26.5.08
Watchman Report 5/26/08
Blair Calls for Partnerships in Changing World
http://www.newsmax.com/us/blair_yale/2008/05/25/98820.html
NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair told Yale University graduates on Sunday that partnerships were key to avoid conflict in a global economy as countries such as China and India become more powerful.
Blair, the Class Day speaker, said that for the first time in many centuries, power is moving East. He said the two Asian countries will industrialize at a rate five times faster than the U.S. will in the next two decades.
"Most of all, we should know that in this new world, we must clear a path to partnership, not stand off against each other competing for power," Blair said. "The world in which you, in time to come, will take the reins, cannot afford a return to the 20th century struggles for hegemony."
Blair also said the graduates will grapple with global issues, such as the threat of climate change, food scarcity, population growth and terrorism based on religion.
Blair urged students to have a purpose in life. "There are great careers. There are also great causes," he said.
A handful of students held up signs, such as "peace now" and "no war" as Blair spoke. Blair, now the International Mideast peace envoy, supported the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Blair characterized the Middle East as a battle between the forces of modernization and moderation against reaction and extremism. He said, "The shadow of Iran looms large."
"What is at stake is immense," Blair said. "Will those who believe in peaceful coexistence triumph, matching the growing economic power and wealth with a politics and culture at ease with the 21st century? Or will the victors be those who seek to use that economic power to create a politics and culture more relevant to the feudal Middle Ages."
Graduates gave Blair a standing ovation when he finished speaking. Many wore outlandish hats, ranging from a Viking helmet to the Statue of Liberty.
Blair's oldest son, Euan, is completing a two-year master's program in international relations at Yale. Blair jokingly thanked the graduates for inviting his son to naked parties and thanked his son for declining the invitation.
Blair recalled his own days as an Oxford student when he sported long hair, torn jeans and a sleeveless long coat made out of drapes his mother had thrown out. When his father winced, he assured him the good news was that he didn't do drugs.
"My Dad looked me in the eye and said, 'Son, the bad news is if you're looking like this and you're not doing drugs we've got a real problem,' " Blair said, prompting laughter.
Blair plans to teach at Yale next year. He is to lead a seminar on issues of faith and globalization.
He continued a Yale tradition in which graduation speakers typically don't speak at commencements. The major speech to seniors is instead given the previous day during Class Day festivities.
Bette Midler, whose daughter was among the graduates, also attended the ceremony, university officials said.
A consuming folly
http://www.stangoodenough.com/?p=140
We have ignition, we’re acquiring traction, and at this rate we’ll soon be off on the road towards an arrangement with Damascus that will see the government in Jerusalem relinquish the Golan Heights - the high ground that towers over all Israel’s northern population centers.
No sooner has Israel left those heights, wrote Israeli commentator Guy Bechor in Ynetnews Friday, than a million Syrians will immediately be moved into the “liberated” territory, which has been settled, farmed and beautified by the Jews during the 40 years under Israel’s control.
[I am not sure that when this nation was called to be “a light to the world” it meant that it was to settle and restore to life desolate lands (Judea, Samaria, the Gaza Strip and the Golan), establish farms and build hundreds of population centers upon them, only to pass them on to another people who claim them but have no historic right, nor any right under international law, to possess them - Ed.]
The presence of his people on the Golan, continued Bechor, will enable Syrian president Bashar Assad “to realize his dream with no interruptions – establishing a ‘resistance’ against Israel in the Golan Heights.”
As with southern Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, this land vacated by Israel would quickly become a terrorist base used to launch more attacks against Israel’s northern communities.
Former [and probably future] Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday an Israeli withdrawal from the Golan Heights would see Iran itself fully positioned along the northern border.
“Giving of the Golan Heights will turn the Golan into Iran’s front lines which will threaten the whole state of Israel,” Netanyahu told members of his opposition Likud Party.
“If the words of Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Moallem are correct, Mr. Olmert has committed to pull back from the Golan up to the shores of Lake Galilee, even before negotiations have begun. Indeed, this would mean unprecedented anarchy of politics and defense,” he added.
“This irresponsibility can be added to the failed conduct of the Second Lebanon War, the failure to prevent Hizb’allah’s new and heightened rearmament, the failure to prevent Kassam fire on southern Israel.”
Lebanon’s Hizb’allah, which has just successfully employed violence to position itself to soon assume control over that country, is an Iranian-sponsored and Syrian-supported terror group that already has tens of thousands of missiles deployed along its border with Israel.
Syria and Iran are fast allies, bound together by a number of agreements including a mutual defense pact which commits them to come to one another’s aid if either should be attacked.
“Once Assad’s regime is toppled, Bechor maintains, “the Golan Heights will turn into the radical spearhead against Israel, and not only from Syria: People will be coming from Iran, Afghanistan and elsewhere.
“Terrorism will be two-pronged – both from the Golan and from Lebanon. Life in the north will turn into an unbearable nightmare, yet the situation will be irreversible. The Golan will shift from being an empty region to being a home to one million zealous Syrians.”
In direct contradiction of such gloomy assessments and warnings, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert Monday proclaimed that Israel faces “an historic agreement with Syria that may remove the northern threat.”
Israel’s yearning for peace, and willingness to pay enormous, unparalleled prices for that peace, is understandable and eminently deserving of praise. How much those who love this land and its people would pray and wish for them this peace.
But to continue pursuing peace down a road that has only led, and leads until today towards greater conflict and inevitable war cannot be excused, let alone commended.
This is not initiative, not statesmanship, not vision or wisdom.
It is, simply and dreadfully, folly.
Israelis to receive new non-conventional warfare kits
http://www.jnewswire.com/article/2457
While Israel was digesting news of sudden "progress' being made on the road towards peace with Syria, local media learned that the nation is soon be issued with newly refurbished kits for protection against non-conventional war.
Gas-masks and other protective gear that has been collected from the public over the last few years and is being updated will be made available for collection starting January 2009.
IDF officials that disclosed this information to The Jerusalem Post were careful to explain that the decision to begin handing out the equipment has not been affected by any threat of imminent war.
Syria and Iran are known to possess chemical and biological weapons, and have both been pursuing nuclear capabilities too, although the Israeli Air Force bombed a secret Syrian nuclear plant late lost year, possibly cooling that country's atomic ardor for now.
At present, the Israeli public is virtually unprotected from any chemical or biological agents that could get past the IDF and penetrate Israeli population centers.
Even after the Home Front begins distributing the gas-mask kits, it will take more than a year for everyone in Israel to be supplied.
Former IDF chief suffering battle fatigue?
http://www.jnewswire.com/article/2456
The former chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces appeared to be suffering a form of battle fatigue at the weekend when he declared that Israel has no real need of the Golan Heights.
Dan Halutz, who resigned in January 2007 in what the Israeli media described as "the wake of the failings" of the 2006 Second Lebanon War, made headlines Saturday after telling a Beer Sheba gathering he gets "stomach pains from the thought of returning the Golan, but in theory, Israel could get by without the Golan."
The statement followed a shock announcement by the governments of Israel and Syria on Wednesday that the two long-time enemies were preparing to discuss peace through an intermediary, starting in two weeks' time.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid Muallem asserted after the announcement that Israel had agreed to surrender the Golan Heights to Syria in exchange for peace.
The Israeli government quickly issued a strong denial, which Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's diminishing credibility rendered unconvincing.
Halutz's weighing in on the Golan issue, and his astonishing assertion that Israel could do without the plateau that towers above the Upper Galilee, is expected to help nudge Olmert and his ministers into actually preparing the Israeli public to pay that enormously risky price for promises of Damascene peace.
Every Israeli school child knows that Israel's presence on the Golan Heights, which was paid for with a high cost in Israeli blood, is the main contributing factor to the reality that the country's border with Syria is its quietest and most secure.
With Damascus in easy range of the formidable Merkava tanks the IDF has stationed on the Golan, and with Israeli listening posts dotting that border from their highest point on Mount Hermon, the Syrians have been unable to act aggressively towards the Jewish state.
The Golan also adds vital strategic depth to Israel, a small and narrow country which, without those heights and the heartland of Samaria and Judea, has been declared indefensible by numerous high-ranking Israeli and United States military officials.
Halutz also reportedly insisted that the Second Lebanon War - in which the Hizb'allah gave the IDF a bloody nose and sent more than a million Israelis fleeing as its rockets slammed into the north of the Jewish state - had not negatively affected Israel's deterrence.
Hizb'allah, which maintains [more than reasonably IMO – Ed] that it won that war against Israel, has used its success against the mighty Jewish-run military machine to draw great numbers of new recruits into its ranks. And the terror group has brazenly exploited the ceasefire Israel was pressured into signing as a cover for re-arming - today boasting many thousands more missiles in its arsenal than it had before that war.
According to Israel National News, Halutz's statements earned him some sharp slaps from Israeli right thinking politicians and, unsurprisingly, some songs of praise from the leftist camp - which formerly had derided him as a right winger, even suing him for anti-leftwing statements.
"In theory and in practice, Israel can get by without Dan Halutz," retorted National Union Party Knesset Member Aryeh Eldad, while his fellow party member MK Effie Eitam slammed the former Chief of Staff and Air Force commander.
Halutz had not learned from his failures during the Second Lebanon War, said Eitam. He continued to underestimate the critical importance of a controlling presence on the ground.
Meretz MKs welcomed Halutz’s statements, saying he had proven the importance of reaching a peace deal with Syria and showed that "peace with Syria is already a part of the consensus."
Arch-leftist Yossi Beilin said Halutz had proven that "the strategic contribution of a deal with Syria... is far more important than retaining the Golan Heights."
Exclusive: Hamas may receive lethal Iran-made EFP roadside bombs
http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5295
Shin Bet director Yuval Diskin reported to Israel’s weekly cabinet meeting Sunday, May 25, on Hamas’ rapidly expanding arsenal. He said it is only a question of time before Palestinian rockets from Gaza fly past Ashkelon to Israel’s main port of Ashdod, 25 km south of Tel Aviv and the town of Kiryat Gat, 30 km further south. Hamas, in Diskin’s view, is steadily building up its war stocks and unlikely to accept a ceasefire.
Ashdod, which handles most of Israel’s marine cargoes, has a population of 200,000, Kiryat Gat 50,000.
DEBKAfile’s military sources report that Hamas’ Damascus leader, Khaled Meshaal secretly met the Revolutionary Guards commander, Gen. Qassem Soleimani during his visit to Tehran Saturday, May 24.
First, he was taken around the IRGC factories manufacturing the roadside bombs known as explosively-formed penetrators (EFPs), which are dreaded for their extra armor-piercing capabilities and can be remotely operated by radio.
US armored vehicles in Iraq were this year fitted with extra side armor plates for protection after these roadside bombs had begun to account for 5 percent of American combat casualties.
According to intelligence sources, Hamas will soon receive EFPs from Iran with which to blow up Israel armored vehicles by remote control from inside the Gaza Strip.
Internal security minister Avi Dichter divulged to the ministers the mechanism whereby the Israeli taxpayer indirectly bankrolls Hamas.
The Israeli government last year transferred more than $1 billion to the Ramallah-based Palestinian Authority headed by Mahmoud Abbas and Salam Fayyad. The funds covered the PA’s public sector payroll, which expanded this year from 160,000 to 200,000 earners. They include members of the various terrorist groups, such as the ruling Fatah and its branches, but also a massive transfer to the Gaza Strip to pay 70,000 administrative workers, most of them members of Hamas. In this way, Dichter reported, the Israeli government is putting up the cash for terrorists.
Analysis: Gen. Michel Suleiman elected Lebanese president: One up for Tehran and Damascus
http://www.debka.com/headline.php?hid=5296
The Lebanese army's chief of staff, Gen. Michel Suleiman, was voted president Sunday, May 25, by 118 deputies to 6 abstentions.
DEBKAfile’s Middle East analysts report: The enormous relief felt by the Lebanese people at finally having a president after 18 months of political turmoil must be dampened for many by the way he attained office.
Gen. Michel Suleiman won the opposition’s support by flatly refusing to obey the orders of his prime minister, the pro-Western Fouad Siniora, to put down the Hizballah rebellion in the first half of May. But instead of being sacked for insubordination and banished, Suleiman was sworn in as president.
Siniora, who backed the wrong horse, lost his job and appears to be heading for exile and a possible position in the World Bank, according to Washington rumors.
The real winners of this topsy-turvy arrangement, the Syrian and Iranian foreign ministers, Walid Mualem and Manouchehr Mottaki, watched the ceremony in parliament from ringside seats.
Also present was a low-ranking US delegations led by Congressman Nick Rahall, a Democrat from Virginia of Lebanese origin. Two other prominent Western officials there were French foreign minister Bernard Kouchner and the European Union’s Javier Solana.
The occasion marks five disturbing developments for the United States, the West and Israel:
1. The new government about to be formed in Beirut will be headed by majority leader Saad Hariri, who until now led the ruling anti-Syrian coalition.
DEBKAfile’s Middle East sources report that Saad Hariri did not inherit the strong character of his assassinated father, the former prime minister Rafiq Hariri, who was willing to pay the price for ridding Lebanon of Syrian and Iranian influence.
In any case the prime minister’s authority has been pared down by the Doha Accord of May 21, which assigned the Syrian-backed opposition led by Hizballah 11 cabinet seats (compared with the majority factions’ 16) and therefore veto power. The weight of authority has now passed to the president.
2. Hizballah, which the Doha Accord declined to disarm, becomes the dominant military force in the country. The bases and weapons systems of Lebanon’s army, air force and navy will eventually pass into Hizballah’s hands, in keeping with the Iranian model, whereby the Revolutionary Guards is the superior military power in the land rather than the army.
This pattern of a dominant armed force subservient to the clerical establishment rather than the government is one of the dictates of a Shiite regime. To all intents and purposes, the Hizballah five-day coup sets Lebanon on the road to this outcome in Beirut.
3. Lebanon’s non-Shiite communities – Sunni, Druze and Christian – because their factional militias did not stand up to Hizballah, will have to watch the shrinkage of their power and national leverage. An exodus is expected to quickly gain ground.
4. The Tehran-Damascus-Hizballah axis took another leap forward Sunday in Beirut. Israeli prime minister Ehud Olmert’s claim that his peace talks with Syria will eventually contribute to weakening this alliance is clearly without substance.
5. Lebanon under the Suleiman presidency threatens to become the most anti-Israel administration in the Arab world. The new Beirut will find much in common with the Palestinian Hamas and openly reinforce the solid support quietly provided by Hizballah.
Iran, Hamas 'perturbed' by news of Israeli-Syrian talks
http://www.jnewswire.com/article/2455
The Iranians and the Hamas - one of Tehran's terrorist proxies - moved quickly at the weekend to express dismay and concern at the news, broken last Wednesday, of imminent Israeli-Syrian negotiations towards peace.
Talks on the Israeli-Syrian "track' had been in limbo for eight years before the governments in both countries, after months of secret activity, announced that they had been laying the groundwork for peace talks and were now ready to launch them, albeit indirectly via Turkey.
According to Israeli media, sources close to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said he was unable to conceal his disappointment and surprise at news of the renewed talks.
Ahmadinejad had characterized the reports as a "flagrant violation" by Damascus of its responsibility towards its powerful, eastern neighbor.
In what some observers saw as an effort to squeeze Syria, Iran announced that in response to Syria's taking a step towards the periphery of the Iranian orbit, Iran planned to provide the Islamist Hamas movement with advanced weapons.
This was reported in the London-based a-Sharq al-Awset on Sunday, which also said that Damascus-hosted Hamas political chief Khaled Meshal met with senior Iranian officials including the leader of the Revolutionary Guard in Tehran this weekend.
While Hamas was supposedly careful not to openly criticize Syrian dictator Bashar el-Assad and his government, it let it be known that it was "extremely disturbed" to hear news of the pending talks.
Gaza-based Hamas spokesmen told The Jerusalem Post its movement's leaders in Damascus were even considering moving to Tehran in protest of what they believe is a change in Syria's strategy.
Almost simultaneously with this news, other reports were circulated according to which both Iran and the Hamas had found a way to position themselves behind Syria by supporting its demands for the full return of the Golan Heights.
Meanwhile, what these responses immediately did [by design? - Ed] was encourage Israel's so-called peace camp (the left) which has been poised to throw its full weight behind the idea, to now start issuing statements in favor of it.
In short, the Iranian-Hamas response has effectively given a push to the ball Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert set rolling last week.
Report: Iran 'Paid Iraq Insurgents to Kill U.K. Soldiers'
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,358063,00.html
Iran has secretly funded insurgent attacks on British soldiers stationed in southern Iraq, a British newspaper reported Sunday.
According to a leaked British government document obtained by London's Daily Telegraph, Jaish al-Mahdi (JAM) – also known as the Mahdi Army — used hundreds of thousands of dollars funneled from Iran to pay fighters to carry out strikes against U.K. forces in Basra.
The report, "Life Under Fire in the Old State Building", details how "Iranian finance teams" worked in the area to recruit and pay unemployed men up to $300 a month to becoming insurgent fighters, the Telegraph reported.
According to the report, discovery of Iran's involvement came from a network of 25 local sources, including a former Iraqi army general, prominent businessmen and local sheikhs.
A senior British officer said that, although officially denied, the existence of Iran's influence in Basra was widely known by the British military, the Telegraph reported.
British forces withdrew from the city in September 2007, but the leak is the latest evidence that Iran continues to send money and weapons into Iraq to fund insurgent activity, and comes amid rising tension between Iran and the international community over its denial that Tehran is developing a nuclear weapons program.
Iraqi Military: Al Qaeda Fleeing Mosul
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,358081,00.html
Al Qaeda fighters and other Sunni insurgents have largely scattered from the northern city of Mosul in the face of a U.S.-Iraqi sweep, fleeing to desert areas further south, an Iraqi commander said Sunday. He vowed the forces will not allow them to regroup.
The U.S. military said Al Qaeda in Iraq was "off-balance and on the run" but remains a very lethal threat, tempering remarks by the U.S. ambassador a day earlier that the terror network was closer than ever to being defeated.
The comments came amid a flurry of attacks in Baghdad and other areas, most likely attributable to Sunni insurgents. A roadside bomb targeted a patrol of U.S.-allied Sunni Arab fighters near a mosque in northern Baghdad, killing one of the so-called Awakening Council members and wounding three others, a police official said.
Bombings and shootings killed three people in and around the city of Baqouba, north of Baghdad, where U.S. forces waged a fierce offensive last year to break Al Qaeda domination of the city, police said. Police officials in both cities spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the press.
Iraqi security forces also made their first major discovery of a weapons cache in Baghdad's Shiite district of Sadr City, where troops and police deployed last week — a move that could raise tensions in the military's truce with the powerful Mahdi Army militia.
The U.S. and Iraqi military have called Mosul the last remaining urban stronghold for Al Qaeda in Iraq after successes against the terror network in Baqouba and major towns in the western province of Anbar.
Iraqi Defense Ministry spokesman Maj. Gen. Mohammed al-Askari said security forces had arrested some 1,030 people during their sweep the past week in Mosul. Another 251 detainees had been freed after being cleared of suspicion, he said.
He said some 2,000 Al Qaeda and other Sunni insurgent fighters were believed to have been in the city before the sweep was launched. He could not say how many remained in the city, but said most who managed to flee were believed to be taking refuge in deserts near the cities of Tikrit and Ramadi, further south.
"Now they are in a confused situation," he said at a joint news conference with U.S. military spokesman Rear Adm. Patrick Driscoll. "We will not allow them to reorganize themselves."
After past sweeps, Sunni insurgents have regrouped to carry out major attacks and dominate other cities to use as a planning base.
U.S. and Iraqi officials have been taking a more confident tone over security gains in Iraq in recent weeks, particularly since the high profile crackdowns in Mosul and Sadr City, and the southern city of Basra. Those sweeps aim to impose Iraqi government control in areas that have been under the control of Shiite militias or Sunni insurgents.
U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said Saturday that Iraqi forces have made important progress in confronting extremists, adding, "You are not going to hear me say that Al Qaeda is defeated, but they've never been closer to defeat than they are now."
Driscoll sounded a cautionary note, however. He said that while Al Qaeda in Iraq fighters "certainly are off-balance and on the run," the group "remains a very lethal threat."
Still, the number of attacks in the past week decreased to a level "not seen since March 2004," he said, without giving specific figures.
The U.S. military has consistently been cautious about recent security gains amid fears that Al Qaeda and other insurgents are trying to regroup after suffering setbacks from military operations as well as a Sunni revolt against the terror network.
Sunni tribal leaders who have joined forces with the Americans have been credited as a key reason for the sharp decline in violence over the past year. The other factors include a troop buildup of some 30,000 additional American forces, which is currently being reduced, and a fragile cease-fire with anti-U.S. Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, the leader of the Mahdi Army.
Iraqi forces in Sadr City — the Mahdi Army's longtime stronghold — have found a number of large weapons caches in the district, including ones in a mosque and a hospital, a military official said, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release the information.
Among the weapons were rockets, anti-tank shells and land mines, he said.
The issue of weapons searches is a sensitive one. Under the truce, Mahdi Army fighters in Sadr City are keeping their light weapons, and the group has denied having heavier weapons like explosives in the area. Al-Sadr officials have warned the government not to be too aggressive in its searches and arrests of wanted militiamen, and the two sides have held talks on how to carry out raids without sparking tensions.
The Sadrist Movement says it is sticking by the truce. But weapons seizures could provoke rogue Mahdi Army members already impatient with the cease-fire, which has been crucial to keeping the Sadr City deployment smooth since it began Tuesday.
At the same time, the past several days have seen violence in other Shiite districts of Baghdad as Iraqi forces move against militias there, including the Mahdi Army.
Clashes broke out before midnight Saturday between Shiite gunmen and U.S.-Iraqi troops in the Amin area in eastern Baghdad, killing two civilians and wounding three others, including a 4-year-old boy, according to police and hospital officials.
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