ali Elbishy, Hussein, Hassan AH, Khalid, Abu Jihad)

27. Musaab Aruchi (Mosabir Aroochi, Masoob Aroochi, Abu Mosa’ab al-Balochi, Abu Mosa’ab Aroochi, Musaad Aruchi, al-Baluchi)

28. Ibad Al Yaquti al Sheikh al Sufiyan

29. Walid bin Azmi

30. Amir Hussein Abdullah al-Misri (Fazal Mohammad Abdullah al-Misri)

31. Safwan al-Hasham (Haffan al-Hasham)

32. Jawad al-Bashar

33. Aafia Siddiqui

34. Saif al Islam el Masry

35. Sheikh Ahmed Salim

36. Retha al-Tunisi

37. Anas al-Libi (Anas al-Sabai, Nazih al-Raghie, Nazih Abdul Hamed al-Raghie)

38. [First Name Unknown] al-Rubaia

39. Speen Ghul

Flushed with self-importance, these enlightened organizations proceed to issue a series of “recommendations,” which are really demands.

The United States must cease use of secret or unacknowledged detention.

For those individuals currently detained by or at the direction of the United States, the United States and relevant foreign governments must:

Make known the names and whereabouts of detainees;

Provide immediate access by the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) to all detainees the organization seeks to visit;

Charge detainees with a recognizable criminal offense and promptly bring them to trial before a court that meets international fair trial standards or release them;

and Allow detainees access to lawyers and to communicate with family members.

The United States must not detain family members of terrorism suspects based on their family relationships.

The United States must make known the names, fate, and whereabouts of all individuals it has detained in the “War on Terror,” even if they have been released, transferred to the custody of another state, or are dead.

The United States must provide reparations, including compensation, to individuals it has secretly detained.

Other governments must not facilitate secret detention: they should not assist or cooperate in secret detention operations, and should disclose information about such operations that comes into their possession.

Reva Bhalla, director of geopolitical analysis at Stratfor, offers the perspective of a dove and insider on the recent US-Iran talks.

Pat Dollard, however, takes a considerably more hawkish perspective in interpreting exactly what brought Iran to the negotiating table.

Watching the pundits discuss our historic meeting with Iran, you would have mostly heard despair at the notion that we have no leverage in these talks, and so therefor why would Iran give on anything? Why would they stop waging war against us in iraq if they have nothing to fear? To all the experts in the media, the whole thing seemed like some grand puzzlement. Was it just an attempt to appease the administration’s domestic critics who have been chiding it for not engaging in diplomacy ( a vaguery if there ever was one ) with the world’s top terrorist? No one you heard from could really quite grasp what was going on.

For some reason, no one told you that just 5 days before Monday’s talks, an entire floating army, with nearly 20,000 men, comprising the world’s largest naval strike force, led by the USS Nimitz and the USS Stennis, and also comprising the largest U.S. Naval armada in the Persian Gulf since 2003, came floating up unnanounced through the Straight of Hormuz, and rested right on Iran’s back doorstep, guns pointed at them. The demonstration of leverage was clear. And it also came on the exact date of the expiration of the 60 day grace period the U.N. had granted Iran.

And it came just a few weeks after Vice President Dick Cheney had swept through the region and delivered a very clear and pointed message to the Saudi King Abdullah and others: George Bush has unequivocally decided to attack Iran’s nuclear, military and economic infrastructure if they do not abandon their drive for military nuclear capability. Plain and simple. Iran heard the message as well, and although a lack of leverage may seem clear to America’s retired military tv talking heads, it is not so clear to the government in Tehran.

The message to both Iran and Syria is that if the talks in Baghdad fail, the military option is ready to go.

The US warships entering

Arabian Sea

3:56 video – A very impressive sight.

Hat tip to Charles Johnson.