The Forward has an interesting article on former undersecretary of defense Dov Zakheim cautioning against what he sees as the excesses of right wing hawks' foreign policy ambitions in the Middle East.

More on AQ Khan selling Iran a nuclear plan at a meeting in Dubai in 1987, way back during Reagan's presidency, from the WaPo's Dafna Linzer:

Khan, who often sold his products through friends and intermediaries while he ran Pakistan's nuclear program, did not attend the meeting. He and several associates are under house arrest in Pakistan and are off-limits to U.S. and foreign interrogators.

But the IAEA learned enough about the meeting to prod Iran again about the offer, and last month Iranian official produced a copy for inspectors.

Two Western diplomats familiar with its contents described it as a five-point, phased plan in which the network offered to supply Iran with drawings for Pakistani centrifuges and then a starter kit of one or two centrifuges. Phase three included as many as 2,000 centrifuges, which could be used to enrich bomb-grade uranium. Auxiliary items for the centrifuges and enrichment process would have been delivered afterward, followed by reconversion and casting equipment for building the core of a bomb.

It is just hard to understand why the Bush administration has not insisted on questioning Khan, given the extent to which he was involving in proliferating nuclear plans to rogue states of pressing concern to the US at this moment. The LA Times' Douglas Frantz has more questioning that, as well as why the US and the UK let Khan sell nuclear know-how to Libya more than 18 months after it concluded he was running an international nuclear smuggling ring, part of a pattern of looking away at Pakistani proliferation dating back to the Reagan administration:

A former CIA agent who worked in the region said the Reagan administration had "incontrovertible" knowledge of Pakistan's progress toward the bomb and Khan's central role in procuring material, but chose not to act.

The pattern and priorities had been established. Throughout the 1980s, the Reagan and Bush administrations sent $600 million a year in military and economic assistance to Pakistan for its help on Afghanistan, according to a report last month by the Congressional Research Service.

Not until the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan did the first President Bush reimpose sanctions on Pakistan, in 1990, for developing atomic weapons.

Meantime, on a different Iran-related subject, two Iranian contacts send along this plea for international attention to the case of Iranian political prisoner Dr. Farzad Hamidi. Arrested last June in front of the UN building in Tehran, Hamidi has been on a hunger strike for the past 35 days in Rajaii shahr prison. More can be found on his case at the Human Rights Watch website.

A brief note from Hong Kong. I must say, I was surprised to walk out the door of our hotel yesterday and into the little shopping mall around the corner to find not just a Starbucks (with Splenda, and Wifi, etc.), but a Bank of America branch too. With a 7-11, and 'Aviator' and 'Hitch' playing at the local movie theater, it's rather remarkably similar to what's on offer down the street from my home in Washington, and far more familiar to American eyes in a commercial sense than Paris and Rome. But then there are these aspects of utter exoticism, such as the flower and rabbit/cat/fish/bird markets at Mong Kok (and the quite intimidating electronics market). More from the mainland soon.

Housekeeping notes: Apologies, I cannot check blog mail at all.

Gone Fishing. Posting will be light for a few days. Behave yourselves.

Maybe Ahmad Chalabi hired Bob Shrum, speculates The New Republic's Spencer Ackerman.

Chalabi out of running for prime minister.

On January 27, Shah A.M.S. Kibria, a member of parliament in Bangladesh and a well known public intellectual in that country, was brutally assassinated, along with his nephew and two associates. Kibria's daughter, Nazli Kibria, an associate professor at Boston University, is seeking to mobilize US support to bring her father's assassins to justice. To find out about the killing and ways being organized to help, visit the website, www.kibria.org

Iranian influence? Never mind. It's funny, once upon a time, not so very long ago, there used to be this vocal group of people in foreign policy circles concerned about Iranian sponsored plots and covert intelligence operations. Where have they gone? Ever since Ahmad Chalabi began whispering with Moqtada al Sadr, you just can't get them excited about Iranian schemes in Iraq anymore. Iranian intelligence and influence? Not any to be found here.

Sharon's Gamble, Netanyahu's Victory? Yossi Verter concludes this interesting analysis of the Israeli cabinet's vote yesterday to approve Sharon's disengagement plan with this:

Across the cabinet table yesterday, Sharon could see the whites of Benjamin Netanyahu's eyes. Sharon has turned to the center-left; Bibi has turned right. And after the disengagement, something will have to change, on the political map as well as the geographic map. Deep inside, Netanyahu is probably happy about the vote yesterday. If he succeeds Sharon, Gaza won't be his problem.

Meantime, this personnel change noted by Uri Avnery is worth reading:

The same week, something quite unexpected happened: Ariel Sharon sent the Chief-of-Staff, Moshe Ya’alon, packing. His successor will most probably be General Dan Halutz. Halutz is, of course, a pilot, and one who played his part in the 1981 attack on the Iraqi reactor. If he succeeds Ya’alon, it will be the first time in the annals of the Israel Defense Forces that an airman is appointed Chief-of-Staff. That is rather curious. In the coming year, the army will be called upon to carry out a very difficult operation on land: the evacuation of the Gaza Strip settlements. The appointment of an Air Force general as Chief-of-Staff may hint that the IDF is planning something even more important in the air.

Syria to begin pulling some troops from Lebanon. And tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the streets of Beirut today to demand Syria out.

Here's an area where France puts America to shame. The Judith Warner book "A Perfect Madness" that the NYT's Judith Shulevitz brilliantly reviews here is causing a firestorm on local lists. As Shulevitz writes, "The mess, c'est moi." And further on, "Just because we have issue fatigue, that doesn't mean we don't have an issue."

What a way for him to go. Via Atrios.

A few days ago, I mentioned complaints from Turkish acquaintances about what they perceived as signs of growing anti-Turkish sentiment coming from their old allies in US policy circles. Today, reader DG sends along a Chicago Tribune article about the current Turkish best-seller. Its topic? A fictional war between the US and Turkey:

The book describes a surprise U.S. attack on its longtime ally and fellow NATO member touched off by a clash between American and Turkish troops in northern Iraq.

Staggered by the simultaneous bombing of Ankara and Istanbul, Turkey turns to the European Union and Russia for help.

The novel, "Metal Storm" or "Metal Firtina," has proved popular even among senior Turkish government officials and has sparked its own war of words between the two countries, striking a nerve at a time when relations are strained over real events.

The Turkish novel imagining the US attacking Turkey comes as Turkish groups are fuming about the fact that two popular American TV series, 24 and West Wing, feature plotlines this season envisioning Turkish terrorists melting down US nuclear plants and women beheaded in Turkey for immodest behavior, respectively. Given that Turkey is overwhelmingly the most socially liberal and progressive of countries in the Muslim world, what is happening here? Are the show's writers just ignorant, or what?

The Israeli cabinet has voted 17-5 to approve the plan to evacuate Jewish settlements in the Gaza strip and northern parts of the West Bank, Ha'aretz reports, making it illegal for Israelis to stay there after mid July. Ha'aretz also reports that cabinet ministers Benjamin Netanyahu and former Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky voted against the plan.

Torture Express. Newsweek has got the flight logs of a CIA-run Boeing 737 airplane used repeatedly to snatch suspects and transfer them to countries where they are interrogated, abused and tortured:

NEWSWEEK has obtained previously unpublished flight plans indicating the agency has been operating a Boeing 737 as part of a top-secret global charter servicing clandestine interrogation facilities used in the war on terror...The Boeing flights are part of a detailed two-year itinerary for the 737 obtained by NEWSWEEK. The jet's record dates to December 2002 and shows flights up until Feb. 7 of this year. The Boeing 737 may have served as a general CIA transport plane for equipment and supplies as well. Among the stops recorded are Libya, where the U.S. government has been dismantling Muammar Kaddafi's clandestine nuclear program, and Jordan, where the Israeli newspaper Haaretz has reported that high-level Qaeda detainees, including 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, were being held. (A Jordanian spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.) The Boeing also landed at Guantanamo.

Ironically, many U.S. officials say, the CIA secret facilities have proven very effective for quietly interrogating a handful of known Qaeda suspects. But when such rough practices "migrated" to Iraqi war detainees and bigger facilities like Abu Ghraib prison—under the direction of the Defense Department—the public backlash compromised the CIA's intel-gathering efforts. Today the agency's cover has been blown and critics are questioning why no full-time CIA employees have been prosecuted despite several cases of serious abuse linked to the agency.

On the eve of Bush's arrival in Germany, Newsweek further reports, German media plan to air a news report about the CIA's recent illegal snatching of a German citizen in Macedonia who was flown aboard the CIA 737 to Afghanistan where he was beaten while interrogated by the CIA. Then they must have found out he was innocent after all, so they dropped him back in Macedonia. I'm sure it's a story that will go a long way to endearing Bush to the public and authorities in Germany, where a Munich prosecutor is investigating the case as a kidnapping.

Former assistant secretary of State Robert Gelbard sends along this declaration, a "Compact Between the US and Europe," published and signed by 55 prominent US and European foreign policy hands in anticipation of Bush's visit to Europe this week. From the press release:

Written in the format of an agreement between governments, the 11-page primer from the ad hoc group of policy experts tackles such thorny issues as climate change, the Geneva Conventions, Iraq, Iran, peace and democracy in the Middle East, China, the developing world, and the United Nations. On climate change, the primer would have the U.S. agreeing to set up binding limits on emissions of greenhouse gases in major industries, power generation, and transportation.

Check it out.

Update: Australian reader Richard Tanter, of the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability, writes in response to the above:

Your reference... to the Brookings Institution-inspired "Compact between the US and Europe" was interesting. Interesting that it popped up in an American chemical industry news site, stressing the climate change aspect - a straw in the wind concerning concerns in such circles about the US stand-out position re: Kyoto.

But what really struck me was the limited character of the principles of the proposed compact, and the way in which the signatories are attempting to reconstruct a somewhat tattered Atlanticist position.

Leaving aside the weakness of the positions arbitrated on almost each of the issues concerned, it is striking to compare the tone and contents of the compact with the principles articulated by another set of European policy makers and advisors.

I'm speaking of the Study Group on Europe's Security Capabilities, which reported to EU Sec Gen Javier Solana in September last year, chaired by Mary Kaldor.

For the present purposes it's just worth noting that there is a clear "Europeanist" alternative to the compact's "Atlanticist" position, based on interesting and promising alternative security thinking. And that this is taken seriously by the EU.

[Here's the Study Group site, and a short Open Democracy piece on it.]

I won't burden you with more, except to say that for an Australian who works on security issues mainly in East and Southeast Asia, I find it slightly discouraging that non-US-centred views of the world don't get too much of a trot in American policy media, and that re-treads of old alliance-based views of security are so taken for granted in some places.

Point taken. Thanks for the letters.

Bush in Europe. One notes the photograph that the BBC chose to accompany a piece about Bush's trip (with the caption "Despite pressure from Europe, Bush has not signed the Kyoto treaty.")

Human rights organizations express concern about Negroponte, the NYT's Scott Shane reports:

Mr. Negroponte, 65, now ambassador to Iraq, is a career diplomat who has worked all over the world in his 40-year career. He has faced repeated scrutiny for his work as envoy to Honduras from 1981 to 1985, when Honduran military units, some trained by the Central Intelligence Agency, carried out kidnappings, torture and killings.

As the first director of national intelligence, Mr. Negroponte would oversee the C.I.A. and the other 14 agencies that are part of the nation's estimated $40 billion spying enterprise...

The C.I.A. and military are also under intense scrutiny because of evidence that detainees in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere have been tortured in questioning and in a few cases have died in custody. Questions have also been raised about whether the intelligence agency has handed over prisoners to third countries, where they might be tortured...

Jack R. Binns, who preceded Mr. Negroponte as ambassador to Honduras, said he opposed the confirmation because he believed that Mr. Negroponte had misled Congress in past testimony and because he might slant intelligence to suit administration policies.

"Based on his performance in Honduras, there's that possibility," said Mr. Binns, who was ambassador from 1980 to 1991 and is now retired and living in Arizona.

Oscar Reyes, whom the Honduran military seized in 1982 and tortured along with his wife, Gloria, said he was dismayed to learn of Mr. Negroponte's nomination.

"He'll say, 'I didn't know,' " said Mr. Reyes, 69, who now publishes a Spanish-language newspaper in Washington. "But the U.S. embassy knew everything that was going on."

This is no way to improve the public discourse in this country. [Nor is this, for that matter.] Ari Berman has the story. Such hate speech leads to situations like this.

Patrick Clawson has an oped on strategies to deter Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons in Ha'aretz.

No coercion, mind you, but you might want to consider mossying over to the Koufax site to vote [we're torn between our colleague up in Philly and Needlenose.]

My Turkish friends, whose opinions (unlike my own) American policymakers should care about, are stewing! First, the plot line of 24 this season most implausibly involves Turkish terrorists plotting to do something terrible against the United States. Now, the WSJ's Robert L. Pollock has come out with an exasperated editorial against Turkey. One Turkish friend who was at a talk with me today by undersecretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith says, the Turks see it as a message - the neoconservatives have turned against Turkey! And the Turks are fed up. Can the US afford to alienate the hearts and minds of one of the most dynamic and tolerant Islamic countries in the world? No, it really can't. But the Bush administration has made the formerly pro-American Turks deeply suspicious and paranoid about American intentions in the Middle East and pushed them closer to Europe -- again one of those counterintuitive goals that the Bush administration seems so apt to achieve, like putting Iraq in the hands of the the Iranian-backed political parties. Friday Update: Reading Pollock's editorial again this morning, it's clear his rant was intended to bolster Feith's message to the Turks on a recent visit there: Turkish political leaders and NGOs should be doing more to change the public discourse in Turkey in favor of the US-Turkish alliance and pro-American policies in general. From the reaction Turkish associates have to the editorial, it has failed to do anything but further infuriate. Maybe questioning why the policies have made the Bush administration so unpopular in Turkey would be a more instructive approach.

West Wing Too? Say it ain't so! A Turkish friends sends along this:

ERDOGAN CRITICIZES NBC’S WEST WING, ASKING DIPLOMATIC REACTION. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan over the weekend criticized the NBC series “West Wing” which in one of its episodes described Turkey as a country where women are beheaded as a punishment to adultery. Stating that such serials damaged the image of Turkey in the eyes of the world by giving incorrect information about the country, Erdogan asked Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul and Justice Minister Cemil Cicek to launch a diplomatic initiative on the issue. “Necessary judicial steps must be taken as soon as possible to correct this,” he added. “The Turkish Embassy in the US must be more active to denounce the series.” (Source: Milliyet)

So much for rallying public opinion in favor of the US-Turkish alliance, huh, Mr. Pollock?

Rumsfeld walked out yesterday when he got tired of briefing the House Armed Services Committee briefing. Just packed his brief case...and walked out...while they were still questioning him. Here's Dana Milbank:

Two dozen members of the House Armed Services Committee had not yet had their turn to question Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld at yesterday's hearings when he decided he had had enough.

At 12:54, he announced that at 1 p.m. he would be taking a break and then going to another hearing in the Senate. "We're going to have to get out and get lunch and get over there," he said. When the questioning continued for four more minutes, Rumsfeld picked up his briefcase and began to pack up his papers.

The chairman, Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), apologized to his colleagues for a rather "unusual" situation.

With the Bush administration asking Congress this month to write checks for half a trillion dollars for the Pentagon, you might think the secretary of defense would set an accommodating posture on Capitol Hill.

What a farce of Congressional oversight we have any more. It doesn't get more pro forma than this. Talk about the Putinization of America.

MoDo:

I'm still mystified by this story. I was rejected for
a White House press pass at the start of the Bush administration, but someone with an alias, a tax evasion problem and Internet pictures where he posed
like the "Barberini Faun" is credentialed to cover a White House that won a second term by mining homophobia and preaching family values?

At first when I tried to complain about not getting my pass renewed, even though I'd been covering presidents and first ladies since 1986, no one called me back.

Finally, when Mr. McClellan replaced Ari Fleischer, he said he'd renew the pass - after a new Secret Service background check that would last several months.

In an era when security concerns are paramount, what kind of Secret Service background check did James Guckert get so he could saunter into the West Wing
every day under an assumed name while he was doing full-frontal advertising for stud services for $1,200 a weekend? He used a driver's license that said James Guckert to get into the White House, then, once inside, switched to his alter ego, asking questions as Jeff Gannon.

Mr. McClellan shrugged this off to Editor & Publisher magazine, oddly noting, "People use aliases all the time in life, from journalists to actors."

I know the F.B.I. computers don't work, but this is ridiculous. After getting gobsmacked by the louche sagas of Mr. Guckert and Bernard Kerik, the White
House vetters should consider adding someone with some blogging experience.

Update: Meantime, noting that it has been confirmed that "Jeff Gannon" was in the White House on February 28, 2003 -- a full month before TalonNews even existed, Rep. Louise Slaughter (D-NY) has written to President Bush demanding to know why. This story just gets weirder and weirder. So "Gannon" was stringing from the White House before TalonNews existed, and Dowd couldn't get a White House press pass after covering the WH since Reagan?? while a staffer for the well known publication you might have heard of called the New York Times?

Bush nominates John Negroponte to be the new national intelligence director, and NSA director Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden as deputy. Judd Legum has more. Update from the Green Zone: Spencer Ackerman of Iraq'd hears that current US ambassador to Kuwait Richard Jones is going to be asked to take Negroponte's job in Baghdad. But Kevin Drum is voting for Paul Wolfowitz to get the Baghdad job.

Some stories just scream, class action lawsuit.

Newsweek's Hosenball and Isikoff have a story on Halliburton's Iran ties.

It's "outposts of tyranny" week at Slate.

Ha'aretz's Zvi Bar'el has a helpful analysis of events in Lebanon.

Will Bunch has a tantalizing story up today: why did a team of CIA, Defense Department and Energy Department federal agents raid the archives of deceased Senator Scoop Jackson yesterday? A sudden research urge? A biographical itch? Bunch writes

Yesterday, a small paper out that way, the Everitt Daily-Herald, carried a blockbuster of a story. It reported that a team of five federal agents -- three from the CIA, and one each from the Department of Defense and the the U.S. Department of Engery -- showed up at the University of Washington to search through the archival papers of the late Washington Sen. Henry M. "Scoop" Jackson. (We were alerted to the story off this posting on Daily Kos.) ...

The federal team apparently found what it was looking for, after culling through some 1,200 boxes of Jackson's papers over several days. A library official (who's probably in a heap o' trouble right now for spilling the beans) said that 10 documents were removed and classified as top secret.

Stay tuned!

Update: Reader S informs me, this was the most pre-publicized CIA raid since the Bay of Pigs: "Hi. I mentioned the Scoop Jackson items in another forum, and a friend who's a librarian at UW came back with this:

...it wasn't a secret that they were doing it. there was an announcement in the UW Daily, e-mail to all libraries staff, and I think there was a brief story in the Seattle papers. It happens every few years, either with donated papers or depository government documents, that they send something they didn't mean to send and need to take it back.

Iran confirms US drones story. Meantime, Reuters reports an unknown aircraft fired a missile near Bushehr, Iran. [Stay tuned: Often these 'breaking news' items turn out to be less than they first appear]. Reuters is also reporting that Israel's Silvan Shalom says that Iran "is six months away from having the knowledge to build an atomic bomb." The US National Intelligence Council is expected to come out with its own estimate by March.

Update: It turns out it was ... road work. From the AFP:

A powerful explosion in southern Iran on Wednesday which raised jitters of a possible attack on the country's nuclear installations, was a result of road blasting, a senior security official said.

It was an explosion set deliberately to blast through rock and open a road," Supreme National Security Council spokesman Agha Mohammadi told AFP. "In no circumstances was it an attack against the Islamic republic's nuclear installations."

[Thanks to all for the links.]

Update II: But was it really road work? I am hearing some speculation that the Iranian authorities originally refused to comment on the Iranian State TV report.

Washington recalls its ambassador from Syria.

Hillel Halkin has an oped worth reading in the New York Sun, Sharansky's Moral Inconsistency:

The problem that I, like many Israelis, have with Mr. Sharansky isn't about democracy in Iraq or the Palestinian Authority. It's about democracy in Israel, for which we sometimes wish he would show as much enthusiasm.

Israel's attorney general, Emmanuel Mazuz, wishes it, too. That's why, a few days ago, he wisely overruled a decision secretly taken last June 22 by the Israeli government's Ministerial Committee for Jerusalem Affairs, of which Mr. Sharansky is chairman.

This decision was outrageous in every sense. It chose to apply to Arab property in Israeli-annexed East Jerusalem a 1949 law on "absentee ownership" that permitted the expropriation of land and houses abandoned by the Palestinian refugees who fled in the 1948 war. (Hundreds of thousands of acres passed into Israeli hands under this law.) Every building and tract of land in the Arab section of Jerusalem owned by West Bank Palestinians living outside the city's municipal limits, the Committee for Jerusalem Affairs ruled, would from now on be subject to uncompensated government confiscation.

Such confiscation would have amounted in the best of cases to outright theft. What made it almost sadistically absurd in this case was that many of the "absentee" Palestinian owners were living practically around the corner from the property they had supposedly "abandoned." Without due process and hiding behind closed doors, Mr. Sharansky's committee voted, with his approval, to commit wholesale robbery by administrative fiat.

One might think this strange behavior for a man who spent eight years in Soviet prisons. Yet Mr. Sharansky, whose bravery as a dissident earned the admiration of the world, has been a disappointment before this, too, if not quite on such a breathtaking scale. Not once in all his years in Israel has he ever stood up for the rights of the Palestinians of the occupied territories - who, however necessary Israel's policies toward them may or may not be on an overall basis, have undeniably often been, individually, the helpless victims of unchecked state power, just as he was...

Mr. Sharansky acquired, during his years as a prisoner of conscience, great moral authority...Yet moral authority that is acquired is also moral authority that can be frittered away. The case for democracy isn't helped when it is.

Sharon under threats by the right for his life...had to hire security to protect the grave of his wife from right wingers threatening to vandalize it.

As Hecate writes, "Gee, it was impossible to see this one coming at us like a freight train barreling down the tracks. Tomorrow, when the sun rises on the east, the...WH will profess themselves completely shocked...."

Here's the must-read WP Robin Wright piece Hecate is pointing to, with the arresting headline: "Iraq Winners Allied With Iran Are the Opposite of U.S. Vision:

When the Bush administration decided to invade Iraq two years ago, it envisioned a quick handover to handpicked allies in a secular government that would be the antithesis of Iran's theocracy -- potentially even a foil to Tehran's regional ambitions.

But, in one of the greatest ironies of the U.S. intervention, Iraqis instead went to the polls and elected a government with a strong religious base -- and very close ties to the Islamic republic next door. It is the last thing the administration expected from its costly Iraq policy -- $300 billion and counting, U.S. and regional analysts say.

Yesterday, the White House heralded the election and credited the U.S. role...

Yet the top two winning parties -- which together won more than 70 percent of the vote and are expected to name Iraq's new prime minister and president -- are Iran's closest allies in Iraq.

Thousands of members of the United Iraqi Alliance, a Shiite-dominated slate that won almost half of the 8.5 million votes and will name the prime minister, spent decades in exile in Iran. Most of the militia members in its largest faction were trained in Shiite-dominated Iran.

And the winning Kurdish alliance, whose co-leader Jalal Talabani is the top nominee for president, has roots in a province abutting Iran, which long served as its economic and political lifeline...

Added Rami Khouri, Arab analyst and editor of Beirut's Daily Star: "The idea that the United States would get a quick, stable, prosperous, pro-American and pro-Israel Iraq has not happened. Most of the neoconservative assumptions about what would happen have proven false."..

The big losers in this election are the liberals," said Stanford University's Larry Diamond, who was an adviser to the U.S. occupation government. "The fact that three-quarters of the national assembly seats have gone to just two [out of 111] slates is a worrisome trend. Unless the ruling coalition reaches out to broaden itself to include all groups, the insurgency will continue -- and may gain ground."

Meantime, Eli Lake is reporting that a key Sunni leader is warning of unrest in Mosul after the election, if steps are not taken to include Sunnis in the new government.

Recommended reading from the Sunday papers:

Lee Smith's A Liberal in Damascus, in the NYT.

Pico Iyer's NYT book review of Christopher de Bellaigue's "In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs."

...Civil wars, de Bellaigue is agile enough to see, often take place invisibly.

The guiding method of ''In the Rose Garden of the Martyrs'' is to zoom in on a handful of individuals whose cases, unraveled in detail, can give us, you could say, the people's version of (and a sequel to) Ryszard Kapuscinski's classic portrait of pre-Revolutionary Iran, ''Shah of Shahs'' (1982). We see loyalists who fought for the revolution and now mostly fight against it; widows in the holy city of Qom who sidle up to mullahs and say, ''Excuse me, sir, would you be interested in doing a good deed?'' (knowing that the religious leaders
are more than ready to pay to do the deed); the ''thick-necks,'' thugs of the bazaar...The results, as befits a famously sinuous and sophisticated culture, are seldom what we expect (one of the strongest defenses of the revolution, as giving people new opportunities to go to school, to learn musical instruments, even to choose their own partners comes, as it happens, from a dissident intellectual who has had six consecutive newspapers shut down). Yet the vignettes also cohere to form a withering portrait of a lost and disenchanted country of heroin addicts, 13-year-old prostitutes and grace notes mocked by the ruins all around...

And Richard Wolin's (subscription only) piece, "From Poland to Ukraine, Self-Limiting Revolution Bears Its Democratic Fruit, in the latest Chronicle of Higher Education. [Thanks to DP and RZ for the links.]

Waldroup out. "Controversial Pentagon Espionage Unit Loses Its Leader," the WaPo reports. Sub-headline: "Rumsfeld Reportedly Moving Ahead with Plans to Expand Team's Intelligence Work Worldwide." And as Barton Gellman reports, the DIA is openly hiring for the field ops positions:

The DIA has stepped up a recruiting campaign for candidates with "outstanding foreign language skills" and "a background in hard science or special operations." "You are the unseen and hear the unspoken," said one advertisement placed in the Army Times and other newspapers with large military readerships. "You could be anybody, anywhere. You are Intelligence. Be DIA." The accompanying illustration depicts two men in silhouette, conversing at a darkened table with a cityscape featuring an Abrams tank out the window. The job being advertised is "DIA field HUMINT collector," requiring willingness "to fulfill short-term deployments and worldwide assignment."

On the DIA's Web site, an "open continuous" announcement of the same vacancies -- posted Jan. 26 -- called for graduates of the CIA's Field Tradecraft Course or the military's "special mission units," the clandestine squadrons reporting to the U.S. Special Operations Command in Tampa.

Also in today's Post, Jim Hoagland reports on the disagreement within the administration over who is the typical Iraqi insurgent, e.g. "Kamal the Tailor." The disagreement breaks down across normal ideological lines. Is Kamal the tailor/insurgent primarily motivated by hostility to the American occupation, or is he a committed Ba'athist? Hoagland is voting for the latter interpretation, the CIA, he reports, the former. Most interesting is his conclusion that the administration still doesn't agree on the facts about who it's fighting in Iraq. The insurgents' motivations are still a subject of abstract theorizing and ideological dispute.

Chalabi's run for the prime minister:

One Iraqi who may hold the key to Mr. Chalabi's future is Moktada al-Sadr, the young cleric who led a series of armed uprisings against the American military last year. According to aides for both men, Mr. Sadr has promised to back Mr. Chalabi in his bid to become prime minister. Despite his outlaw status - he is under indictment for murder and has been in hiding for months - Mr. Sadr fielded several candidates in the election. Together, his allies appear likely to emerge as the largest single block inside the Shiite alliance, with as many as 21 seats.

Mr. Sadr's backing would give Mr. Chalabi a substantial boost toward his goal. Without it, Mr. Chalabi's chances seem slim.

Mr. Sadr, known for his virulently anti-American views and Islamist leanings, seems an unlikely ally of Mr. Chalabi, a pro-Western moderate who supports the continued presence of American forces in Iraq. But in an interview last week in Najaf, Mr. Sadr's chief aide said that Mr. Sadr had decided to back Mr. Chalabi. The aide, Ali Smesim, said the other candidates were pursuing their narrow agendas.

"The others are baking bread just for themselves," Mr. Smesim said of Mr. Chalabi's rivals, employing an Arabic proverb.

But aides to Mr. Chalabi's main rivals, Mr. Mahdi and Mr. Jafaari, say Mr. Sadr's support for Mr. Chalabi is not assured. Indeed, they say Mr. Sadr has pledged to support whomever emerges as the top candidate.

Drones:

But the mystery was laid to rest by Iranian air force commanders, some of whom were trained more than 25 years ago in the United States and are familiar with U.S. tactics. They identified the drones early last month, a senior Iranian official said, and Iran's National Security Council decided not to engage the pilotless aircraft. That action is considered a major policy decision and reflects Iran's belief that an attack is unlikely anytime soon...

U.S. officials confirmed that the drones were deployed along Iran's northern and western borders, first in April 2004, and again in December and January. A former U.S. official with direct knowledge of earlier phases of the operation said the U.S. intelligence community began using Iraq as a base to spy on Iran shortly after taking Baghdad in early April 2003. Drones have been flown over Iran since then, the former official said, but the missions became more frequent last year...

The last drone sightings were in mid-January, about the same time that Iran's National Security Council met in Tehran to discuss them, according to an Iranian official.

"It was clear to our air force that the entire intention here was to get us to turn on our radar," the official said...

But it did not work. "The United States must have forgotten that they trained half our guys," the Iranian official said. After a briefing by their air force three weeks ago, Iran's national security officials ordered their forces not to turn on the radar or come into contact with the drones in any way.

David Ignatius profiles national security advisor Stephen J. Hadley, describing him as "a man with no enemies" (my own reporting has found this to be the case -- many a Democrat who has worked with Hadley at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, USIP, etc. has called him utterly decent, brilliant, top notch, etc.) Based on an interview with Hadley, Igantius writes:

Hadley argues that analysts are wrong to see a tension in this administration between idealists and realists...

Yet he returns, repeatedly, to the idea that policy must be rooted in the president's values, not in the bloodless bargaining of interagency debate. He cites a dictum of former NSC colleague Bob Blackwill: "In any interagency meeting, what often gets lost is what we're trying to accomplish."

Many outsiders faulted the Bush NSC operation during the first term for failing to tee up critical issues for clean presidential decisions so that a single policy could then be imposed on State, Defense and the CIA. Hadley rejects the premise: On Iran, for example, he says that the Bush administration reached consensus several years ago on a tough approach, but that when details of bickering over a formal National Security Presidential Decision leaked to the press, "we decided to shelve the NSPD and go ahead and implement the policy."

What policy are they implementing on Iran?

Remember al Qaeda? Liberal Oasis points to this BBC report today that says Pakistan admits that it has paid the equivalent of half a million dollars to "help four former wanted tribal militants in South Waziristan settle debts with al-Qaeda."

Military operations chief in the region, Lt Gen Safdar Hussain, said the payments were part of a peace deal signed on Monday with tribesmen.

It is the first time Pakistan has admitted making such payments...

The peace deal offers an amnesty in return for the tribe's pledge not to support al-Qaeda and Taleban militants or attack government installations.

Meantime, Joseph Braude, writing in The New Republic, parses the broadcast on al Jazeera yesterday by al Qaeda's #2, Ayman al-Zawahiri, with this conclusion:

Al Qaeda may kill hundreds of innocents in Spain to influence the outcome of elections there--or deliver a tirade against George Bush on the eve of the American elections, apparently to influence voters here--but the movement seems to have no appetite for achieving its goals through elections in Arab and Muslim countries. In this respect, today's message wasn't just another hyperbolic rant. It drew a philosophical line in the sand. And among Arabs and Muslims, it may prove to be an unpopular one.

Eurabia? I am informed we will be hearing it a lot. From the Hudson Institute:

Bat Ye'or's latest book, Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2005) makes the controversial argument that Europe and the Arab world are drifting increasingly closer culturally and politically, forming an alliance that is anti-Christian, anti-Western, and anti-American. Born in Egypt, author Bat Ye'or is a pioneer researcher of minority religious groups within the Arab Muslim world. Her three major books
translated from French are: The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians under Islam (1985), The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude (1996), and Islam and Dhimmitude: Where Civilizations Collide(2002)...

Thanks to DP.

Hmm. This just got pinged to me by the US Institute of Peace:

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell will lead a new task force that will assess UN effectiveness and recommend actions for the United States to take to strengthen the world body. Mandated by Congress in the FY2005 omnibus appropriations bill at the behest of Rep. Frank Wolf (R-VA), the task force will examine the extent to which the United Nations is fulfilling the goals of its Charter and offer recommendations for U.S. action in a report to be submitted to Congress in June 2005.

Ten other distinguished Americans, including former diplomats, policymakers, business executives and military leaders, have agreed to serve on the task force. They are: Gen. Charles Boyd (USA, Ret.), Business Executives for National Security; Gen. Wesley K. Clark (USA, Ret.), Wesley K. Clark and Associates; Edwin Feulner, The Heritage Foundation; Roderick Hills, Hills and Stern; Ambassador Donald McHenry, Georgetown University; Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, Boeing Company; Dr. Anne-Marie Slaughter, Princeton University; Dr. A. Michael Spence, Oak Hill Capital Partners; Senator Malcolm Wallop, Asian Studies Center; and J. Robinson West, PFC Energy...

It doesn't happen often, but here's a Max Boot column I agree with:

Given the poisonous climate of opinion fostered by the Mubarak mafia, it is little wonder that the leader of the September 11 hijackers was Egyptian or that Osama bin Laden's deputy is Egyptian. Egypt has long been a breeding ground of Islamist extremism. Mr. Mubarak uses this to his advantage by telling the West that if he falls, the fundamentalists will take over. To forestall this catastrophe, the 76-year-old generously proposes to "run" for a fifth term this fall as the only candidate on the ballot. But there is little evidence that Islamists are popular enough to win a free election in Egypt. They have flourished mainly because little mainstream opposition is allowed. The American government should be funding the opposition, not the apparatus that represses it.

We've seen in the past that threatening to cut off subsidies has helped modify Egyptian behavior. Dissident Saad Eddin Ibrahim credits American pressure with helping to win his release from prison in 2003. And that involved a threat to withhold merely $130 million in supplemental aid. What might a threat to cut off $2 billion accomplish?

More from Praktike and Matt Yglesias.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan says he knew "Gannon" wasn't Gannon. Here's E&P with the WH Transcript:

Q: Were you aware that he had another name?

McClellan: Was I aware? I had heard that. I had heard that, yes, recently.

Q: But did you know during all this time that he really wasn't Jeff Gannon?

McClellan: I heard at some point, yes -- previously.

Q: As Press Secretary, what do you think about this whole --

McClellan: Well, like I said -- what do I think about it? Well, let me explain a few things. First, as the press secretary, I don't think it's the role of the press secretary to get into picking or choosing who gets press credentials. Also, I don't think it's the role of the press secretary to get into being a media critic, and I think there are very good reasons for that. I've never inserted myself into the process. He, like anyone else, showed that he was representing a news organization that published regularly, and so he was cleared two years ago to receive daily passes, just like many others are. The issue comes up -- it becomes, in this day and age, when you have a changing media, it's not an easy issue to decide or try to pick and choose who is a journalist. And there -- it gets into the issue of advocacy journalism. Where do you draw the line? There are a number of people who cross that line in the briefing room.

And, as far as I'm concerned, I would welcome the White House Correspondents Association, if they have any concerns or issues that they want to bring to my attention, they know my door is open and I'll be glad to discuss these issues with them. I have an open dialogue with the Correspondents Association. No one's ever brought such an issue to my attention, in my -- during my time as being press secretary. And you all cover the briefing room on a regular basis. You know that there are a number of people in that room that express their points of view, and there are people in that room that represent traditional media, they represent talk radio, they represent -- they're columnists, and they represent online news organizations.

Q: Was the White House aware at all -- was the White House aware -- was the White House aware at all about the online Web sites that he was linked to?

McClellan: No. This has only come to my attention through the news reports, just a few reporters calling in.

My understanding was, when he started coming to the White House about two years ago, the staff asked to see that it -- that he represented a news organization that published regularly. And they showed that, so he was cleared and has been cleared ever since based on that time.

And this is just now something that's come to my attention more recently because it's been an issue raised in some media reports.

(via Romenesko).

Cheney and Rumsfeld. I think Jim Hoagland calls this absolutely right: Cheney's influence is stronger than ever:

Continued divisions over policy fortify Cheney as a center of gravity for Bush on choices of substance. And Cheney's views are so firmly held and starkly stated that they polarize debate within the administration...

Rice stayed out of the State-Pentagon-CIA battles and never established bureaucratic control over policy issues at the White House. That left Cheney as Bush's primary reference point when hard decisions had to be made. It could easily happen again.

Bush has moved to integrate Cheney's staff with his in unprecedented fashion. And while Stephen Hadley, Bush's new national security adviser, served as Rice's deputy, he came to prominence as a policymaker at the Defense Department under Cheney in the George H.W. Bush administration, as did Hadley's recently named deputy, J.D. Crouch.

Also: Rumsfeld, on the French Riviera, decides he will go to the Munich security summit after all. He's made quite a comeback the past few weeks. As Hersh predicted, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Bush are in together, out together, it seems (barring health issues).

Short Takes:

Jane Mayer's New Yorker piece on the US's outsourcing of torture.

The AP's George Jahn is reporting that the Austrian firm Steyr-Mannlicher has sold 800 rifles to Iran. A reader writes, "These are 12.7mm x 99mm, which makes them the functional equivalent of the US military .50cal sniper rifles. They will be capable of penetrating light armor, such as in armored personnel carriers - though not tanks. Steyr makes excellent weapons, and rifles of this type are capable of accurate fire at more than 2km in the hands of a skilled operator. Iran claims they are for border protection, and in the terrain they have to protect that may be possible (due to ranges). But I find it difficult to believe. It certainly looks as though they are preparing for war." Update: Perhaps, but it seems sniper riflers wouldn't be the weapon to defend against the kinds of external threat Iran might be most concerned about.

North Korea admits it has nuclear weapons (for the second time) and pulls out of six party talks. Update: Slate's Fred Kaplan says it's time to talk to Pyongyang.

Read Samantha Power and Mark Goldberg on the Bush administration blocking of the ICC's efforts to try to hold individuals accountable for war crimes in Darfur.

Re: Gannongate, Atrios is right in his questions here and here. It's hard to understand how the White House could not have been complicit in Gannon's getting White House press credentials using a pseudonym; under what conditions and for what purpose? More from Kossacks.

Matt thinks Tom Friedman has been drinking some of the kool-aid. And experts weigh in to say, US intelligence on Iran is even worse than it was for Iraq.

Nostalgia among the neoconservatives for the 1950s and 18th century classical architecture. It's not often in an article about architectural trends that a source demands anonymity. But behold just that in this NYT piece on "classicists strike back":

...One could understand why the design world might dismiss the earnest and tweedy souls in horn-rimmed glasses who founded the Institute of Classical Architecture in 1992. Who needs Ionic columns when you can have Rem Koolhaas?

What a difference a decade makes. Since 2002 the institute has made sweeping changes to its once-fusty agenda, and the design world is scoffing no longer... In the last 18 months, its membership has more than doubled, to 1,500, and the group (now called the Institute of Classical Architecture & Classical America) has opened five new regional chapters for a total of seven.

Its program of classes, tours and lectures teaching the concepts and practices of traditional architecture - a curriculum largely vanished from architecture schools - earned last year's largest design grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. Its lectures in New York have drawn speakers like Martha Stewart and crowds as large as 300, even on staid topics like a new translation of Vitruvius...

Classicism's most zealous fans maintain that its tenets mark it as the great and timeless architecture of democracy, and they exalt it above all other styles. But even nonzealots have come to see its allure...

But detractors counter that today's traditionalism is more about class than classicism. Instead of recalling the noble aims of the golden age of Mount Vernon and Monticello, classicism today, they say, seems more likely to recall the glory days of Anglo-American aristocracy, a Ralph Lauren version of architecture...

The institute's successes do not rub everyone in design the right way. Some of the debate has, not surprisingly, taken on political overtones. One institute staff member said that shortly after he started working for it, he received a furious note from a friend accusing him of having become a neoconservative stooge. He asked not to be identified so as not to reopen a wound.

The dialogue does not often get that heated, but tensions do simmer...

But others are quick to point out that nostalgia for 18th-century buildings may have more to do with unspoken nostalgia for the 18th century than for the building. "Reviving the classical forms is not the same thing as reviving the culture," said Terence Riley, the chief curator of architecture and design at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. A 2000 Georgian mansion might be impossible to differentiate from an 1800 one, but the social climates that created the two are two centuries apart.

[Thx to reader S. for the link.]

Housekeeping: Blogging will be thin until Saturday.

Happy Year of the Rooster.

Ideas "unconditioned by reality," a familiar contemporary theme. Gertrude Himmelfarb writes:

...TRILLING WAS RESPONDING to the problem George Orwell had posed so dramatically in Nineteen Eighty-Four. Reviewing that book when it appeared in 1949, Trilling made clear that Orwell was not, as liberals liked to think, merely attacking Soviet communism. "He is saying, indeed, something no less comprehensive than this: that Russia, with its idealistic social revolution now developed into a police state, is but the image of the impending future and that the ultimate threat to human freedom may well come from a similar and even more massive development of the social idealism of our democratic culture." A few years later, reviewing another book by Orwell, Trilling repeated this theme: "Social idealism" is not the only thing that can be perverted into tyranny; so can any idea "unconditioned" by reality. "The essential point of Nineteen Eighty-Four is just this, the danger of the ultimate and absolute power which the mind can develop when it frees itself from conditions, from the bondage of things and history."

Put it in the mattress, I'm almost convinced. Perhaps convert half of it to Euros first and then stuff it in your duvet.

I'm very pleased to see this review of Miljenko Jergovic's Sarajevo Marlboro, not only because the subject is obviously of great interest to me; but also because the publisher of the English language translation, Archipelago Books, was created by my childhood family friend, Jill Schoolman. Archipelago is committed to publishing contemporary foreign language literature in English that otherwise much of us would never see. And they seem to be making quite a success of it.

Disturbing.

Talon News' White House correspondent calls it quits. But still, has anyone answered why the White House allowed him to use a pseudonym? More here, here, and here.

As much predicted, Ahmad Chalabi is back, and seeking to become Iraq's prime minister:

In a phone interview yesterday with The New York Sun, Mr. Chalabi said he had said yes to the request from prominent members of the United Iraqi Alliance list, the slate of candidates that will likely control a majority of seats in the transitional national assembly to be announced in the coming days.

Update: Knight Ridder's Nancy Youssef has a great piece on Chalabi's irrepressable political ambitions, which suggests he still has quite a bit of maneuvering to do to win over fellow members of his Shiite bloc:

In a survey of 1,500 potential voters in the week before the election, the Iraq Center for Research and Strategic Studies found that only 56.2 percent could name a leader they trusted. Of those, Chalabi received only 1.3 percent of the total. Interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi, Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr and interim President Ghazi al Yawer all received higher numbers.

Worth reading.

Recovering blogger Haggai Elitzur has thrown in the towel. He is now blogging over at Praktike's site. It seems one can never escape.

Nobel peace prize laureate Shirin Ebadi argues the human rights case against attacking Iran in the NYT:

Respect for human rights in any country must spring forth through the will of the people and as part of a genuine democratic process. Such respect can never be imposed by foreign military might and coercion - an approach that abounds in contradictions. Not only would a foreign invasion of Iran vitiate popular support for human rights activism, but by destroying civilian lives, institutions and infrastructure, war would also usher in chaos and instability. Respect for human rights is likely to be among the first casualties.

Instead, the most effective way to promote human rights in Iran is to provide moral support and international recognition to independent human rights defenders and to insist that Iran adhere to the international human rights laws and conventions that it has signed. Getting the Iranian government to abide by these international standards is the human rights movement's highest goal; foreign military intervention in Iran is the surest way to harm us and keep that goal out of reach.

Haaretz's front page banner headline:

Sharon and Abbas declare an end to hostilities

Iran's Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a candidate in Iran's June presidential elections, grants an interview to USA Today's Barbara Slavin. Highlights:

Slavin: Would you be prepared to reopen a dialogue with the United States?

Rafsanjani: The first step has to be from the U.S. part. They have to show positive signs for us so we can believe they are sincere. The main thing would be our assets. That would be the best positive sign. This is a very wrong action that they have betrayed our trust. When I talk about the assets, that was at the beginning of the talks. I was president then. I'm not president now. When I said it, this would be a sign of goodwill to begin the talks...

Slavin: Are you satisfied with the nuclear talks with the Europeans and would you like the U.S. to join the process?

Rafsanjani: I'm not satisfied with the progress of the work, but I am happy that the talks are going on. It might have a negative effect if the United States joins.

Slavin: Are you concerned about all the tough statements from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and other U.S. officials in recent days?

Rafsanjani: Miss Rice talks very tough. We have gotten used to this nonsense. Miss Rice is a bit emotional about this, and we predicted that she would have a more emotional approach to this.

(Watch out, Larry Summers!) Here's more:

Slavin: Have you ever visited the United States?

Rafsanjani: I have toured 20 states in a car (in 1974). I found the States a large, developed and rich country. I was surprised that they still look to smaller countries of the world to get benefits. That time I was in contact with Iranians, the students and my brother who was there. Now when I study about the States, there are interesting and capable people there. The technology and science are very impressive there. We don't have any bad memories of the people of the United States. If we have any problems, it's always with the government of the United States...

Rafsanjani: President Bush also has slips of the tongue often. One could really write a full editorial comprising these slips. I do not think it is correct or appropriate for someone in that high position as the president of the United States (to talk that way). The United States is a big country but unfortunately it seems it has the brain of a little bird not befitting the greatness of the country.

Slavin: Does Iran need or want nuclear weapons, given that Israel, India and Pakistan have them?

Rafsanjani: We are certain that we will never use such weapons, therefore they have no utility for us. Even during our war with Iraq, we could have employed chemical weapons but we refrained. I'm sure you must be aware of the casualties we faced (some 750,000 dead or wounded over eight years). It is unfortunate that I have to stress that your country is among those that have to share part of the guilt (because the United States supplied chemical munitions to Saddam Hussein during 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war).

Rafsanjani is the front runner in the elections.

Thanks to reader F for sending this along, with this note: "A serious tension has been created between Rafsanjani and Iran's supreme Ayatollah Khameneie since Rafsanjani has agreed to run for presidency. This is a surprise interview which I believe Rafsanjani has chosen to send a signal to Americans that he is the guy to be taken seriously. I believe this is a window of opportunity for Americans."

Via Matt, very cool website, Pyongyang Metro. Only ostensibly only about the metro. This page taken from a 1994 guidebook to the Pyongyang subway reminds one a bit of the 2001 Tony Kushner play, Homebody/Kabul, written just a couple years before 9/11.

Let's hope Elliot Abrams invites David Kay for a chat.

Gerecht:

Let us make an analytical bet of high probability and enormous returns: The January 30 elections in Iraq will easily be the most consequential event in modern Arab history since Israel's six-day defeat of Gamal Abdel Nasser's alliance in 1967.

Update: And in a (subscription only) piece at the WSJ, Kanan Makiya writes on the Iraqi elections and the question of whether the Shiite majority will protect minority rights:

...The most fundamental truth of post-Saddam politics in Iraq is that only the Shiites are in a position to stop the legacy of dictatorship from snatching victory out of the jaws of its own demise in the shape of escalating confessional and ethnic violence in the years to come...

"Worried that the nation's aging nuclear arsenal is increasingly fragile, American scientists have begun designing a new generation of nuclear arms meant to be sturdier and more reliable and to have longer lives," the NYT reports. Update: Arms control wonk has more [thx to RZ].

The NYT ombudsman has more on its reporter's much-noted televised claim last week that the US government was in a position to offer Ahmad Chalabi the head of the Iraqi Interior Ministry. Meantime, the NY Sun reported last week that the newly elected Iraqi national assembly will inherit recommendations for a Status of Forces Agreement with the US negotiated a year ago by the INC's former law firm Shea & Gardner.

Puzzled about the Iran portion of Bush's State of the Union, as I was? We were meant to be, argues Daniel Eisenberg in Time: "Confused? That could be the intended effect, part of a psychological game to keep the Iranians off balance. The problem is that the Iranians—who deny they are pursuing nuclear weapons and insist that they have a sovereign right to enrich uranium for peaceful, civilian purposes—seem quite adept at playing their own games." Strategic ambiguity may be Bush's rhetorical intention, but seems to reflect genuine lack of consensus in the administration about what it should adopt as its policy towards Iran. On a related topic, the Senate Select Intelligence committee is preemptively reviewing US intelligence on Iran, Reuters and others report. It's a novel idea. But we are still waiting to see the promised second part of that committee's review of the administration's role in shaping Iraq pre-war intelligence assumptions. Update: Jim Hoagland has more on the administration's Iran policy review -- "how do you review something that doesn't exist?"

If there is any justice, these Enron comic book villains will go to jail. From reports about newly released Enron tapes:

In one January 2001 telephone tape of an Enron trader the public utility identified as Bill Williams and a Las Vegas energy official identified only as Rich, an agreement was made to shut down a power plant providing energy to California. The shutdown was set for an afternoon of peak energy demand.

"This is going to be a word-of-mouth kind of thing," Mr. Williams says on the tape. "We want you guys to get a little creative and come up with a reason to go down." After agreeing to take the plant down, the Nevada official questioned the reason. "O.K., so we're just coming down for some maintenance, like a forced outage type of thing?" Rich asks. "And that's cool?"

"Hopefully," Mr. Williams says, before both men laugh.

The next day, Jan. 17, 2001, as the plant was taken out of service, the State of California called a power emergency, and rolling blackouts hit up to a half-million consumers, according to daily logs of the western power grid...

Until the tapes were released on Thursday, there had been few public details of how Enron set in motion the phony power shortages.

Memos uncovered by Snohomish County also show that Enron rewarded midlevel executives based on their performance in manipulating the West Coast market.

All for greed. It's really pretty incredible.

Some readers sent along this David Ignatius column today from the WaPo, about the direction of US foreign policy in the second Bush administration. A subtheme of the column pushes forward understanding of the FBI Aipac investigation:

... The FBI investigation has received surprisingly little publicity in the mainstream press, but it continues to rumble along. A prominent former government official with access to highly classified information told me this week that he was interviewed in late January by two FBI agents and quizzed about his luncheon meetings with Steve Rosen, AIPAC's director of foreign policy issues. He said he told the agents that he had never given Rosen classified information and that Rosen had never asked for it. The FBI investigation seemed, to this former official, to be largely a "fishing expedition."

The FBI has raided AIPAC's offices twice, most recently on Dec. 1, and at least four of its officials have reportedly been asked to testify before a grand jury. (AIPAC officials declined my request that they comment on the investigation. An FBI spokesman said the bureau couldn't comment on an ongoing investigation.) Meanwhile, I'm told that more than a half-dozen officials in the Bush administration who are apparently suspected of leaking classified information to AIPAC have had to retain defense lawyers.

I am not sure I agree with Ignatius that "the FBI probe is a reminder of the subterranean battles that often take place in Washington." That there are internal Bush administration battles over the direction of US foreign policy is certainly true; and that the FBI probe of AIPAC continues is also true. But I am not convinced that the probe itself is chiefly politically motivated, as Ignatius and indeed, some critics of the investigation, seem to suggest. [Thx to readers I and SB.]

Interesting article by Michael Oren in the New Republic on Ariel Sharon's non Likudnik roots in the Mapai movement -- whose leaders, Oren writes, have a tradition of talking right but acting pragmatically. Interesting as well for the reason that as far as I have read, TNR is pretty consistently coming out in support of Sharon's Gaza pull out plan - a position that is not unanimous among the pro-Israel American right. The alternative to progress on reaching a two-state solution, Oren says however, is a one state solution:

Today, facing mounting pressures for a one-state solution and persistent threats from Palestinian terrorism, Israel surely needs the hard-nosed realism of Ben-Gurion. Israel must never return to the unworkable borders of 1967 or negotiate under fire, but neither can it afford to absorb millions of Palestinians and tip its demographic balance toward binationalism. At the same time, confronting the danger of severe internal schisms--perhaps even violence between settlers and the soldiers ordered to evict them--Israel also needs a Begin. Democracy, whether in the form of a national referendum on disengagement or elections, is essential to limiting the trauma of removing thousands of Israelis from their homes. To preserve Israel's integrity and security, to safeguard its society, Ariel Sharon must be not only the last Mapainik, but the last Likudnik as well.

Update: Reader and recovering blogger Haggai Elitzur writes in response to Oren's article:

I also read the article, he made some interesting points, but some vaguely contradictory ones as well. Part of his thesis was based on a Mapainik tradition of contempt for democracy, as opposed to a Herut/Likudnik liberalism. He's partially right, certainly with
regards to Ben-Gurion, who was quite the dictator on many occasions. But he also glosses over Begin's reputation for wild-eyed extremism, built up over decades of bloodthirsty rhetoric and, in the early years of Israeli statehood, motorcycle-gang-style acolytes who tended to stage rather fascistic rallies, in addition to some pretty violent demonstrations, like in the early 50s when the Knesset voted to support Ben-Gurion's reparations deal with Adenauer and the W. German government.

Oren also glosses over the practical one-man coup that Sharon engineered with the Lebanon war, claiming that "several ministers insinuated that he executed Israel's ill-fated 1982 invasion of Lebanon almost unilaterally, without fully consulting the cabinet."

None of this is beyond any dispute (and Sharon also kept some cabinet-level decisions hidden from his military officers); it would be like saying "some people have insinuated" that the Bush administration relied on what turned out to be false WMD evidence before invading Iraq. Sharon's decision-making as prime minister has been far more democratic than that; he waited to launch the big April 2002 invasion of the West Bank until he had complete support across the whole political mainstream in Israel, something that nobody would have believed the Sharon of the early '80s would have done.

Oren's final point is that there needs to be some national vote on the withdrawal plan, either through a referendum or through elections. The call for elections is a reasonable to make on the grounds of the need for democratic legitimacy, since Sharon ran against withdrawal in 2003 (the article mistakenly says 2001). But it's a little hard to square his conclusion about Sharon being anti-democratic about the whole thing with his admission that Sharon's "decision to disengage from Gaza is based on the practical realization that the majority of Israelis are no longer willing to defend the settlements there and that Israel's occupation of the Strip only strengthens Palestinian demands for the creation of a binational Arab-Jewish state."

Update II: Reader S asks:

Where is the pressure for a one-state solution coming from??? Have I missed something? Is Tony Judt pressure? I don't have a subscription to TNR, but from the graf you've posted, it looks like Oren is simply saying, not Eretz but Bantustan. What else could he mean, if the 1967 borders are impossible? Anyway, we all know that Sharon has always shown himself to be eminently pragmatic...

Fodder for some future Meet the Press interview. "Secretary, one year ago, you said ...."

Mr. Sevan had quite an aunt.

Crouch, not Abrams. A friend and I puzzled over a confusingly written AP report on this late last night. Here's the deal. Elliot Abrams is not being appointed the deputy national security advisor. The NSC #2 job is going to J.D. Crouch, the current US ambassador to Romania, as announced by the White House January 31st. The White House announced yesterday that Abrams is being named "Deputy Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy." It's not clear how that is quite so different from the job Abrams has already held at the NSC since 2002 -- "Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Near East and North African Affairs." The White House press release says "In his [new] capacity...Mr. Abrams will assist Mr. Hadley in work on the promotion of democracy and human rights, and will provide oversight to the NSC's directorate of Democracy, Human Rights, and International Organization Affairs and its directorate of Near East and North African Affairs. Working with Secretary Rice and Mr. Hadley, he will maintain his involvement in Israeli/Palestinian affairs." Sounds like Abrams' portfolio is going to remain pretty heavily focused on the Middle East.

Rumsfeld tells reporters, he submitted his resignation twice during the Abu Ghraib scandal, but Bush wouldn't accept it. And he says the war crimes lawsuit filed against him by the Center for Constitutional Rights in Germany is what is deterring him from traveling to the security summit in Munich next week. Update: Emailing with a reader, one wonders, why is Rumsfeld saying this now?

I admit to being a bit puzzled by the Iran portion of Bush's State of the Union speech. He's certainly not openly declaring regime change in Iran as anything like official US policy, as some of his supporters advocate; he seems to be offering instead something much milder -- US moral support to the Iranian people should they choose to rise up against the regime themselves. It suggests more a wink and a nod than a real commitment of US support. It's a low-risk message and one that doesn't seem likely to inspire mass demonstrations any time soon. Nevertheless, Iran's supreme leader didn't appreciate it much, as reported by the AP. Update: The Corner's Ramesh Ponnuru seems to have come away with the same sense from Bush's Iran talk. Ponnuru: "...It sounded to me as though the president was saying that if the Iranians held a revolution he'd be happy to throw them a parade..."

Update II: But Iranian American reader F likes what she heard:

You say, "doesn't seem likely to inspire mass demonstrations any time soon." But this is a good step. Opposition groups do not want to see Americans talk about military option, it does not help their cause. Unlike the monarchists who wants everything to be done by Americans. I think someone in Bush's team is listening to the majority of opposition groups....

Update III: But Iranian blogger Hoder was underwhelmed by the SOTU. Says Hoder "..."Very harsh words, but nothing new said Bush about Iran in his fifth State of the Union address. What are his specific plans to stand with the Iranian people who are already standing for their liberty? It's not his first time to send the same direct message to Iranians. So what he is going to do?" [via Wolcott.]

Getting Chilly Again. Slate's Fred Kaplan reports that Condoleezza Rice's sensible picks at State divert attention from the real action: appointments of the hardest of the hardliners to top national security posts. Chief among those new appointments, deputy NSC advisor nominee J.D. Crouch who advocates US development and deployment of tactical nuclear weapons. Kaplan concludes:

At a time when President Bush is urging regimes to refrain from developing nuclear weapons, his rhetoric would look hollow and ridiculous if the United States started developing a new generation of such weapons. A number of regimes (rogue and otherwise) are on the verge of going nuclear, in some cases to deter aggression from what they see (correctly or not) as real threats. The vital task now is to persuade such regimes that nuclear weapons have no military utility. Instead, Rumsfeld is promoting the bunker buster as a nuclear weapon that has great utility, that expands U.S. military options.

Ken Baer and Matt are of course right that crying "hypocrisy" can be a bit pointless and shrill, but hypocrisy at this level would seem to threaten the US's most pressing national security interests.

Great photo accompanying Joseph Braude's (subscription only) TNR article on Arab media coverage of the Iraqi elections. [Is it just me or is TNR putting more of its articles behind the subscription wall of late?]

Former WaPo West Africa bureau chief Doug Farah has more documents that show Kellogg Brown & Root still has active Iraq contracts with notorious blood diamonds merchant Viktor Bout:

Seems, from new documents I have had recent access to, that KBR continues to use several Viktor Bout-related companies to fly personnel and cargo into Iraq, despite efforts earlier this year to cut off all such contracts. Seems Viktor has simply been able to activate several shelf companies, shift his planes around, and carry on while missing very few beats. One of them is Aerocom, named in U.N. reports and a DEA report on flying drugs into Belize. Aerocom lost its Moldovan Air Operator's Certificate in June 2004, but continues to operate. In Moldova, Aerocom shares and address and phone number with Jet Line International, a publicly identified Bout company. Other companies seem to be operating out of Sudan and elsewhere. it also appears that some do not carry the requisite insurance to allow them to fly for U.S. companies.

What is particularly disturbing is that no one seems to really care...

Indeed.

Zelikow ascendant. Gossip has it that historian Philip Zelikow, the former executive director of the independent 9/11 commission, is going to be appointed senior counselor to Condy Rice's State Department. Stanford's Stephen Krasner will be appointed director of policy planning. Zelikow's role is described as hands-on and high level. I view his rumored appointment as good news, especially considering how tough the 9/11 commission was on some of the first term Bush administration's chief canards, particularly the false claim of a meaningful operational connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda.

Matt Taibbi channels Rumsfeld and Feith dissecting Hersh's latest.

New blog on the block. Check out the new DC media gossip blog, Fishbowl DC, edited by Garrett Graff, who kindly got me and Yglesias into a fun Boston DNCC party last summer [this despite the fact that Matt and Garrett appear to have edited rival Harvard newspapers.] Here's Fishbowl's introductory note.

Update: And another new blog on the block: the Center for American Progress' thinkprogress.org.

Update II: And another interesting new journo blog by Mother Jones and Nation contributor and Asia expert Tim Shorrock. [Thanks to David Isenberg for the link.]

Greg Djerejian points to this important In the National Interest piece by Iran expert Ray Takeyh on what real democratization in the Middle East would entail:

A genuine strategy of democratization would concentrate, first and foremost, on placing significant curbs on executive power. The proper prelude to fostering such a society is to shift the focus away from NGOs and civil society groups to constitutional reform and an independent judiciary.

Throughout the region, the current constitutions enshrine the power of the executive and immunize him from any challenge to his prerogatives. Monarchs and presidents stand in a privileged position, as their decisions are unencumbered by either parliamentary legislation or judicial verdict. Moreover, many Arab constitutions deliberately undermine the power of the legislative branch by granting the executive the right to appoint an upper chamber that can obstruct parliamentary initiatives. Free elections to such emasculated institutions will not pave the way for emergence of a democratic order, as the existing constitutional provisions effectively strangle any viable reform project.

The second imperative of democratic change is an independent judiciary. Throughout the Middle East, the judiciary is staffed by the compliant agents of the executive, and the courts have been used to prevent media outlets and pro-democracy forces from organizing...

If Washington is serious about democratization in the Middle East, as opposed to liberalization, it has to change strategies. Rhetorical commitments to democracy are no substitute for a checklist of steps that can be taken by regimes in the region. The reality remains that Western governments have been complicit in creating and sustaining the current autocratic order. Moreover, the masters from Cairo to Algiers have remained confident of America's forbearance, as competing geopolitical factors have ensured that U.S. assistance and loans continue even in the absence of any meaningful change.

A viable democratization strategy would employ the considerable economic leverage that the United States and Europe possess to pressure these states toward viable reforms. Preferential trade agreements, foreign assistance and access to U.S. markets should be contingent on the level of progress that regimes make toward democracy. The U.S. experience vis-ˆ-vis Latin America, especially Mexico during the 1980s and 1990s, and that of the EU towards its eastern periphery make it clear that when political reform is linked to economic benefits, regimes can be induced to introduce changes that lay the basis for a democratic transformation. The West should link aid to reforms designed to reduce state controls over both political life and the economy.

Worth reading the whole piece.

The Boston Globe investigates Talon News here. Wondering why the White House has given the little known outfit's self described "embedded conservative" daily press credentials:

Transcripts of White House briefings indicate that McClellan often calls on Gannon and that the press secretary -- and the president -- have found relief in a question from Gannon after critical lines of questioning from mainstream news organizations.

What they don't get into is the mystery Atrios and Susan G. @ Daily Kos have raised -- what is TalonNews.com's White House correspondent's real name, and why does the White House allow him to use a pseudonym?

Writing in the Washington Post, former CIA officer, Mid East expert and Atlantic Monthly and Weekly Standard contributor Reuel Marc Gerecht gives Porter Goss a vote of no confidence in making worthwhile changes to the CIA's clandestine service:

So far, all signs show that his CIA will be the CIA of his predecessor: bureaucratically moribund at headquarters and operationally ineffectual in the field. If this were not the case, we would see Goss and the White House announcing plans first to fire, not hire, hundreds of operatives who do not advance the agency's primary counterterrorism mission...

According to active-duty CIA officers, there is a general realization that the number of nonofficial operatives needs to go up: It's difficult even to imagine scenarios in which the CIA's fake diplomats -- the people under official cover -- can meet, let alone "develop" possible agents who might be useful against the Islamic extremist target. Yet there will be enormous resistance inside the clandestine service to giving priority to the NOC corps in counterterrorism...

President Bush and Goss are well on the way to repeating the errors of Ronald Reagan and William Casey. It should not require a detailed knowledge of agency history and operations for outsiders to see that most case officers, both "inside" officers and NOCs, have no relevance to the counterterrorist efforts.

What's more, Gerecht argues, the NOCs that the CIA does have in play are usually under business cover that has them flying in and out of target countries on short term assignments ill suited to do the sustained type of intelligence gathering and recruitment work needed. Well worth reading the whole piece.

Ha'aretz tells the tale of how President Bush came to be a fan of Natan Sharansky's new book on democracy. With this intriguing conclusion:

Just don't forget that all these connections are two-way. Sharansky is against the evacuation of Gaza and is considered in the government to be one of the votes Sharon has lost and will never recover. So far. But at the decisive moment, it is possible the phone will ring and on the line, an IOU in his tone, will be the salesman from the White House.

Update: Reader Haggai Elitzur writes in response to the above:

The conclusion of the article you posted is not very realistic. Aside from the somewhat comical idea that Bush would ever be willing to get involved that actively on such a personal level on the issue, there's the fact that Sharanksy's support for disengagement is basically immaterial to Sharon. Sharansky is a minister in the cabinet, but getting the disengagement approved by the cabinet is a slam dunk even without him, since Labor came into the government. Sharon doesn't need his vote. The real problem for Sharon is getting his budget passed through the Knesset (where Sharansky also doesn't matter, he's not a Knesset member). If he can't get it passed, they'll go to elections, so the disengagement would have to wait. This is a good update on the bizarre budget situation.

And reader and blogger Dave Meyer writes that, "For what it's worth, I just watched Aznar on C-Span claim that he recommended the Sharansky book to Bush. It was in this speech." Thanks for the letters.

This really is pretty incredible. From Jack Shafer's Slate column today, via Atrios:

[MSNBC Hardball host, Chris] Matthews: Wait a minute. When you say—Judy, when you say administration, do you mean the alliance party leadership or Allawi over there, the current prime minister? Who are you talking about?

[NYT reporter Judith] Miller: We are talking about the administration officials who have been reaching out to …

Matthews: You mean Americans?

Miller: ... [Ayatollah] Sistani's—yes, American officials who have been reaching out to Sistani's party. Because Dr. Chalabi is on that list.

Matthews: So where—so we have an election over there. And the same day we're holding an election, the same week, we are plotting which ministries to give to Chalabi, the guy who talked us into the war in the first place.

Miller: No, no. There were expressions. There was apparently an effort to determine whether or not he would be interested in assuming a certain portfolio.

Matthews: Why are we in the business of deciding or even negotiating cabinet ministries in a foreign government?

Miller: No. Well, you know, Chris, first of all, this is just one report. But I think what is very clear, according to people I talked to today, is that they have been attempting to mend fences with him. Now understanding that as a tent [phonetic transcription] on that Sistani list, the Shia list, he will be an important person in Iraq. And I think that there will have to be a lot of rethinking on the part of the Americans with whom they want to deal.

Matthews: … the idea that the man who won his country back through the vice president's office, Ahmed Chalabi, finds his way now through all this electoral process to end up as oil minister or finance minister, as you say, interior minister—and I think he has higher ambitions than that—makes the electoral process come down to the guy who started the war, ends up winning the war, irregardless of how people vote over there.

Miller: Well, you know, I think the interesting thing was the up and down, was the kind of rise and fall of Ahmed Chalabi in this administration. On one hand, in the beginning, he was the person supported adamantly by the Defense Department. He was opposed by the State Department and the CIA …

Matthews: Right.

Miller: ... who said he had no popular support in the country...

Matthews: Right.

Miller: ... and he wouldn't be able to hold a coalition together. We've now seen that, in fact, he played a pivotal role in putting together, helping to put together the list which we don't know yet, but it may very well have done extremely well, if not won the vote.

Last term brought us the rise of the Vulcans. This term? The rise of the nuclear hawks. And these guys may make us nostalgic for the foreign policy intellectuals who want to spread democracy at the point of US conventional weapons. [Thx to reader JH.]

CIA issues a correction:

In what may be a formal acknowledgment of the obvious, the CIA has issued a classified report revising its prewar assessments on Iraq and concluding that Baghdad abandoned its chemical weapons programs in 1991, intelligence officials familiar with the document said.

The report marks the first time the CIA has officially disavowed its prewar judgments and is one in a series of updated assessments the agency is producing as part of an effort to correct its record on Iraq's alleged weapons programs, officials said.

The CIA's decision to distribute the report — titled "Iraq: No Large-Scale Chemical Warfare Efforts Since Early 1990s" — in classified channels underscores the awkwardness the agency faces as it continues to reconcile its prewar reporting with postwar realities in Iraq. Before the war, the CIA asserted that Iraq had stockpiled biological weapons and was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.

Pax Hashemite. The Bush administration forgot Jordan in its democratization plans, Matt Yglesias points out here. Update: Stygius has more.