CURRENT UPDATES: March 30, 2006

Dear Friends,

We mark two passings at the beginning of this issue of the ATRC E-Update.

The first is the peaceful death of Casper Weinberger, who died Wednesday at the age of 88 after a week of illness. One of Weinberger's legacies was his role in the Iran-contra scandal while serving as the Reagan administration's Secretary of Defense. Weinberger was spared federal felony prosecution for his role in the sale of weapons to Iran to finance secret, illegal aid to the Nicaraguan contras by President George H.W. Bush's pardon just weeks before he was scheduled to stand trial.

Weinberger's death–and the revisiting of the Iran-contra scandal that rocked the Reagan White House–comes as junior President Bush's administration is increasingly embattled. He has responded by replacing White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card with his Budget Director Joshua Bolten while fending off calls for Defense Secretary Rumsfeld's resignation.

The second passing is the violent death of peace activist Tom Fox, killed in Iraq by members of the Sword of Righteousness Brigade. Fox, a member of the Christian Peacemakers Team–North American religious activists who travel to conflict zones to work with civilians and make appeals for peace to combatants–had been held hostage for four months. He was found dead just days before the three other hostages; Norman Kember, Jim Loney, and Harmeet Sooden, were freed in a military raid.

Fox, originally from Virginia, was a Quaker engaged in active dialogue about nonviolence. In one essay he reflected on our "tendency to see war as a very active force and peace as a very passive one. We refer to peace in the negative - nonviolence or non-aggression. As if peace is a vacuum created when the force of war is absent ... Is it possible that (the force of war) is in reality a negative, mirror image of the force of peace?" A fitting tribute would be to explore and create new words, concepts and actions on the issue of war and peace.

For more on CPT's response to Tom Fox's death and the release of the three other hostages, visit: http://www.cpt.org/iraq/response/06-23-03statement.htm Also, George Lakey's "Taking Chances to Help Peace," Philadelphia Inquirer, March 28, 2006, http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/editorial/14201026.htm

In this edition of the ATRC E-Update, Bill Hartung focuses on Iran, and the Bush administration's come hell or high water adherence to the doctrine of preemptive war; and Frida Berrigan digs into the Bush/Blair Memo and why protest still works. We also offer links to some new resources on private military corporations, Indonesia and the arms trade.

Thanks,
Frida Berrigan
Bill Hartung

TABLE OF CONTENTS:

I. IRAN: REGIME CHANGE OR RESURGENT DIPLOMACY?

II. PENCILING IN THE WAR: The President's Plans Revealed

III. PROTEST WORKS

IV. OTHER RESOURCES OF NOTE AND INTEREST

I. IRAN: REGIME CHANGE OR RESURGENT DIPLOMACY?

Apparently, at least some members of the Bush administration never learn. Despite the debacle in Iraq, where a preventive war justified on the basis of nonexistent weapons of mass destruction has morphed into an accelerating spiral of violence and chaos, a number of top administration officials have strongly implied that regime change and military strikes may be the best way to deal with Iran's nascent nuclear enrichment program.

First we had Vice President Cheney breathing fire on March 7th at the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee: "The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on the present course the international community is prepared to impose meaningful consequences. For our part, the United States is keeping all options on the table in addressing the irresponsible conduct of the regime* We will not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon."

The following week, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton -- the anti-diplomat -- ratcheted up the rhetoric when he told an interviewer from ABC News that if Iran were to obtain a nuclear weapon it would be "Just like September 11th, only with nuclear weapons this time, that's the threat* I think it's just facing reality and if you don't deal with it, it will become even more unpleasant." ("Bolton Compares Iran Threat to 9/11," Reuters, March 16, 2006).

No one in the administration has yet said "we cannot wait for the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud," as Condoleezza Rice and President Bush did in the run-up to the war in Iraq, but that could be because the administration doesn't want to remind people how far off the mark they were in their scare-mongering over Iraq's alleged nuclear program.

In the mean time, the Bush administration has released its new national security strategy, which vows that the United States will strike first "even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack." The document further notes that "[w]hen the consequences of an attack with weapons of mass destruction are so devastating, we cannot afford to stand idly by as grave dangers materialize. The place of preemption in our national security strategy remains the same." (Deb Reichman, Associated Press/Washington Post, March 16, 2006). This approach, which the administration refers to as "preemption," is in fact a doctrine of preventive war. The difference is that preemption is exercised against an adversary that is about to strike, while preventive war may be launched well in advance of proof that the potential enemy plans to attack the United States.

The administration's strategy document identifies Iran as the greatest threat to the United States. But Bush National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley has denied that "the preservation of the doctrine of preemption is to preserve it with Iran as the principle case–our preference in terms of preemptive action is always to use diplomacy–but we retain obviously the right to use force as necessary." (Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, "U.S.: New Security Strategy Names 'Tyrannies,' Singles Out Iran," March 16, 2006).

The main obstacle carrying out the agenda of administration hawks is reality. Even Vice President Cheney and his acolytes know that with the bulk of the U.S. Army tied down in Iraq, a "boots on the ground" version of regime change in Iran is out of the question, especially since it is so much larger than Iraq, both geographically and in terms of population. Air strikes would come up against the practical problem that the Iranian nuclear program is widely dispersed, and it would be unlikely that there would be adequate intelligence or accuracy to eliminate all elements of the program. Despite recent mythology to the contrary, the U.S. Air Force is far from flawless. As Human Rights Watch has noted, in the early days of the intervention in Iraq a bombing campaign was conducted against fifty targets that were believed to be most likely to contain Saddam Hussein and his top leadership. The air strikes went 0 for 50, missing every single target.

The potential political backlash from bombing Iran would be severe, ranging from Iranian efforts to hit U.S. troops in Iraq, to upgraded support for terrorist groups like Hamas and Hezbollah, to the generation of further anti-U.S. sentiments in the Islamic world. A military action with so little prospect of success and so many negative consequences is likely to generate considerable opposition, even within the Bush camp. Henry Sokolsky an official in the administration of George Herbert Walker Bush, put the case against bombing Iran as follows:

"Targeting Iran's nuclear facilities risks leaving other covert facilities and Iran's cadre of nuclear technicians untouched. More important, any overt military attack would give Tehran a casus belli either to withdraw from the NPT [Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty] or rally Islamic Jihadists to wage war against the U.S. and its allies more directly." (Henry Sokolski, "Defusing Iran's Bomb," Policy Review, June/July 2005, published by the Hoover Institution).

David Isenberg of the British American Security Information Council has also cited a 2005 study by the U.S. Army War College study that reinforces this point:

"As for eliminating Iran's nuclear capabilities militarily, the United States and Israel lack sufficient targeting intelligence to do this* Compounding these difficulties is what Iran might do in response to an attack."

After being struck Tehran could declare that it must acquire nuclear weapons as a matter of self-defense, withdraw from the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and accelerate its nuclear endeavors. This would increase pressure on Israel* to acknowledge its ownership of nuclear weapons publicly, and thus set off a chain of possible nuclear policy reactions in Cairo, Damascus, Riyadh, Algiers, and Ankara." (Cited in David Isenberg, "Overstating Iran's Threat: Fears of Pending Nuclear Attack Miss Target," Defense News, February 20, 2006).

All of the above suggests that a diplomatic option is the only viable approach to persuading Iran to foreswear the development of nuclear weapons. Luckily, there is time to "give diplomacy a chance." Iran's current uranium enrichment effort is a small, pilot program that would need to be radically expanded before it would be capable of manufacturing enough uranium to build a bomb. In January the Institute for Science and Security released an issue brief indicating that Iran's current facilities are inadequate for producing bomb-grade uranium, and that in a worst case scenario it would take Iran at least three years to make a crude nuclear weapon (see citation and link below). Other analysts put the timeline on an Iranian bomb at five to 10 years.

As for the content of a diplomatic approach, there is considerable disagreement about the best course. The Bush administration is currently pushing for UN sanctions, while Security Council members Russia and China would prefer to leave the matter up to monitors from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). Some non-governmental experts have suggested allowing Iran to have a modest uranium enrichment capability under strict IAEA surveillance. Others have suggested a regional approach that would include a freeze on Israel's military nuclear activities, a reversal of the nuclear deal with India (which rewards a nuclear-armed country that has never joined the NPT) and a strengthening of IAEA safeguards, including steps to make inspections mandatory instead of voluntary.

As former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has suggested, one thing is clear:" the Bush administration should disavow any plan for regime change in Iran* In today's warped political environment, nothing strengthens a radical government more than Washington's overt antagonism. It is also common sense to presume that Iran will be less willing to cooperate in Iraq and to compromise on nuclear issues if it is being threatened with destruction." (Madeleine Albright, "Good Versus Evil Isn't a Strategy," Los Angeles Times, March 24, 2006).

We will continue to follow the Iranian nuclear issue in future editions of ATRC Update, with special emphasis on what an effective diplomatic strategy might look like.

RESOURCES ON IRAN

"Iran's Next Steps: Final Tests and the Construction of a Uranium Enrichment Plant," ISIS Issue Brief, David Albright and Corey Hinderstein, January 12, 2006. http://www.isis-online.org/publications/iran/irancascade.pdf

"Iran: Is There a Way Out of the Nuclear Impasse?" International Crisis Group, February 23, 2006 http://www.crisisgroup.org/home/index.cfm?id=3976&l=1

II. PENCILING IN THE WAR: The President's Plans Revealed

The New York Times (March 27, 2006) reveals smoking proof of what many have known all along-- the Bush administration wanted war-- not Saddam Hussein's disarmament, not regime change, certainly not building democracy or preventing terrorism.

"Our diplomatic strategy had to be arranged around the military planning," wrote David Manning, British Prime Minister Tony Blair's foreign policy adviser in a confidential memo summarizing the Blair/Bush meeting on January 31, 2003. "The start date for the military campaign was now penciled in for 10 March. This is when the bombing would begin," Manning wrote, summarizing Bush's remarks. While the memo has been referred to in books and the British news, the New York Times was the first to review the five-page document in its entirety.

Bush and Blair-- arguably the two most powerful men in the world-- envisioned a quick victory in Iraq, with a "complicated" but "not unmanageable" transition to the new Iraqi government. President Bush-- with the blithe and baseless confidence that is his hallmark -- said that it was "unlikely there would be internecine warfare between different religious and ethnic groups." He went on to estimate that the air campaign would last four days and involve 1,500 targets, while promising that the U.S. military would take "great care to avoid civilian casualties."

At least the administration is consistent in its willful ignoring of facts. Last March, Dick Cheney said that the insurgency in Iraq was in its "last throes." Asked about that assessment on March 27th, he maintained that it is still "basically accurate," despite the fact that Former Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi is calling the sectarian violence a civil war. He told the BBC earlier this week; "It is unfortunate that we are in civil war. We are losing each day as an average 50 to 60 people throughout the country, if not more. If this is not civil war, then God knows what civil war is* We are in a terrible civil conflict now."

Cheney, however, sees the fact that the attacks are growing in boldness and sophistication as an indication that the insurgency is in a "state of desperation." Huh? The facts just don't support that. The Brookings Institution finds that there were 75 attacks a day last month in Iraq-up from 54 in February 2005 and 21 in February 2004. Brookings' Iraq Index Archive, updated twice a week and full such useful and sobering information, is online at http://www.brook.edu/fp/saban/iraq/index.pdf

But, back to the memo. It makes clear that Bush and Blair knew there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. And in the most shocking portion of the memo, the two leaders discuss how to provoke a conflict with Iraq, while expressing the importance of a second resolution from the UN as -- in the words of Tony Blair-- an "insurance policy against the unexpected." In response to Blair's insistence, Bush agrees, somewhat begrudgingly. According to the memo, the President made clear that, "The United States would put its full weight behind efforts to get another resolution and would twist arms and even threaten... but he has to say that if we ultimately failed, military action would follow anyway."

The summary of the meeting shows President Bush weighing three provocative options to create a pretext for war. "The U.S. was thinking of flying U2 recon aircraft with fighter cover over Iraq painted in the UN colors. If Saddam fired on them, he would be in the breach," the President supposes. "The U.S. might be able to bring out a defector who could give public presentations about Saddam's WMDs." And finally, the President of the United States proposed assassinating Saddam Hussein.

III. PROTEST WORKS

The third anniversary of the war did not see millions of Americans in the street protesting the war, even though a solid majority (65%) disapprove of the way Bush is handling the situation in Iraq (the highest figure ever in the Newsweek polls). In the New York Times' March 20th article on how the administration was packaging the 3rd anniversary, one line jumped out: "the administration could take heart this weekend from the relatively small antiwar protests around the country, compared with protests held on previous anniversaries of the invasion." Tens of thousands turned out to mark the third anniversary, but the question on everyone's lips was where are the hundreds of thousands or millions?

Wearing her activist hat, ATRC staff member Frida Berrigan discussed this issue with New York Times columnist Clyde Haberman in his "NYC; Carnage There, But Not Much Happens Here," article on March 21: ''Except for some minor shifts, like higher gas prices, it's very, very far away,'' she said of the war. ''I think that people feel sort of hopeless. It feels very remote. It translates into irritation over the war rather than outrage.''

Despite fewer numbers in the street, John Mueller, a political scientist at Ohio State University, finds some hope in a historical comparison. In an Agence France Presse article on March 23 he notes that," with 2,000 [soldiers] dead in this war, support has dropped to the point that it took 20,000 dead in Vietnam," at the time of the Tet offensive in 1968. In other words, during the Vietnam War era- seen as the modern apex of political protest- 18,000 more Americans were killed before antiwar sentiment reached today's levels.

In Mueller's view, outrage and opposition are not translating into protest for two reasons: the absence of a draft and- perhaps more importantly- the lack of an alternative to military occupation that is understandable to the majority of Americans.

So, one of our jobs is to create and disseminate clear exit strategies-Brian Katulis, a member of the Center for American Progress' National Security Team, published a good one in the San Jose Mercury News last week: read it online at http://www.americanprogress.org/site/apps/nl/content3.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=839811&ct=2071059

Those opposed to the war should take heart and take to the streets, because, as a careful reading of the coverage of the recent protests around immigration legislation reveals* It makes a difference.

The New York Times' Rachel L. Swarns, in her March 28 article "Bill to Broaden Immigration Law Gains in Senate," credits the many hundreds of thousands of people protesting Congress' move to criminalize millions of immigrants with shifting the debate. She writes, "Lawmakers central to the immigration debate acknowledged that the televised images of tens of thousands of demonstrators, waving flags and fliers, marching in opposition to tough immigration legislation helped persuade the panel to find a bipartisan compromise."

We have another opportunity to show a strong and clear message against the war in Iraq at the end of April with United for Peace and Justice's March for Peace, Justice and Democracy. To learn more visit: http://www.april29.org/

IV. OTHER RESOURCES OF NOTE AND INTEREST

THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UNKNOWN: PMCs in Iraq This paper was written and presented by David Isenberg, BASIC Senior Analyst, at the "Guns 'N Gates: The Role of Private Security Actors in Armed Violence" Cost Action 25 Working Group 3 roundtable, held in Bonn, Germany, February 9-10, 2006, http://www.basicint.org/pubs/2006PMC.pdf

WHO'S MINDING THE STORE? The Business of Private, Public and Civil Society Actors in Zones of Conflict, Volker Bge, Christopher Fitzpatrick, Willem Jaspers and Wolf-Christian Paes, online at http://www.bicc.de/publications/briefs/brief32/brief32.pdf

COMBATING THE ILLEGAL SMALL ARMS TRADE CDI Senior Analyst Rachel Stohl discussed the U.S. effort to prevent the illicit trade of small arms, on Tuesday, March 21 on National Public Radio's Morning Edition program. "Government Turns to Arms Makers to Fight Smuggling, by Pam Fessler."

"Stemming the illicit trafficking of conventional weapons requires multiple approaches and significant cooperation from various government agencies," said Stohl. She adds that, law enforcement investigations, destruction of surplus weapons, and responsible export criteria are all "tools in our export control toolbox." You can listen to the report online at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5291844

U.S. RESTORES MILITARY AID TO INDONESIA Rights group blasts plans for expanded U.S. military cooperation with Indonesia http://www.etan.org/news/2006/03rice.htm

The United States will undermine efforts to reform Indonesia's armed forces if it sharply increases military sales to the world's most populous Muslim nation next year. "Arming the military is not the way to promote democracy and human rights in Indonesia," said Karen Orenstein, National Coordinator of New York-based East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN).

"Congress should zero out the Bush administration's unwarranted gift to Indonesia's unreformed military." The Bush administration allocated nearly $1 million dollars for military sales to Indonesia in 2006, and asked Congress for a six-fold expansion of the program next year. The move follows the U.S. decision in November to lift a six-year military embargo imposed in 1999 after troops ravaged East Timor during the territory's break from Indonesia.

For more, visit http://etan.org/ and also see in-depth reports from the ATRC on Indonesia:

Indonesia at the Crossroads: U.S. Weapons Sales and Military Training A Special Report by Frida Berrigan, October 2001 http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/indo101001.htm

U.S. Arms Transfers to Indonesia 1975-1997: Who's Influencing Whom? A Special Report by William D. Hartung, March 1997 http://www.worldpolicy.org/projects/arms/reports/indoarms.html