Gaza And The Language Of Power

By Ramzy Baroud

17 July, 2009
Countercurrents.org

Nearly six months have passed since the Israeli army ceased pounding the tiny stretch of land that is the Gaza Strip. Since then, Gaza continues to appear on the news once in a while, as a recurring subject of human misery.

The tireless efforts of British MP George Galloway, and the courageous endeavors of the Free Gaza movement have managed to push Gaza back into the spotlight, even if momentarily and with political context which is lacking at best.

Aside from that, the three-week Israeli onslaught in Gaza, starting December 27 – and the catastrophic conditions endured there – have served the purpose of a footnote in many news reports. The event is generally cited as such: “Israel moved against Hamas in Gaza to quell the firing of militants’ rockets, resulting in the death of such and such number.” Hamas, according to media conventional wisdom, is the “militant group that ousted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ forces in a bloody coup in mid 2007.”

Sadly, ones worse fears have actualized, where the post-Gaza massacre world and the one which existed prior are exactly the same. Israel is trying to prove that political and military might overpower all human rights reports combined, and that public opinion - which turned against Israel as it wantonly killed and wounded thousands – will eventually turn back in Israel’s favor. One does not need to be an expert in the art of propaganda to predict the public relations model that would allow Israel to deceive millions into believing that the belligerent state is in fact a victim in a sea of hostile Arabs hell-bent on subjugating the Jewish State. Thus it was hardly a deviation from the script when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu used a most shrewd term to depict his governments’ refusal to respect international law regarding the dismantling of Jewish settlements in the West Bank, all considered illegal under international law, specifically the Fourth Geneva Convention. He said during his recent trip to Germany that the West Bank will never be “Judenrein” a Nazi term meaning “cleansed of Jews”.

And once again, Israel is resorting to its traditional propaganda (such as equating Palestinians with Nazis), drawing on people’s historical sympathies, guilt and ignorance of false analogies.

More, Israel’s National Security Advisor Uzi Arad is in fact reviving the discredited Israeli rhetoric that Israel has no partner in peace, in comments made to Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Friday, July 10. He questioned whether there is in fact a Palestinian leadership that is capable of delivering peace with Israel. If such a Palestinian state would exist, say in 2015 – according to Arad – it would be a “fragile structure. A house of cards.” But he chose to omit that Israel purposely besieged and weakened the democratically elected Palestinian leadership in Gaza, while painstakingly propping and legitimizing Abbas. using with astounding mastery, the carrot and the stick metaphor.

Only Israel can cleverly spawn a dependent, weak leadership, and accuse the Palestinians of not being a worthy peace partner; only Israel can murder thousands of Palestinians and demand security from its very victims; only Israel can caution of a Nazi past, yet cage Palestinians in concentration camps, punish them for recklessly subscribing to the wrong God, or foolishly falling into the wrong race.

It has six months since the unprecedented and savage war against Palestinians in Gaza, and here we are making the same argument, referencing the same deceit and quoting the same outrageous claims. During those same months, unsubstantiated Israeli accounts were countered with carefully composed reports by highly regarded organizations, such as the Red Cross, among others. Bombarded Gaza neighborhoods “look like the epicenter of a massive earthquake,” said a recent Red Cross report, entitled: “Gaza: 1.5 million trapped in despair.”

UN human rights envoy, Richard Falk summed up Israeli behavior in more direct terms, on Thursday, July 9. “There will be no peace between these two peoples, until Israel shows respect for Palestinian rights under international law,” Professor Falk said.

Israeli leaders however pay no heed to international law. In fact there is little evidence that Israel’s history was shaped, in any respect, by international standards, neither those pertaining to war nor peace. Israel only understands the language of politics and power. It is a state that has been constructed, and sustained upon Machiavellian wisdom. Advisor Arad is perhaps the most visible manifestation of the logic that propels the Israeli state. In his recent interview, he demanded that once a state deal is reached with the Palestinians, Israel should be granted a NATO membership as a “quid pro quo”. To counter nuclear threats by others, he said, Israel must have “tremendously powerful weapons”. Considering that Israel already has nuclear arms, one has to wonder to what other “tremendously powerful weapons” Arad is referring. Arad must’ve been encouraged by US Vice President Joe Biden who said in a recent interview with ABC’s “This Week” that “If the Netanyahu government decides to take a course of action different than the one being pursed now (by the US and its allies), that is their sovereign right to do that.”

Once again, it is the brute logic that “might makes right” pursued by those with the bigger guns, that continues to menace the Middle East, with Gaza being the most devastating example.

One must remember that Israel never heeds to statements, and is hardly moved by reports and random condemnations. Only pressure, constant and focused, will grab the attention of Israeli policymakers. Only the language of an international campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions will translate in Tel Aviv to a legible political language. As for Gaza, civil society must not wait for President Obama or any other to save the slowly starving population, but must take every possible and urgent effort to help an oppressed yet proud community to redeem its basic rights and freedom.

- Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is, "The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle" (Pluto Press, London), and his forthcoming book is, “My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza’s Untold Story” (Pluto Press, London)

Israel’s Plan To Wipe Arabic Names Off The Map

By Jonathan Cook

17 July, 2009
Countercurrents.org

Nazareth: Thousands of road signs are the latest front in Israel’s battle to erase Arab heritage from much of the Holy Land.
Israel Katz, the transport minister, announced this week that signs on all major roads in Israel, East Jerusalem and possibly parts of the West Bank would be “standardised”, converting English and Arabic place names into straight transliterations of the Hebrew name.
Currently, road signs include the place name as it is traditionally rendered in all three languages.
Under the new scheme, the Arab identity of important Palestinian communities will be obscured: Jerusalem, or “al Quds” in Arabic, will be Hebraised to “Yerushalayim”; Nazareth, or “al Nasra” in Arabic, the city of Jesus’s childhood, will become “Natzrat”; and Jaffa, the port city after which Palestine’s oranges were named, will be “Yafo”.
Arab leaders are concerned that Mr Katz’s plan offers a foretaste of the demand by Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, that the Palestinians recognise Israel as a Jewish state.
On Wednesday, Mohammed Sabih, a senior official at the Arab League, called the initiative “racist and dangerous”.
“This decision comes in the framework of a series of steps in Israel aimed at implementing the ‘Jewish State’ slogan on the ground.”
Palestinians in Israel and Jerusalem, meanwhile, have responded with alarm to a policy they believe is designed to make them ever less visible.
Ahmed Tibi, an Arab legislator in the Israeli parliament, said: “Minister Katz is mistaken if he thinks that changing a few words can erase the existence of the Arab people or their connection to Israel.”
The transport ministry has made little effort to conceal the political motivation behind its policy of Hebraising road signs.
In announcing the move on Monday, Mr Katz, a hawkish member of Likud, Mr Netanyahu’s right-wing party, said he objected to Palestinians using the names of communities that existed before Israel’s establishment in 1948.
“I will not allow that on our signs,” he said. “This government, and certainly this minister, will not allow anyone to turn Jewish Jerusalem into Palestinian al Quds.”
Other Israeli officials have played down the political significance of Mr Katz’s decision. A transport department spokesman, Yeshaayahu Ronen, said: “The lack of uniform spelling on signs has been a problem for those speaking foreign languages, citizens and tourists alike.”
“That’s ridiculous,” responded Tareq Shehadeh, head of the Nazareth Cultural and Tourism Association. “Does the ministry really think it’s helping tourists by renaming Nazareth, one of the most famous places in the world, ‘Natzrat’, a Hebrew name only Israeli Jews recognise?”
Meron Benvenisti, a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, said Israel had begun interfering with the Arabic on the signs for East Jerusalem as soon as it occupied the city in 1967. It invented a new word, “Urshalim”, that was supposed to be the Arabic form of the Hebrew word for Jerusalem, “Yerushalayim”.
“I was among those who intervened at the time to get the word ‘al Quds’ placed on signs, too, after ‘Urshalim’ and separated by a hyphen. But over the years ‘al Quds’ was demoted to brackets and nowadays it’s not included on new signs at all.”
He said Mr Katz’s scheme would push this process even further by requiring not only the Arabic equivalent of the Hebrew word for Jerusalem, but the replication of the Hebrew spelling as well. “It’s completely chauvinistic and an insult,” he said.
Meir Margalit, a former Jerusalem councillor, said official policy was to make the Palestinian population in East Jerusalem as invisible as possible, including by ignoring their neighbourhoods on many signs.
The transport ministry’s plans for the West Bank are less clear. In his announcement Mr Katz said Palestinian-controlled areas of the territory would still be free to use proper Arabic place names. But he hinted that signs in the 60 per cent of the West Bank under Israeli military rule would be Hebraised, too.
That could mean Palestinians driving across parts of the West Bank to the Palestinian city of Nablus, for example, will have to look for the Hebrew name “Shechem” spelt out in Arabic.
Mr Benvenisti said that, after Israel’s establishment in 1948, a naming committee was given the task of erasing thousands of Arab place names, including those of hills, valleys and springs, and creating Hebrew names. The country’s first prime minister, David Ben Gurion, told the committee: “We are obliged to remove the Arabic names for reasons of state.”
In addition, the Arabic names of more than 400 Palestinian villages destroyed by Israel during and after the 1948 war were lost as Jewish communities took their place.
Israel’s surviving Palestinian minority, today one-fifth of the population, have had to battle in the courts for the inclusion of Arabic on road signs, despite Arabic being an official language.
Many signs on national highways were provided only in Hebrew and English until the courts in 1999 insisted Arabic be included. Three years later the courts ruled that Arabic must also be included on signs in cities where a significant number of Arabs live.
However, as the political climate has shifted rightward in Israel, there has been a backlash, including an unsuccessful bid by legislators to end Arabic’s status as an official language last year.
Recently the Israeli media revealed that nationalist groups have been spraying over Arabic names on road signs, especially in the Jerusalem area.
Israel has also antagonised Palestinians in both Israel and the West Bank by naming roads after right-wing figures.
The main highway in the Jordan Valley, which runs through Palestinian territory but is used by Israelis to drive between northern Israel and Jerusalem, is named “Gandhi’s Road” – not for the Indian spiritual leader but after the nickname of an Israeli general, Rehavam Zeevi, who called for the expulsion of Palestinians from Greater Israel.
Jonathan Cook is a writer and journalist based in Nazareth, Israel. His latest books are “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). His website is www.jkcook.net.
A version of this article originally appeared in The National (www.thenational.ae), published in Abu Dhabi.

Health Insurance Whistle-Blower Knows Where the Bodies Are Buried

Published on Wednesday, July 15, 2009 by TruthDig.com

by Amy Goodman

Wendell Potter is the health insurance industry's worst nightmare. He's a whistle-blower. Potter, the former chief spokesperson for insurance giant CIGNA, recently testified before Congress, "I saw how they confuse their customers and dump the sick—all so they can satisfy their Wall Street investors."

Potter was deeply involved in CIGNA and industrywide strategies for maintaining their profitable grip on U.S. health care. He told me: "The thing they fear most is a single-payer plan. They fear even the public insurance option being proposed; they'll pull out all the stops they can to defeat that to try to scare people into thinking that embracing a public health insurance option would lead down the slippery slope toward socialism ... putting a government bureaucrat between you and your doctor. They've used those talking points for years, and they've always worked."

In 2007, CIGNA denied a California teenager, Nataline Sarkisyan, coverage for a liver transplant. Her family went to the media. The California Nurses Association joined in. Under mounting pressure, CIGNA finally granted coverage for the procedure. But it was too late. Two hours later, Nataline died.

While visiting family in Tennessee, Potter stopped at a "medical expedition" in Wise, Va. People drove hours for free care from temporary clinics set up in animal stalls at the local fairground. Potter told me that weeks later, flying on a CIGNA corporate jet with the CEO: "I realized that someone's premiums were helping me to travel that way ... paying for my lunch on gold-trimmed china. I thought about those men and women I had seen in Wise County ... not having any idea [how] insurance executives lived." He decided he couldn't be an industry PR hack anymore.

Insurance executives and their Wall Street investors are addicted to massive profits and double-digit annual rate increases. To squeeze more profit, Potter says, if a person makes a major claim for coverage, the insurer will often scrutinize the person's original application, looking for any error that would allow it to cancel the policy. Likewise, if a small company's employees make too many claims, the insurer, Potter says, "very likely will jack up the rates so much that your employer has no alternative but to leave you and your co-workers without insurance."

This week, as the House and Senate introduce their health care bills, Potter warns, "One thing to remember is that the health insurance industry has been anticipating this debate on health care for many years ... they've been positioning themselves to get very close to influential members of Congress in both parties." Montana Sen. Max Baucus chairs the Senate Finance Committee, key for health care reform. Potter went on, "[T]he insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry and others in health care have donated ... millions of dollars to his campaigns over the past few years. But aside from money, it's relationships that count ... the insurance industry has hired scores and scores of lobbyists, many of whom have worked for members of Congress, and some who are former members of Congress."

The insurance industry and other health care interests are lobbying hard against a government-sponsored, nonprofit, public health insurance option, and are spending, according to The Washington Post, up to $1.4 million per day to sway Congress and public opinion.

Don't be fooled. Profit-driven insurance claim denials actually kill people, and Wendell Potter knows where the bodies are buried. His whistle-blowing may be just what's needed to dump what's sick in our health care system.
Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column.

© 2009 Amy Goodman

Amy Goodman is the host of "Democracy Now!," a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on more than 750 stations in North America. She is the co-author of "Standing Up to the Madness: Ordinary Heroes in Extraordinary Times," recently released in paperback.

Will Iraq Be a Global Gas Pump?

Published on Wednesday, July 15, 2009 by TomDispatch.com

The (Re)Making of a Petro-State

by Michael T. Klare

Has it all come to this? The wars and invasions, the death and destruction, the exile and torture, the resistance and collapse? In a world of shrinking energy reserves, is Iraq finally fated to become what it was going to be anyway, even before the chaos and catastrophe set in: a giant gas pump for an energy-starved planet? Will it all end not with a bang, but with a gusher? The latest oil news out of that country offers at least a hint of Iraq's fate.

For modern Iraq, oil has always been at the heart of everything. Its very existence as a unified state is largely the product of oil.

In 1920, under the aegis of the League of Nations, Britain cobbled together the Kingdom of Iraq from the Ottoman provinces of Basra, Baghdad, and Mosul in order to better exploit the holdings of the Turkish Petroleum Company, forerunner of the Iraq Petroleum Company (IPC). Later, Iraqi nationalists and the Baath Party of Saddam Hussein nationalized the IPC, provoking unrelenting British and American hostility. Hussein rewarded his Sunni allies in the Baath Party by giving them lucrative positions in the state company, part of a process that produced a dangerous rift with the country's Shiite majority. And these are but a few of the ways in which modern Iraqi history has been governed by oil.

Iraq is, of course, one of the world's great hydrocarbon preserves. According to oil giant BP, it harbors proven oil reserves of 115 billion barrels -- more than any country except Saudi Arabia (with 264 billion barrels) and Iran (with 138 billion). Many analysts, however, believe that Iraq has been inadequately explored, and that the utilization of modern search technologies will yield additional reserves in the range of 45 to 100 billion barrels. If all its reserves, known and suspected, were developed to their full potential, Iraq could add as much as six to eight million barrels per day to international output, postponing the inevitable arrival of peak oil and a contraction in global energy supplies.

Nailing Down the Energy Heartland of the Planet

Iraq's great hydrocarbon promise has been continually thwarted by war, foreign intervention, sanctions, internal disorder, corruption, and plain old ineptitude. Saddam Hussein did succeed for a time in elevating oil output, in the process raising national income and creating a well-educated middle class. However, his ill-conceived invasions of Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990 led to devastating attacks on Iraqi oil facilities, as well as trade embargoes and crippling debt, erasing much of his country's previous economic gains. The trade sanctions imposed by Presidents George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton in the wake of the First Gulf War only further eroded the country's oil-production capacity.

When President George W. Bush launched the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, his overarching goals all revolved around the geopolitics of oil. He and his top officials were intent on replacing Saddam Hussein's regime with one that would prove friendly to American oil interests. They also imagined that, greeted as liberators by a grateful population, they would preside over a radical upgrading of Iraq's petroleum capacity, thereby ensuring adequate supplies for American consumers at an affordable price. Finally, by building and manning a constellation of major military bases in a grateful Iraq, they saw themselves ensuring continued American dominance over the oil-soaked Persian Gulf region, and so the energy heartland of the planet.

All of this, of course, proved to be a mirage. The U.S. invasion and ensuing occupation policies provoked a bitter Sunni insurgency that quickly overshadowed all other American concerns, including oil. As a result, no matter how much money they poured into the task, the Bush administration and its Baghdad agents found themselves incapable of boosting petroleum output even to the levels of the worst days of Saddam Hussein's regime -- and so their plans to use oil revenues to pay for the war, the occupation, and the reconstruction of the country all vanished into thin air.

The data provided by BP on yearly production tallies cannot be starker when it comes to the impact on oil output of the insurgency, rampant corruption, the loss of the nation's oil professionals (many of whom fled into exile amid sectarian warfare), and other related factors. Prior to the American invasion, Iraq was pumping 2.6 million barrels of oil per day, already significantly below its pre-invasion peak of 3.5 million barrels per day. In the first year of the ill-starred U.S. occupation, production quickly plunged to a paltry 1.3 million barrels per day. Only in 2007 did it finally top the two million mark and, with improved security, 2.4 million in 2008. Assuming conditions continue to improve, Iraqi output could, for the first time, exceed pre-invasion levels, though barely, in 2009 or 2010 -- six years or more after Baghdad fell to American forces.

A Sea Change in Iraqi Oil Production?

Until recently, most analysts assumed that Iraq would continue, at best, to make modest progress in its efforts to increase daily output. There were too many obstacles, it was argued, to achieve dramatic breakthroughs. These included continued insurgent attacks on pipelines and production facilities; corruption in the Oil Ministry and major energy production enterprises; the failure of parliament to adopt a national hydrocarbons law; differences between the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG) and the central government over who has the right to award what sort of oil contracts in Kurdish-controlled territories; and the reluctance of major foreign oil firms to venture into, or invest in a major way in such a dangerous and unstable place.

Recently, however, the Oil Ministry has made noticeable progress in overcoming at least some of these obstacles. Under the leadership of Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani, a former nuclear scientist who was jailed and tortured by Saddam Hussein for refusing to assist in the development of nuclear weapons, corruption has been substantially reduced and various production bottlenecks eliminated. Shahristani has also won support from Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki for the participation of foreign firms in the development of Iraqi oil fields, even though this has alienated many in Iraq who oppose any such involvement. Once derided for ineptitude, the Oil Ministry is beginning to be viewed as a functioning, professional operation.

As a result, there are clear indications that Iraq's oil industry could be poised for a major turnaround. Among the most significant recent developments:

* Late last year, Iraq's state-owned North Oil Company signed a $3.5 billion, 20-year service contract with the Chinese National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC) to develop the Adhab oil field in Wasit province, southeast of Baghdad. Originally negotiated under the Saddam Hussein regime, the deal was put on hold after the 2003 invasion and only given final approval in November 2008. This is the first major contract the government in Baghdad has signed with a foreign oil firm since the Iraq Petroleum Company was nationalized in the 1970s. It also represents the first significant investment by a company from China in Iraq. Under the agreement, CNPC and its partners will develop the Adhab field and deliver all resulting crude oil to state refineries; as the field's main operator, CNPC will be paid a fee by the Iraqi government for its engineering work and all delivered petroleum.

* In May, the Oil Ministry reached an accord with the Kurdistan Regional Government that, for the first time, will allow the Kurds to export oil from fields under their control. Previously, the Baghdad government had refused to recognize any contracts signed by the KRG with private oil firms to develop fields in their territory and had prevented the Kurds from exporting oil from these fields through pipelines controlled by the central government. Under the accord, the KRG will initially be allowed to export 100,000 barrels per day from the Tawke and Taq Taq fields, with higher rates expected in the future; 73% of the resulting revenues will go to the central government, 15% to the Kurds, and 12% to the foreign oil companies that signed production contracts directly with the KRG, bypassing the central government in Baghdad. This agreement paves the way for a significant increase in output from Kurdish-controlled areas, which are thought to hold substantial reserves of untapped petroleum.

* In June, the Oil Ministry conducted its first auction of rights to operate existing fields in the country's major producing areas. This represented a major -- even staggering -- shift in policy, opening the door for the first time in three decades to the participation of major international oil companies in the operation -- if not the ownership -- of the country's nationalized oil fields. Although opposed by many key groups in Iraq, ranging from the oil workers' union to significant factions in parliament, the move was taken to secure outside expertise in modernizing and upgrading the country's crumbling oil infrastructure, thereby boosting output in a country that still relies on oil for more than 75% of its gross domestic product and about 95% of its revenues. In fact, many foreign companies chose not to bid in the auction's opening round, finding the returns being offered insufficiently attractive. Nevertheless, one Western firm, BP, won the right (in partnership with CNPC) to operate the giant Rumaila field, Iraq's largest. The Oil Ministry has since indicated that it will conduct additional auctions, including one for the right to explore for oil, on terms as yet unrevealed, in the country's undeveloped south and west -- possibly laying the groundwork for significantly more intrusive participation by foreign firms.

Taken together, these steps -- aimed at securing the necessary external financing and expertise to achieve a significant boost in production -- represent a genuine sea change in the way the Oil Ministry has been overseeing the country's hydrocarbons industry. If all goes as planned, it intends to increase output by 1.5 million barrels per day, and another four to five million barrels by 2017. These efforts, if successful (and given recent history, that remains a big "if"), would place Iraq among the world's top four or five oil producers, along with Saudi Arabia, Russia, and the United States.

A New Petro-State Servicing the Global Economy?

No one should underestimate the potential obstacles in the way of this objective. Any number of factors -- a rise in opposition to giving away any part of the national "patrimony" to foreigners, a significant increase in insurgent violence, heightened factional fighting in Baghdad, a sharpening of tension between Baghdad and the Kurds, an increase in corruption -- could prevent the realization of these ambitious goals. Moreover, pending the passage of a national oil and gas law (a goal pursued by U.S. officials for years), the major foreign oil companies will remain reluctant to sink too much money into Iraq, fearful that their assets will not be protected.

Nevertheless, it appears that, for the first time since the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980, the stars in the energy firmament are aligning in ways that may favor Iraq's reemergence as a major oil producer. Whereas the major powers once competed among themselves for influence in Iraq or backed one or another of Iraq's local rivals in efforts to weaken or contain that country, all now seem inclined to invest in, and benefit from, the reconstruction of its energy infrastructure. The Bush administration, which looked with alarm at Saddam Hussein's growing ties to Russia and China, invaded the country in part to reassert American dominance in the Persian Gulf region and diminish the role played by Moscow and Beijing. Today, Washington appears to welcome the growing role of Chinese and Russian firms in the rehabilitation of Iraq's dilapidated energy infrastructure.

It's a reasonable assumption that behind this unprecedented shift lies an acknowledgement of the inescapable reality of peak oil. As things stand now, the world will soon reach a maximum level of sustainable daily oil output, followed by an inevitable contraction in available supplies. Many experts believe that the peak in conventional (liquid) oil output is likely to occur in the very near future, perhaps in the 2010-2015 timeframe, with global output topping out about 5 to 10 million barrels per day higher than today's 85 million barrels.

Hitting the peak moment in that timeframe, and at that level, would prove devastating to the world economy, as global energy demand is expected to climb far higher, thanks to rising consumption patterns in China, India, and other dynamos of the developing world. It's not hard, then, to do the math. An addition of perhaps six million supplemental barrels per day from Iraq would make a striking difference in the energy equation. In fact, it might prove the difference between squeaking by and a catastrophic worldwide shortage. Under such circumstances, it is understandable that -- no matter what their governments felt about the Bush administration's invasion and occupation of Iraq -- the major powers now share a common interest in facilitating that country's recovery as a major oil exporter.

For devastated Iraq, of course, these last years were a disaster and real reconstruction of the country still remains a long way off. For the United States, gone are expectations of converting Iraq into a model Middle Eastern democracy, or of inserting a Western-trained, pro-U.S. regime in Baghdad. Nor is there any expectation that the state-owned Iraq National Oil Company will be completely privatized -- once the dream of Bush-era neocons. Nonetheless, the (re)emergence of a functioning Iraqi petro-state working closely with foreign energy firms to boost global oil supplies (with American troops, whether based in Iraq or neighboring countries, providing ultimate security) would be an outcome that could be sold to Congress and, presumably, a majority of the American public.

Within Iraq itself, conditions may favor such an outcome. Although various Iraqi factions have enormous differences, all recognize that their future prosperity rests on the successful development of the nation's hydrocarbon reserves. While Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds may each hope to benefit disproportionately from this great treasure, they all realize that some degree of cooperation -- for example, in the construction and maintenance of export facilities -- is essential to their ambitions, however disparate. While the bargaining over the terms of cooperation may seem endless, and violence may sometimes accompany these negotiations, it is likely that some sort of collaborative structure will, in the end, emerge. A gradual drawdown, if not total departure, of American forces will, in all likelihood, only accelerate this process.

So it has finally come to this dismal possible end point: after all the blood and tears, all the death and destruction, almost all interested parties seem to be returning to the only vision of the country, however depressing, that has demonstrated any viability. In the future, Iraq is likely to be an oil-fueled petro-state with no function other than to service global markets and enrich local elites as well as the technocrats that assist them. This may be not be an inspiring vision -- especially for Iraqis who have suffered so much -- but it might possibly be the only reality available that will circumvent the horrific bloodletting of the past 30 years.

Copyright 2009 Michael T. Klare

Michael T. Klare is a professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He is the author, most recently, of Rising Powers, Shrinking Planet: The New Geopolitics of Energy (Henry Holt). A documentary movie of his previous book, "Blood and Oil," is available at bloodandoilmovie.com.

The Democrats' Selective Amnesia on Assassination: Clinton Did It and Obama Does It Too

Published on Wednesday, July 15, 2009 by RebelReports

While the focus is on Dick Cheney’s role, the U.S. has long had a bi-partisan assassination program.

by Jeremy Scahill

Members of Congress have expressed outrage over the "secret" CIA assassination program that former vice president Dick Cheney allegedly ordered concealed from Congress. But this program-and the media descriptions of it-sounds a lot like the assassination policy implemented by President Bill Clinton, particularly during his second term in office.

Partisan politics often require selective amnesia. Over the past decade, we have seen this amnesia take hold when it comes to many of President Bush's most vile policies. And we are now seeing a pretty severe case overtake several leading Democrats. It makes for good speechifying to act as though all criminality began with Bush and-particularly these days-Cheney, but that is extreme intellectual dishonesty. The fact is that many of Bush's worst policies (now being highlighted by leading Democrats) were based in some form or another in a Clinton-initiated policy or were supported by the Democrats in Congress with their votes. To name a few: the USA PATRIOT Act, the invasion of Iraq, the attack against Afghanistan, the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, the widespread use of mercenaries and other private contractors in US war zones and warrant-less wire-tapping.

Regarding the Bush-era assassination program, there is great reason to be skeptical that the program CIA Director Leon Panetta alleges was concealed from Congress is actually the program the public is currently being led to believe it is. Why would the CIA need to conceal a program that never was implemented and, if it never was implemented, why did Panetta need to shut it down? Moreover, who was running this inactive program from the minute Obama was sworn in until June 24 when Panetta supposedly announced its cancellation? This program-as it is currently being described- should hardly be a major scandal to members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, as some are now treating it. As they well know, President Obama has continued the Bush targeted assassination program using weaponized drones and special forces teams hunting "high value targets." As former CIA Counter-terrorism chief Vincent Cannistraro and others have pointed out, "The CIA runs drones and targets al Qaeda safe houses all the time." Cannistraro told Talking Points Memo that there is no important difference between those kinds of attacks and "assassinations" with a gun or a knife.

Now, if it turns out that the actual plan Cheney allegedly concealed is something other than what has been publicly described, that will be a different matter. For instance, if the CIA had a secret post-9/11 program planning assassinations on US soil or of US citizens and it was ordered concealed by Cheney. Or, if it was a plan to target in other ways "enemies of the state" within the U.S. as Seymour Hersh has suggested: "The Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state," Hersh said in March. "Without any legal authority for it. They haven't been called on it yet. That does happen."

Let's look at the program the Democrats claim was kept secret. The Bush administration reportedly authorized the CIA to use small paramilitary teams to hunt down and assassinate "al Qaeda" leaders around the world. It is currently being reported that this plan was never implemented and was born after 9/11. Both of these assertions are very, very doubtful.

The plan, as currently described in the press and by Democrats, is one that continues to exist under the Obama administration right now. In fact, this program has been part of official U.S. policy-under Democratic and Republican administrations-for decades.

By way of background, there is technically a U.S. ban on assassination that dates back to President Ford in 1976. "No employee of the United States Government shall engage in, or conspire to engage in, political assassination," states Executive Order 11905. That was then updated by President Carter who dropped the term "political" simply prohibiting "assassination." The current Executive Order, 12333, was signed by president Reagan in 1981 and has remained on the books through every administration since. What is brutally ironic about Reagan signing this ban was that he authorized repeated assassinations, notably the 1986 attempt on Col. Moammar Gadhafi, which failed to kill Gadhafi but instead killed his infant daughter. But in that brutal apparent contradiction is the truth: the U.S. does not have a ban on assassinations as long as government lawyers can figure out some legal acrobats for the president to use in sidelining the ban. Every president from Reagan to Obama has reserved the right to assassinate kill "terrorists" by claiming it as a military operation or a preemptive strike.

It is pretty clear that when the Bush administration took over, it picked up the Clinton administration's policy on assassination and ran with it-albeit with more of a missionary zeal for killing and a removal of some of the layers of lawyering. In short, the Bush team expanded and streamlined the longstanding U.S. government assassination program.

Throughout the 1990s, the question of covert assassinations was a source of major discussion within the Clinton White House and it is clear assassinations were attempted with presidential approval. Newsweek magazine reported on how, in 1995, U.S. Special Forces facilitated the assassination of a Libyan "terrorist" in Bosnia, saying, "American authorities justified the assassination under a little-known 1993 ‘lethal finding' signed by President Bill Clinton that gave permission to target terrorists." A former senior Clinton official speaking shortly after 9/11 called on the Bush administration not to escalate the U.S. assassination program, saying "We have a war on drugs, too, but we don't kill drug lords." But then, with no apparent sense of contradiction, the official added, "we have proxies who do."

Clinton-era officials' attempt to hide behind "proxies" is a stunning trampling of the assassination ban as it currently exists. Not only does it ban U.S. government personnel from engaging in or conspiring to engage in "assassination," it also bans "Indirect Participation," stating: "No agency of the Intelligence Community shall participate in or request any person to undertake activities forbidden by this Order."

The truth is, under Clinton, it wasn't just proxies authorized to do the assassinations.

The Clinton White House worked for years with the CIA to craft an assassination policy-specifically relating to "al Qaeda" in general and Osama bin-Laden and his top deputies specifically. CIA operatives like Billy Waugh complained in the early and middle years of the Clinton presidencies that they were lawyered to death by Clinton's attorneys in their attempts to get the green light to kill bin Laden in Sudan. "[I]n the early 1990s we were forced to adhere to the sanctimonious legal counsel and the do-gooders," recalled Waugh. Among Waugh's rejected ideas was an alleged plot to kill bin Laden in Khartoum, Sudan and dump his body at the Iranian Eembassy in an effort to pin the blame on Tehran. Eventually, however, Clinton did authorize what amounted to assassination squads to hunt down and kill bin Laden and other "al Qaeda leaders." That happened officially in 1998 with Clinton's signing of a Memorandum of Notification authorizing the CIA to carry out covert assassinations. George W Bush was not the president and Dick Cheney was not the vice president. Of course, current CIA Director Leon Panetta was Clinton's chief of staff from 1994 to 1997 and would have been party to years worth of discussion on this issue when Clinton was president.

Under Clinton, the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel issued secret rulings stating that the Ford/Reagan ban on assassinations did not apply to "military targets or "to attacks carried out in preemptive self-defense," according to Steve Coll, Pulitzer-Prize winning author of Ghost Wars.

Shortly after 9/11, Clinton stated this position publicly, supporting the Bush administration's "war on terror" targeted assassination policy, saying on NBC News, "The ban that was put in effect under President Ford only applies to heads of state. It doesn't apply to terrorists." That is a stunning statement that is a true legal stretch given the explicit language of the ban. Moreover, Clinton did, in fact, try to kill a head of state on April 22, 1999, when he ordered a NATO airstrike on the home of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Clinton and Gen. Wesley Clark also authorized an assassination attempt on Serbian Information Minister, Aleksander Vucic, bombing Radio Television Serbia when Vucic was scheduled to appear via satellite on CNN's "Larry King Live." Vucic was not killed, but 16 media workers were.

Clinton also publicly acknowledged his own administration's attempt to assassinate bin Laden. "I worked hard to try to kill him," Clinton said. "I authorized a finding for the CIA to kill him. We contracted with people to kill him. I got closer to killing him than anybody has gotten since." Clinton's National Security Advisor Sandy Berger said after Clinton issued his 1998 "lethal finding," U.S. operatives worked with Afghan rebels for two years in an attempt to kill Bin Laden. "There were a few points when the pulse quickened, when we thought we were close," Berger later recalled. Among the alleged attempts on bin Laden's life taken by Clinton was the 1998 bombing of Afghanistan (which was coupled with a massive strike on the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan).

As Coll observed of the Clinton policy: "Clinton had demonstrated his willingness to kill bin Laden, without any pretense of seeking his arrest."

After 9/11, the CIA, which had been frustrated by some of the hurdles to assassination posed by the Clinton administration's legal team, now had the conditions and the commander-in-chief it needed to take its assassination program to the next level. The main operations were run out of the CIA's Counter-Terrorism Center (CTC) headed by J. Cofer Black, who had served as Clinton's CIA station chief in Sudan when bin Laden was there in the 1990s. After 9/11, Black's division at the CIA was authorized by President Bush -with the consent of Congress-to hunt down bin Laden and others alleged to be responsible for 9/11. As I describe in my book, Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army:

Before the core CIA team, Jawbreaker, deployed [to Afghanistan] on September 27, 2001, Black gave his men direct and macabre directions. "Gentlemen, I want to give you your marching orders, and I want to make them very clear. I have discussed this with the President, and he is in full agreement," Black told covert CIA operative Gary Schroen. "I don't want bin Laden and his thugs captured, I want them dead... . They must be killed. I want to see photos of their heads on pikes. I want bin Laden's head shipped back in a box filled with dry ice. I want to be able to show bin Laden's head to the President. I promised him I would do that." Schroen said it was the first time in his thirty-year career he had been ordered to assassinate an adversary rather than attempting a capture. Black asked if he had made himself clear. "Perfectly clear, Cofer," Schroen told him. "I don't know where we'll find dry ice out there in Afghanistan, but I think we can certainly manufacture pikes in the field." Black later explained why this would be necessary. "You'd need some DNA," Black said. "There's a good way to do it. Take a machete, and whack off his head, and you'll get a bucketful of DNA, so you can see it and test it. It beats lugging the whole body back!"

The actions of the teams run by Cofer Black were certainly known to Congress. In fact, Black himself testified in front of Congress in 2002 about what he called the new "operational flexibility" being employed in the "war on terror." "This is a very highly classified area, but I have to say that all you need to know: There was a before 9/11, and there was an after 9/11," Black said. "After 9/11 the gloves come off." By 2004, Black claimed that "over 70 percent" of Al Qaeda's leadership had been arrested, detained, or killed, and "more than 3,400 of their operatives and supporters have also been detained and put out of an action." The existence of this program is not secret. It has been documented in books by former CIA operatives, is discussed in public speeches by former officials and is a reflected extensively in the Congressional record.

Obviously, the House and Senate Intelligence Committees should investigate the assassination policy under the Bush administration. Cheney's role is central to that. Prosecutors should also be authorized to do the same. If there is a nefarious program that the public is unaware of and was unlawfully concealed, it should be brought out into the light. But, the truth is that a real investigation-one that actually seeks to get to the broader truths of these matters- would require investigating the current assassination program under Obama and the roots of the program that preceded the day when George W Bush took power. That means looking at the Clinton White House and further back. It means looking at both Democratic and Republican assassination teams. The sad fact is that nobody on Capitol Hill has demonstrated in any way that they have the political courage to do that.

© 2009 Jeremy Scahill

Jeremy Scahill is the author of the New York Times bestseller Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army. He is currently a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow at the Nation Institute.

Cheney Sweats Out the Summer

Published on Wednesday, July 15, 2009 by CommonDreams.org

by Ray McGovern

So far the summer has been mild in the Washington, D.C., area. But for former Vice President Dick Cheney the temperature is well over 100 degrees. He is sweating profusely, and it is becoming increasingly clear why.
Cheney has broken openly with former President George W. Bush on one issue of transcendent importance — to Cheney. For whatever reason, Bush decided not to hand out blanket pardons before they both rode off
into the sunset.
Cheney has complained bitterly that his former chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, should have been pardoned, rather than simply having his jail sentence “commuted.”  The former Vice President told the press that Bush left Libby "sort of hanging in the wind" by refusing to issue Libby a pardon before Bush left office. Libby had been convicted of perjury, obstruction of justice, and lying to federal agents investigating the leak of a former CIA operations officer's identity.
"I believe firmly that Scooter was unjustly accused and prosecuted and deserved a pardon, and the President disagreed with that," Cheney said. He would disclose no details of his efforts to lobby Bush on Libby's behalf, saying they would be "best left to history."
It is getting close to history time. You do not need to be a cracker-jack analyst to understand that Cheney is feeling betrayed — that he is thinking not of Libby, but of himself, and fearing that, if our system of justice works, he could be in for some serious, uncommuted jail time.
His situation has grown pathetic. Aside from the man himself, it has fallen almost solely to faithful daughter Liz to defend her dad and to start a political backfire to keep him out of prison. She is to be admired for her faithfulness. In the process, though, she has unwittingly given much away.
Liz on the Offensive
On Washington Times’ “America’s Morning News” radio program Monday, Liz acted again as designated hitter, responding to the recent New York Times report that her father had given “direct orders” to the CIA to withhold “information about a secret counterterrorism program for eight years.”  Not for the first time, Liz Cheney disclosed what has her father so worried and agitated. She said he is “very angry” over recent press reports that Attorney General Eric Holder may be about to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate the Bush administration’s interrogation practices.
She branded this “shameful” — worse still, “un-American.” Not the interrogation practices, mind you, but the notion that her father should be held to account for them.
Typically, Ms. Cheney did well in sticking closely to her talking points, arguing that the issue is “somebody taking office and then starting to prosecute people who carried out policies that they disagreed with, you know, in the previous administration.”  As if unprecedented decisions to torture, in violation of international law and the War Crimes Act of 1996, can be accurately described as “policies” over which there can be honest disagreement. This is about crimes, not “policies.”
Pulling out all the stops, Ms. Cheney worried aloud over what this does to “morale at the CIA,” where the practitioners of what Bush called “an alternative set of procedures” for interrogation were told they were acting with the blessing of the Justice Department. Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity addressed that bromide frontally on April 29, 2009, in a Memorandum to our new President. (See http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/042909e.html of  April 29, 2009.)
Liz Cheney went on to argue that this could in the future inhibit CIA functionaries from various actions, out of fear of criminal liability. (Not a bad idea, it seems to me.)
The Decider
What has pretty much escaped notice in the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) is that the former Vice President has also reminded us all that President Bush was the “decider.”  That unusual word sounded quite macho as Bush strutted around and about reminding us regularly that he was also “commander in chief.” But now, it could be the kiss of death — for Bush, as well as for Cheney.
Here’s what Cheney allowed himself to tell Face the Nation’s Bob Schieffer about “enhanced interrogation techniques” on May 10:
SCHIEFFER: How much did President Bush know specifically about the methods that were being used? We know that you – and you have said – that you approved this…
CHENEY: Right.
SCHIEFFER: … somewhere down the line. Did President Bush know everything you knew?
CHENEY: I certainly, yes, have every reason to believe he knew — he knew a great deal about the program. He basically authorized it. I mean, this was a presidential-level decision. And the decision went to the President. He signed off on it.
Small wonder that Republicans are wincing, although the winces have been largely suppressed. The Washington Post reported recently that many Republicans now consider Cheney a major problem, but cannot say so.
The Post quoted one Republican strategist on the Cheney dilemma: “He continues to be a force among many members of our base, and while he is entirely unhelpful, no one has the standing to show him the door."
Spending four days in Dallas last week, I learned that George W. Bush continues to be a lofty hero among many folks there — with the notable exception of the hardy activists of the Dallas Peace Center and Code Pink.  Hefty donations keep pouring in for his library and institute, and any “mistakes” that may have been made during the Bush/Cheney administration are laid at the door of the former Vice President.
Leading Republicans are passionate about this. And the phenomenon is not limited to Dallas. Cheney is smart enough to know that he, too, may soon be “sort of hanging in the wind” along with his former subordinate, Libby.
It’s Also About “Fixing” Intelligence
Approval of torture, assassination, warrantless eavesdropping — hey, there is quite enough to go on, and increasing signs that Cheney will be called on the carpet.
What we have been focusing on, however, glosses over Cheney’s key role in purveying lies to get our representatives in Congress to approve a war that qualifies for what the post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal called the “supreme international crime” — a war of aggression.
We Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) were on to Cheney very early. Exactly six years ago, we took the unusual step of sending a formal recommendation to President Bush that he “ask for Cheney’s immediate resignation.”  (See http://www.consortiumnews.com/2009/042909e.html.)
Our unprecedented appeal even caught the eye of the FCM, since our Memorandum for the President reviewed some of the deceit engineered by the Vice President in concocting a rationale for war on Iraq and leading the cheerleading for it.
We noted that Cheney, skilled at preemption, had stolen a march on his vacationing colleagues by launching, in a major speech on Aug. 26, 2002, a meretricious campaign to persuade Congress and the American people that Iraq was about to acquire nuclear weapons.  That campaign mushroomed, literally, in early October, with Bush and senior advisers raising the specter of a “mushroom cloud” threatening our cities. On the inside of the synthetic clouds one could almost read the label — “manufactured out of thin air in the Office of the Vice President.”
In his memoir, the pitiable former CIA Director George Tenet complains that Cheney’s assertion that Iraq would acquire nuclear weapons “fairly soon” did not square with the intelligence community’s assessment.  Tenet adds, “I was surprised when I read about Cheney’s assertion that, ‘Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.’”
Tenet whines that the Vice President did not send him a copy of the speech for clearance. But the malleable CIA director quickly got over it, and told CIA analysts to compose the kind of National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that would provide ex post facto support for Cheney’s bogus assertions. Just what Cheney (and Bush) ordered.
Tenet explains lamely, “I should have told the Vice President privately that, in my view, his speech had gone too far ... and not let silence imply agreement.”
Yes, George; and you should have resisted White House pressure for a dishonest NIE to grease the skids to unnecessary war.
In fact Cheney, as well as Tenet, knew very well that Cheney’s assertions were lies.
How? Saddam’s son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, whom Saddam had put in charge of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons, as well as missile development, told the United States when he defected in mid-1995 that all (that’s right, all) such weapons had been destroyed at his order by the summer of 1991.
And in mid-2002, the Iraqi foreign minister, whom CIA operatives had recruited and persuaded to remain in place, was telling us the same thing.
Unwelcome Intelligence
When they briefed the President and his senior advisers on this, CIA operations officers were astonished to learn first-hand that this intelligence was unwelcome.  These officers, who had used every trick in the book to “turn” the foreign minister and get him working for us, were told that further reporting from this source was not needed: “This isn’t about intel anymore. This is about regime change,” they were told.
Tenet was hardly astonished at reports of the non-existence of WMD. From documentary evidence in the Downing Street Minutes we know that Tenet on July 20, 2002, told the chief of British intelligence that the intelligence was being “fixed” around the policy.  And former UN inspectors like Scott Ritter could verify that some 90 percent of the WMD Iraq earlier possessed had been destroyed — some during the Gulf War in 1991, but most as a result of the inspections conducted by the UN.
The reporting from Hussein Kamel and the Iraqi foreign minister, sources with excellent access, was suppressed in favor of “evidence” — from forgeries, for example, like the infamous Iraq-Niger yellowcake report.  When finally U.S. officials were forced to concede that the Iraq-Niger information was based on a forgery, lawmakers like Rep. Henry Waxman, D-California, protested loudly — but too late.
Three days before President Bush let slip the dogs of war, NBC’s Tim Russert braced Cheney with the assertion by the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) that Saddam Hussein did not have a nuclear weapons program.
Cheney strongly disagreed and claimed support for his view from the CIA and other parts of the intelligence community. He even ratcheted up his bogus assessment of Iraq’s nuclear capability: “We believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.”
We? Maybe his wife, Lynne, and Liz were on board for that judgment; few others believed it.
Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni, retired CENTCOM commander but still enjoying access to the most sensitive information on Iraq, was sitting in the audience on Aug. 26, 2002, and later described himself as astonished at the way Cheney hyped the Iraqi threat.  And the most knowledgeable analysts — those who knew Iraq and nuclear weapons — scoffed at Cheney’s faith-based intelligence.
In our July 14, 2003, appeal to President Bush to ask for Cheney’s resignation, we warned of the likelihood that intelligence analysts would conclude that the best way to climb the ladder of success is to acquiesce in the cooking or “fixing” of their judgments, since neither senior nor junior officials would ever be held accountable.
This remains as acute a concern as the tolerance for torture and the like.
We shall have to demand that Attorney General Eric Holder do his duty and move quickly to start the process to hold accountable those responsible for dragging our country down into a moral abyss.
This article appeared originally on Consortiumnews.com.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. During his career as a CIA analyst, he prepared and briefed the President's Daily Brief and chaired National Intelligence Estimates. He is a member of the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

July Equals Deadliest Month of Afghan War

Published on Wednesday, July 15, 2009 by Reuters

by Peter Graff

KABUL - The death toll for foreign troops in Afghanistan halfway through July equaled the highest for any month of the eight-year-old war, tallies showed on Wednesday, as a U.S. escalation has met unprecedented violence.

Mourners react as a procession of hearses carrying the bodies of eight British soldiers killed in Afghanistan in travels through the streets of Wootton Bassett, in Wiltshire on July 14. At least 43 foreign troops have died so far this month in Afghanistan, compared to two in Iraq, according to the independent www.icasualties.org website. (AFP/Carl de Souza)

Authorities announced a U.S. soldier had been killed by a bomb and two Turks had died in a road accident, raising the toll of U.S. and allied foreign fatalities in the first half of July to 46, equal to full month highs set in August and June 2008.

In the two weeks since U.S. and British troops launched massive assaults, Western troops have died at an average rate of three a day, nearing the tempo of the bloodiest days in Iraq and almost 20 times the rate in Afghanistan from 2001-04.

The soaring death toll was an outcome of U.S. President Barack Obama's escalation strategy, one that commanders say they predicted ahead of a decisive summer.

"It is something we did anticipate occurring as we extend our influence in the south," U.S. Rear Admiral Greg Smith, spokesman for U.S. and NATO forces, said of the increased violence.

"You're seeing a pretty intensive set of objectives being met in terms of routing the insurgents away from the population. The insurgents in many areas are pretty well entrenched."

He added that the increased violence is likely to continue for several months at least, with the last of the U.S. reinforcements not expected to fully deploy until September.

Obama, who long accused predecessor George W. Bush of ignoring Afghanistan to fight what Obama called an unnecessary war in Iraq, has diverted thousands of troops to Afghanistan as he draws them down from Iraq.

In all, 2009 will see U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan more than double from 32,000 to 68,000, along with 36,000 troops from other Western allies.

"SURGE" TACTICS

The new troops are rapidly being sent to small outposts in towns and villages, mirroring some tactics of the "surge" of additional forces that Bush ordered in Iraq in 2007, which saw months of sharply increased U.S. losses before violence declined.

U.S. commanders do not use the term "surge" to refer to the reinforcements in Afghanistan because the increase is indefinite, not for a limited time as Bush ordered in Iraq.

But they say they are employing counter-insurgency tactics which proved successful in Iraq: pushing extra troops off big bases and onto streets to show they can protect the public.

At the start of this month the new U.S. troops, along with an existing British-led contingent, launched simultaneous assaults, the biggest of the war. Thousands have moved quickly into Taliban-held territory in Helmand province, the most violent part of Afghanistan and the insurgents' opium-growing heartland.

Fighters have responded by seeding the area with roadside bombs and sniper nests, and also by stepping up suicide and roadside bomb attacks in other parts of the country. The homemade bombs are by far their most lethal tactic.

More fighting lies ahead. The U.S. Marines who launched Operation Strike of the Sword this month to seize the southern part of the Helmand River Valley have tried to take control of as large a populated area as possible with minimum confrontation.

Taliban fighters were allowed to move out of the valley into western suburbs of provincial capital Lashkar Gah, where they are now lurking in a densely irrigated canal network, U.S. troops say. Other provinces are next. U.S. reinforcements are coming to neighboring Kandahar province, the Taliban's birthplace.

Obama said on Tuesday he wanted an exit strategy that would see control of territory passed to Afghan security forces.

Thousands of extra U.S. troops are coming to train Afghan soldiers and police, but the shortfall of local security forces is acute. A country with roughly the same population as Iraq, Afghanistan has only about a third as many soldiers and police.

Only about 650 Afghan troops and police were able to join 4,000 advancing U.S. Marines on Strike of the Sword. The Marines' commander, Brigadier General Larry Nicholson, told the Washington Post his biggest concern was the shortfall of Afghan troops.

(Editing by Paul Tait)

© 2009 Reuters