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Another embarrassing revelation: U.S. lost track of Iraqi weapons

The Pentagon lost track of  “about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005“, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) concluded.

On Monday, the Government Accountability Office (GAO), an independent U.S. government agency that is essentially the watchdog and investigative arm for the U.S. Congress, released a report that accused the Pentagon of losing track of “about 190,000 AK-47 assault rifles and pistols given to Iraqi security forces in 2004 and 2005“.

The report is particularly embarrassing for the Pentagon, firstly, because the numbers of the missing weapons are shocking — the highest previous estimate of unaccounted-for weapons was 14,000 in a report issued last year by the inspector general for Iraq reconstruction — and, secondly, because the U.S. plans to train and equip Iraqi forces have been so central to its strategy in the war-torn country, according to an editorial on the BBC.

The GAO says it can only account for less than half of about 185,000 assault rifles and 170,000 pistols that the Pentagon says it distributed to Iraqi security forces from 2004 through early this year; there is a discrepancy of 110,000 in the case of AK-47s, and 80,000 pistols. The gaps in the figures for body armour and helmets are even bigger – only 80,000 out of a total of 215,000 sets of body armour accounted for, and only 25,000 out of 140,000 helmets.

The GAO says it doesn’t know what has happened to the weapons, only that there are gaping holes in the records.
Moreover, the report states that the U.S. has spent $19.2 billion trying to develop Iraqi security forces since 2003, including at least $2.8 billion to buy and deliver equipment. But the GAO said weapons distribution was haphazard and failed to follow established procedures, particularly from 2004 to 2005, when security training was led by Gen. David H. Petraeus, who now commands all U.S. ocupation forces in Iraq.

The Pentagon, which has asked for another $2bn for new equipment for Iraqi forces, says it accepts key recommendations in the GAO report on improving records, and that steps have been taken. But the report says that, as of last month, the Pentagon had not specified what the accounting procedures were.

Although controls have been tightened since 2005, the inability of the United States to track weapons with tools such as serial numbers makes it nearly impossible for the U.S. military to know whether it is battling fighter equipped by American taxpayers, according to an article on the Washington Post.

“They (U.S. military officials) really have no idea where they are,” says Rachel Stohl, a senior analyst at the Center for Defense Information who has studied small-arms trade and received Pentagon briefings on the issue. “It likely means that the United States is unintentionally providing weapons to bad actors.”

Although the GAO focused on Pentagon failures regarding weapons distribution to the Iraqis, it raises concerns that the missing weapons have found their way into the hands of fighters. According to The Washington Post, one top Pentagon official acknowledged that some of the weapons probably were being used against U.S. occupation forces. He cited the Iraqi brigade created at Fallujah that quickly dissolved in September 2004 and turned its weapons against the Americans.

The report also raises serious questions about the capabilities of Iraqi security forces, especially the police, as the Pentagon is under intense pressure to achieve results in its efforts to train and equip Iraqi forces. In less than a month, the top U.S. military commander in Iraq, Gen David Petraeus, and the U.S. ambassador, Ryan Crocker, will release their assessment of how Bush’s “surge” strategy is working. The findings of this report are crucial; they could fuel more criticism or draw more support for the latest U.S. strategy in Iraq. Gen Petraeus wouldn’t be immune to criticism, as he was in change in Iraq for much of the time covered by the GAO investigation – and this alone could damage his reputation.

Given the importance of training and equipping Iraqi forces to the success of any American strategy, the GAO findings suggest that the U.S. didn’t only lose track of weapons, but also lost track of Iraq itself.

Source: alJazeera Magazine
http://www.aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=25380

US: Pakistan Handled Mosque Takeover Responsibly

The State Department Tuesday expressed understanding for the Pakistani government’s decision to use force against militants holding the Red Mosque in Islamabad.  A spokesman said Pakistani authorities made extensive efforts to resolve the crisis peacefully. Voice of America’s David Gollust reports from the State Department.

U.S. officials had been monitoring the siege at the landmark mosque in Islamabad with concern. While they have not explicitly endorsed the government’s decision to use troops against the militants, they say authorities gave the occupiers ample opportunity to lay down their arms and resolve the crisis peacefully.

In a talk with reporters, State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey said Pakistani authorities had taken the steps they felt were appropriate to maintain order in the country.

He said it was obvious that officials had tried to negotiate an end to the crisis and that it was unfortunate that the militants who had taken over the Red Mosque did not respond to what he said had been many opportunities to release their hostages and surrender peacefully:

“I think the government of Pakistan has proceeded in a responsible way on this issue,” he said.  “They have made a number of efforts to try and resolve this peacefully.  Certainly no one wants to see loss of life and certainly loss of innocent life in this process. But ultimately all governments have a responsibility to preserve order and to try and take steps against terrorists and those that commit criminal actions, too.”

Casey said he was not characterizing those involved in the mosque takeover as terrorists, though he said no one believes those who engineered the events at the mosque were innocent students.

He said it is clear the Pakistani government is under threat from extremist groups as evidenced by attempts on the life of President Pervez Musharraf and activities of groups associated with the Taleban.

The Bush administration has strongly supported Mr. Musharraf since he made what was described here as a strategic decision in 2001 to side with the United States in the war against terrorism.

U.S. officials have nonetheless been critical of the Islamabad government on human rights issues including recent decrees, since withdrawn, that would have curbed media coverage on the ongoing controversy over the country’s suspended Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry.

The State Department has said it wants to see free, fair and transparent elections later this year for a new Pakistani parliament, which is to choose a president.

It has also said that, if Mr. Musharraf follows through on his stated intention to seek another term, he should keep a promise to give up his dual role as army chief of staff.

Source: Voice of America
http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-07-10-voa45.cfm

Pakistan zeroes in on zealots

The standoff at the Red Mosque represents the rise of moderate Muslims against violent, vigilante Islam.

When the violent strand of Islam eventually collapses of its inherent contradiction, that day may have been foreseen in the siege at Pakistan’s Red Mosque. If the military uses wise tactics to end the siege well, civilization will be the victor.

The standoff began after the mosque’s radical jihadists began to escalate their terrorizing of citizens in the capital, Islamabad. For months, the Muslim militants had been sending self-appointed vice squads onto the streets to enforce their strict version of Islamic law. They accused women of being prostitutes, burned music discs, and abducted police. Pakistani society, which prefers democracy over sharia vigilantism, was fed up.

When the military finally decided to crack down last week, the militants showed what they were really made of: They are using women as hostages. And one of their leaders, senior cleric Maulana Abdul Aziz, tried to sneak out of the compound in women’s clothing, covered in a burqa and wearing high heels. For all of his past sermonizing on keeping the sexes separate, his attempted escape in drag revealed the underlying farce of Islamic holy war.

The mosque and its religious schools (madrassas) are a key part of Pakistan’s long history of dealing with militant Islam, going back to its support of Islamic fighters against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and then the post-Soviet Taliban regime.

Since the Sept. 11 attacks, however, President Pervez Musharraf has tried to break the link between the military’s intelligence services and Muslim radicals. The Red Mosque siege represents a firm, public stand by the government to weed out the militants before they threaten Pakistani society itself.

If Mr. Musharraf succeeds in ending the standoff with little bloodshed, the victory will send a strong message to anyone trying to turn Pakistan into “Talistan.”

Other stark standoffs between violent, totalitarian Islam and civilized society are currently happening in several Muslim lands. Lebanon’s military is trying to end the hold of Islamic militants on a Palestinian refugee camp. Secular Palestinian leaders have successfully isolated the Sunni radical group Hamas in the Gaza Strip. And in Saudi Arabia, more and more citizens are challenging the mutawiyin, or the nonuniformed religious militia who enforce the radical Wahhabi form of Sunni Islam on public behavior.

Pakistan has many more radical groups it will need to confront, especially along the border with Afghanistan and at dozens of Muslim seminaries that teach violent tactics. The nation’s problem is compounded by the bungled attempts of Musharraf, who is both president and chief of the army, to restore a full democracy in Pakistan after his eight years in power.

So far, he has shown restraint during their siege of the Red Mosque, a move that only helps to show the militants’ moral weakness and allows more of those holed up inside to think twice and escape. He has the quiet support of much of Pakistan’s political opposition.

This crisis also represents, in a microcosm, an attempt by the world’s 1 billion, mainly moderate Muslims to stand up to zealots. Al Qaeda and other such groups have lost their “war” to create a united Muslim state because of their violent, antidemocratic tactics. It only takes a civilized response to reveal their lack of appeal.

Source: Christian Science Monitor
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0709/p08s01-comv.htm

FACTBOX: Assassination attempts against Pakistan’s Musharraf

(Reuters) – Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf’s plane was fired on as it took off on Friday from a military airfield in Rawalpindi, an intelligence officer said.

Musharraf’s plane arrived safely in the southwestern town of Turbat, where the president visited flood victims. The military initially denied there had been any attack.

General Musharraf came to power in a military coup in 1999 and enraged Pakistani militant groups by abandoning support for the Taliban harboring al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden after al Qaeda’s attacks on the United States in 2001.

Militants were further angered by his pursuit of peace with India over the disputed territory of Kashmir.

Here are some facts about previous attempts to kill the Pakistani leader:

* Musharraf narrowly escaped an attempt to kill him on December 14, 2003, when a bomb blew up a bridge in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, next to the capital Islamabad, minutes after his motorcade passed it. He described in his autobiography how the blast caused his car to fly into the air.

* On December 25, 2003, Musharraf survived a second attempt on his life within two weeks when suicide truck bombs were driven into his convoy on the same road a few days later. The president’s heavily damaged car made it through the carnage to reach his home, with blood on its bodywork. Fourteen people were killed in the attack.

* Pakistan’s Supreme Court in September 2006 upheld death sentences handed down to 12 men, including soldiers and civilians, convicted of taking part in the two attempts on his life. A man named Islam Siddiqui was hanged in August 2005 after being convicted of taking part in one of the attempts.

* Pakistan’s military has said no senior officers were involved and that the principal planners were Abu Faraj Farj al Liby, the so-called al Qaeda “number three” and Amjad Farooqi, a Pakistani militant. Farooqi was gunned down in 2004.

* Pakistani intelligence officials said in May 2005 that they had foiled a conspiracy to kill Musharraf with a series of arrests, including the capture of Liby.

* A Pakistani court in October 2003 convicted three Islamist militants of involvement in an assassination plot against Musharraf in April 2002, handing down 10-year jail terms to each of them. The militants belonged to the al-Almi faction of Harkat-ul Mujahideen, a group also blamed for masterminding a suicide attack outside the U.S. consulate in Karachi the same year in which 12 Pakistanis died. The anti-terrorism court said the men had plotted to kill Musharraf on his way to address a public rally in Karachi.

Source: Reuters
http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSL0649978720070706?src=070607_0917_DOUBLEFEATURE_musharraf_fired_on

Israeli Forces Leave Gaza Strip After Deadly Raid

Hamas masked gunmen check the damage of a building after a military raid in the Bueij refugee camp, central Gaza Strip, 06 Jul 2007

Israeli forces pulled out of the Gaza Strip Friday after one of the deadliest days of fighting there since Hamas militants seized control of the territory in mid-June.At least 11 Palestinian militants died in fighting Thursday between Israeli troops and gunmen from Hamas and Islamic Jihad in central Gaza.

Israel says its forces were targeting militants firing rockets at the Jewish state and looking for tunnels used to smuggle weapons.

In Washington Friday, the U.S. State Department announced officials from the Quartet of Middle East peace mediators will meet in London next week.

Officials from the United States, United Nations, European Union, and Russia will Tuesday discuss events in the region and the role of the group’s new envoy – former British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Mr. Blair will not attend Tuesday’s meeting. State Department spokesman Tom Casey also said he is not aware of any plans for Mr. Blair in his new role as Mideast envoy to meet with Hamas.

Hamas seized control of the Gaza Strip in fighting with the rival group Fatah led by Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Afterwards, Mr. Abbas dismissed the Hamas-led unity government and formed another administration based in the West Bank.

Source: Voice of America
http://www.voanews.com/english/2007-07-06-voa33.cfm

Killing 10,000 Iraqis Every Month

Media Silence About the Carnage in Iraq

Killing 10,000 Iraqis Every Month

By MICHAEL SCHWARTZ

A state-of-the-art research study published in October 12, 2006 issue of The Lancet (the most prestigious British medical journal) concluded that–as of a year ago–600,000 Iraqis had died violently due to the war in Iraq. That is, the Iraqi death rate for the first 39 months of the war was just about 15,000 per month.

That wasn’t the worst of it, because the death rate was increasing precipitously, and during the first half of 2006 the monthly rate was approximately 30,000 per month, a rate that no doubt has increased further during the ferocious fighting associated with the current American surge.

The U.S. and British governments quickly dismissed these results as “methodologically flawed,” even though the researchers used standard procedures for measuring mortality in war and disaster zones. (They visited a random set of homes and asked the residents if anyone in their household had died in the last few years, recording the details, and inspecting death certificates in the vast majority of cases.) The two belligerent governments offered no concrete reasons for rejecting the study’s findings, and they ignored the fact that they had sponsored identical studies (conducted by some of the same researchers) in other disaster areas, including Darfur and Kosovo. The reasons for this rejection were, however, clear enough: the results were simply too devastating for the culpable governments to acknowledge. (Secretly the British government later admitted that it was “a tried and tested way to measuring mortality in conflict zones”; but it has never publicly admitted its validity).

Reputable researchers have accepted the Lancet study’s results as valid with virtually no dissent. Juan Cole, the most visible American Middle East scholar, summarized it in a particularly vivid comment: “the US misadventure in Iraq is responsible [in a little over three years] for setting off the killing of twice as many civilians as Saddam managed to polish off in 25 years.”

Despite the scholarly consensus, the governments’ denials have been quite effective from a public education point of view, and the few news items that mention the Lancet stody bracket it with official rebuttals. One BBC report, for example, mentioned the figure in an article headlined “Huge Rise in Iraqi Death Tolls,” and quoted at length from President Bush’s public rebuttal, in which he said that the methodology was “pretty well discredited,” adding that “six-hundred thousand or whatever they guessed at is just… it’s not credible.” As a consequence of this sort of coverage, most Americans probably believe that Bush’s December 2005 figure of 30,000 Iraqi civilian deaths (less than 10% of the actual total) is the best estimate of Iraqi deaths up to that time.

COUNTING HOW MANY IRAQIS THE OCCUPATION HAS KILLED

These shocking statistics are made all the more horrific when we realize that among the 600,000 or so victims of Iraqi war violence, the largest portion have been killed by the American military, not by carbombings or death squads, or violent criminals–or even all these groups combined.

The Lancet interviewers asked their Iraqi respondents how their loved ones died and who was responsible. The families were very good at the cause of death, telling the reporters that over half (56%) were due to gunshots, with an eighth due each to car bombs(13%), air strikes (13%) and other ordinance (14%). Only 4% were due to unknown causes.

The families were not as good at identifying who was responsible. Although they knew, for example, that air strike victims were killed by the occupation, and that carbomb victims were killed by insurgents, the gunshot and ordinance fatalities often occurred in firefights or in circumstances with no witnesses. Many times, therefore, they could not tell for sure who was responsible. Only were certain, and the interviewers did not record the responsible party if “households had any uncertainly” as to who fired the death shot.

The results are nevertheless staggering for those of us who read the American press: for the deaths that the victims families knew for sure who the perpetrator was, U.S. forces (or their “Coalition of the Willing” allies) were responsible for 56%. That is, we can be very confident that the Coalition had killed at least 180,000 Iraqis by the middle of 2006. Moreover, we have every reason to believe that the U.S. is responsible for its pro rata share (or more) of the unattributed deaths. That means that the U.S. and its allies may well have killed upwards of 330,000 Iraqis by the middle of 2006.

The remainder can be attributed to the insurgents, criminals, and to Iraqi forces. And let’s be very clear here: car bombs, the one source that was most easy for victims’ families to identify, was responsible for 13% of the deaths, about 80,000 people, or about 2000 per month. This is horrendous, but it is far less than half of the confirmed American total, and less than a quarter of the probable American total.

Even if we work with the lower, confirmed, figured of 180,000 Iraqi deaths caused by the occupation firepower, which yields an average of just over 5,000 Iraqis killed every month by U.S. forces and our allies since the beginning of the war. And we have to remember that the rate of fatalities was twice as high in 2006 as the overall average, meaning that the American average in 2006 was well over 10,000 per month, or something over 300 Iraqis every day, including Sundays. With the surge that began in 2007, the current figure is likely even higher.

HOW COME WE DON’T KNOW ABOUT THIS?

These figures sound impossible to most Americans. Certainly 300 Iraqis killed by Americans each day would be headline news, over and over again. And yet, the electronic and print media simply do not tell us that the U.S. is killing all these people. We hear plenty about car bombers and death squads, but little about Americans killing Iraqis, except the occasional terrorist, and the even more occasional atrocity story.

How, then, is the US accomplishing this carnage, and why is it not newsworthy? The answer lies in another amazing statistic: this one released by the U.S. military and reported by the highly respectable Brookings Institution: for the past four years, the American military sends out something over 1000 patrols each day into hostile neighborhoods, looking to capture or kill insurgents and terrorists. (Since February, the number has increased to nearly 5,000 patrols a day, if we include the Iraqi troops participating in the American surge.)

These thousands of patrols regularly turn into thousands of Iraqi deaths because these patrols are not the “walk in the sun” that they appear to be in our mind’s eye. Actually, as independent journalist Nir Rosen described vividly and agonizingly in his indispensable book, In the Belly of the Green Bird, they involve a kind of energetic brutality that is only occasionally reported by an embedded American mainstream journalist.

This brutality is all very logical, once we understand the purpose and process of these patrols. American soldiers and marines are sent into hostile communities where virtually the entire population is supports the insurgency. They often have a list of suspects’ addresses; and their job is to interrorgate or arrest or kill the suspect; and search the house for incriminating evidence, particularly arms and ammunition, but also literature, video equipment, and other items that the insurgency depends upon for its political and military activities. When they don’t have lists of suspects, they conduct “house-to-house” searches, looking for suspicious behavior, individuals or evidence.

In this context, any fighting age man is not just a suspect, but a potentially lethal adversary. Our soldiers are told not to take any chances: in many instances, for example, knocking on doors could invite gunshots through the doors. Their instructions are therefore to use the element of surprise whenever the situation appears to be dangerous”to break down doors, shoot at anything suspicious, and throw grenades into rooms or homes where there is any chance of resistance. If they encounter tangible resistance, they can call in artillery and/or air power rather than try to invade a building.

Here is how two Iraqi civilians described these patrols to Asia Times reporter Pepe Escobar:

“Hussein and Hasan confirm that the Americans usually come at night, sometimes by day, always protected by helicopters.’ They “sometimes bomb houses, sometimes arrest people, sometimes throw missiles’”

If they encounter no resistance, these patrols can track down 30 or so suspects, or inspect several dozen homes, in a days work. That is, our 1000 or so patrols can invade 30,000 homes in a single day. But if an IED explodes under their Humvee or a sniper shoots at them from nearby, then their job is transformed into finding, capturing, or killing the perpetrator of the attack. Iraqi insurgents often set off IEDs and invite these firefights, in order to stall the patrols prevent the soldiers from forcibly entering 30 or so homes, violently accosting their residents, and perhaps beating, arresting, or simply humiliating the residents.

The battles triggered by IEDs and sniper attacks almost always involve the buildings surrounding the incident, since that is where the insurgents take cover to avoid the American counter-attack. Americans, therefore, regular shoot into these buildings where the perpetrators are suspected of hiding, with all the attendant dangers of killing other people. The rules of engagement for American soldiers include efforts to avoid killing civilians, and there are many accounts of restraint because civilians are visibly in the line of fire. But if they are in hot pursuit of a perpetrator, their rules of engagement make it clear that capturing or killing the insurgent takes precedent over civilian safety.

This sounds pretty tame, and not capable of generating the statistics that the Lancet study documented. But the sheer quantity of American patrols”1000 each day”and the sheer quantity of the confrontations inside people’s homes, the responses to sniper and IED attacks, and the ensuring firefights add up to mass slaughter.

The cumulative brutality of these thousands of patrols can be culled from the recent inquest into the suspected war crimes committed in the city of Haditha back in November 19, 2005. The investigation seeks to ascertain whether American marines deliberately murdered 24 civilians including executing with point blank head shots nineteen unarmed women, children and older men in a single room, apparently in retribution for the death of one of their comrades earlier in the day. These horrific charges have made the incident newsworthy and propelled the investigation.

But it is the defense’s version of the story that makes the Haditha useful in understanding the translation of American patrols into hundreds of thousands of Iraqi deaths. First Lt. William T. Kallop, the highest ranking officer in Haditha that day, told the military hearing that he had ordered a patrol “to clear’ an Iraqi home in Haditha after a roadside bomb had killed a Marine” earlier in the day. Later, after the firefight that this action generated, he went to inspect the home and was shocked to discover that only civilians had been killed:

“He inspected one of the homes with a Marine corporal, Hector Salinas, and found women, children and older men who had been killed when marines threw a grenade into the room.

“What the hell happened, why aren’t there any insurgents here?’ Lieutenant Kallop testified that he asked aloud. I looked at Corporal Salinas, and he looked just as shocked as I did.”

It is important to keep in mind that Lt. Kallop would not have been shocked if there had been one or more insurgents among the dead. What made the situation problematic was that all the fatalities were clearly civilians, and it led to the possibility that they had not been in hot pursuit of an enemy combatant.

Later, however, Lt. Kallop decided that even this situation involved no misbehavior on the part of his troops, after questioning Staff Sgt. Frank D. Wuterich, who had led the patrol and commanded the military action:

“Sergeant Wuterich had told him that they had killed people [in that house] after approaching a door to it and hearing the distinct metallic sound of an AK-47 being prepared to fire.

“I thought that was within the rules of engagement because the squad leader thought that he was about to kick in the door and walk into a machine gun,’ Lieutenant Kallop said.”

According to Kallop, the soldiers were thus following the rules of engagement because if the squad leader “thought” that he was going to be attacked (based on recognizing a noise through a closed door), he was authorized and justified to use the full lethal force of the patrol (in this case a hand grenade), enough to kill all the people huddled within the apartment.

The critical distinction has to do with intentionality. First Lieutenant Max D. Frank, sent to investigate the incident somewhat later, explained this logic: “It was unfortunate what happened, sir,” Lieutenant Frank told the Marine prosecutor, Lt. Col. Sean Sullivan, “but I didn’t have any reason to believe that what they had done was on purpose.”

Translated, this means that as long as the soldiers sincerely believed that their attack might capture or kill an armed insurgent who could attack them, the rules of engagement justified their action and they were therefore not culpable of any crime.

Note here that other alternatives were not considered. The soldiers could have decided that there was a good chance of hurting civilians in this situation, and therefore retreated without pursuing the suspected insurgent. This would have allowed him to get away, but it would have protected the residents of the house. This option was not considered, even though many of us might feel that letting one or two or three insurgents escape (in a town filled with insurgents) might be acceptable instead of risking (and ultimately ending) the lives of 19 civilians.

Later in the hearing, Major General Richard Huck, the commanding officer in charge of the Marines in Haditha, underscored these rules of engagement in more general terms, “and also ignored the unthinkable option of letting the insurgents get away”when he explained why he had not ordered an investigation of the deaths:

“They had occurred during a combat operation and it was not uncommon for civilians to die in such circumstances. In my mind’s eye, I saw insurgent fire, I saw Kilo Company fire,’ Huck testified, via video link from the Pentagon, where he is assistant deputy commandant for plans, policies and operations. I could see how 15 neutrals in those circumstances could be killed.’”

For General Huck, and for other commanders in Iraq, once “insurgent fire”"or even the threat of insurgent fire”entered the picture (and it certainly had earlier, when the American soldier was killed), then the actions reported by the Marines in that Haditha home were not just legitimate(if they reported them honestly), but exemplary. They were responding appropriately in a battlefield situation, and the death of “15 neutrals” is “not uncommon” in those circumstances.

Let’s keep in mind, then, that the United States undertakes something over 1000 patrols each day, and lately this number has surged to over 5000 (if we also count patrols by the Iraqi military). According to U.S. military statistics, again reported by the Brookings Institute, these patrols patrols currently result in just under 3000 firefights every month, or just under an average of 100 per day (not counting the additional 25 or so involving our Iraqi allies). Most of them do not produce 24 Iraqi deaths, but the rules of engagement our soldiers are given”throwing hand grenades into buildings holding suspected insurgents, using maximum firepower against snipers, and calling in artillery and air power against stubborn resistance”guarantee a regular drumbeat of mortality.

It is worth recording how these events are reported in the American press, when they are noted at all. Here, for example, is an Associated Press account of American/British patrols in Maysan province, a stronghold of the Mahdi army:

Well to the south, Iraqi officials reported as many as 36 people were killed in fierce overnight fighting that began as British and Iraqi forces conducted house-to-house searches in Amarah, a stronghold of the Shiite Mahdi Army militia.

This brief description was part of a five paragraph account of fighting all over Iraq, part of a review under the headline “U.S. and Iraqi forces Move on Insurgents.” It contained brief accounts of several different operations, none of them presented as major events. There were 100 or so engagements that day, and many of them produced deaths. How many? Based on the Lancet article, we could guess that on that day”and most days”the incident in Amarah represented perhaps one-tenth of all the Iraqis killed by Americans that day. Over the course of June, the accumulated total probably came to something over 10,000.

During the hearing about Haditha one of the investigators addressed the larger question that emerges from the sacrifice of so many civilians to the cause of chasing and catching insurgents in Iraq. Lieutenant Max D. Frank, the first officer to investigate the deaths, characterized is an “unfortunate and unintended result of local residents’ allowing insurgent fighters to use family homes to shoot at passing American patrols.” Using a similar logic, First Lt. Adam P. Mathes, the executive office of the company involved, argued against issuing an apology to local residents for the incident. Mathes advocated that instead they should issue a warning to Haditha residents, that the incident was “an unfortunate thing that happens when you let terrorists use your house to attack our troops.”

The Merriam Webster dictionary defines terror as “violent or destructive acts (as bombing) committed by groups in order to intimidate a population.” The incident at Haditha was just such a violent act, and was one of about 100 that day that Lt. Mathes hoped would intimidate the population of Haditha and other towns in Iraq from continuing to support insurgents.

Source: CounterPunch
http://www.counterpunch.com/schwartz07052007.html

Red Mosque leader attempts to flee in burka, hundreds surrender

Radical students sit outside the Red Mosque after surrendering themselves. Photograph: Aamir Qureshi/AFP/Getty Images

The leader of a pro-Taliban mosque was captured hiding under a burka as he tried to slip through a tightening siege tonight, while hundreds of his radical followers reportedly surrendered to the Pakistani government.Maulana Abdul Aziz was discovered by a policewoman as she searched students fleeing Lal Masjid, or the Red Mosque, in central Islamabad, where a two-day showdown with the government has killed 16 people and wounded 150.

 

Local television showed the bearded preacher being bundled into a police car, his face uncovered over a flowing dark cloak. The government claimed that another 1,000 militants, including many woman students, had also abandoned the mosque, enticed by promises of safe passage and 5,000 rupee (£41) in pocket money.

But the siege has not collapsed. Heavily armed militants – estimated to be between 1,500 and 4,000 in number – remained holed up inside the mosque, vowing to become martyrs and fight to the bitter end. Sporadic gunfire erupted as evening fell.Abdul Aziz’s brother, Maulana Abdul Rashid Ghazi, remains at large, offering to negotiate with the government but saying that talks were “going nowhere”.

Lal Masjid shot to public prominence six months ago after indoctrinated students launched an anti-vice campaign that targeted music shop owners and suspected prostitutes in a wealthy Islamabad neighbourhood, just a few streets from the diplomatic quarter and the supreme court.

Abdul Aziz, a radical preacher famed for his fiery Friday sermons, was the spiritual leader of the movement, while his brother Ghazi, a university educated cleric who speaks fluent English, emerged as its main spokesman.

The brothers are openly sympathetic to al-Qaida and boast of having met Osama bin Laden, whom Abdul Aziz has compared to the biblical figure of Abraham. They have also boasted of having hundreds of suicide bombers at their disposal.

Their vigilante campaign — which involved abducting suspected prostitutes and burning pyres of Hollywood movies – severely embarrassed Pakistan’s president, General Pervez Musharraf. But he did nothing, saying that a violent showdown could spark countrywide violence.

The final straw may have been the abduction of seven Chinese employees of a massage parlour, which the militants termed a brothel, last week. The Chinese were released within hours but their government – a key ally of Pakistan – demanded greater security.

After an attack on a government checkpoint on Tuesday, the authorities finally hit back. A five-hour gun battle outside the mosque left 16 people dead. Then early today hundreds of soldiers rolled in, cutting off the electricity and imposing strict curfew on the surrounding neighbourhood.

Tonight parts of central Islamabad resembled a war zone, with machinegun wielding troops patrolling the streets and helicopter gunships buzzing overhead. The neighbourhood around the mosque was isolated by thick coils of barbed wire.

“They have no options but to surrender,” said Javed Iqbal Cheema, a government spokesman. “The government is not into dialogue with these clerics.”

Gen Musharraf seems intent on flushing out as many students as possible before considering a violent assault on the hard core. “The others want to be martyrs. But I don’t want to die,” said one young man who escaped today.

Pakistan’s information minister, Muhammad Ali Durrani, said only “a few hundred” students were left, although most estimates were higher.

Meanwhile hundreds of students made their way home, escorted by relieved relatives. “We are so relieved, my mother is very worried,” said Ziauddin, who had travelled 19 hours by bus from Gilgit to retrieve his 20-year-old sister, Qoresha.

The girl, who had just been released from police custody after escaping in an ambulance, was ambivalent about the experience. “Abdul Aziz and his brother are good men. Whether their actions are good or bad, only they can tell,” she said from under a black burka.

Source: Guardian Unlimited
http://www.guardian.co.uk/pakistan/Story/0,,2118662,00.html

Rolls-Royce Wins $6.06 Billion in Orders from Qatar Airways

Rolls-Royce PLC, the world’s second-largest aircraft engine maker, said Monday that it won orders worth a total of $6.32 billion, including a record $5.6 billion contract to supply engines to Qatar Airways.

The British company will supply Qatar Airways with engines for its new fleet of Airbus A350 aircraft with deliveries due to begin in 2013, Rolls-Royce said in a statement. The pact also provides for a long-term services contract for an undisclosed duration.

“This is an extremely significant order from one of the world’s most forward-looking airlines,” said Chief Executive John Rose.

Separately, Rolls-Royce said it won contracts to supply five engines to International Lease Finance Corp. and two to Flyglobespan along with $180 million worth of business with China’s Hainan Airlines and $260 million with China Eastern Airlines.

Shares in Rolls-Royce, which competes for Airbus’ business alongside companies such as General Electric Co. and United Technologies Corp.’s Pratt & Whitney, gained 0.8 percent to 551 pence ($10.89) on the London Stock Exchange.

Source: SF Gate
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2007/06/18/financial/f081051D50.DTL&type=business

For a Secular Democratic State

“A WORLD CUT IN TWO:” At Qalandia checkpoint Israeli soldiers stop Palestinians on their way to Jerusalem from Ramallah, January 2005. (Matthew Cassel

This month marks the fortieth anniversary of the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem. Four decades of control established and maintained by force of arms — in defiance of international law, countless UN Security Council resolutions and, most recently, the 2004 Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice in The Hague — have enabled Israel to impose its will on the occupied territories and, in effect, to remake them in its own image.

The result is a continuous political space now encompassing all of historic Palestine, albeit a space as sharply divided as the colonial world (“a world cut in two”) famously described by Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth. Indeed, Fanon’s 1961 classic still enables an analysis of Israel and the occupied territories as fresh, insightful and relevant in 2007 as the readings of Cape Town or Algiers that it made available when it was first published.

Israel maintains two separate road systems in the West Bank, for example: one for the territory’s immigrant population of Jewish settlers, one for its indigenous non-Jewish (i.e., Palestinian) population.

The roads designated for the Jewish settlers are well maintained, well lit, continuous and uninterrupted; they tie the network of Jewish “neighborhoods” and “settlements” — all of them in reality colonies forbidden by international law — to each other and to Israel. The roads for the West Bank’s native population, by contrast, are poorly maintained, when they are maintained at all (they often consist of little more than shepherds’ trails); they are continuously blockaded and interrupted. A grid of checkpoints and roadblocks (546 at last count) strangles the circulation of the West Bank’s indigenous population, but it is designed to facilitate the free movement of Jewish settlers — who are, moreover, allowed to drive their own cars on the roads set aside for them, whereas Palestinians are not allowed to drive their cars beyond their own towns and villages (the entrances to which are all blockaded by the Israeli army).

The wall that Israel has been constructing in the West Bank and East Jerusalem since 2002 makes visible in concrete and barbed wire the outlines of the discriminatory regime that structures and defines everyday life in the occupied territories, separating Palestinian farmers from crops, patients from hospitals, students and teachers from schools and, increasingly, even parents from children (it has, for example, separated one parent or another from spouses and children in 21 percent of Palestinian families living on either side of the wall near Jerusalem) — while at the same time enabling the seamless incorporation of the Judaized spaces of the occupied territories into Israel itself. And a regime of curfews and closures, enforced by the Israeli army, has smothered the Palestinian economy, though none of its provisions apply to Jewish settlers in the occupied territories.

There are, in short, two separate legal and administrative systems, maintained by the regular use of military force, for two populations — settlers and natives — unequally inhabiting the same piece of land: exactly as was the case in the colonial countries described by Fanon, or in South Africa under apartheid.

All this has enabled Israel to transplant almost half a million of its own citizens into the occupied territories, at the expense of their Palestinian population, whose land is confiscated, whose homes are demolished, whose orchards and olive groves are razed or burned down, and whose social, economic, educational and family lives have been, in effect, all but suspended, precisely in order that their land may be made available for the use of another people.

The result has been catastrophic for the Palestinians, as a World Bank report published in May makes clear. While the Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem enjoy growth rates exceeding those of Israel itself, Palestinian towns and villages are slowly being strangled. While Jewish settlers move with total freedom, the combination of physical obstacles and the bureaucratic pass system imposed by the Israeli army on the Palestinian population has not only permanently separated the Palestinians of the West Bank from those of Gaza, East Jerusalem and Israel (movement among which is forbidden for all but a tiny minority) but has also broken up the West Bank into three distinct sections and ten enclaves. Half of the West Bank is altogether off-limits to most Palestinians; to move from one part of the rest of the territory to another, Palestinians must apply for a permit from the Israelis. Frequent bans are imposed on movement into or out of particular enclaves (the city of Nablus, for example, has been under siege for five years), or on whole segments of the population (e.g., unmarried men under the age of 45). And all permits are summarily invalidated when Israel declares one of its “comprehensive closures” of the West Bank — there were seventy-eight such days in 2006 — at which point the entire Palestinian population stays home.

The lucky few who are able to obtain passes from the Israelis are channeled from one section or enclave to another through a series of army checkpoints, where they may be searched, questioned, hassled, detained for hours or simply turned back. “The practical effect of this shattered economic space,” the World Bank report points out, “is that on any given day the ability to reach work, school, shopping, healthcare facilities and agricultural land is highly uncertain and subject to arbitrary restriction and delay.” Given the circumstances, it is hardly any wonder that two-thirds of the Palestinian population has been reduced to absolute poverty (less than $2 a day), and that hundreds of thousands are now dependent for day-to-day survival on food handouts provided by international relief organizations. Not only has the international community refused to intervene; it has actively participated in the repression, imposing — for the first time in history — sanctions on a people living under military occupation, while the occupying and colonizing power goes on violating the international community’s own laws with total impunity.

To all of these charges, Israel and its supporters have but one response: “security.” But as the World Bank report argues, it is “often difficult to reconcile the use of movement and access restrictions for security purposes from their use to expand and protect settlement activity.” Moreover, the Bank notes, it seems obvious that Israeli security ought to be tied to Palestinian prosperity: By disrupting the Palestinian economy and immiserating an entire population — pushing almost 4 million people to the edge — the Israelis are hardly enhancing their own security.

Such arguments miss the point, however. No matter how fiercely it is contested inside Israel, there remains a very strong sense that the country is entitled to retain the land to which it has now stubbornly clung for four decades. Even while announcing his scheme to relinquish nominal control over a few bits and pieces of the West Bank with heavy concentrations of Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert insisted on his country’s inherent right to the territory, irrespective of the demands of international law, let alone the rights and claims of the Palestinians themselves. (“Every hill in Samaria and every valley in Judea is part of our historic homeland,” he said last year, using Israel’s official, biblical terminology for the West Bank.)

Although some people claim there are fundamental differences between the disposition of the territories Israel captured in 1967 and the territories it captured during its creation in 1948 — or even that there are important moral and political differences between Israel pre- and post-1967 — such sentiments of entitlement, and the use of force that necessarily accompanies them, reveal the seamless continuity of the Zionist project in Palestine from 1948 to our own time. “There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing,” argues Israeli historian Benny Morris, with reference to the creation of Israel. “A Jewish state would not have come into being without the uprooting of 700,000 Palestinians. Therefore it was necessary to uproot them. There was no choice but to expel that population. It was necessary to cleanse the hinterland and cleanse the border areas and cleanse the main roads. It was necessary to cleanse the villages from which our convoys and our settlements were fired on.”

Israel’s post-1967 occupation policies are demonstrably driven by the same dispossessive logic. If hundreds of thousands have not literally been forced into flight, their existence has been reduced to penury. Just as Israel could have come into being in 1948 only by sweeping aside hundreds of thousands of Palestinians, Israel’s ongoing colonization of Palestinian territory — its imposition of itself and its desires on the land’s indigenous population — requires, and will always require, the use of force and the continual brutalization of an entire people.

Indeed, the discriminatory practices in the occupied territories replicate, albeit in a harsher and more direct form, those inside Israel, where the remnant of the Palestinian population that was not driven into flight in 1948 — today more than a million people — continues to endure the systematic inequalities built into the laws and institutions of a country that explicitly claims to be the state of the Jewish people rather than that of its own actual citizens, about a fifth of whom are not Jewish. Recognizing the contradiction inherent in such a formulation, various Israeli politicians, including Deputy Prime Minister Avigdor Lieberman, have explicitly called for the territorial transfer — if not the outright expulsion — of as much as possible of Israel’s non-Jewish (that is, Palestinian) minority. Although it would be intended to mark the ultimate triumph of the dispossessing settler over the dispossessed native (Lieberman is an immigrant from Moldova who enjoys rights denied to indigenous Palestinians simply because he happens to be Jewish), such a gesture would actually amount to a last-ditch measure, an attempt to forestall what has become the most likely conclusion to the conflict.

For, having unified all of what used to be Palestine (albeit into one profoundly divided space) without having overcome the Palestinian people’s will to resist, Zionism has run its course. And in so doing, it has terminated any possibility of a two-state solution. There remains but one possibility for peace with justice: truth, reconciliation — and a single democratic and secular state, a state in which there will be no “natives” and “settlers” and all will be equal; a state for all its citizens irrespective of their religious affiliation. Such a state has always, by definition, been anathema for Zionism. But for the people of Israel and Palestine, it is the only way out.

Saree Makdisi, a professor of English and comparative literature at UCLA and a frequent commentator on the Middle East, is writing a book on Palestine, forthcoming from Norton. This article was originally published by The Nation.

Source: Electronic Intifada
http://electronicintifada.net/v2/article6994.shtml

New UN map charts West Bank reality

 

By Sharmila Devi and Harvey Morris in Jerusalem

A new map of the West Bank (see below), 40 years after its conquest by Israel in the Six Day War, gives the most definitive picture so far of a territory in which 2.5m Palestinians are confined to dozens of enclaves separated by Israeli roads, settlements, fences and military zones.

Produced by the United Nations’s Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs, it is based on extensive monitoring in the field combined with analysis of satellite imagery. It provides an overall picture officials say is even more comprehensive than charts drawn up by the Israeli military.

The impact of Israeli civilian and military infrastructure is to render 40 per cent of the territory, which is roughly the size of the US state of Delaware or the English county of Norfolk, off-limits to Palestinians.

 

The rest of the territory, including main centres such as Nablus and Jericho, is split into isolated spots. Movement between them is restricted by 450 roadblocks and 70 manned checkpoints.The UN mapmakers focused on land set aside for Jewish settlements, roads reserved for settler access, the West Bank separation barrier, closed military areas and nature reserves.

What remains is an area of habitation remarkably close to territory set aside for the Palestinian population in Israeli security proposals dating back to postwar 1967.

The process of enclosing the civilian enclaves has accelerated in the years since the outbreak of the Palestinian uprising in 2000, and the reintroduction by Israel of its military rule even in areas previously under Palestinian Authority security control.

A network of roads designed to ease the movement of Jewish settlers limits access between Palestinian enclaves. A secondary network being built would allow Palestinian limited movement via tunnels, bridges and trenches.

Diplomats say the effect of the infrastructure changes would be to formalise the de facto cantonisation of the West Bank. Some 450,000 Israelis live in the West Bank and occupied east Jerusalem and settlements have grown by at least 5.5 per cent a year compared with less than 3 per cent among Palestinians.

The map is one of a number of documents whose publication has coincided with Monday’s anniversary of the 1967 war. Amnesty, the rights group, issued a report that accused Israel of a land grab in the West Bank and called for urgent action to address “widespread human rights abuses committed under the occupation”.

The Israeli justice ministry branded the report as “one-sided, immoral and riddled with mistakes”.

Source: The Financial Times
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/728a69d4-12b1-11dc-a475-000b5df10621,_i_rssPage=ff3cbaf6-3024-11da-ba9f-00000e2511c8.html

Jerusalem: Israel Bans Muslim Burials in Old City Cemetery

 JERUSALEM — The Israeli government is preventing burials in an ancient Muslim cemetery in the Old City of Jerusalem, a move that could inflame fresh tensions in the city’s Muslim community, an Islamic official said Wednesday.

Sheik Azzam al-Khatib, head of Jerusalem’s Council for Waqf and Islamic Affairs, said the city’s Muslims used the cemetery for 1,400 years, until August 2006, when Avi Dichter, Israel’s minister of public security, ordered a halt to new burials because the site had spread beyond its original boundaries.

“This is an affront against the rights of Muslims,” al-Khatib said, charging that it was part of efforts to boost the Jewish presence in largely Arab east Jerusalem.

The cemetery lies near the plateau known to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, which was the site of the Biblical Jewish temples. The Al Aqsa mosque compound that stands there today houses Islam’s third-holiest shrine.

The area is a tinderbox for Palestinian-Israeli tensions. In February, Israeli work on a ramp leading to the hilltop site touched off clashes between police and local Muslims and brought cries of protest from around the Islamic world.

Matti Gill, head of Dichter’s office, said Muslims had recently begun illegally interring their dead outside the original plot and action had to be taken. He said that while further burials would be prevented, existing graves would not be touched.

“The burial that was being done there was illegal,” he said, adding that there were plenty of alternative sites elsewhere in the city.

Gill said the area adjoining the graveyard would not be built up, but would be turned over to the Israeli Environment Ministry and preserved as a green space.

Muslim leaders have complained to the ministry and to police about the ban.

“We will not accept giving up any part of the cemetery,” said Adnan Husseini, a member of the Higher Islamic Council.

He compared the latest dispute to the case of the planned Museum of Tolerance in the western part of Jerusalem where the building site was found to encroach upon parts of a disused Muslim burial ground.

Construction of the project, backed by the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, has been frozen by a court order while lawyers for supporters and opponents argue the case.

“The truth is that there is a war going on over Muslim cemeteries in Jerusalem,” Husseini said. “This a sensitive and dangerous issue, and it should be dealt with as such.”

Source: Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/30/AR2007053001536.html

Related: Israel Bans Muslim Burials Next to Al-Aqsa Mosque

As jets pound Gaza, Israel threatens to assassinate Hamas political leaders

5 Palestinians, Israeli killed as clashes intensify

GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Israeli-Palestinian violence escalated Monday when Israel killed five militants in air strikes and hinted that Hamas political leaders could be their next target. A rocket fired from Gaza killed an Israeli woman, inviting a harsh response.

The woman was the first Israeli to die in a Palestinian rocket attack since November.

Even before the fatal salvo, Hamas leaders feared for their safety. They turned off their cell phones, stayed out of official vehicles and reduced their movements as militant groups declared a state of emergency.

The precautions followed an Israeli air strike late Sunday on the home of Hamas lawmaker Khalil al-Haya that killed eight people. Israel denied that al-Haya, who was not there at the time, was the target. But Israel’s leaders said they would employ more drastic measures to stop daily barrages of rocket fire into Israel.

On Monday, an Israeli aircraft fired a missile at a car carrying four Islamic Jihad men, killing all of them. A spokesman for the group said they were targeted just after firing rockets into Israel.

Islamic Jihad, which has carried out hundreds of rocket attacks and suicide bombings in recent years, threatened “earthshaking” revenge.

Other air strikes Monday killed a Hamas militant and hit suspected weapons-storage facilities, the Israeli army said. More than 40 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli strikes since a decision last week to start hitting back for the rocket barrages.

Late Monday, Israel imposed a closing on Gaza and the West Bank, banning Palestinians from entering Israel except in humanitarian cases. The military said the closing could be lifted Wednesday after a Jewish holiday, depending on the security situation.

The Israeli strikes have not slowed the rockets. A new barrage slammed into the Israeli town of Sderot early Tuesday, lightly injuring two residents, the army said. Israel responded with two new air strikes against buildings housing weapons depositories in central Gaza.

The Hamas military wing said it fired 23 rockets Monday, including nine at Sderot.

At sundown Monday, a Palestinian rocket hit a car and set it on fire in Sderot, about a mile from Gaza. A woman died en route to the hospital and two others were wounded in the attack. Both Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility.

Deaths in rocket attacks often trigger a harsh Israeli response.

Monday’s salvo came during a meeting in Sderot between Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and Javier Solana, the European Union foreign policy chief. They were not harmed.

At a news conference in Sderot, Solana denounced the violence, and Livni called for international action “to put pressure on the terrorists and the Palestinian government and not compromise with terror.”

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert visited Sderot late Monday for the second time in a week, his office said.

Angry Sderot residents demonstrated outside the building where Solana and Livni were meeting and later burned tires, saying the Israeli government has failed to protect them.

Hamas pledged to “strike at the enemy anywhere in Palestine, whether with suicide attacks or operations against soldiers,” said the group’s military wing spokesman, Abu Obeida. Since 2000, Hamas has carried out dozens of suicide bombings in Israel, killing more than 250 people.

Moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas was making efforts to restore the cease-fire that greatly reduced Israeli-Palestinian violence in Gaza from November until last week, said Abbas aide Saeb Erekat.

Source: Chicago Tribune
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0705220001may22,1,2379934.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hed

Israel continues air raids despite new Gaza truce

Rival Palestinian factions have clinched a new cease-fire deal to end a week of violence that has left more than 50 dead but Israel is continuing to pound targets across Gaza.

The Hamas and Fatah movements agreed to implement a cease-fire from 1200 GMT, the fifth such deal since violence erupted on Sunday.

Shortly after announcement of the new truce but before it took effect, gunmen in northern Gaza opened fire on the convoy of general Mohammed al-Masri of the Palestinian intelligence service, causing no casualties.

Under the agreement, “armed men will leave buildings and streets, will remove road blocks and release hostages on both sides at 1600 (local time),” Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniya’s spokesman Ghazi Hamad said.

The deal was struck at the Egyptian mission in Gaza in the presence of Mr Haniya, who had been in contact with Hamas political supremo Khaled Meshaal in Syria, Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas.

Gunmen clashed in the streets of Gaza City for the seventh day, although no casualties were reported and residents returned cautiously to the streets of several districts where the fighting had subsided.

The internecine battles have killed a total of 51 people, six of them civilians.

Israel, meanwhile, continued its aerial offensive on Gaza in a bid to curb the incessant rocket fire against its towns, which has intensified since the violence erupted between Hamas and Fatah.

The Israeli army said it carried out an air raid against “three members of a Qassam rocket-launching cell that had just fired a rocket towards Israel”.

A Palestinian, identified by medics as a civilian, was killed in the northern Gaza attack and five others were wounded.

Source: ABC News Online (Australia)
http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200705/s1927687.htm

Access Denied: US Military bans YouTube, MySpace

By Erika Morphy
TechNewsWorld

Certain popular Web sites — including MySpace and YouTube — are no longer accessible to users of military networks. Critics are decrying the hardship the ban causes to soldiers deployed overseas, who have relied on social networking to stay close to family and friends, and have no Internet access other than the DoD nets.

Citing limited bandwidth and potential security issues, the Pentagon has cut off U.S. troops’ access to several social networking and other high-volume Web sites. Soldiers can still post to MySpace and YouTube — two of the banned sites –but only from outside networks.

However, most overseas military personnel, including thousands stationed in Iraq and Afghanistan, have no Internet access other than the Defense Department networks, which they rely on to stay in touch with family and friends.

Other sites covered by the ban include Metacafe, iFilm, StupidVideos, FileCabi, BlackPlanet, Hi5, Pandora, MTV, 1.fm, Live365 and Photobucket.

Legitimate Concerns

To be sure, bandwidth requirements pose a legitimate concern that is not limited to the U.S. military. Large corporations, for instance, have taken to locking employees out of popular streaming video sites at the workplace in order to ensure that their networks can run at full capacity.

Sharing videos, swapping photos and other popular Web 2.0 activities can easily eat up a lot of bandwidth, said Jeff Stibel, CEO of Web.com, which provides military families with tools to create multimedia sites.

“It can be a concern,” he told TechNewsWorld.

Also, security risks should not be underestimated, warns Melissa Feagin, a former information systems technician who recently separated from the U.S. Navy.

“A military network is an entirely different entity than a civilian one,” she told TechNewsWorld. “Every day, our networks are under attack from foreign invaders. Whoever thinks our enemies are out herding their camels are sadly mistaken. Our militant enemies have networks of very intelligent, trained operatives working night and day to hack into our networks.”

Although the military warns sailors and soldiers to never reveal their schedules or locations, “there will inevitably always be that one who does tell his mom back in Wisconsin that ‘the ship is pulling into Dubai next Tuesday,’” Feagin continued. “Especially after the USS Cole tragedy, mistakes like this can be deadly.”

MySpace has a feature called “MySpace Chat,” she noted. “Any chat space online allowing users real-time conversation is strictly forbidden on board United States Navy vessels, as that mistake that one person lets slip out may reveal the ship’s exact real-time location.”

By blocking access to such sites, the Pentagon is also protecting itself from a common virus vector, Dan Nadir, vice president of product strategy for ScanSafe, told TechNewsWorld. “Some users are not that sophisticated in knowing not to download certain files from a P2P (peer-to-peer) site, for example,” he said. “This is a valid security risk — not only in the military, but in the corporate world as well.”

Moment to Moment

Still, the ban — which the Pentagon imposed with little warning — is undercutting a type of communications near and dear to deployed armed forces and their families. Soldiers have been using these sites to stay in touch and give their loved ones some sense of what is happening with them.

“Real-time communication is so important in these situations,” Andi Hurley, founder of Spousebuzz.com, a Web site for military spouses, told TechNewsWorld. “It empowers military families — and we are exploiting it for all that it is worth.”

Hurley, whose husband was deployed in Afghanistan, told of a recent military spouses’ convention she recently attended. “We talked about how difficult — inconceivable, actually — it must have been for spouses in World War II or Vietnam, waiting weeks and weeks for a letter. Being able to see your spouse and talk directly — virtual or otherwise — makes all the difference at the home front.”

Alternative Mode

In response to the military’s dictum, sites such as Web.com and WebsitesForHeroes.com are likely to become more trafficked as overseas personnel seek to stay in touch. These sites use various means to minimize bandwidth usage.

In the case of Web.com, it avoids social networking and linkages that can slow systems.

WebsitesforHeroes.com employs a compression technology that “shrinks” photos as they’re uploaded to a standard size, thus reducing the strain on the system. These sites typically come with password-protected technology to satisfy the Pentagon’s security concerns.

That is assuming, of course, that the military wants its personnel to be using these sites at all — regardless of whether they are safe or easy on the network.

One dark suspicion that’s making the rounds in the blogosphere is that the Pentagon wishes to shut down any communication by the troops that may reflect unfavorably on what is happening in Iraq.

The move to ban the social networking and photo-sharing sites follows a far more onerous ban on personal communications implemented earlier this year.

E-Mail Monitoring

Reportedly, the army has recently ordered soldiers to stop writing blogs or sending personal e-mail messages, unless the content has been cleared by a superior officer. These new regs, which can be punishable by court martial or criminal action if violated, also apply to spouses and friends, although jurisdiction is unclear on that point.

For some military personnel, the restrictions have been hard to swallow.

The new regulation “does not distinguish between on-duty, off-duty, deployed, non-deployed, military computers, personal computers, etc.,” writes one solider.

“In effect, it dictates to me, my family and my friends that they cannot send e-mail or publish their own blogs, regardless of content. So, technically, every time my wife wants to send an e-mail, she needs to get permission from my commander or OPSEC (operations security) officer beforehand. While the intent is geared towards the release of OPSEC-related material, the reality is that the regulation effectively targets EVERY form of electronic communication utilized by Soldiers AND their family members.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Defense, demanding information on how the Army monitors soldiers’ blogs. Even before the new regulations went into effect, there were accounts of an Army unit called the “Army Web Risk Assessment Cell” (AWRAC) that reportedly reviewed hundreds of thousands of Web sites every month, notifying webmasters and bloggers of information it found inappropriate.

“Soldiers should be free to blog their thoughts at this critical point in the national debate on the war in Iraq,” said EFF Staff Attorney Marcia Hofmann.

“If the Army is coloring or curtailing soldiers’ published opinions, Americans need to know about that interference.”

In light of the military’s most recent action, Americans certainly won’t learn about it at MySpace or other familiar Internet haunts.

Source: TechNewsWorld
http://www.technewsworld.com/story/8OGatvNZPpWJbs/Whats-Motivating-the-Militarys-Selective-Web-Site-Ban.xhtml