If The Shoe Fits and Where is Jane?

To Jimmy Carter and those of his mind set - if the shoe fits wear it. (See 1 below.)

Bush is doing Obama a favor by allowing Israel the freedom to take on Hamas unimpeded but will Obama do Israel and the world the same favor? (See 2 below.)

Has the softening up begun? - woe will it be for Hamas? Whistling in the dark will not save them face or life and limb against a determined and superior IDF trained military force? (See 3 below.)

Israel has no choice and has a full plate. It must destroy Hamas' will and ability to be the force it has been and to reduce its appeal. This means making it senseless for volunteers to join Hamas and for Gazans to ultimately realize their prospects are bleak if Hamas remains in charge of their destiny. A sober analysis.(See 3a below.)

War during a political campaign - an analysis. Bruised egos can lead to negative results and for the soldier being shot at it is a sad commentary on human behaviour and leadership. (See 4 below.)

Protesters protest but then they are not being rocketed. Were they rocketed would they change their tune? Protesters, even naive but well intentioned ones, are simply a pain in the ass but democracy demands they must be tolerated. But where were they when Israel was being rocketed daily? Protesters enter the court room with dirty hands, questionable motives and gutless souls. So where's Jane Fonda?(See 5 below.)

A good use of Arab TV? Get 'em when they are young and vulnerable! Then create the next wasted generation of haters and world misfits!(See 6 below.)

Daniel Pipes offers his version of insights into Obama's Middle East thinking based on the views of those whose policies he might embrace. If Pipes is correct, though he has had his disagreements with GW, which he spells out, he would find GW, warts and all, better. (See 7 below.)

An examination of our Iraq detention policy and whether it is working. (See 8 below.)

More on Israel's preparation for its move into Gaza. (See 9 below.)

Jeff Taylor explains why '09 will be worse than '08. (See 10 below.)

A journalist for The Guardian takes Israel to task for believing force will acheive their goal. (See 11 below.)

Dick

1) Protesting Against Israel or Hating Jews?
By Richard L. Cravatts

The anti-Israel demonstration of some 200 to 300 people outside the Ft. Lauderdale courthouse on December 30th , which took place on the same day in other major American and European cities, gave Palestinian supporters yet another excuse to decry Israel: this time because of its recent incursions into Gaza to counterstrike Hamas personnel and infrastructure, and the Jewish state's attempt to stop the barrages of 6300 rockets that have rained down on southern Israel since 2005.


The members of A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition: Act Now to Stop War & End Racism and the Muslim American Society who attended Tuesday's demonstration apparently were not sufficiently concerned when rockets and mortars were launched almost daily into Israel from Gaza by Hamas, aimed at civilian targets for no other reason than the intended victims were Jews. Once Israel retaliated with targeted strikes against Hamas, however, and some 400 Palestinians were killed (most of whom were Hamas terrorists), civilian casualties were immediately elevated by Israel's worldwide critics to "crimes against humanity," "genocide," and "disproportionate" responses.


What was particularly revealing, and chilling, about the Ft. Lauderdale demonstration was the virulence of the chants and messages on the placards, much of it seeming to suggest that more sinister hatreds and feelings-over and above concern for the current military operations-were simmering slightly below the surface. Several of the protestors, for instance, carried signs saying "Nuke Israel," a sentiment that was also shouted out to pro-Israel counter-demonstrators standing across the street.


Now the notion of using of a nuclear device to eliminate Israel and thereby attempting to kill its roughly 5 million Jews is not a unique one, since words to that effect are regularly uttered, among others, by Iran's raving president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who dreams of such apocalyptic final solutions. What is unique is the morally-defective logic that would enable someone to justify a second Holocaust, the mass murder of Jews, on the basis of Israel having defended itself from years of rocket attacks and having killed several hundred murderous terrorists in the process. Making the Middle East free of Jews, Judenfrein, is exactly what Hamas, the group of murderous thugs being cheered on by the demonstrators here, ardently longs for; Hamas' charter, in fact, expresses as one of its core tenets that Israel should be eliminated, that "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it."


Other protestors were less overt in their angry protestations, carrying signs and shouting out the oft-heard slogan, "Free Palestine," or, as it is generally expressed when the odious messenger has sufficient time and space, "Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea." That phrase suggests the same situation that the nuclear option would help bring about, namely that if "Palestine" is "liberated," is free, there will of course be no Israel between the Jordan River and Mediterranean, and no Jews.


So the careless talk about the so-called "occupation" of the West Bank and previously of Gaza, or disputes over the 1967 borders, or the division of Jerusalem, or the construction of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria is obviously all meaningless, merely a smokescreen put up by the enemies of Israel to disguise the fact that they have no intention of living peacefully in their own state beside a Jewish one because they have no intention of letting the Jewish one exist. Hamas' charter announces quite clearly "that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgment Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up."


The most frightening incident during the demonstration, caught on video by Tom Trento, director of the Florida Security Council, and one which reveals the actual nature of the naked hatred of the pro-Hamas demonstrators, involved a Muslim-American woman in headscarf who was taunting the (presumably) Jewish counter-protestors across the street. She first screams that someone's "mother is a whore," but finding that a little ineffective she then reaches for something that captures the particularity of the event and screams, "Go back to the ovens. You need a big oven. That's what you need," suggesting, in a rather insensitive way, that if Hamas is not able to eliminate Jews in the Middle East successfully, wouldn't it be convenient to be able to ship Jews back to the crematoria of the Nazi's Final Solution?


This demonstrator's ugly and revealing comments expose what many have thought of Israel's most virulent critics for some time -- that if you scratch the surface of an Israel-hater long enough, you will eventually find a Jew-hater lurking below. Even critics of Israel as odious as Ahmadinejad never publicly admit that they despise Jews. He merely loathes the "Zionist regime." The argument always goes something like this: it's not that they hate Jews; it's only Zionism or Israeli policies they abhor.


So the British university lecturers union can call for boycotts of Israeli academics because of Zionist policies; or two American professors can write about an ominous "Israel Lobby" while they actually question the motives, and loyalty, of American Jews; or a former American president can accuse Israel of "apartheid" as opposed to peace; or Arab states and the UN can continually denounce the alleged ongoing "ethnic cleansing" or "genocide" of the Palestinians at the hands of the brutal Zionist regime; and all of them can escape what should be painfully obvious: that they despise and want to dismantle Israel not because its policies or actions are so beyond acceptable standards of nationhood, but precisely because Israel is, and always will be, the Jew among nations.

2)Day 8 of Gaza campaign: Bush clears way for Israeli ground operation, updates Obama

Washington source report that in a telephone conversation with prime minister Ehud Olmert, US president George W. Bush okayed Israeli air, sea and ground operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. He promised the US would veto a resolution condemning Israel at the UN Security Council meeting next Monday. Early Saturday morning, Jan. 3, Day 8 of Israel's Gaza operation, US and British media described the Israeli invasion as hours away.

In his weekly radio address - brought forward by a day, the US president spoke with exceptional firmness: "Another one-way ceasefire that leads to rocket attacks on Israel is not acceptable," he said. "This recent outburst of violence was instigated by Hamas – a Palestinian terrorist group supported by Iran and Syria that calls for Israel's destruction."

He noted that "Hamas took over the Gaza Strip in a coup and routinely violated an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire…" and went on to define the exit point for Israel's military operation:

"Promises from Hamas will not suffice," he said. There must be "monitoring mechanisms in place to help ensure that smuggling of weapons to terrorist groups in Gaza comes to an end."

This left Israel the option of sustaining its military activity against Hamas until such a mechanism was installed. He implicitly criticized Egypt for failing to control the smuggling of rockets and other munitions through its territory.

In his radio address, President Bush noted that president-elect Barack Obama is being kept up to date on the latest developments. With just over two weeks left in power, the Bush administration is preparing to hand over the problem to his successor.

Military sources list 9 pointers to an imminent Israeli incursion:

1. Israel's three decision-makers, the prime minister, defense minister Ehud Barak and foreign minister Tzipi Livni, met Friday, Dec. 2, and resolved "to keep up the military pressure on Hamas" – a decision that gives the IDF a free hand.

2. Hamas' conduct Friday: After 9 Grad Katyusha rockets were fired against Ashkelon, destroying two buildings and injuring five Israelis, the tempo slowed to 40 launchings the whole day - half the week's daily average. The Palestinian terrorists were evidently reserving stocks for a grand climax when Israeli tank and armored infantry crossed into Gaza.

3. Hamas threats have mounted to a new pitch: Damascus-based Khaled Meshaal, who is in hiding, warned Israel (in a taped speech) of a "black fate" if it invades Gaza, including more kidnapped Israeli soldiers. Underlying his words was the threat of guerrilla action behind Israeli lines to snatch hostages.

4. Israeli air strikes against the empty homes of Hamas leaders continued early Saturday after 45 were destroyed Thursday and Friday. Their objective is to demoralize the Hamas command echelon and break its will to fight.

5. The Hamas military wing reported thwarting an Israeli special forces' attempt to steal into the Sejaya refugee camp in Gaza City early Saturday. This is the third such claim in three days. The IDF spokesman denied knowledge of the incident.

6. Military sources report mass-desertions by teenagers who form the backbone of Hamas' fighting rank and file. They are going home to their parents.

7. Early signs that former Palestinian security officers unaffiliated with Hamas are getting together to seize control of Gazan districts in which Hamas rule has collapsed.

Israeli warplanes dropped leaflets from Friday night advising people living in the northern and eastern neighborhoods of Gaza City to leave their homes. Defiance of this curfew directive carried the risk of being shot.

8. Cairo forwarded an urgent request to Hamas leaders in Damascus to make known their conditions for a ceasefire.

9. The arrival in Damascus of the chairman of Iran's national security council and nuclear negotiator Said Jalili for urgent talks with Syrian president Bashar Assad and the leaders of Hamas and Jihad Islami.

Bush's speech followed his conversations with Palestinian, Egyptian, Jordanian and Saudi leaders as well as Olmert. He said he was concerned by the humanitarian situation in Gaza and noted that "Hamas terrorists often hide within the civilian population which puts innocent Palestinians at risk."

3) Israel begins firing artillery shells into Gaza
By Amos Harel, Yoav Stern and Yanir Yagana

The Israel Defense Forces began firing artillery shells into open areas
inside the Gaza Strip on Saturday, for the first time since the offensive
began a week ago, heralding a possible escalation in more than a week of
fighting.

Palestinian witnesses said the barrage caused a large explosion in Gaza City
as well as a series of blasts stitching the nearby frontier with Israel.

There was no immediate word of casualties. Channel 10 television quoted a
witness as saying that Israel was shelling targets along the entire length
of the shared border.

Israel has massed ground forces on the Gaza frontier in anticipation of a
decision to send troops into the Hamas-ruled territory.

Simultaneously, Israel Air Force warplanes stepped up airstrikes on Gaza,
bombing the main road that runs throughout the strip in three different
spots, making travel from one side of the Strip to the other close to
impossible.

Meanwhile, Palestinian officials in Gaza reported Saturday evening that 10
people had been killed in an IAF bombing of a mosque in Beit Lahiya.

The air force struck more than 40 Hamas targets over the course of Saturday,
killing the third senior Hamas official since Israel's aerial assault began.

On Saturday morning, Israel Radio quoted a spokesman for the Hamas military
wing as saying it had repelled an attempt by Israel Defense Forces soldiers
to infiltrate the Shajaiyeh section of Gaza City.

According to Israel Radio, Hamas said that its militants detected the
soldiers and fired six mortar shells. Hamas said the soldiers reportedly
opened fire and then returned to Israeli territory.

3a) ANALYSIS / Are air strikes enough, or is a ground op needed in Gaza?
By Amos Harel and Avi Issacharoff


Two and a half years of a lull, six days of fighting, and we are almost back where we started. The dilemma faced by Israel's decision makers this week is not all that different from the one that hounded them (in some cases it's the same people) throughout most of the Second Lebanon War. To enter or not to enter?

After the two reports published by the Winograd Committee (examining the civilian and military management of the 2006 war in Lebanon), and after a methodical, lengthy round of learning the lessons, the start of the campaign in Gaza seemed to show that the pre-flight checklist, so to speak, had been completed in full. The preparations were conducted in an orderly fashion. The Israel Defense Forces prepared for Operation Cast Lead for almost two years. The security cabinet, once it stopped accusing the army of not truly preparing itself, took its role seriously and held comprehensive discussions about available options. The integration of accurate intelligence, exacting strikes and tactical surprise produced a lethal opening air strike.

But those who sought to apply the lessons of Winograd in their entirety appear to have overlooked a few critical elements, and those lacunae are liable to have an effect on the final result. Prof. Yehezkel Dror, the Winograd panel's organizational expert, may yet have to summon the security cabinet to rehash the material.

This week it became apparent once again that the personal element ("What will people say about me at the end of the war?" "How can I play up my part at the expense of my rival in the government/General Staff?") plays a tremendous role in the behavior of the decision makers and sometimes affects the decisions themselves; that the political competition raging in the midst of an election campaign will also influence developments; and that a military operation on this scale necessitates a preplanned and clear-cut exit strategy at the diplomatic level. All of these limitations also affect the Israeli handling of the dilemma at hand, which at the time of writing looks like it will be decided faster than the treading-of-water seen over 34 days of fighting in Lebanon.

Shake off the dust

The dilemma, in a nutshell, is this: Is the heavy pounding from the air enough, or will Hamas simply rise out of the ruins later, shake off the dust and declare, as Hezbollah did in 2006, that it succeeded in surviving against the army that purports to be the strongest in the Middle East? And if ground forces enter, will they inflict on Hamas sufficient damage to force the organization to moderate its demands in cease-fire talks, or will the operation get bogged down, slide into mass killing of Palestinian civilians, cost the IDF dearly in casualties and erode the internal consensus in Israel?

The impression at this writing on Thursday is that Israel is going to launch a ground offensive quite soon. The decision will ostensibly be based on two cardinal reasons: the fact that the diplomatic initiatives are still incomplete (that's what happens when no one is in a hurry to prepare the ground for them), and the realization that without the movement of infantry and armored forces on Gazan soil, the Arabs will again be able to tell themselves that the Israelis are avoiding confrontation and making do with dropping one-ton bombs from 30,000 feet up. That, it is argued, is liable to lead to a disastrous outcome for Israel, particularly after the previous failure in Lebanon. After all, it was the chief of staff, Gabi Ashkenazi, who said a few months after his appointment that in the event of another war, his aim would be to ensure that "next time, at the end of the war, no will have to ask who won."

Don't dare fail

In the past few days, Israel received almost identical signals from several moderate Arab states, formulated in language very different from the public condemnations they have issued recently: Go in if you must, but don't dare fail, they said. Another missed opportunity in the face of the Iranian emissaries in the region will be untenable.

Still, mainly for fear of an entanglement ending in heavy casualties, the IDF appears to be bent on a major land incursion, albeit a limited one. That also suits the character of the chief of staff. The satirical television program "A Wonderful Country" portrays him as a gung-ho inarticulate macho (and his refusal to give interviews doesn't allow him to rebut that image). But in reality, say colleagues and subordinates, Ashkenazi's most prominent trait, along with personal toughness and broad professional knowledge, is extraordinary caution in fielding troops. On the assumption that a ground operation is imminent, it is likely that he will want to fashion it in his spirit: large forces, little time. The defense minister, Ehud Barak, the key person in the decision-making process that led to the launching of the war, takes a similar view.

The IDF is now looking for another surprise move in a narrow, complex theater, about 40 kilometers long and less than 15 kilometers wide. The major difficulty in the first stage will lie in breaching the heavily mined and booby-trapped zone Hamas has created, from the "perimeter" (a strip of a few hundred meters on the Palestinian side of the security fence) to areas west of that zone. The army is concerned about an attempt by Hamas to reprise the success Hezbollah had, first, in blowing up a Merkava tank that entered Lebanon on what turned out to be the first day of the war in 2006, in pursuit of the abductors of the two reserve soldiers, and then in destroying more tanks with antitank missiles.

This defensive strip is passable, of course, but if a ground offensive is launched, crossing it is liable to entail casualties. Beyond that looms Gaza City, narrow and appallingly overcrowded. During Israel's absence, the city grew mainly upward, in a manner that will hamper the movement of a ground attacker. The IDF's great advantage, even during a ground operation, is in the air, where it has full control, with no serious threat posed to its craft. Air support for the ground forces, however, will be at very close quarters, approaching safety limits, as was also the case in Lebanon.

Random conversations on Wednesday with officers on the Gaza border turned up a complex picture. The soldiers in the spearhead units want the operation very much (which is the way of combat troops, and rightly so). A company commander talked about the need "for the people on top to decide already, because we can't wait here forever." Battalion commanders were more cautious, aware of the difficulties the operation will involve. Easy and simple it won't be.

Determination or insensitivity?

Quite astonishingly, given all that the country underwent under Ehud Olmert's leadership in the last war, the prime minister sounds like he is barely wrestling with these dilemmas. It's hard to believe, but the man who was to have been kicked out of office following the interim Winograd report and then resigned (tardily) last summer is now leading the country into a second Israeli-initiated war - and is meanwhile enjoying public support. In Lebanon, Olmert objected to the use of ground forces almost until the last minute, and was finally dragged into the move against his will, under the pressure of the defense minister, Amir Peretz, and the chief of staff, Dan Halutz. This time Olmert seems to be less hesitant. It is to be hoped that this is due to determination and not insensitivity.

On Tuesday Olmert visited Southern Command headquarters. To the senior officers who met with him he sounded determined but not gung-ho. Some of them, who were highly critical of his performance in the Lebanon conflict, were favorably impressed this time. Most of those present spoke in favor of continuing the operation, including a ground offensive. If you want to consolidate what we have achieved, you must not stop now, the officers told the prime minister. Olmert listened attentively. The officers believed he was with them. Not exactly a leader, given his peculiar political situation, but someone who is capable of continuing to conduct a complex operation. Still, these favorable impressions could be dashed if it turns out that the decision to attack on the ground was mistaken, and produces large numbers of casualties.

The euphoria that marked the onset of the fighting in Lebanon in 2006 was not in evidence this week, but the prime minister, as is his wont on dramatic occasions like these, felt constrained to resort to a tone of light pathos. I salute you for the way you conducted the preparations for the operation, Olmert told GOC Southern Command Maj. Gen. Yoav Gallant. And he saluted him.

That was a satisfying moment for Gallant. He was appointed to the post more than three years ago, immediately after the Gaza pullout, and since then has been fighting mostly with his hands tied. After the pullout, Israel adopted a policy of shutting its eyes completely to the ongoing firing of Qassams. Nor was much done to scuttle Hamas' more ambitious plans. Gilad Shalit was abducted in the period when the IDF was prohibited from crossing the border and operating even in the part of the Strip closest to Israel. Most of the combat means were operated from the Kirya Defense Ministry and General Staff compound in Tel Aviv - to the point where Gallant was sometimes surprised to discover from the media that Israel had assassinated a wanted individual in Gaza. Throughout this period Gallant consistently urged expansion of the fight against Hamas. Hardly anyone paid attention. His critics claimed that the general, a graduate of Ariel Sharon's bureau (he was the prime minister's military secretary), was simply preparing a defense for the next commission of inquiry.

This week it emerged that Gallant made good use of the time. The opening move was prepared in the course of two years, in which the "bank of targets" was put together meticulously with the aid of the commander of the air force, Maj. Gen. Ido Nehoshtan, and his predecessor, Eliezer Shkedy. The former commander of the Gaza Division, Brig. Gen. Moshe Tamir (and his intelligence officer, Lt. Col. T.), made an important contribution, not least by developing the "hot point" method: There was systematic identification of the places from which rockets were launched, an understanding that these were permanent dugouts that Hamas built, and simultaneous attacks on them last Saturday. Most of the dugouts - the Gaza version of the Hezbollah "nature reserves" - were destroyed.

This week there was some tension between the General Staff and Southern Command over who was running the war. The answer is that the air force is the leading contractor, Southern Command is managing the combat and the chief of staff holds the reins with regard to the sensitive issues. At the moment there is only a skirmish over who gets the credit, but Lebanon showed that it can turn pretty ugly.

'Our values'

On Wednesday afternoon, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni visited a community center in Sderot. The foreign media waited patiently for the press conference she was to hold there. Barely two minutes after Livni's arrival, a "Color Red" alert was sounded, but the hall in which the meeting took place is considered secure and the alarm was greeted with some indifference.

Livni didn't miss a single cliche, offering each of the points on the "message sheet" she has drawn up, with which she appeared on foreign TV stations during the week. "Hamas is a terrorist organization that is harming the life of the residents of Gaza and the life of the Israelis," "Hamas is an extremist organization" - and so forth. The foreign correspondents, who had been driving all over the south for a few days, fought to stay awake. Only one item drew their interest: IDF officers and Shin Bet security service personnel phoned 9,000 homes in Gaza to warn occupants to leave, because the homes were located close to Hamas command posts or to its arms caches, which might be bombed. "Even though this is an advance warning to Hamas," Livni said. "We did it because these are our values."

She continued to ignore the urgent issue at that time - the French proposal for a 48-hour truce - until the question period began. Citing Israeli media, a CBS correspondent claimed that Israel was tending to accept the French offer. "Oh, really?" Livni said in response. She stated only that she would make her opinion known behind closed doors.

The French proposal was in the meantime stricken from the agenda during a tense meeting of the Olmert-Livni-Barak kitchen cabinet on Tuesday evening. Olmert and Livni saw no great benefit in agreeing to an immediate cease-fire, even a limited one. Their fear was that Hamas would quickly exploit the time to reorganize and claim it had won the war. Its major condition was and remains the opening of the crossings for goods to enter the Gaza Strip. If they were not opened within 48 hours, Hamas would start firing rockets again.

In the eyes of Hamas, an IDF ground operation, however great the risk, might present a certain advantage. Hamas has prepared itself for such an offensive over a lengthy period, under the close instruction of Iran and Hezbollah, and believes it has the capability to harass the Israeli troops and inflict heavy losses on them. According to the Hamas scenario, it would be possible to force Israel to beat a quick retreat, under the pressure of the losses and of the international community.

In conversations with her staff, however, Livni raised a different idea: a return to the cease-fire situation without an agreement. This would not involve a tahadiyeh with Hamas or an enhanced truce, but an explicit threat by Israel (this time with the intention of realizing it) to respond actively every time it is attacked. The assumption is that with a deterrent balance of some 400 Palestinians killed, Gaza will hesitate before bringing another Israeli attack on itself. The disadvantage of this proposal is the difficulty in persuading Hamas to accept it. Even at the price of more casualties, it appears as though Hamas would at this time prefer to fighting rather than agree to an arrangement which will be construed, from its point of view, as an admission of failure.

Ready in the rear

Be'er Sheva this week absorbed its first rocket attack. So did Ashdod, Kiryat Malakhi and Gedera. It might not be pleasant to admit, but Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu and MK Yuval Steinitz were right, and twice: The IDF withdrawal from Gaza led to the firing of missiles into the heart of Israel, just as the evacuation of the IDF from the West Bank cities in the Oslo accords facilitated (until the Shin Bet got its act together and the separation fence was built) the entry of Palestinian suicide bombers into Israel.

Hamas exploited the recent six month cease-fire not only to deepen its control of Gaza and build fortifications but also, more specifically, to smuggle in long-range Katyusha rockets, which considerably increased the number of Israelis vulnerable to them. Only a small strip, between Hadera and Gedera, did not suffer missile fire, though Hezbollah is today capable of firing missiles into Metropolitan Tel Aviv, in the event of another confrontation.

The main reason that Israel has not fallen into the black funk that marked the Second Lebanon War is the small number of casualties this time. For the present, it appears as though Hamas has only a limited ability to inflict damage on the home front. Hezbollah apparently had 14,000 rockets at the start of the war in Lebanon. Hamas, by a rough estimate, has 3,000, at least 80 percent of them Qassams, whose accuracy is not great and which usually cause little damage. This is still a bothersome and psychologically scary state of affairs, but it is not one that poses a threat capable of breaking Israel's spirit, if the political and military echelons continue to manage the campaign properly.

The home front appears to be the place where most of the lessons of Lebanon were learned. The intensive exercises conducted under the leadership of Deputy Defense Minister Matan Vilnai are producing their first fruit. The local governments in the south are well prepared. Even those mayors of the big towns who were elected only two months ago - in Be'er Sheva, Ashdod and Ashkelon - managed to take part in a first exercise before the escalation. On Tuesday at midnight, when the Be'er Sheva Municipality was trying to decide whether to cancel classes the next day, Maj. Gen. Yair Golan, GOC Home Front Command, stopped the discussion and declared schools would be closed. The next morning, a Katyusha rocket slammed into a high school in the city.

Home Front Command personnel are everywhere and busy undertaking missions to aid the population, as though their role consisted of nothing more than rescuing people heroically from rubble. At the moment, in the face of the limited threat from Hamas, that is enough.

4) Politics: Conducting a military campaign during a political one
By Gil Hoffman

One of the most common questions the foreign press has asked Israeli interviewees since Operation Cast Lead began on Saturday was how much of an impact the fact that a general election is coming up on February 10 had on the decision to go to war.

The answer that Israel's spokesmen have consistently given is "zero."

They have said that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is not running for re-election, that Defense Minister Ehud Barak is too far back in the polls to be a factor and that the two main candidates in the race - Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and opposition leader Binyamin Netanyahu - were consulted on the decision, but it was ultimately made by the prime minister and the minister of defense.

They said the timing for the operation was based solely on the six-month cease-fire's ending on December 19, and on a week of unsuccessful efforts to restore it. They added that if any political considerations were involved, they were on the Palestinian side, where Hamas wanted to flex its muscles ahead of next Friday, when Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas's term ends and, it believes, a power struggle will ensue.

The foreign press didn't seem to buy that explanation. Neither did residents of the South, who wanted such an operation to have been undertaken years ago, instead of waiting so long to exhaust every possible option other than war.

Even if Israel's spokesmen are given the benefit of the doubt that no political considerations were involved in the initial decision to go to war, it is harder to believe Olmert's statement to the cabinet Wednesday that every decision since then was also made for purely professional reasons.

And even if the decision to go to war was not influenced by the looming election, no one would disagree that the election will be majorly impacted by the war itself. And that makes it inevitable that the concurrent combat and campaigning will be intertwined.

SEVERAL ISRAELI elections were influenced by the outcome of wars, military operations and waves of terror, among them the Yom Kippur War in 1973, which caused them to be delayed, and in 1996, when a Hamas-led spree of suicide bombings snatched victory from Shimon Peres and helped hand it to Netanyahu.

Many die-hard doves still believe that the peace process with the Palestinians would have been completed successfully in the previous decade had Hamas not influenced that race. They are concerned that history will repeat itself, and that Hamas will return the Likud to power again.

The Likud, of course, rejects that version of history. "Next thing you know, they'll say we gave Hamas the Kassams to help us get elected," a Likud official said mockingly.

While historically, terrorism and security threats have shifted the public rightward, polls show that it hasn't happened this week. The Likud and Kadima have held steady, while Labor has gained a few mandates, thanks to the perceived success of Barak.

Likud officials expressed confidence that they will end up gaining from the war, win or lose. They say that if the IDF succeeds in stopping rocket fire, Barak will be credited and Labor will gain at Kadima's expense. And if the war is unsuccessful, Livni will be blamed for caving into international pressure to end it prematurely, and the first Kassam fired after a cease-fire would give the Likud five more mandates.

Labor also thinks it will be the victor of the war. Boosted by polls showing Barak's popularity rating tripling, the party's MKs started talking this week about passing Kadima and winning the second-most seats behind Likud. But they also haven't forgotten that Amir Peretz's popularity rating topped 70 percent when the Second Lebanon War was going well.

In Kadima, party officials spoke more modestly. They said the war gave Livni the opportunity to look "presidential," and that after serving in a position of power in two wars, the Likud would have a hard time claiming that the Prime Minister's Office was out of her league, as it did in a negative campaign that was shelved due to the war.

But privately, politicians in Kadima expressed concern that they stood to lose a great deal in the current war, as they did in the last one. Two MKs among the party's top 10 candidates even suggested in closed conversations that the election be delayed.

IT IS in this preelection spirit of tension and competition that Olmert, Barak and Livni are meeting almost nightly to decide how to proceed with the war. It is no wonder that leaks are emerging about infighting among the three.

There have been disputes over credit and blame. Kadima officials are concerned that Olmert will try to prevent Livni from receiving any credit for the war's successes, and will help make sure she becomes the fall guy for its failures.

Livni reportedly was steamed at Olmert for inviting Netanyahu to brief the foreign press. Olmert actually asked several politicians to aid the PR effort, but his office only put out a statement about Netanyahu, and not about his also turning to ministers Isaac Herzog and Meir Sheetrit.

Barak and Livni have accused each other of leaking the timing of the IDF's first strike, and they fought over who should make the first statement informing the world about the maneuver.

Both Olmert and Livni told the press that they scolded Barak for telling the French foreign minister that Israel would consider a cease-fire. Livni said international diplomacy was her turf, and Olmert was quoted as saying that only he would handle the sensitive negotiations with foreign mediators about how to end the war.

Barak's associates said Livni was trying to look tough to try to win votes from Likud, while Kadima sources said Barak sought a cease-fire in an effort to win votes away from Meretz.

With all that infighting and mutual mistrust, it could be hard for the three leaders to unite to fight Hamas. But a source close to one of them said it would not be a problem, because Hamas was not their only common enemy - or challenge.

"They are fully aware," the source said, "that if there is a commission of inquiry after the war, all three of them will be in the same boat."

5) European crowds urge end to Gaza Op

Demonstrators hurled shoes at the tall iron gates outside the British prime minister's residence in London on Saturday and waved Palestinian flags in more than a dozen European cities as tens of thousands protested Israel's operation against Gaza terrorists.

In London, at least 10,000 people, many carrying Palestinian flags, marched past Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Downing Street residence to a rally in Trafalgar Square. Outside Downing Street, hundreds of protesters stopped and threw shoes at the gates that block entry to the narrow road.

Shoe-throwing has become a popular gesture of protest and contempt since an Iraqi journalist pelted US President George W. Bush with a pair of brogues in Baghdad last month.

Police estimated the crowd in London at 10,000 to 12,000, but organizers said the number was much higher. The marchers included activist Bianca Jagger, ex-Eurythmics singer Annie Lennox and comedian Alexei Sayle.

"As a Jew, it's very moving to see so many people who are so outraged at Israel's actions," Sayle said. "Israel is a democratic country that is behaving like a terrorist organization."

After the rally, a smaller group of about 2,000 protesters marched on the Israeli Embassy in west London, and some youths scuffled with police and hurled objects at officers in riot gear. Police said there were no initial reports of arrests.

Rallies also were held in other British cities - including Manchester, Liverpool and Glasgow - and across Europe in countries such as Italy, Germany and Turkey.

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan flew to Saudi Arabia as his country engaged in shuttle diplomacy with Arab countries to help broker a cease-fire. But public anger mounted in Turkey, as 5,000 Turks shouting "Killer Israel!" protested in downtown Ankara.

In The Netherlands, thousands of people marched through Amsterdam, criticizing both the Israeli attacks and the Dutch government's failure to condemn them. One banner declared: "Anne Frank is turning in her grave. Oh Israel!"

More than 4,000 people demonstrated in Duesseldorf, Germany, and some 5,000 in Frankfurt. One group in Duesseldorf held up a doll representing a bleeding baby with the placard "Made in Israel."

In Berlin, more than 7,000 people braved freezing temperatures for a march along the capital's Unter den Linden boulevard.

Another 2,500 demonstrated in Salzburg, Austria, while scores protested peacefully in Madrid outside the Spanish Foreign Ministry.

Hundreds more marched in the Swedish cities of Malmo and Uppsala, while in Oslo, Norway demonstrators marched from the parliament to the Israeli Embassy, calling on Israel to "let Gaza live."

Most of the protests were peaceful, but in Athens, Greece - the scene of violent demonstrations by anarchist youths over the past month - a few of the 5,000 protesters threw stones and petrol bombs at police outside the Israeli embassy. Riot police retaliated with tear gas and stun grenades.

In Cyprus, demonstrators pelted riot police with rocks, sticks, shoes and oranges near the Israeli embassy in Nicosia. A peaceful protest by about 2,000 people turned violent when some protesters tried to break through a line of police blocking the road leading to the embassy. The demonstrators eventually dispersed.

Brown's office said Saturday the British leader had phoned Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and called for an immediate cease-fire.

"Rocket attacks from Hamas must stop, and we have called for a halt to Israeli military action in Gaza," a spokesman said on condition of anonymity in line with government policy. "Too many have died and we need space to get humanitarian supplies to those who need them."

6)Iranian TV Program Teaches Toddlers About Martyrdom

Following are excerpts from an Iranian children's show which aired on Channel 1, Iranian TV on December 29, 2008.

TV host: "Tell me, children, you are all wearing kaffiyeh scarves. What are you trying to show? That you are friends of the Palestinian children, and that you are all worried because of what is going on.

"What did the enemy do? It turned the oppressed children of Gaza into martyrs. It turned their families - their parents - into martyrs as well. These children were defenseless. They were so young that they didn't know anybody but their parents.

"Except for strolling down the street and looking for a flower to smell, these children didn't do anything. They didn't understand what war is. They didn't understand what murder, massacre, and crime are. They didn't understand what evil is. But before they had time to grow up, they got a taste of the enemy's evil.

[...]

"We all loathe those enemies. We all loathe them. We are furious at them. We identify with the Palestinian children.

[...]

"Suppose we put ourselves in the position of the Palestinian children - why not? Kids, let's put ourselves in the position of the Palestinian children - of the children of Gaza. What do you think we would do if we were in their position? Would we surrender, or would we fight back? You tell me..."

Children in unison: "Fight back."

Child: "We would all get together so we could fight..."

TV host: "...the enemies and the bad people. That's right, we would struggle against them and fight them. What do you say?"

Second child: "Our country... We must..."

TV host: "...defend it..."

Second child: "We will struggle until we win."

TV host: "Well done.

[...]

"I am willing to sacrifice myself. I am willing to sacrifice my arms, my legs, and all my limbs, my family, and my property, in order to achieve my goals.

[...]

"Children, let's pray for all the children of Palestine and Gaza. Let's pray, because you are pure at heart. You are innocent children. No matter where you live in the world, you children are very pure. You are as white as snow, and as clear as running water.

[...]

"Dear God, these are difficult times. These days are full of pain and suffering. These are unbearable times for the children of Palestine and Gaza. Dear God, give them more patience and endurance."

Children in unison: "Amen."

TV host: "Dear God, we ask you to resolve their problems."

Children in unison: "Amen."

TV host: "Increase their perseverance, their patience, and their abilities."

Children in unison: "Amen."

7) Insight into Obama's Middle East Policy?
By Daniel Pipes

Two events earlier this month summed up differing views of George W. Bush's Middle East record.

In one, Bush himself offered a valedictory speech, declaring that "the Middle East in 2008 is a freer, more hopeful, and more promising place than it was in 2001." In the other, an Iraqi journalist, Muntadar al-Zaidi, expressed disrespect and rejection by hurling shoes at Bush as the U.S. president spoke in Baghdad, yelling at him, "This is a farewell kiss! Dog! Dog!"

Ironically, Zaidi's very impudence confirmed Bush's point about greater freedom; would he have dared to throw shoes at Saddam Hussein?

While I like and think well of Bush, I have criticized his response to radical Islam since 2001, his Arab-Israeli policy since 2002, his Iraq policy since 2003, and his democracy policy since 2005. In both 2007 and 2008, I critiqued the shortcomings of his overall Middle East efforts.

Today, I take issue with his claim that the Middle East is more hopeful and more promising than in 2001. Count some of the ways things have degenerated:

Iran has nearly built nuclear weapons and appears to be planning for a devastating electro-magnetic pulse attack on the United States.

Pakistan is on its way to becoming a nuclear-armed, Islamist rogue state.

The price of oil reached an all-time high, only to collapse due to a U.S.-led recession.

Turkey went from being a stalwart ally to the most anti-American country in the world.

Iraq remains an albatross (or a pair of shoes?) around the American neck, incurring expenses, fatalities, and with an immense potential for danger.

Rejection of Israel's existence as a Jewish state has become more widespread and virulent.

Russia has re-emerged as a hostile force in the region.

Democracy efforts have collapsed (Egypt), increased Islamist influence (Lebanon), or paved the way for Islamists to attain power (Gaza).

The doctrine of preemption has been discredited.

Bush's two successes, an Iraq without Saddam Hussein and a Libya without WMD, hardly balance out these failures.

Unsurprisingly, Bush's critics excoriate his Middle East record. Fine, but now that they are almost in the driver's seat; exactly how do they intend to fix America's Middle East policy?


"Restoring the Balance" offers defeatist policy recommendations.

One preview is on display in Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President, a major study issued jointly by two liberal lions, the Brookings Institution (founded 1916) and the Council on Foreign Relations (founded 1921). The culmination of an 18-month effort, Restoring the Balance involved 15 scholars, 2 co-editors (Richard Haass and Martin Indyk), a retreat at a Rockefeller conference center, multiple fact-finding trips, and a small army of organizers and managers.

This reader is struck by two major deficiencies. First, while the book covers six topics (the Arab-Israeli conflict, Iran, Iraq, counterterrorism, nuclear proliferation, and political and economic development), its specialists have almost nothing to say about Islamism, the most pressing ideological challenge of our time, nor about the Iranian nuclear buildup, the most urgent military danger of our time. They also manage to bypass such issues as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Arab rejectionism of Israel, the Russian danger, and the transfer of wealth to energy-exporting states.

Second, the study offers defeatist policy recommendations. "Bring Hamas into the fold" advise Steven A. Cook and Shibley Telhami, arguing that the terrorist organization be included in a "Palestinian unity government" and be urged to accept the ill-fated Abdullah Plan of 2002. It is hard to imagine a single more counterproductive policy in the Arab-Israeli theater.

On the topic of Iran, Suzanne Maloney and Ray Takeyh dismiss both a U.S. strike against the Iranian nuclear infrastructure and the policy of containment. Instead, in a far-fetched "paradigm change," they urge engagement with Tehran, the acknowledgment of "certain unpalatable realities" (such as growing Iranian power), and crafting "a framework for the regulation" of Iranian influence.

As these examples suggest, a spirit of weakness and appeasement permeates Restoring the Balance. What happened to the promised robust promotion of American interests?

If one hopes the Obama administration will ignore such despairing pablum, one also fears that the Brookings-CFR mindset will dominate the next years. Should that be the case, Bush's record, however inadequate it looks today, would shine in comparison to his successor's.

8) Is U.S. Detention Policy in Iraq Working?
By Jeffrey Azarva

On December 31, 2008, the United Nations mandate for Multi-National Force-Iraq, which has authorized the presence of foreign troops in Iraq since 2004, will expire. While troop levels and future U.S.-Iraq cooperation dominate debate, the future of coalition detention operations in Iraq is as important. The reform of detainee operations in Iraq has been one of the most important, and least reported, contributors to the past year's reduction in violence. Detention facilities, once viewed by military commanders as a strategic backwater,[1] today are viewed as an integral part of the coalition's successful counterinsurgency strategy. The coalition now uses detention facilities to learn why Iraqis join the insurgency so that the insurgents can be rehabilitated and turned into allies instead of enemies.

But such progress is reversible. During a June 13, 2008 visit to Jordan, Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki declared that Iraq "cannot extend the U.S. forces permission to arrest Iraqis or to undertake the responsibility of fighting terrorism in an independent way."[2] The draft text of the U.S.-Iraqi security agreement meant to replace the U.N. mandate has reflected a similar stance.[3] Adopting such an inflexible position is risky. Maliki may be seeking to burnish his image and strengthen Iraqi sovereignty, but the premature transfer of detention authority to Baghdad could unravel many of the gains made.

Detention and Counterinsurgency

Ahmed Abdul Ghafour al-Samarrai (in white robe), the head of the Sunni Endowment, hands a Qur'an to a detainee (with cane) before his release. Other Sunni sheikhs from Anbar Province present Qur'ans to departing detainees. The coalition is hoping that those released from detention will go back to their communities and serve as agents for positive change. (Photo by Jeffrey Azarva)

The progress at stake in detention in Iraq may surprise. After all, it was only four years ago that images of U.S. soldiers' abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib caused a media sensation. Overnight, the prison became a symbol for what many critics believe to be a botched and illegitimate occupation. The photos not only robbed the United States of moral legitimacy but also did more to undercut the U.S. counterinsurgency effort than perhaps any other incident in the post-invasion period. Indeed, it is doubtful that Sunni insurgents have enjoyed a more effective recruiting tool than the Abu Ghraib scandal.

In the aftermath of Abu Ghraib, the Pentagon conducted a number of investigations. Most, if not all, failed to probe beyond the "close fight" in detention—procedural matters related to interrogation, care and custody, and the coalition's day-to-day interactions with its detainee population. None identified the "deep fight" in which detention represented a contested battleground where victory would be indispensable to successful counterinsurgency and winning the broader war of ideas in Iraq.

The March 2004 military inquiry led by Maj.-Gen. Antonio M. Taguba was a case in point. Though more inculpatory and far-reaching than other Pentagon investigations, the report only scratched the surface of what military commanders would later come to recognize as the "battlefield of the mind." In its analysis of what went wrong, the report reserved the brunt of its criticism for problems such as inadequate corrective training and muddled chains of command. Only in passing did it acknowledge that the abuses partially arose out of the military's inability "to identify and segregate leaders in the detainee population"[4] who may be organizing escapes or riots. In his statement to Taguba, Capt. Donald J. Reese, the warden at Abu Ghraib's cell box complexes at the height of the abuses, went further and confirmed that little consideration went into segregating detainees. Reese said that, although the cell boxes were meant for convicted criminals and high-value security detainees, the site was a "hodgepodge" that often housed civilians, juveniles, and the mentally infirm.[5] Even then, the report did not explore the implications of the coalition's failure to understand and safeguard those in its custody—a failing that, from 2003 to early 2007, would preclude the successful conduct of detention.

While the Abu Ghraib scandal drew widespread condemnation, few significant changes resulted from the criticism. Aside from tighter restrictions placed on military police, improvements in custody and care, and the creation of a task force to consolidate command and control over detention in Iraq, there were no wholesale changes. Doctrinally, coalition leaders continued to treat detention as a warehousing operation, little more than a repository for insurgents and militiamen rounded up on Iraq's streets. Despite indications that coalition practices were still sending released detainees back into the fight, the traditional view of detention as an exercise in "intake, interrogation, hold, and release" remained unchallenged.

The failures of the coalition's detention practices manifested themselves less than a year after the April 2004 revelations at Abu Ghraib. On January 31, 2005, riots at Camp Bucca, the largest coalition detention facility in Iraq, prompted guards to shoot and kill four detainees.[6] Maj.-Gen. William Brandenburg, then the commander of coalition detention in Iraq, acknowledged that the conditions at Camp Bucca and other internment facilities had become untenable. "What happened here on January 31 has changed the dynamics" of running detention, he said. "It also showed that we have to do a better job of understanding who we have in detention."[7]

But while military commanders awoke to the possibility of an insurgency "inside the wire," the situation at Bucca continued to degenerate. Two months after the January riot, the 105th Military Police Battalion, then responsible for the facility's day-to-day management, uncovered a fully-excavated 357-foot-long tunnel hours before detainees had planned to escape.[8] The discovery came against the backdrop of an environment in which extremists ruled compounds by fiat and dispensed Shari‘a-like justice to those who did not abide by their diktat. Incidents of detainee-on-detainee violence spiked; hardliners meted out physical punishment to those who bucked their "rules." In an effort to cement their control over the compounds, Al-Qaeda ringleaders and veteran Shi‘ite militiamen organized lessons in Qur'anic recitation and Islamic jurisprudence to indoctrinate detainees and bring them under their sway.[9]

Col. James B. Brown, the commander of the Eighteenth Military Police Brigade, which oversaw Camp Bucca until February 2008, was one of the first U.S. Army commanders to articulate the dynamics at play inside detention facilities. "In a prison, there is a feeling that the war is over for you, and it is over for me. We will chitchat at the fence and get through this together. Nothing could be farther from the truth. [In Bucca], the war is not over at all," he said in August 2005.[10]

Brown was correct: Camp Bucca was not just a holding pen but an integral battlefield in the insurgency. Until early 2007, no illusion dominated the U.S. military's thinking about detention more than the belief that the threat posed by Al-Qaeda and other insurgents would be neutralized upon arrest. For much of the military leadership, the fight ended inside detention.

This mentality—that detaining Iraqis caught in large, dragnet-type security sweeps would quickly suppress insurgent violence—was prevalent among battlefield commanders concerned with the capture and release of insurgents. Such an outlook also seemed to dismiss detention as a place where a hearts-and-minds-style counterinsurgency effort could augment kinetic operations; most, if not all, detainees were considered beyond rehabilitation. Perhaps no one embodied this mindset more than Gen. Raymond T. Odierno, the current commander of Multi-National Force-Iraq. Odierno, whose 4th Infantry Division had a reputation for heavy-handed tactics in 2003-04, displayed such an animus to detainee releases during this period that Brig.-Gen. Barbara Fast, the top army intelligence officer in Iraq at the time, described his attitude as being "‘We wouldn't have detained them [in the first place] if we wanted them released.'"[11]

The corollary of this approach, of course, was overcrowded facilities. In June 2005, the detainee population stood at 10,783, up from 5,435 just a year before.[12] By February 2006, the number swelled to 14,767.[13] With the coalition loath to transfer inmates to appalling Iraqi-run prisons, the rapid influx of detainees—some of whom were innocent or held little to no intelligence value—strained the military's capacity to interrogate and exacerbated its inability to identify malefactors and curtail their access to the broader population. In June 2006, senior U.S. military commanders began to sound the alarm. They warned that the flood of detainees would transform coalition facilities into "jihadist universities"—terrorist incubators where Al-Qaeda loyalists could train, network, and replenish their depleted ranks.[14] Already, many detainees who had been brought in innocent were walking out radicalized.

The boomerang effect created by a policy that treated detention as a strategic irrelevance would not become fully apparent until early 2007. That January, President George W. Bush ordered a surge in U.S. forces, deploying an additional five combat brigades to Baghdad. While the troop increase helped pacify the capital, it caused an explosion in the detainee population. By April, the combined population at Camp Bucca and Camp Cropper—the only two coalition detention facilities in Iraq following Abu Ghraib's closure in August 2006—ballooned to 20,000, a figure that would ultimately peak at nearly 26,000.[15]

When mass riots involving up to 10,000 detainees rocked Bucca the next month, the situation inside one of the world's largest detention centers had reached its breaking point. Detainees, armed with makeshift weapons and brandishing banners reading "You Die" and "Death to American MPs," lit tents on fire and plotted to kidnap and kill members of the guard force. Incoming detention commander Maj.-Gen. Douglas Stone considered using deadly force to restore order. "We had a panic meeting here, and someone came up with the idea to electrify the fence. I mean, that's where we were," he recalled this spring.[16] The riots would prove to be the impetus for a radical reformation of detainee operations.

Detention Reformed
With Bucca in shambles, the new command of Task Force 134, the outfit charged with overseeing coalition detainee operations, staked out a new strategy intended to incorporate detention into the broader U.S. counterinsurgency strategy. This would hinge on a strategy that sought to segregate extremists, nurture moderates, and ensure first-rate care and custody for every detainee.[17]

This approach also had a wider target audience: the detainees' web of relatives, friends, and tribesmen who were directly affected by their internment and who, by some estimates, included a half-million Iraqis.[18] Abu Ghraib, predictably, had turned these and other Iraqis against the coalition, creating fertile ground for insurgent recruitment. But the military soon came to understand that this network held out as much promise as it did peril—that, if conducted with dignity and respect, detention could trigger a cascading effect that would help turn the tide of public opinion.

The U.S. Army counterinsurgency field manual, released in December 2006, provided some of the inspiration for this doctrinal shift,[19] but it did not give concrete recommendations for improving detention practices or marginalizing extremism "inside the wire." In addressing the latter phenomenon, the task force leadership instead drew on several de-radicalization programs in the Muslim world, with Saudi Arabia and Indonesia perhaps the best known templates, and solicited advice from former detainees familiar with extremist recruitment practices.[20]

The military realized that the point of departure for any successful reform would be its ability to detect and segregate irreconcilables—those incorrigible detainees bent on upsetting the apple cart and imposing their extremism on others. Although detainee assessments were administered under Maj.-Gen. John D. Gardner, Stone's predecessor, they were significantly expanded following Gardner's transfer of authority to Stone.[21] The task force figured out that it was in detention, more so than in the alleyways of Baghdad, where the worlds of coalition and insurgent forces met. To capitalize on this interaction, the task force employed psychologists, teachers, social workers, and Iraqi imams to paint a rough sketch of each detainee's background, including their religiosity, education, skills, work history, and general motivation. The evaluations have since assisted not only in the physical placement of detainees—those deemed extremist are now quarantined in modular housing units—but have also proved instrumental in shaping the military's innovative reintegration programs.[22]

In conjunction with the psychological assessments, surveys of detainees reaffirmed the potential for their rehabilitation. Many detainees, it turned out, were not avowed jihadists but Iraqi civilians spurred on by pragmatic considerations. Research commissioned by the task force revealed that in a majority of cases, a confluence of factors contributed to the average detainee's arrest, such as illiteracy, fear of reprisal, underemployment, and the enticement of cash.[23] Family demographic studies also helped to explain why otherwise law-abiding citizens gravitated toward the insurgency: 63 percent of detainees were married, 79 percent had children, and the overwhelming majority lived with their extended family.[24] For those detainees who acted as family breadwinners, the allure of $200-$300 a month in supplemental income—Al-Qaeda's average recompense for planting a roadside bomb[25]—was simply too strong to resist.

Armed with this knowledge, the task force set out to counteract these motivations and provide detainees with an alternative to joining the insurgency. Education, vocational, and enhanced family visitation programs formed the backbone of the military's efforts, filling a void previously exploited by extremists. In August 2007, the military set up Dar al-Hikma (House of wisdom), an education center accredited by the Iraqi Ministry of Education. The school, which is open to both juveniles and adults and offers a core curriculum of Arabic, English, math, science, civics, and geography, has turned into an unequivocal success: On a number of occasions, detainees have postponed their releases to finish studies, and parents without detained children have petitioned to enroll their kids in the program.[26]

Perhaps the education programs' true center of gravity lies in the Islamic discussion program. There, vetted Iraqi clerics employ a moderate exegesis of the Qur'an to encourage debate and refute extremist arguments. Ironically, most insurgents are not devout. Polling of the population has revealed that, prior to detention, more than 70 percent of detainees were not fastidious mosque-goers; in fact, 36 percent had never even set foot in one.[27] On other questions about piety, responses did not reflect stringent or immoderate beliefs. Even mid-level members of Al-Qaeda and the Shi‘ite Mahdi Army at times exhibited few signs of religious fervor.

On the surface, such information would seem to render moot the utility of such a program. But it does not. Al-Qaeda has long used a perverted interpretation of the Qur'an to proselytize among secular, illiterate, and disenfranchised Iraqis. But for those who do not arrive in detention possessed of religious fervor, the program still has merit, both in its ability to reduce future susceptibility and to encourage independent thinking. A number of imams who led the juvenile Islamic discussion program attested to this fact, telling this author that the program unlocked adolescents' minds and made them less vulnerable to brainwashing upon release.[28]

Detractors such as Andrew K. Woods, a Hauser fellow at Harvard Law School, suggest that such education smacks of propaganda or religious proselytizing.[29] But the program does not attempt to teach religion or replace one ideology with another—after all, many new detainees possess only a rudimentary, if not superficial, understanding of Islam. Rather, it is designed to enable them to read and then to interpret religious texts on their own. The results can be poignant: Detainees have often wept and even become suicidal, upon discovering that the actions they once thought condoned by Islam were actually sacrilegious.[30] The discussions have been so effective in exposing Al-Qaeda's moral bankruptcy that the group's leadership has specifically braced its members for such measures. In a videotape released last fall, Abu Yahya al-Libi, a rising figure in the organization, sought to reassure followers that those who had recanted violence had done so under duress.[31]

The military's attempt to defeat extremists off the battlefield has extended beyond simple education programs. Vocational and pay-for-work programs have aided the assimilation of insurgents into Iraqi society. Designed to teach job skills and aid in Iraq's reconstruction, the voluntary programs have allowed detainees to acquire expertise in trades such as carpentry, masonry, welding, and textile manufacturing. For detainees once unprepared to compete in the job market, the vocational training has offered them yet another powerful incentive to refrain from violence.

With the military's new understanding of the important role that families play in a person's decision to join the insurgency, the task force revamped its visitation process to help curb recidivism and make relatives a more integral part of the rehabilitative effort. The visits—more than 2,000 now take place per week[32]—have also served to humanize coalition forces and allow detainees to provide their families with much needed earnings from the pay-for-work programs.

The new initiative, though, has not been without its challenges. Although 85 percent of those in detention are Sunnis with many hailing from the hinterland of western Iraq, the detention facility at Camp Bucca is located in the heart of the Shi‘ite south and is not readily accessible to the majority of detainee families. In fall 2008, the military hopes to bridge the divide when it plans to open a quasi-detention center in Taji, a predominantly Sunni city located west of Baghdad. This so-called theater internment facility reintegration center will provide additional work, education, and family advocacy programs, and thereby act as a way-station for those who are neither quite ready for release nor suited for continued lockup.[33] As of October 2008, though, the center is still not operational.[34]

Can Engagement End Insurgency?
The litany of engagement programs offered by the coalition is, of course, a means to an end. The hope is that moderate detainees can be safely released without representing an imperative threat to security—the U.N. mandate's lone criterion for the internment of Iraqi citizens.[35] But the military is hoping for much more: that those released from detention will go back to their communities and serve as agents for positive change. Some actually have, returning to lead mosques once firmly controlled by extremists.[36] Though rare, some detainees remain wedded to their insurgent ideology and feign rehabilitation simply to win release while others may seek retribution no matter what their experience in detention. There will always be some recidivism.

Another means by which the coalition detainee system has been improved is through a new release process. Prior to mid-2007, a simple paper review served as the coalition's last line of defense in preventing dangerous insurgents from reemerging on Iraq's streets. Although compliant with Geneva Convention obligations, the release process, in which a magistrate cell and joint U.S.-Iraqi review board combed through each detainee's file within three months of detention (and every four to six months thereafter), was opaque and counterproductive.[37] Ninety percent of reviews resulted in continued confinement,[38] and those detainees who did gain their freedom often emerged from detention embittered, having been confined for years without ever going before a panel. By 2007, the coalition's re-internment rate exceeded 9 percent, the high-water mark for the war.[39]

Part of the problem had its roots in the nature of coalition security practices, in which the apprehension of individuals lent itself—and continues to lend itself—more to the "probable cause" standard than to the collection of prosecutable evidence. This is not to suggest that most detainees were scooped up indiscriminately but rather that the body of evidence upon which their capture rested was unlikely to withstand further review in an Iraqi court. The upshot was a meager 10 percent adjudication rate in the Central Criminal Court of Iraq.[40]

Complicating matters was the fact that the coalition had never seen itself as the arbiter of guilt or innocence in Iraq. In a war zone, there was little time or place for detective work. Still, it became apparent that the coalition needed a way both to expedite case processing and to infuse a greater sense of due process into its review hearings. In mid-2007, the coalition created the Multi-National Force Review Committee (MNFRC), a three-member military review board that convened on a rolling basis and afforded detainees an opportunity to present their side of the story in person.[41]

Though it failed to assuage human rights advocates—the MNFRC still did not grant detainees access to legal counsel—the interactive panel immediately proved its efficacy. It provided the coalition with a treasure trove of information about insurgent networking and financing at the same time as it also allowed detainees to better understand why they were being held, and what they could do about it.[42] Good behavior and enrollment in voluntary programs, they learned, correlated to increased prospects for release. But the larger question of how to ensure that detainees would not simply view participation as a get-out-of-jail-free card remained unanswered.

A partial solution came in the form of a pledge and guarantor program. The idea, which evolved out of a 1957 Iraqi law, called on those slated for release to go before an Iraqi judge and take an oath to keep the peace. With deceit an obvious concern, the military required detainees to select guarantors who would be legally liable for their conduct. However, this formula soon presented an unforeseen problem: Local sheikhs, frequently asked to sign on the dotted line, often viewed the program as a vehicle to increase their prestige and tribal authority. As a result, they often exercised little discretion in vouching for detainees. U.S commanders instead sought greater family involvement in the process. A detainee's relatives, they concluded, had far less incentive to give their word if they knew a family member would revert to violence.[43]

The cumulative effect of such efforts has been a whittling down of the detainee population: Roughly half of all detainees are now recommended for release, a five-fold increase over the pre-MNFRC process.[44] More importantly, the right people are now receiving their release papers. Of the more than 15,000 detainees released between January 2008 and September 2008, only about one hundred were re-interned.[45] While recent months have witnessed an uptick in the number of re-captures, the revised review system, like all of the coalition's reforms, no doubt represents an improvement over what existed before it.

The Way Ahead
If today there is a broad consensus among U.S. military leaders, Iraqi government officials, and even human rights organizations that the situation inside coalition detention facilities has undergone a remarkable turnaround, there is less unanimity over the long-term prospects of the transformation. Among academics and terrorism experts such as Marc Sageman, there is widespread sentiment that the reforms instituted over the past year, no matter how well-intentioned, may amount to little more than a band-aid approach that treats the symptoms of extremism rather than its causes.[46] Similar arguments have been made by skeptics of the Sunni Awakening, the paramilitary forces that recoiled against Al-Qaeda and now collect Iraqi state salaries to keep the peace.

Of course, the jury remains out over whether such skepticism is warranted. Not even the military claims to know whether the reforms at Cropper and Bucca will effect a long-term improvement in Iraqi security. But questions like these take a back seat to more pressing concerns, namely what to do with the thousands of Al-Qaeda members and Takfiri adherents (literally, those who declare other Muslims apostates) in coalition custody who are irredeemable and will need to be held indefinitely. Their ultimate fate, like the balance of the detainees who will remain at year's end, is uncertain and largely depends on whatever deal Baghdad and Washington strike before the U.N. mandate expires in December.

Therein lies much of the U.S. military's concern. While U.S. officials are, in principle, not opposed to relinquishing control over detainee operations as a step toward greater Iraqi sovereignty, in practice, they know that such a handoff is fraught with danger. For starters, there will be disagreement between the two parties over which detainees pose an enduring threat.

From a logistical perspective, however, the issue of manpower will be more problematic. Although the U.S. Justice Department is now training two thousand Iraqi corrections officers[47] (twice that of the current force), that number will fall far short of what is required to manage day-to-day operations at Cropper and Bucca, where over 9,000 U.S. personnel work under the aegis of Task Force 134. Put in the context of Iraq's 2008 amnesty law, [48] the consequences of such a labor shortage could prove acute. Though the legislation applies only to the roughly 25,000 individuals in Iraqi-run jails, Iraqi lawmakers have pushed to extend its reach into coalition facilities. In the absence of sufficient personnel, it is conceivable that Baghdad, while not opening the floodgates, could choose to wipe the slate clean for thousands of un-rehabilitated detainees.

As unpalatable as that scenario may be, the transfer of coalition detainees to the Iraqi government could be even more problematic. Notorious for overcrowding and abuse, Iraq's disparate prison system—the ministries of interior, defense, and justice all maintain separate facilities—has long been a bastion of sectarianism.[49] Placed under the authority of predominantly Shi‘ite Iraqi keepers, coalition detainees could face torture and maltreatment, a prospect that raises not just ethical questions but legal ones as well. The U.N. Convention against Torture, of which the United States and Iraq are both signatories, prohibits refoulement, the practice of extraditing individuals to places where there are substantial grounds to believe persecution will occur. Just how the United States and Iraq should navigate this problem is unknown, but a reprise of Abu Ghraib, even one in which U.S. forces are seen to play a secondary role, could breathe new life into a dying insurgency and fan sectarian flames.

To be sure, such a dilemma is not far-fetched. With the December 31, 2008 deadline for a deal approaching—and hopes that a security agreement will win quick Iraqi approval fading—U.S. negotiators seem poised to acquiesce to rigid Iraqi demands. Indeed, a draft version of the accord circulated in October 2008 prohibits coalition forces from detaining individuals without an Iraqi arrest warrant; requires them to hand over detainees to Iraqi authorities within twenty-four hours of their detention; and calls for the "release of all detainees in U.S. custody in a safe and orderly manner."[50] While other provisions in the agreement are likely to be renegotiated at Baghdad's behest, at present, the clauses governing detention no longer appear to be a point of contention.

Conclusion
Of all the issues up for negotiation between Baghdad and Washington, few dramatize the tension between the need for stability and the need to bolster Iraqi sovereignty more than detainee operations. Coalition detention, once a liability to the war effort, has today become a potential strategic advantage. The revolution inside coalition internment facilities, long considered a sideshow to the broader mission in Iraq, has not only helped to solidify the gains of the surge but has also provided a paradigm for projecting the soft-power side of counterinsurgency. If detention has made significant strides, though, few things seem to grate against the concept of a sovereign Iraqi state more than the internment of Iraqi citizens by a foreign force.

It should be of little surprise that both sides staked out a firm negotiating position in this regard. While the United States pressed to retain the authority to detain at will, the Iraqi government, emboldened by recent military success and eager to tout its national credentials, vowed to assert greater autonomy over detention. If the proposed security deal is any indication, the Iraqis will appear to have gotten their way. But while compromise has been hard to come by, reality should still dictate a middle-of-the-road accommodation, not a wholesale transition to Iraqi authority in 2009. What this would mean exactly is unclear, but at a maximum, the contours of such a deal should allow the Iraqis to intern and hold onto only some of those the coalition judges to be an imperative threat to security. Any greater concession on the part of the United States in the near term will be both premature and damaging to the U.S. and Iraqi security effort.

Jeffrey Azarva is a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He recently spent three months in Baghdad studying coalition detainee operations.

[1] The Washington Post, July 24, 2006.
[2] Reuters, June 13, 2008.
[3] See provisional text of U.S.-Iraqi security pact, As-Sabah al-Jadid (Baghdad), Oct. 19, 2008.
[4] Article 15-6 Investigation of the 800th Military Police Report (The Taguba Report), Mar. 2004.
[5] Capt. Donald J. Reese, company commander, 372nd Military Police Company, former warden, Hard Site, Abu Ghraib Prison, sworn statement, Jan. 18, 2004.
[6] The Washington Post, Feb. 21, 2005.
[7] The Washington Post, Feb. 21, 2005.
[8] The Washington Post, Aug. 24, 2005.
[9] The Washington Post, Aug. 24, 2005.
[10] The Washington Post, Aug. 24, 2005.
[11] Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin Press, 2006), p. 239.
[12] Los Angeles Times, June 26, 2005.
[13] The New York Times, Feb. 15, 2006.
[14] The New York Times, Feb. 15, 2006.
[15] E-mail correspondence between author and Maj. Eric Dill, executive officer, Task Force 134 (Detainee Operations), Multi-National Force-Iraq, June 25, 2008.
[16] Andrew K. Woods, "The Business End," Financial Times, June 27, 2008.
[17] The Washington Post, Sept. 19, 2007.
[18] Mason Brooks, Detainee Background and Motivation Assessment, Institute for Defense Analysis (Alexandria, Va.), briefing for commanding general, Task Force 134, Baghdad, June 2007.
[19] Maj.-Gen. Douglas Stone, former commanding general, Task Force 134 (Detainee Operations), Multi-National Force-Iraq, news briefing, U.S. Department of Defense, Pentagon, June 9, 2008.
[20] Ibid.
[21] The New York Times, June 2, 2008.
[22] The Washington Post, Sept. 19, 2007.
[23] RAND Corporation, "Detainee Motivation and Morale Survey" (prepared for the commanding general), Task Force 134 (Detainee Operations), Multi-National Force-Iraq, Baghdad, fall 2007.
[24] Author conversations with Maj.-Gen. Douglas Stone, former commanding general, Task Force 134 (Detainee Operations), Multi-National Force-Iraq, Baghdad, Mar. 2008.
[25] National Public Radio, June 30, 2008.
[26] Asharq al-Awsat (London), Mar. 24, 2008.
[27] Author conversations with Maj.-Gen. Stone, Baghdad, Mar. 2008.
[28] Author conversations with juvenile detainee instructors, Baghdad, Mar. 5, 2008.
[29] Andrew K. Woods, "Good Muslim, Good Citizen," Slate, July 3, 2008.
[30] Author conversations with Maj.-Gen. Stone, Baghdad, Mar. 2008.
[31] The New York Times, Apr. 4, 2008.
[32] Maj.-Gen. Douglas Stone, commander, Task Force 134 (Detainee Operations), Multi-National Force-Iraq, news briefing, Baghdad, June 1, 2008.
[33] Maj.-Gen. Douglas Stone, news briefing, U.S. Department of Defense, June 9, 2008
[34] E-mail correspondence between author and Matthew Reynolds, advisor to commanding general, Task Force 134 (Detainee Operations), Multi-National Force-Iraq, Oct. 10, 2008.
[35] United Nations Security Council Resolution 1546, June 8, 2004.
[36] Author conversations with Maj.-Gen. Stone, Baghdad, Mar. 2008.
[37] W. James Annexstad, "The Detention and Prosecution of Insurgents and Other Non-Traditional Combatants—A Look at the Task Force 134 Process and the Future of Detainee Prosecutions," The Army Lawyer, U.S. Department of the Army, July 2007, p. 79.
[38] W. Thomas Smith, Jr., "The New Counterinsurgency Front," National Review Online, Sept. 4, 2007.
[39] Author conversations with Maj.-Gen. Stone, Baghdad, Mar. 2008.
[40] Maj.-Gen. Douglas Stone, news briefing, Mar. 23, 2008.
[41] Ibid.
[42] SPC Michael V. May, "Detainee Engagement Making a Difference," Multi-National Force-Iraq, mnf-iraq.com, Feb. 25, 2008.
[43] Maj.-Gen. Douglas Stone, speech to 42nd MP Brigade, Camp Bucca, Iraq, Mar. 22, 2008.
[44] Maj.-Gen. Stone, news briefing, June 9, 2008.
[45] Radio Sawa, Oct. 9, 2008.
[46] The New York Post, May 2, 2008.
[47] Author conversations with Task Force 134 (Detainee Operations) attorneys, Baghdad, May 8, 2008.
[48] See text of Iraq's General Amnesty Law: As-Sabah al-Jadid, Mar. 2, 2008.
[49] The Los Angeles Times, July 21, 2007.
[50] As-Sabah al-Jadid, Oct. 19, 2008.

9) Gaza incursion: IDF targeting rocket launching sites
By Hanan Greenberg



Army officials confirmed that dozens of terrorists were hurt in clashes with IDF ground troops, some of them were killed. In several cases, armed terrorists approached Israeli forces and were shot at by ground troops and IDF gunships. There are no reports of Israeli casualties at this time.

Large IDF ground forces, including Armored and Engineering corps units, as well as infantry soldiers are currently operating in the Beit Lahiya and Beit Hanoun areas, from which rockets have been launched toward Israel.

The army is preparing to enter the third phase of the operation, which is expected to be much broader in scope. In this framework tens of thousands of reserve soldiers will be heading to training bases in north and south Israel during the early hours of Sunday morning.

The reserve soldiers may take part in the third phase of the operation or be deployed in central and northern Israel in case of escalation on those fronts.

"Calling up the reserves and gearing them up will provide us the flexibility we need in case of any development, particularly if the operation in Gaza is expanded," an army official explained.

A third of the reserve soldiers will receive new equipment as part of a five-year plan initiated by the IDF Logistics Corps following the Second Lebanon War. Other troops will have to make due with outdated gear.

A military official told Ynet that troops were advancing in northern Gaza according to plan.

"For the time being, we are facing several hubs of resistance, yet we are not dealing with massive resistance," he said. "Since we entered there have been no unusual incidents, and the troops are operating in line with pre-determined objectives."

Meanwhile, IDF Central Command Chief Yoav Galant has ordered to expand the closed military zone in the Gaza vicinity region so that it will include all areas west of Sderot, Ofakim and Netivot.

Saturday night, the Palestinians reported that the IDF attacked a fuel depot in Beit Lahiya. Meanwhile, the IDF imposed a 30-kilometer (roughly 20 miles) naval blockade on Gaza. The move was approved by Defense Minister Barak and was meant to prevent foreign vessels from reaching the combat zone.

Earlier in the evening, large infantry, engineering and intelligence forces entered the Strip, accompanied by armored corps and artillery units. Navy vessels and Air Force gunships also played a role in the operation. The troops entered various areas in northern Gaza and fire exchanges were reported soon after.

"The objective is to destroy the Hamas terror infrastructure in the area of operations," said Major Avital Leibovitch, a military spokeswoman, confirming that incursions were under way. "We are going to take some of the launch areas used by Hamas."

Army Chief Gabi Ashkenazi met with troops before the incursion was launched, and made it clear that the army was fully determined to secure the operation's objectives.

"I have complete faith in you, the commanders and fighters," Ashkenazi told soldiers. "I count on you, I trust you, and I'm backing you. The people of Israel could not have asked for a better team of commanders and fighters."


Meanwhile, the IDF has started calling up thousands of reservists in the framework of emergency call-ups approved by the government. The objective of the call-up is to enable the IDF to expand the ground incursion if necessary.

Reservists have started to arrive at their bases Saturday evening and will continue to come in Sunday.

"It won't be easy and it won't be brief," he said. 'We're continuing to expand the operation while being well aware that this move will include challenges, difficulties, and also victims. We are doing it because of the faith that at this time this is our duty to citizens of the country."

"Several hours ago, IDF troops entered the Gaza Strip," he said. "So far in the operation, the IDF, the Air Force, and the Intelligence Corps delivered a harsh blow against Hamas.
The defense minister stressed that he debated at length before ordering the ground incursion, adding that Israel was a peace-loving country and pledging that the IDF will have the upper hand by the operation's end.

"The decision to embark on the ground phase of the operation was taken following in depth consideration," he said. "Every alternative was examined thoroughly, while we examined every possible scenario."

"We won't abandon our citizens," Barak said. "The IDF's job is to defend the home front."

Gaza Op

For first time since Gaza op's start, IDF artillery units shell targets in Strip. Meanwhile, Air Force hunts for senior Hamas terror activists in Strip, hits dozens of targets Saturday; Hamas officer killed after car hit by aircraft

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Defense Minister Barak, and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni met Friday night and approved the ground incursion. The operation was approved in principle in the cabinet session 10 days ago.

Gaza pounded
Earlier in the day, artillery cannons started to shell targets in the Strip. The IDF said that by Saturday evening hundreds of shells had been fired at precise targets in Gaza. Much of Gaza was enveloped by darkness as night fell.

Meanwhile, Air Force aircraft continued to drop leaflets in Gaza, calling on residents to leave their homes in order to avoid injury. The leaflets dropped Saturday read: "Area resident, as result of the acts undertaken by terror activists in your area against Israel, the IDF is forced to respond immediately and operate in this area. For your own safety, you are asked to leave the area immediately."


Earlier Saturday, the Air Force attacked a vehicle in Khan Younis carrying Hamas officer Muhammad Maaruf and another group member. The two were reportedly killed in the strike. Saturday morning, a senior Hamas commander was assassinated.

10) Why 2009 Will be Worse than 2008: We are not out of the woods yet
By Jeff Taylor

Whew. Now that 2008 is in the history books, $8.5 trillion in federal bailout money is in the pipeline, and bold leadership is set to take command, Americans can all breathe a little easier, right?

Uh, no. The unhappy fact is that 2009 is almost certain to feature more economic hardship than the year that preceded it. President-elect Barack Obama may think he has steeled himself and his administration for this outcome, but three major factors argue against Obama truly being prepared for what's to come.

Insane expectations. It was no mistake that Vice President-elect Joe Biden was dispatched to try to dampen surging overseas expectations that the Obama presidency will quickly reverse American actions around the globe. But a similar threat lurks domestically, where the federal government under Obama will be expected to correct every dislocation from the confused Bush years—all while providing free health care and full employment.

Most telling is the continued misunderstanding of the role that Obama's Treasury chief pick, Tim Geithner, has played in the Bush bailouts from his current perch at the New York Federal Reserve. Geithner has in every way possible functioned as a loyal member of Hank Paulson's Goldman Sachs army, seeking to reverse market judgements on bad investments with billions in federal cash. Why anyone would expect substantially different policy from an Obama administration with Geithner in place escapes me.

The one exception to this is at the Federal Reserve, where Ben Bernanke might end up as the poster-child for economic malaise, giving Obama license to show Bernanke the door. If nothing else, this could buy Obama time and reset the clock on his honeymoon. But otherwise, without some sort of dramatic gesture to placate the public, by late spring the euphoria over Obama's inauguration could give way to a crushing let down.

State and local implosions. The coming spring will also prove crucial as many states and localities write their budgets. These are the same entities that came hunting for roughly $200 billion in federal “stimulus” handouts via thousands of make-work projects.

The real trouble, however, lies in the hundreds of general funds, enterprise funds, pensions, and health care plans which are skirting the edge of bankruptcy right now. The nearly $3 trillion market for state and local debt remains in flux with the certitude that borrowing costs will creep up by about 50 basis points for all but the most well-insulated jurisdictions.

For many others, 2009 will bring a cruel ratcheting effect when reduced revenues from the slowing economy, coupled with increased investor and analyst wariness, combine to reduce debt ratings. This will further push up the cost of borrowing, which will then further strain revenues. Tax hikes might help, but only at the cost of further depressing business activity.

For that reason, the federal government will once again be called on to bail out insolvent operations—but this time it will be cities, counties, and maybe even a state or two.

Incidentally, this process may have a profound impact on winnowing the field of Republican statehouse superstars who might be in a position to challenge Obama in 2012. If Sarah Palin, Bobby Jindal, or Mark Sanford watches their state circle the drain in '09, you can pretty much write them off as a serious candidate in a time of economic strife. Conversely, should a governor truly rise to the occasion by shrinking the cost of their operations while maintaining services, they would jump to the front of the line.

Addled economics. When otherwise smart people start talking about the positive effects of inflation, we've entered desperate times. Let's walk through the root cause of America's housing bubble, which is widely held to be at the epicenter of America's 2008 economic meltdown, to see why inflation can only compound our economic woes.

Why did housing prices embark on a rocket-ride straight up in recent years? Because banks created an unlimited supply of ready buyers at every price point. How did they do that? By lending money to people without the income historically required to pay back a mortgage of a given size or, in many cases, of any size. So the ongoing housing correction, or “collapse” in some quarters, represents a return to a more sane relationship between a borrower's income and their ability to borrow.

Given this reality, income will be at a premium in 2009. Rising unemployment has already started to batter income levels. But real income can also be impacted by rising inflation, which leaves fewer dollars available to pay for things like mortgages.

In effect, those pundits pushing the inflation solution do not advocate jumping off the fake-wealth-via-permissive-lending treadmill, they just want Americans to run faster to get nowhere.

Already we see that when policymakers debase the currency with zero short-term interest rates they provoke a market response. Long-term interest rates, led by the benchmark 30-year fixed mortgage, inched up last week. This is exactly what you would expect as lenders realize that the dollars they will be getting back will have less—perhaps much less—purchasing power than the ones they are lending out.

In basic terms, this is a process that has gone on for thousands of years, since the dawn of human civilization. When kings, pharaohs, or emperors try to tamper with a society's store of value, that value shifts.

Indeed, all the talk of deregulating or reregulating markets misses the simple yet essential point that the serial bailouts of 2008 were designed to avoid market consequences for bad investments. The New Year will demostrate that this was a waste of both time and resources. In 2009, market forces will punish the human hubris that peaked in 2008, setting the stage for a brighter tomorrow.

11) Israel has plenty of tactics for war, but none for peace: A leadership dazzled by its own military might ignores the political reality and believes the only solutions lie in force.
By Jonathan Freedland

All those involved, and most of those following the bloodshed in Gaza from afar, are sure who is in the right and who is in the wrong. They know who the innocent victims are and who are the wicked perpetrators. These certainties are held equally firmly by those who will be demonstrating in solidarity with the Palestinians in London today and those who plan to stage similar shows of support for Israel later this month.

Both sides see the conflict in moral terms. For supporters of the Palestinians, it could not be clearer. Israel is committing a war crime, killing people in their hundreds, hammering a besieged population from the sky (and soon perhaps on the ground too), claiming to aim only at Hamas but inevitably striking those civilians who get in the way.

Israel's cheerleaders are just as clear. Israel is the victim, hitting out now only belatedly and in self-defence. Its southern citizens have sat terrorised in bomb shelters, fearing the random rockets of Hamas, since 2005, longer than any society could tolerate without fighting back.

Both sides say they would have maintained the six-month ceasefire that had held - albeit imperfectly - until December 19 had the other side not broken it first. And who did break the deal first, Hamas with its rockets or Israel with its blockade? Both sides point at the other with equal vehemence, a Newtonian chain of claimed action and reaction that can stretch back to infinity.

So perhaps a more useful exercise - especially for those who long for an eventual peace with both sides living side by side - is not to ask whether the current action is legitimate, but whether it is wise.

Israel, say its spokesmen, seeks not to trigger an Iraq-style "regime change" in Gaza but simply to alter Hamas' calculus, so it concludes that hurling rockets is against its own interests. Israel hopes thereby to reassert its long-cherished deterrence, so damaged in Lebanon in 2006. Hamas will be taught a lesson, abide by an enduring ceasefire and leave Israel's southern border quiet. Israel can then get on with pursuing a pact with the Fatah-led Palestinians of the West Bank.

That sounds coherent, but does it make sense? After this first phase of the conflict, Israeli officials say yes. They boast that Hamas' command and control systems have been shattered, and that its leaders are in hiding 4m under ground.

But there are immediate questions, eerily similar to the ones that surfaced in Lebanon two years ago. How exactly does this end? If Israeli tanks go into Gaza, won't they get bogged down in the mud and narrow streets of the refugee camps, terrain known intimately by Hamas?

And these are only the most obvious, current concerns. The grounds for questioning the wisdom of Operation Cast Lead, even from Israel's own point of view, go much deeper.

First, even if Israel gets the quiet it wants there is every reason to believe it could have got that without resorting to war. The longtime Palestinian analyst and negotiator Hussein Agha says it would have been "straightforward: if they had lifted the blockade, the rockets would have stopped".

Some diplomatic sources dispute this, arguing that Hamas actually saw an advantage in the sanctions regime: "opening up would have loosened Hamas' grip," says one. Hence the cases of Hamas firing on border crossings as they were opened. But most Palestinians insist that a relaxation of the blockade would have granted Hamas its key objective - a chance to prove it can govern effectively - and it would not have jeopardised that with rocket fire. It would have had too much to lose.

Put that to Israelis, and they admit that prospect was unpalatable too: they can't allow Hamas, a movement whose charter drips with antisemitism and calls for Israel's eradication, to gain the appearance of legitimacy. But if, as Israel insists, its chief objective is quiet in the south, then there was at least another, non-military path it could have taken - one that those who know Hamas best insist would have stopped the Qassams. Besides, any ceasefire will involve easing the blockade, so Israel will end up making those concessions anyway.

Second, if Israel hoped to break Hamas' hold on Gaza it has gone precisely the wrong way about it. Its leaders have done this many times before, repeatedly misreading the way Arab societies work. They believe that if they hit Gaza (or Lebanon) hard enough, the local population will blame Hamas (or Hezbollah) for bringing tragedy upon them. But it doesn't work like that. Instead, Gazans blame Israel - and close ranks with Hamas. "Anything which doesn't kill Hamas makes them stronger," says Agha, noting the way the organisation has been lionised in recent days across the Arab world, hailed as a defiant party of resistance, turning it into a "regional phenomenon".

Third, Israel's best hopes lie with the so-called moderate Arab leaders. But they have been badly undermined by this exercise, and none more so than the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, whose peace talks with Israel now look like consorting with a brutal enemy.

And this is without mentioning the fresh supply of hatred Israel has stored up against itself, creating a new generation of Gazans bent on revenge. Every child who witnessed this week's bombing is another recruit for the violence of the future.

So, yes, there may be short-term advantage for Israel's politicians, eyeing the election calendar, in hitting Hamas hard. But the senior European official who told me that this is "tactics, not strategy by the Israelis, who are expert in dealing with symptoms, not causes" is surely right. This is the act of a nation that has plenty of tactics for war - but no strategy for peace.

If it did, it would realise that Israel cannot pick the Palestinians' leaders for them, that Hamas - however repulsive its charter - is part of the Palestinian reality and will eventually have to be accommodated. Such a peace strategy would see a decision to withdraw from almost all of the West Bank and end settlement expansion, thereby making Abbas - and the peace process - credible in the eyes of his own people.

But there is no such peace strategy, only an Israeli leadership so dazzled by its own military might that it has come to believe that force is almost always the answer - and the way to avoid the toughest questions.