U.S Clout replaced by U.S rout!

More dithering on Olmert's part as Iran flexes its muscle. (See 1 below.)

If Israel rejects the terms of the Saudi Plan, which if embraced would destroy the nation through diplomacy, the Syrian Information Minister says Arab nations have a right to attack Israel. I realize these are just mouthed words but they suggest the tenor of the continual threat Israel faces. (See 2 below.)

Excerpt from Janes' about polarizing impact of radical Islamists in Maylasia. (See 3 below.)

Caroline Glick writes about the long effort required to fight terrorism as if we still have the stomach for it. Iran and the Radical Islamists have won the first round and I suspect, until we are attacked again or something akin to that happens, they will continue to press forward. Their sails are unfurled and with the positive support they are receiving from Russia and China, the timidity of Europe and the withdrawal message from the Democrats, Iran and Radical Islamists have every reason to feel emboldened. (See 4 below.)

Lebanon to sue Israel. Maybe the World Bank can pay the Lebanese off. (See 5 below and my comments about Wolfowitz and The World Bank.)

I am no particular fan of Mr. Wolfowitz, President of The World Bank, but if there ever was a situation where the pot called the kettle black his is one. He went along with the directives of the Bank's ethics panel after he recused himself vis a vis any action pertaining to a female friend employed by the Bank before he was made head. They told him he must participate in her compensation plan which he then did. He is now being hung for following their advice. He stupidly made an apology and now is being accused of ethical violations because his lady friend was given certain financial considerations.

Wolfowitz has been trying to reform The Bank and hold them accountable for their lending results. That is deemed sinful by the Bank's bureaucracy because The World Bank has a pitiful record of accomplishments and reeks with cronyism and incompetence. It is now pay back time and the Europeans are jealous of the fact that we contribute the most and generally can veto much of its actions. The Europeans want their selection as President so they can continue dolling out dollars, mostly ours, in The Bank's continued historical and wasteful manner.

One more example of how we are being trashed because of our failures in Iraq and it demonstrates how far we have fallen. U.S. clout has been replaced by U.S. rout! (See 6 below.)

History will eventually record that the Bush Presidency was surrounded by a series of hypocrisies that are mind-boggling to which the administration succumbed because it was incapable of mounting any kind of meaningful response. GW is not only inarticulate but he is brain dead when it comes to knowing how to fight back.

Dick



1)Tehran arms Lebanese Hizballah militia with air defense missile wing as part of war build-up.


Iranian Shahab Sagheb anti-air missile based on Chinese FM-80


April 15, on the eve of Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, Hizballah and Iranian Revolutionary Guards commanders staged a grand ceremony at the Imam Ali base in northern Tehran to celebrate the launch of Hizballah’s anti-air missile wing. They cheered the 500 Lebanese graduates of a course in the use of three anti-air missiles supplied by Iran:

The Sayyad 1 (Hunter), the Misagh 1 (Convention [with Allah]) and the Shahab Sagheb (Meteor), which is based on the Chinese Feimeng-80 system.

Military sources report that these new weapons will seriously restrict the Israeli Air Force’s tactical freedom over Lebanon. In the event of hostilities, Israeli warplanes will have to evade a dense array of Hizballah-operated anti-air missiles which will also defend the terrorist group’s surface rocket batteries.

Those sources disclose that the Iranian-Chinese missile has already been smuggled into Lebanon and is in Hizballah’s hands. It is designed to shoot down planes and helicopters flying at ultra-low altitudes under radar screens for surprise assaults on ground targets such as military bases, missile positions and artillery. Ordinary radar and air defense missiles are mostly ineffective against these low-flying tactics. The new missile makes up for this shortcoming.

On March 7, the 500 Hizballah trainees flew out of Damascus airport for Tehran aboard two civilian airliners; on April 16, they returned home – again through the Syrian airport - after training in the Imam Ali base under Iranian experts commanded by Iranian Col. Mohammed Mnafi.

Military circles made wry remarks to the effect that, while Israel’s heads of state and chief of staff solemnly declared: “Never again!” in speeches marking Holocaust Remembrance day, they are seriously short on action for curbing Hizballah-Hamas preparations for their next war on the Jewish state. Surface missiles are routinely smuggled into Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, unopposed. But the arming of Iran’s Lebanese proxy with deadly anti-air missiles poses a new and extraordinarily threat to the Israeli Air Force and, moreover, prevents air attacks on the Hizballah batteries shooting rockets into Israel. Questions are being asked about how Israel’s policy-makers and top brass could have allowed 500 Hizballah trainees to fly out of Damascus airport unhindered and return as air defense specialists, highly trained for shooting missiles at the Israeli Air Force and preventing Israeli warplanes from halting surface rockets should they fly against Israeli civilian locations once more.

2) Syria: Without peace, resistance will liberate Golan Heights

Syrian information minister says Damascus wants peace, but will resort to
violence if Israel rejects peace proposal; 'any nation living under
occupation has the prerogative to resist,' he says.

"If Israel rejects the Arab League peace proposal, resistance will be the
only way to liberate the Golan Heights," warns Syrian Information Minister
Muhsen Bilal, at a press conference in Damascus Monday.

The minister explained that Syria had an interest in renewing talks with
Israel with support from America and Russia. "Syria wants to reach a fair,
comprehensive peace," he added. However, he also stated that "any nation
living under occupation has the prerogative to resist. In Lebanon, Palestine
and Iraq, we must liberate all occupied Arab land."

Bilal blamed Israel for causing instability in the Middle East.

He also referred to Ibrahim Soliman's visit to Israel. Soliman, a
Syrian-American, is recognized as someone who reached an understanding with
former Foreign Ministry Director-General Alon Liel regarding peace between
Israel and Syria.

"We have nothing to do with his visit," Bilal made clear. "Nobody elected
Soliman to represent Syria. He does not speak for any Syrian institute. It
is not our approach, to conduct underground negotiations."

Damascus announced Monday that it planned to host an international
conference to discuss "media coverage of the Palestinian problem and Iran's
right to have nuclear technology for peaceful purposes."

Bilal told reporters that the conference would focus on "several studies on
the Arab media coverage - professional ethics versus commitment to national
matters - as well as the concept of resistance in the Arab media."

The conference will take place on April 30; it will be headed by Syrian
President Bashar Assad; and 350 journalists, academics and politicians are
planned to attend.

3) The polarising force of Islam in Malaysia

Malaysia has long been noted for its liberal and tolerant interpretation of Islam and hailed by the West as a model for modern Islamic society. However, a series of controversial incidents involving Islamic hardliners has heightened concerns about the creeping Islamisation of the country's multi-racial and multi-faith society.

The recent case of R Subashini, a Hindu Malaysian woman who lost her appeal to prevent her Muslim-convert husband from going to an Islamic sharia court to dissolve their civil marriage and convert their children to Islam, has sparked a blaze of controversy.

Civil rights groups and the Malaysian Bar Council argue that it is unfair to subject a non-Muslim to the jurisdiction of an Islamic court, as sharia only applies to Muslims. They also question why the civil court, which is ostensibly in place to protect the rights of ordinary citizens, failed to intervene. They say the rulings of the Islamic courts should never surpass the right to religious freedom guaranteed under Article 11 of the constitution.

A similar case in 2006 saw the Hindu wife of a Muslim convert lose the right to have her husband buried according to Hindu tradition. Islamic authorities intervened and ordered a Muslim burial, with the Civil High Court refusing to intervene in what it deemed to be an Islamic issue.

Under Article 11, freedom of religion is guaranteed for Malaysia's multi-ethnic population, of which more than half are Malay Muslims but which also includes Chinese and Indian Malaysians who practise other faiths.

4) The long road to victory
By Caroline B. Glick

The common wisdom in Washington these days is that the Americans will leave Iraq by the end of President George W. Bush's presidency regardless of the situation on the ground. This view is based on the proposition that Iraq is unwinnable. It has had a devastating impact on the administration's confidence that it can handle Iran's nuclear weapons program.

Monday's events brought that impact home starkly. On the one hand, the fourth anniversary of the fall of Baghdad came as the US wages a seemingly last-ditch attempt to defeat the insurgency in Iraq. On the other hand, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's performance at the Natanz nuclear installation where he said, "With great pride, I announce as of today our dear country is among the countries of the world that produces nuclear fuel on an industrial scale," indicated that he for one, does not believe he has anything to worry about from America.

"Right-thinking" people these days claim that if the US and Britain hadn't invaded Iraq, everything today would have been perfect. The US would have been loved. The Europeans, Arabs and the UN would be standing on line to support the US in preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

As British commentator Simon Jenkins put it in *The Guardian* on Tuesday, "If ever [British Prime Minister Tony] Blair hoped to carry his 'western values agenda' on a white charger to the gates of Tehran, that hope vanished in the mire of Iraq."

Yet this is untrue. The US's difficulties with confronting Iran have little to do with the decision to invade Iraq. Rather, America's feckless diplomacy towards Iran to date is the result of the administration's early misunderstanding of Iraq and of Iranian and Arab interests.

In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the Bush administration identified certain basic guiding realities and missed others. First there was the issue of Arab tyranny. As Bush recalled last September, "For decades, American policy sought to achieve peace in the Middle East by pursuing stability at the expense of liberty. The lack of freedom in that region helped create conditions where anger and resentment grew, and radicalism thrived, and terrorists found willing recruits."

Yet recognizing this basic reality did not lead the administration to adopt appropriate policies. Rather than promote liberty, which at its core revolves around a certain foundational understanding of human dignity, the administration promoted elections — fast elections — in Iraq and throughout the region.

In so doing, the administration placed the cart before the horse, with predictable results. The legacy of tyranny is hatred and dependence. And the values of hatred and dependence were those that were expressed at the ballot boxes in Iraq, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority. In all jihadists, often allied with Iran, were empowered while those that were considered moderates modified their positions in opposition to the US.

The Americans pushed for elections in the hopes of finding a silver bullet that would instantly solve the problem of tyranny in the Arab world. But in their rush, the Americans trampled the very liberal democrats they sought to empower.

These forces, who receive no money from Iran and Saudi Arabia to buy votes, and have no private militias to intimidate voters, couldn't compete against the likes of the Dawa party in Iraq, the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt or Fatah and Hamas in the Palestinian Authority.

In Iraq, the one openly liberal party, led by Mithal al Alousi won one seat. In the Palestinian elections, all political parties were either directly or indirectly tied to terrorist organizations. And in Egypt, the supposedly liberal Kifaya party one-upped dictator Hosni Mubarak when it demanded to nullify Egypt's peace treaty with Israel.

By pushing fast elections, the US entrapped itself. It inadvertently empowered its enemies and so was unable to embrace the duly elected governments. In opposing the forces it expended so much energy getting elected, the US was perceived as weak, foolish, and hypocritical.

After September 11, Bush explained that the attacks showed that the friend of your enemy is also your enemy. As he put it last September, "Americamakes no distinction between those who commit acts of terror, and those that harbor and support them, because they're equally guilty of murder."

Yet, Bush failed to note is the converse of that reality: the enemy of your enemy is not necessarily your friend. Here the distinction generally relates to Sunnis and Shiites. The administration's failure to grasp that just because Shiites and Sunnis are rivals doesn't mean that they will join forces with the US to fight one another, or won't join forces with one another to fight the US, has caused the Americans no end of difficulty.

In the 1980s, the Reagan administration did recognize this truth. In its handling of the Iran-Iraq War, the Reagan administration adopted a policy of dual containment. The Americans helped both sides enough to ensure they could keep fighting, but too little to enable either side to emerge the victor. Rather than believing the fiction that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend," the Reagan administration advanced US interests by using their rivalry to weaken both.

Rather than follow its predecessor's example, the Bush administration clung to the delusion that Shiites and Sunnis would ally with the US against one another. This fantasy has confounded the administration in every one of its subsequent initiatives towards Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Palestinians.

In Iraq, for three years the Americans treated al-Sadr, Teheran's man in Baghdad as a potential ally due to the fact that he too is an enemy of al Qaida. The delusion only ended finally when al-Sadr moved to Iran in February ahead of the US surge operation in Baghdad.

The Americans' treatment of al-Sadr is similar to its treatment of his state sponsor. Since the fall of Saddam, the Americans have repeated the mantra that Iran and Syria share America's interest in bringing stability to Iraqbecause the current instability destabilizes them.

While it is true that the chaos in Iraq breeds instability in Syria and Iran, it does not follow that the Iranians and Syrians are interested in ending it.

Since Iran and Syria view the US as their enemy, their ideal scenario is for the US to bleed in Iraq while propping up a weak Shiite government that has no inclination or ability to threaten them. That is, for Iran and Syria, the current situation in Iraq aligns perfectly with their interests, (which explains why they are working so diligently to maintain it.)

As for the Arab world, the administration believes that since the Arabs oppose Iran's quest to become a regional nuclear power, they will help the US both in stabilizing Iraq and in preventing Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Here too, the administration confuses common interests with common agendas. The fact that the Arabs share common interests with the US does not make them allies. As a young Saudi imam put it this week to the *Wall Street Journal*, "We are waiting for the time to attack [the US]. Youth feel happy when the Taliban takes a town or when a helicopter comes down, killing Americans in Iraq. It is a very dangerous situation for the US in the whole Muslim world."

The fruits of America's disorientation were revealed in last month's three Saudi summits: the Hamas-Fatah summit, the King Abdullah-Ahmadinejad summit, and the Arab League-Iranian summit.

Since last summer's war between Israel and Hizbullah and more intensively since the publication of the Baker-Hamilton Commission report on Iraq last November, the Bush administration has been advancing a vision of an anti-Iranian Arab coalition which will join forces with America to confront and defeat Teheran.

There has been no rational basis for this view since the Saudis, Egyptians and Jordanians responded last year to Iran's nuclear advances by announcing that they will get their own nukes. But it took last month's diplomatic cavalcade in Saudi Arabia to finally destroy the fantasy.

First there was the Hamas-Fatah summit in Mecca where Abdullah undermined the US by promising to pay Hamas terrorists a billion dollars in exchange for their agreement to let Fatah terrorists be their junior partners in government.

If that wasn't sufficient proof that Abdullah is not a friend, there was his warm and fuzzy love-fest with Ahmadinejad.

Their meeting shocked Israeli, American and British intelligence services who perceived it as the culmination of a progressive Saudi estrangement from the US. It was preceded by a massive expansion of Saudi ties with China and Russia.

Any notion that the US could expect assistance from the Arabs in contending with Iran disintegrated a week later when Abdullah and Mubarak enthusiastically signed onto the Arab League and Iranian statement referring to the US presence in Iraq as an "illegal occupation".

Yet for all their overt anti-Americanism and competition with Iran to see who can destroy Israel first, the Arabs have not become Iran's allies. They do not want Iran to win its war against America. They want to play Iran and the US against one another. That is, the Arabs are implementing the double containment strategy that the US should have adopted towards them.

The fact of the matter is that the Americans are capable of learning from their mistakes. This week, the commander of US forces in Iraq General David Petraeus published a letter to the Iraqi people ahead of the fourth anniversary of Baghdad's fall. In it, he discussed the anti-American rallies that al-Sadr organized from Iran.

As Petraeus put it, "On this April 9th, some Iraqis reportedly may demonstrate against the coalition force presence in Iraq. That is their right in the new Iraq. It would only be fair, however, to note that they will be able to exercise that right because coalition forces liberated them from a tyrannical, barbaric regime that never would have permitted such freedom of expression."

In the end, the protests were ill attended. Now al-Sadr is now whining that he will pull his support for the government as US forces destroy his militia in Diwaniyah and daily release information about Iranian support for the insurgency.

The success the US is now experiencing in Iraq is the result of a process of identifying and correcting mistakes. If such learning could take place regarding the US's regional strategy, there is every reason to believe that it will contend successfully with Iran and the Arab world. But to correct mistakes it is first necessary to recognize them.

The US is not failing to contend with Iran because it went to war in Iraq. It is failing because it is implementing policies that prefer imaginary silver bullets to real solutions to real problems.

There are no shortcuts in this war. But victory is still waiting at the end of the long and difficult road.

5) Lebanon says to seek war reparations from Israel

Finance Minister Jihad Azour says country preparing to go to international tribunal to seek reparations for damage caused during last summer’s war; ‘Israeli aggression was beyond the purpose,’ he says.

Lebanon is preparing to go to an international tribunal to seek reparations from Israel for damage caused during last year’s month-long war, the country’s finance minister Jihad Azour said on Monday.



Speaking at Johns Hopkins University, Azour declined to say which court or international tribunal Lebanon would petition and added that the case is still being prepared.



Israel invaded southern Lebanon in July after Hizbullah guerrillas captured two of its soldiers in a cross-border raid.



The war killed over 1,100 Lebanese, displaced thousands and destroyed swathes of infrastructure, including roads, bridges and power systems.



Azour said Lebanon’s economy had been set back 10 years by the attack. Over a million cluster bombs had been dropped on his country, killing civilians, he added.


“We were attacked. The (extent of the) Israeli aggression was beyond the purpose. Therefore we want to seek reparation, first of all, for the principle that you cannot kill 1,400 individuals, most of them civilians, displace so many people and destroy the economy without being asked for reparations,” he said.



“We are preparing our case,” he added.



'Financial dimension is secondary'

Asked if Lebanon wanted money from Israel or an apology, he said: “Both. It’s not about money but about principle.”



The minister told Reuters after the speech Lebanon’s Justice Ministry had commissioned international lawyers to prepare the case. He said he was not aware of how much compensation would be sought.



“Lebanon’s objective is above all to set a precedent. The financial dimension is secondary,” he added.



In December, a United Nations human rights inquiry said Israel should be made to pay compensation to Lebanon. It suggested setting up an international compensation program similar to the one that paid out billions of dollars to cover losses due to Iraq’s 1990-91 invasion of Kuwait.


Israel, supported by the United States, has rejected the findings, saying it had acted in self-defense.

6) Iraqi Blowback: Explaining why Paul Wolfowitz is a travesty and Sandy Berger is a snooze.
By Victor Davis Hanson

The resigned Scooter Libby did not leak Valerie Plame’s name, a fact known to a special prosecutor charged with finding out who did and if were a crime. After hours of testimony, he was found self-contradictory under oath (though self-contradictory hardly to the extent of a Joe Wilson who said and wrote things about his yellow-cake inquiries that could not be conceivably true), and now faces a possible prison term.

Ditto the exemption given to the Duke accuser who repeatedly lied in her sworn testimonials, but will apparently not be charged with perjury because her stories are so implausible that officials think she must be unhinged — a new rationale that the perjurer is apparently free from indictment when the concoctions exceed possible belief.

Alberto Gonzalez perhaps (emphasize “perhaps,” as yet we don’t know all the facts) showed a lapse in judgment or at least of political savvy by firing politically appointed federal attorneys, something that was not unusual in past Democratic administrations.

Paul Wolfowitz, who sought to curb corruption that undermines support for World Bank aid to Africa, likewise is facing a lynch mob over perhaps a similar one-time lapse of judgment in regard to compensation of a companion — nothing, however, ranking with the various scandals surrounding Kofi Annan, whose son profited by United Nations exemptions given through his family ties. In today’s moral calculus, presiding over a $50-billion-dollar Oil-for-Food scandal that led to frequent death in Iraq and profit among global elites is a misdemeanor, recommending a pay package for an employee one dates is an unforgivable felony.

One could go on with the furor over the misdirected pellets from Dick Cheney’s shotgun, or the clamor for the Rumsfeld resignation. Yet contrast all this hysteria with the slight whimpers surrounding recent controversies over conflicts of interest or lapses in judgment surrounding Richard Armitage, Harry Reid, or Dianne Feinstein. The destruction of federal documents that might well alter history’s consensus by former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger was a snore for most journalists.

What, then, is the one common tie that explains all these furious efforts of the media and partisans to go after these present and former Bush-administration officials?

Payback for Iraq.