The Rag Blog

The gulf’s two military powers, Sunni-Muslim Saudi Arabia and Shia Iran, are lining up behind their warring religious brethren in Iraq in a potentially explosive showdown, as expectations grow in both countries that America is preparing a pull-out of its troops.

The Saudis, America’s closest allies in the Arab World, were reported – in an article last week by Nawaf Obaid, a senior government security adviser- to be considering providing anti-US Sunni military leaders with funding, logistical support and even arms – as Iran already does for Shia militia in Iraq.

Riyadh is alarmed that Sunnis in Iraq could be abandoned to their fate – military and political – at the hands of the Shia majority.

Indeed, President George W Bush dispatched his vice-president Dick Cheney to Saudi last weekend after the kingdom demanded high-level consultations about their concerns.

DAMASCUS, Syria: A top spokesman for the former Baath party of Iraq said in a recent interview that his group will not reconcile with the U.S.-backed government in Baghdad nor stop its active support of the insurgency unless the Iraqi government and U.S. officials first meet strict conditions including the withdrawal of American troops.

The interview with the man who identified himself as Abu Mohammed came after repeated efforts by The Associated Press to make contact in Syria with supporters of the insurgency in Iraq.

The man, who appeared in person at the interview, is believed to be Khudair al-Murshidi, a former head of the Iraqi Doctors Syndicate under the rule of Saddam Hussein. He refused to give his real name during the interview and also refused to be photographed but said he was in Syria temporarily while on his way to other Mideast countries to advance the party’s goals.

Al-Murshidi also appeared last month on the pan-Arab al-Jazeera television network, also using the pseudonym Abu Mohammed.

Bilal al-Hassan is writes a regular political column for Asharq al-Awsat. (He happens to be Palestinian, apparently the younger brother of one of the longest-serving “historical Fatah” figures and former Arafat associates Hani al-Hassan). His column today (Sunday December 3) on Iraq and the Bush administration is notable for a number of reasons. Here is a summary of his argument:

While the Bush administration seems to be rejecting the idea of talks with Syria and Iran, this would be a mistake, because these are two countries through which fighters and weapons transit to Iraq, and serious discussions with them could result in putting a stop to that, thus contributing greatly to Iraqi internal stability. Moreover, there are indications that both Syria and Iran are being amenable. For instance, Syria refused the invitation to participate in a three-way summit in Tehran, out of deference to the Arab position; and Iran, for its part, has said there is an important role in the Iraq-pacification process for both Saudi Arabia and Egypt. The Bush administration, al-Hassan says, should pay careful heed to these signs.

WASHINGTON (Dec. 1) — When radio host Jerry Klein suggested that all Muslims in the United States should be identified with a crescent-shape tattoo or a distinctive arm band, the phone lines jammed instantly.

The first caller to the station in Washington said that Klein must be “off his rocker.” The second congratulated him and added: “Not only do you tattoo them in the middle of their forehead but you ship them out of this country … they are here to kill us.”

Another said that tattoos, armbands and other identifying markers such as crescent marks on driver’s licenses, passports and birth certificates did not go far enough. “What good is identifying them?” he asked. “You have to set up encampments like during World War Two with the Japanese and Germans.”

At the end of the one-hour show, rich with arguments on why visual identification of “the threat in our midst” would alleviate the public’s fears, Klein revealed that he had staged a hoax. It drew out reactions that are not uncommon in post-9/11 America.

“I can’t believe any of you are sick enough to have agreed for one second with anything I said,” he told his audience on the AM station 630 WMAL, which covers Washington, Northern Virginia and Maryland.

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Today’s report that the blue-ribbon Iraq Study Group, led by former Secretary of State James Baker, will call for a pullback of American combat forces in Iraq is the beginning of the end of the war in Iraq. Stripped of its diplomatic weasel words, the ISG’s recommendations are a stunning blow to the administration of George W. Bush and everything it stands for. “We had to move the national debate from whether to stay the course to how do we start down the path out,” said one of the ISG’s commission members, according to The New York Times.

Faced with the ISG consensus, backed by a determined Democratic majority in Congress that was catapulted into power by an American electorate sick of the war, President Bush will have no choice but to capitulate. Early in 2007, American troops will start to come home. War-weary, mainstream Republicans, eager to get Iraq off the table before the 2008 elections, will strongly support the ISG’s exit strategy. It marks a sweeping, irreversible change of course for American foreign policy, and a death blow to Vice President Dick Cheney and the remaining, but dwindling population of neoconservatives inside the administration.

WASHINGTON (Dec. 1) – Without their knowledge, millions of Americans and foreigners crossing U.S. borders in the past four years have been assigned scores generated by U.S. government computers rating the risk that the travelers are terrorists or criminals.

The travelers are not allowed to see or directly challenge these risk assessments, which the government intends to keep on file for 40 years.

The government calls the system critical to national security following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Some privacy advocates call it one of the most intrusive and risky schemes yet mounted in the name of anti-terrorism efforts.

Virtually every person entering and leaving the United States by air, sea or land is scored by the Homeland Security Department’s Automated Targeting System, or ATS. The scores are based on ATS’ analysis of their travel records and other data, including items such as where they are from, how they paid for tickets, their motor vehicle records, past one-way travel, seating preference and what kind of meal they ordered.

The use of the program on travelers was quietly disclosed earlier this month when the department put a notice detailing ATS in the Federal Register, a fine-print compendium of federal rules. The few civil liberties lawyers who had heard of ATS and even some law enforcement officers said they had thought it was only used to screen cargo.

It’s taken nearly a century, but the federal government has finally dropped part of a tax it initially levied on telephone customers to help fund the Spanish-American War.

That’s the good news.

The better news is the Internal Revenue Service expects to return $13 billion in refunds to taxpayers next year.

Known as the “federal excise tax” on phone bills, the 3 percent surcharge on long-distance and bundled service was dropped in August. Refunds will be calculated on phone bills back to March 2003.

The tax will still be assessed on local phone service.

For an explanation of the refunds, reporter Purva Patel talked to Dick Hansen, president of Technology Change Management, whose firm advises businesses on billing issues.

Q: How does one claim this refund?

A: Basically, the way you’re going to claim it is through income tax forms. You can only get the credit on the 2006 forms. So as an individual, I personally will send in my 1040, and there’s a new line on that tax return that asks “What is your credit?” and you take it off your taxes.

Although rarely credited, the anti-war movement has been a major factor in mobilizing a majority of the American public to oppose the occupation and killing in Iraq.

To many observers, the movement seems feckless and marginal, its rallies an incoherent bazaar of radical sloganeering. Yet according to Gallup surveys, a majority of Americans came to view Iraq as a mistake more rapidly than they came to oppose the Vietnam War more than three decades ago. So how could there be a peace majority without a peace movement?

Foreign Affairs, the journal of the foreign policy establishment, wondered about this riddle in a 2005 essay by John Mueller reporting a precipitous decline in public support for the war even though “there has not been much” of a peace movement.

In January, when congressional opinion was shifting against the war, a Washington Post analysis made eight references to “public opinion,” as if it were a magical floating balloon, without any mention of organized lobbying, petitioning, protests or marches. That was consistent with a pattern beginning before the invasion, when both the New York Times and National Public Radio reported that few people attended an October 2002 rally in Washington, only to admit a week later that 100,000 had been in the streets.

Began then abandoned three attempts to write about Iraq, or what’s left of it. Maybe I’ve hit a wall when it comes to the war, or maybe there’s nothing left to say. When I read all the reports and analysis about the slaughterhouse we helped to erect, I feel paralyzed. I don’t know how others can keep offering opinions about this human disaster. At this point, especially for Americans, we should be shamed into silence.

Which is not to suggest, of course, that people do or say nothing about the war. Pressure to find alternatives to the present madness must be maintained, or else it’ll never end. Perhaps what I’m trying to say is that I no longer have anything to add to the chorus. I feel somewhat guilty about this, being a political blogger who’s expected to pop off at daily headlines. But that’s where I’m currently at, for what it’s worth. Besides, there are others, like Juan Cole and Patrick Cockburn, who keep their eyes and ears on the chaos. And my pal Jon Schwarz, who knows quite a bit about US involvement in Iraqi affairs, from pre-Saddam time to now, will always have something to say. Though how he keeps his sense of humor about it eludes me.