Here's the full article since the Globe is subscription-only: Study Cites Seeds of Terror in IraqNew investigations by the Saudi Arabian government and an Israeli think tank — both of which painstakingly analyzed the backgrounds and motivations of hundreds of foreigners entering Iraq to fight the United States — have found that the vast majority of these foreign fighters are not former terrorists and became radicalized by the war itself.
The studies, which together constitute the most detailed picture available of foreign fighters, cast serious doubt on President Bush’s claim that those responsible for some of the worst violence are terrorists who seized on the opportunity to make Iraq the "central front" in a battle against the United States. […]
American intelligence officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, and terrorism specialists paint a similar portrait of the suicide bombers wreaking havoc in Iraq: Prior to the Iraq war, they were not Islamic extremists seeking to attack the United States, as Al Qaeda did four years ago, but are part of a new generation of terrorists responding to calls to defend their fellow Muslims from "crusaders" and "infidels." […]
Obaid said in an interview from London that his Saudi study found that "the largest group is young kids who saw the images [of the war] on TV and are reading the stuff on the Internet. Or they see the name of a cousin on the list or a guy who belongs to their tribe, and they feel a responsibility to go."
Other fighters, who are coming to Iraq from across the Middle East and North Africa, are older, in their late 20s or 30s, and have families, according to the two investigations. "The vast majority of them had nothing to do with Al Qaeda before Sept. 11th and have nothing to do with Al Qaeda today," said Reuven Paz, author of the Israeli study. "I am not sure the American public is really aware of the enormous influence of the war in Iraq, not just on Islamists but the entire Arab world."
Case studies of foreign fighters indicated they considered the Iraq war an attack on the Muslim religion and Arab culture, Paz said.
Sunday, July 17, 2005
foreign fighters in the fight on foreigners
unbearable lightness
July 14, 2005 | US Marine Lance Cpl. Angel Gomez holds up his left arm during a ceremony marking his becoming a citizen as his parents Paulino and Antonia Gomez stand behind him. The US Citizenship and Immigration Services gave Gomez his US citizenship after he was injured in an explosion outside of Baghdad, Iraq, in April. Gomez sustained head wounds and was unable to hold up his right arm during the ceremony.Then check out these brave warriors:
Civilian Group Patrols Mexico Border
tour de france -- george!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But the biggest news of the day is George Hincapie. Took off in the early escape at the 27km mark, held on with a small group over five extremely difficult mountains, and raced to stage victory over Oscar Pereiro at the top of the nastiest climb of the day. No other Armstrong teammate has won a stage during Armstrong's tenure because the team has always worked for that overall classification -- Armstrong's place. Everything has been built around Lance. Hincapie has been the most loyal lieutenant one can ask for, and an all around good guy. He has deserved this stage win for years already and now finally has it. Many congratulations to George and to Discovery. A thing of sheer beauty.
mo' mangoes
Slow, tired night here in Washington, DC after a day of draining humidity. We'll dream of mangoes tonight.
Photo: Jim Richter
Saturday, July 16, 2005
The CIA and Trust
From: TPMCafe Special Guests
Jul 15, 2005 -- 10:59:46 PM EST
Our joint training experience forged a bond of trust and a sense of duty that continues some eighteen years later. It is because of this bond of trust that the authors of this piece and two other colleagues, all former intelligence officers, appeared on ABC's Nightline to speakout on behalf of the wife Ambassador Joseph Wilson, a sensitive undercover operative outed by columnist Robert Novak. The Ambassador's wife (we decline to use her name) is a friend who went through the same training with us. We acknowledge our obligation to protect each other and the intelligence community and the information we used to do our jobs. We are speaking out because someone in the Bush Administration seemingly does not understand this, although they signed the same oaths of allegiance and confidentiality that we did.
Many of us have moved on into the private sector, where this Agency aspect of our lives means little, but we have not forgotten our initial oaths to support the Constitution, our government, and to protect the secrets we learned and to protect each other. We still have friends who serve. We protect them literally by keeping our mouths shut unless we are speaking amongst ourselves. We understand what this bond or the lack of it means.
Clearly some in the Bush Administration do not understand the requirement to protect and shield national security assets. Based on published information we can only conclude that partisan politics by people in the Bush Administration overrode the moral and legal obligations to protect clandestine officers and security assets.
Beyond supporting Mrs. Wilson with our moral support and prayers we want to send a clear message to the political operatives responsible for this. You are a traitor and you are our enemy. You should lose your job and probably should go to jail for blowing the cover of a clandestine intelligence officer.
Ambassador Wilson's political affiliations are irrelevant. Political differences serve as the basis for the give and take of representative government. What is relevant is the damage caused by the exposure that Ambassador Wilson's wife as a political act intended to undermine Wilson's view.
Not only have the Bush Administration leakers damaged the career of our friend but they have put many other people potentially in harm's way. If left unpunished this outing has lowered the bar for official behavior. Further, who in their right mind would ever agree to become a spy for the United States? If we won't protect our own officers how can we reassure foreigners that we will safeguard them? Better human intelligence could prevent any number of terror incidents in the future, but we are unlikely to get foreign recruits to supply it if their safety cannot be somewhat assured. If more cases like Mrs. Wilson's occur, assurances of CIA protection will mean nothing to potential spies.
Politicians must not politicize the intelligence community. President Bush has been a decisive leader in the war on terrorism, at least initially. What about decisiveness now? Where is the accountability he promised us in the wake of Clinton Administration scandals? We find it hard to believe the President lacks the wherewithal to get to bottom of this travesty. It is up to the President to restore the bonds of trust with the intelligence community that have been shattered by this tawdry incident.
We joined the CIA to fight against foreign tyrants who used the threat of incarceration, torture, and murder to achieve their ends. They followed the rule of force, not the rule of law. We now find ourselves with an administration in the United States where some of its members have chosen to act like foreign tyrants. As loyal Americans and registered Republicans we implore President Bush to move quickly and decisively against those who, if not apprehended, will leave his Administration with the legacy of being the first to allow political operatives to out clandestine officers.
Friday, July 15, 2005
tour de france -- a very difficult weekend
Here are the incredibly difficult Stages 14 and 15 (Saturday and Sunday) as the Tour heads into the Pyrenees. This is going to be a wild weekend on the Tour, the wildness most likely starting tomorrow about half way through this very long and hot stage. As Ivan Basso said, the Tour will be won in the Pyrenees. The attacks on Armstrong -- still in yellow -- are going to come by all the top contenders. Watch especially for Rasmussen, Basso, Moreau, and Vinokourov to make a go of it. Anyone who's not able to cut it this weekend is not going to be on the podium in Paris. If you are in the US and have OLN on cable, watch!
w and osama race to the bottom
Most Muslim publics are also expressing less support for acts of terrorism in defense of Islam and less confidence in Osama bin Laden....
AP-Ipsos poll (July 11-13) [June results in parentheses]:
Generally speaking, would you say things in this country are heading in the right direction, or are they off on the wrong track?
_Right direction, 36 percent (35)
_Wrong track, 59 percent (59)
_Not sure, 5 percent (6)
Overall, do you approve, disapprove or have mixed feelings about the way George W. Bush is handling his job as president?
_Approve, 42 percent (43)
_Disapprove, 56 percent (55)
_Mixed feelings, 1 percent (1)
_Not sure, 2 percent (1)
insurgency
8 Months After US-Led Siege, Insurgents Rise Again in Fallujah
Not until this war is recognized as propagating war -- a nationalist insurgency, if not civil war -- will it be possible to search for a solution to this disaster. You cannot kill and humiliate Iraqi nationalists in the name of liberating them or in the name of reconstructing a "stable" and "autonomous" Iraqi state. The problem with this recognition however, is that it would totally and publicly belie the administration's justification for and rhetoric of the war. This will not happen, thus the quagmire or Carrollian rabbit-hole the US is in.
science and political pressure
- More than one third of respondents positioned to make such recommendations (37 percent) have “been directed, for non-scientific reasons, to refrain from making findings that are protective” of marine life and nearly one in four (24 percent) of those conducting such work reported being “directed to inappropriately exclude or alter technical information from a NOAA Fisheries scientific document;”
- More than half of all respondents (53 percent) knew of cases where “commercial interests have inappropriately induced the reversal or withdrawal of scientific conclusions or decisions through political intervention;” and
- More than half of the scientists (58 percent) knew of cases “where high-level U.S. Department of Commerce administrators and appointees have inappropriately altered NOAA Fisheries determinations.” A substantial minority (42 percent) also cited incidents where members of Congress “inappropriately influenced NOAA Fisheries determinations.”
Britain and the US
James Wolcott writes,
We are quite willing to stand by our British brothers and sisters, as long as we can stand a good safe distance and still do our shopping.
To me, the greatest insult to the British and their losses was delivered today, all the more insulting because it was thoughtless and unintentional.
I was watching the news of the two minutes of silence held for the victims of the London bombings, a silent vigil held not just in London but across Europe.
"Britain's Queen Elizabeth stood in silence at Buckingham Palace. In London's Trafalgar Square, a giant banner declared 'One City, One World.'
"Taxis and buses pulled over, workers left their offices to stand in the street and financial markets paused to remember the dead.
"In Italy, government offices, railway stations and airports paused while television stations cut into normal broadcasting to honour the London dead.
"In Paris, President Jacques Chirac's annual Bastille day television address was put back so the French could mark the moment. Chirac stood silent on the steps of the Elysee Palace."
Has the United States or even simply Washington, DC held a silent moment for the victims of the London bombings? Has any national gesture of solidarity been proposed?
If so, I haven't seen or heard of it. We're just going about our business while insisting that the world perpetually acknowledge our scars and trauma from September 11th as our justification to wage whatever aggressive action we deem necessary to ensure it never happens again.
For months, we've been hearing and reading that Brits no longer discriminate between average Americans and the policies of our government--that the reelection of Bush has made them hold us in something of the same contempt they hold him. Well, they have good reason, and we keep furnishing them with better reasons all the time.
A Moroccan friend told me something similar just prior to the US elections last November. He maintained that most North Africans generally viewed Americans favorably despite the US having elected W the first time around -- the administration and the American people were held to be separate entities worthy of separate judgments. But if W was reelected, my friend had said, this view was going to change. Now, this is purely anecdotal information. But for many worldwide, the reelection was a genuine surprise and a kind of realization that Americans really do support American aggression abroad. We're not just stupid; we actually are aggressive. In addition to the real, concrete damage caused by administration policies, this view is not to be underestimated in terms of its long-term damage to the image and international policy-making of the US. Legitimacy is crucial at the international level in all kinds of ways, including getting what one wants, and it is largely a matter of perception of a global power as legitimate. The collapse of American legitimacy in its benign sense then entails a malignant form in which a state must take what it wants through sheer economic or military force. And the US is a wanting and self-regarding state.
Aargh
The person who provided the information about Mr. Rove's conversation with Mr. Novak declined to be identified, citing requests by Mr. Fitzgerald that no one discuss the case. The person discussed the matter in the belief that Mr. Rove was truthful in saying that he had not disclosed Ms. Wilson's identity.No comment on an ongoing investigation. But there's certainly more leakage. And who was this?
Thursday, July 14, 2005
bananas
The dervishes flew into action today and I'm still reeling, even numb. The Rove spin has been fast and furious all day from all sides, all jockeying for that precious moment of enframing. All I can do is put the best face that I can on this mad dance. It might be an overly literal choice of photo, but look at it as interpretive dance.
Photo: Jim Richter
moral inversion
I think it's only late in the evening, when the email traffic slows and the other distractions fade, that I can really see and marvel at the collosus that is, as Brock calls it, the Republican noise machine, with its ferocity that is only surpassed by its nihilism.
Now we can see in full view what we've seen again and again in recent years, the favored tactic: terror by grand moral inversion, the lie so total and audacious that it almost knocks opponents off their feet.
John Kerry decorated war hero? No, coward and showboat.
We noted yesterday the great article by Josh Green in the Atlantic last year in which Josh chronicled the tactic as Rove practiced it in races he ran down in Alabama in the 1990s. In one state supreme court race his candidate went up against an opponent who'd developed an impeccable reputation on child welfare issues (he was a former family court judge). Once you understand the pattern, the strategy suggests itself. Rove orchestrated a whispering campaign to spread the word that the man was a pedophile. Like I said, audacious.
And so here now. Wilson, a whistleblower administration officials were trying to punish? A whistleblower calling out White House manipulated intelligence during the lead-up to war?
Not at all. Rove was the whistleblower trying to knock down a campaign of disinformation from Joe Wilson. The audacity of it is enough to knock some people off their feet. Like I said, terror by grand moral inversion.
And here we have them on their shows and newsprint boxes, having Plame simultaneously a glorified secretary and also a political operator scheming to upend the president's drive to war by sending her husband on a mission to Niger. What range!
The two words capture it: ferocity and nihilism, feeding off each other.
more about guantanamo and abu ghraib...
...which puts to rest the administration's rhetorical defense that Abu Ghraib was a matter of a few bad apples. In fact, there is so much organized bad-apple-ness here that we may as well call it a policy.