Iran and Israel: Lost in translation?

Iran and Israel: Lost in translation?

Babak Yektafar explains the meaning behind Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's rhetoric

Thursday May 15th, 2008

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterates controversial statements calling for an "end to the Zionist regime," leading different news services to translate his words in different ways, some making them sound more belligerent than others. The Real News Network Senior Editor Paul Jay speaks to Babak Yektafar of Washington Prism to discuss the meaning of the statements.

Babak Yektafar, Editor-in-Chief of Washington Prism is a graduate of Farleigh Dickinson University with a B.A. in Communications. From 1999 to 2005, Babak was a producer with C-SPAN network’s national live morning program, Washington Journal.

Transcript:

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, THE REAL NEWS NETWORK: US President George Bush arrived in the Middle East on Wednesday for a five-day tour of the region. He landed in Jerusalem, where he took part in celebrations surrounding the 60th anniversary of Israel's creation. Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, reacted with a searing warning to Israel, which has elicited international scrutiny over the exact meaning of his words. To discuss the latest comments about Israel from Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, we're joined from Washington by Babak Yektafar, editor-in-chief of Washington Prism. Welcome back, Babak.

BABAK YEKTAFAR, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, WASHINGTONPRISM.ORG: Thank you for having me.

JAY: Early Wednesday morning in the city of Gorgan, Iran, just outside of Tehran, President Ahmadinejad, speaking to a crowd of supporters, had this to say:

(CLIP BEGINS)

MAHMOUD AHMADINEJAD, IRANIAN PRESIDENT (SUBTITLED TRANSLATION): The Zionist regime is dying. The region's nations hate this fake and criminal regime and if they find any opportunity, they will root out this fake regime.

(CLIP ENDS)

JAY: The subtitling that we showed you came from a translation provided to us by Associated Press. Reuters translate it like this: [text on screen] "given the briefest chance, to regional nations, they will destroy it"—"destroy it" clearly meaning the regime, the Zionist regime. Some of the publications seem to stretch it to the destruction of Israel. This reminds us of 2005, when President Ahmadinejad made another speech that was translated around the world in two very different ways. Most of English media heard a translation saying that Israel should be wiped off the face of the earth, whereas an Agence France-Presse translated it and others translated it as saying the Zionist regime is doomed to disappear. So I guess what I'm asking you here is there's two very different camps of translating what Ahmadinejad is saying. One is, you could say, a somewhat observer's voice, in grammatical terms a more passive voice: the Israeli regime is doomed; the Israeli regime will collapse. But another translation is far more active, which is to destroy the regime; sometimes it gets, more often than not in American media, as destroying Israel. So can you tell us what in fact is Ahmadinejad saying?

YEKTAFAR: Well, first of all, as you know, Paul, one of the difficulties of dealing with language, be it language used in the Middle East or English or any other, is these words, the nuances of the words, the context within which these words are being used, the word that he used yesterday in his speech in Farsi is the word ["ree-shih-KAN"], which literally translates into uprooting or pulling out from the roots the physical entity that's being uprooted. You also mentioned the phrase or the word that was used in 2005, which started this whole issue. Again, that's the word—he used the word ["math"], which given the context, given as to how it's being used, it means disappearance. And he at the time meant, and all throughout, I believe, has maintained that he is essentially talking about the physical state, physical borders of the state of Israel, and the government, or the regime, as he mentions, "the fake regime" he often uses. And I think in a lot of ways not only Ahmadinejad himself but the hierarchy of Iran's Islamic republic have tried to portray that this does not mean that they want to wipe out the Jewish population or anything like that. They constantly refer to the Jewish minorities in Iran and the representation that they have in the Iranian Parliament and so on and so forth. They're always as careful, as careful as they can be, to make sure that the reference is to the existence of the state of Israel at the expense of the Palestinians, the whole issue.

JAY: Now, the Iranian government does not recognize the state of Israel.

YEKTAFAR: No, they don't.

JAY: Ahmadinejad's made it clear he doesn't recognize the legitimacy of the state or the borders of that country.

YEKTAFAR: Exactly.

JAY: But it's one thing not to recognize it, and it's quite another to say you're in some active way going to destroy it, which is what we keep hearing over and over again from the White House and from most of the media. In terms of what Ahmadinejad is saying to Iranians in Iran, what is the real meaning of what he's saying?

YEKTAFAR: He is approaching it in two ways. I don't think I have heard, read anything that specifically portrays this as some sort of attack by Iran against the state of Israel. I think a great deal of reaction that we've seen actually is because of the fear that the Islamic republic has of a possible attack by Israel, and this has escalated with the United States being there. What Ahmadinejad has portrayed the situation is more of not a direct attack by Iran, but encouraging the people in some sort of an uprising, parallel to the whole idea that, again going back to the whole justice issue and the way he feels about the Shiite hidden Imam whose return is going to herald the end of the world and, you know, justice to the world and all that, that if the will of the people and some sort of an uprising is there among the neighbors, among the oppressed people of Palestine, among other Arab nations, and so on and so forth then Israel has no chance, *and it will be destroyed.

JAY: *But clearly Ahmadinejad's language often is very provocative. He's not a fool—he knows how this is going to play in international public opinion. He knows what organizing a Holocaust conference is going to play out in world public opinion. To some extent, he doesn't care, he wants to send that message, or is he just completely focused on Iranian public opinion and it doesn't matter too much to him how it plays out internationally?

YEKTAFAR: Well, a big part of it is the way he is focused on the Iranian internal politics, and that to the extent that he wants to have a system, essentially, or he wants the Islamic republic to go back to a kind of system that he believed made the Islamic republic the way it is, (A). And (B), a lot of it again comes from the fact of the mistrust that he has and a great deal of people, the ones, the veterans of the Iran-Iraq War, the mistrust that they have of the western world, and the way that the western world has treated Iran, as well as other countries in the Middle East. And, again, going back to the issue of Israel in the speeches that he has, that's his thing, that the state of Israel—and he calls it a fake regime—is there at the insistence and backing of other criminal powers, and usually this means the United States and Great Britain.

JAY: Now, people in the press and certainly the American government government portray Iran rather monolithically, at least the rulers of Iran. Ahmadinejad represents a very specific faction within the Iranian ruling elite. Is the kind of provocative rhetoric that he uses, does it represent the supreme leader? Does it represent people like Rafsanjani? How unified are they around this kind of positioning?

YEKTAFAR: That's the interesting thing about Iranian politics and the dynamics of the Iranian politics. There is no such directive, as far as I have observed and I can tell, by the supreme leader that this is how it should be done. However, there are groups here that are at play in trying to get the nod from the supreme leader. Remember, the supreme leader has never essentially taken a specific position in regards to foreign policy, even domestic policy. He essentially acts as an arbitrator, and he's very comfortable doing that. So when people like Ahmadinejad and people who think like him come up and say things of that nature, he has a tendency of seeing how does it play? How does it play internally? How does it play externally? If he's really unsatisfied, he will tell them to stop, you know, and clamp down, or he mobilizes other forces there to say things contrary to what Mr. Ahmadinejad has said. And we've heard things from Mr. Larijani, the former nuclear negotiator, who's insisting that, you know, we should start negotiating with the West and the United States, or Mr. Rafsanjani, who says that this kind of rhetoric and talk is not beneficial to the future of Iran, and all it's going to do is that it's going to invite trouble from, you know, various forces that are surrounding us.

JAY: Is Iran actually a credible threat to Israel? Or is this really all about Hamas and Hezbollah?

YEKTAFAR: Well, you have to realize all this talk about—I've said it many times—about Iran being this power or emerging power, there really isn't much there that tells me that Iran is a power that can be in a conventional war, that can have that kind of a power.

JAY: Babak, we're going to end the section here, and we're going to start a part 2 interview and discuss just what is Iran's role in the region and its relationship to Hezbollah, Hamas, and particularly what's going on in Lebanon now. Please join us for part 2 of our interview with Babak Yektafar. Thank you.

DISCLAIMER:

Please note that TRNN transcripts are typed from a recording of the program; The Real News Network cannot guarantee their complete accuracy.

US plot to nail Iran backfires

US plot to nail Iran backfires
By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - The George W Bush administration's plan to create a new crescendo of accusations against Iran for allegedly smuggling arms to Shi'ite militias in Iraq has encountered not just one but two setbacks.

The government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki refused to endorse US charges of Iranian involvement in arms smuggling to Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, and a plan to show off a huge collection of Iranian arms captured in and around the central city of Karbala had to be called off after it was discovered that none of the arms was of Iranian origin.

The news media's failure to report that the arms captured from Shi'ite militiamen in Karbala did not include a single Iranian weapon shielded the US military from a big blow to its anti-Iran strategy.

The Bush administration and top Iraq commander General David Petraeus had plotted a sequence of events that would build domestic US political support for a possible strike against Iran over its "meddling" in Iraq, and especially its alleged export of arms to Shi'ite militias.

The plan was keyed to a briefing document to be prepared by Petraeus on the alleged Iranian role in arming and training Shi'ite militias that would be revealed to the public after the Maliki government had endorsed it, and that would be used to accuse Iran publicly.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen told reporters on April 25 that Petraeus was preparing a briefing to be given "in the next couple of weeks" that would provide detailed evidence of "just how far Iran is reaching into Iraq to foment instability". The centerpiece of the Petraeus document, completed in late April, was the claim that arms captured in the southern city of Basra bore 2008 manufacture dates on them.

US officials also planned to display to reporters Iranian weapons captured in both Basra and Karbala. That sequence of media events would fill the airwaves for several days with spectacular news framing Iran as the culprit in Iraq, aimed at breaking down US congressional and public resistance to the idea that Iranian bases supporting the meddling would have to be attacked.

But events in Iraq did not follow the script. On May 4, after an Iraqi delegation had returned from meetings in Iran, Maliki's spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, said in a news conference that Maliki was forming his own cabinet committee to investigate the US claims. "We want to find tangible information and not information based on speculation," he said.

Another adviser to Maliki, Haider Abadi, told the Los Angeles Times' Alexandra Zavis that Iranian officials had given the delegation evidence disproving the charges. "For us to be impartial, we have to investigate," Abadi said.

Dabbagh made it clear the government considered the US evidence of Iranian government arms smuggling to be insufficient. "The proof we want is weapons which are shown to have been made in Iran," Dabbagh said in a separate interview with Reuters. "We want to trace back how they reached [Iraq], who is using them, where are they getting it."

Senior US military officials were clearly furious with Maliki for backtracking on the issue. "We were blindsided by this," one of them told Zavis.

Then the Bush administration's plot encountered another serious problem.

The Iraqi commander in Karbala had announced on May 3 that he had captured a large quantity of Iranian arms in and around the city. Earlier, the US military had said that it was up to the Iraqi government to display captured Iranian weapons, and now an Iraqi commander was eager to do just that. Petraeus' staff alerted US media to a major news event in which the captured Iranian arms in Karbala would be displayed and then destroyed.

But when US munitions experts went to Karbala to see the alleged cache of Iranian weapons, they found nothing they could credibly link to Iran.

The US command had to inform reporters that the event had been canceled, explaining that it had all been a "misunderstanding". In his press briefing on May 7, Brigadier General Kevin Bergner gave some details of the captured weapons in Karbala but refrained from charging any Iranian role.

The cancelation of the planned display was a significant story, in light of the well-known intention of the US command to convict Iran on the arms smuggling charge. Nevertheless, it went unreported in the world's news media.

A report on the Los Angeles Times' blog "Babylon and Beyond" by Baghdad correspondent Tina Susman was the only small crack in the media blackout. The story was not carried in the Times itself.

The real significance of the captured weapons collected in Karbala was not the obvious US political embarrassment over an Iraqi claim of captured Iranian arms that turned out to be false. It was the deeper implication of the arms that were captured.

Karbala is one of Iraq's eight largest cities, and it has long been the focus of major fighting between the Mahdi Army and its Shi'ite foes. Muqtada declared his ceasefire last August after a major battle there, but fighting resumed there and in Basra when the government launched a major operation in March. Thousands of Mahdi Army fighters have fought in Karbala over the past year.

The official list of weapons captured in Karbala includes nine mortars, four anti-aircraft missiles, 45 rocket propelled grenade (RPG) weapons, 800 RPG missiles and 570 roadside explosive devices. The failure to find a single item of Iranian origin among these heavier weapons, despite the deeply entrenched Mahdi Army presence over many months, suggests that the dependence of the Mahdi Army on arms manufactured in Iran is actually quite insignificant.

The Karbala weapons cache also raises new questions about the official US narrative about the Shi'ite militia's use of explosively formed penetrators (EFPs) as an Iranian phenomenon. Among the captured weapons mentioned by Major General Raied Shaker Jawdat, commander of the Karbala police, were what he called "150 anti-tank bombs", as distinguished from ordinary roadside explosive devices.

An "anti-tank bomb" is a device that is capable of penetrating armor, which has been introduced to the US public as the EFP. The US claim that Iran was behind their growing use in Iraq was the centerpiece of the Bush administration's case for an Iranian "proxy war" against the US in early 2007.

Soon after that, however, senior US military officials conceded that EFPs were in fact being manufactured in Iraq itself, although they insisted that EFPs alleged exported by Iran were superior to the home-made version.

The large cache of EFPs in Karbala which are admitted to be non-Iranian in origin underlines the reality that the Mahdi Army procures its EFPs from a variety of sources.

But for the media blackout of the story, the large EFP discovery in Karbala would have further undermined the credibility of the US military's line on Iran's export of the EFPs to Iraqi fighters.

Apparently understanding the potential political difficulties that the Karbala EFP find could present, Bergner omitted any reference to them in his otherwise accurate accounting of the Karbala weapons.

Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. The paperback edition of his latest book, Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006.

(Inter Press Service)

The Sadistic Side of Bush's War on Terror

Sexual Terrorism

By DAVID ROSEN

The “New York Times’” recently revealed the existence of a little-known executive order issued by President Bush in the summer of ’07 that permitted U.S. intelligence operatives to circumvent restrictions on the use of humiliating and degrading interrogation techniques.

Bush’s order permitted U.S. intelligence operatives to effectively side-step the legal and moral restrictions imposed by the Supreme Court and Congress (and formally approved by Bush) as well as Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.

Brian Benczkowski, a deputy assistant attorney general, laid-out the rationale for the continued subversion of these restrictions:

The fact that an [humiliating interrogation] act is undertaken to prevent a threatened terrorist attack, rather than for the purpose of humiliating or abuse, would be relevant to a reasonable observer in measuring the outrageousness of the act.

The Bush administration’s argument is that an interrogator can utilize what it calls “enhanced interrogation techniques” if he/she believes such techniques will thwart a possible threat or terrorist act. For the administration, illegal (if not immoral) interrogation techniques are a corollary to preemptive military strikes that was its rationale for the invasion of Iraq.

Much attention has been paid to water-boarding as an immoral if not illegal technique utilized in the so-called War of Terror. Little attention has been paid to the equally physically harmful and likely more long-term consequential technique of sexual humiliation and terror.

Buried deep in Mark Mazzetti’s Times article is an intriguing paragraph:

That order specifies some conduct that it says would be prohibited in any interrogation, including forcing an individual to perform sexual acts, or threatening an individual with sexual humiliation. But it does not say which techniques could still be permitted. [New York Times, April 27, 2008]

Yes, what “techniques” of sexual humiliation can still be used?

It seems almost impossible to precisely determine these techniques. Reviews of the CIA, Justice and Defense department’s websites reveal little useful information. Email queries to the Justice Department, including Benczkowski and the media-relations office, have not been answered.

An exhaustive search of the internet has provided no further information about sexual humiliation then the oblique Times reference. (An effort for further clarification from Mazzetti has not succeeded.) This is very much in keeping with Bush administration policies to deny, falsify, obfuscate or simply lie about techniques sanctioned and employed in its fictitious War on Terror.

In the absence of the formal specification of CIA’s approved or utilized (and they are not necessarily the same) techniques of sexual humiliation, one must draw upon previously documented U.S. military and intelligence-agency practices and the techniques used by other militaries. These examples illustrate what the CIA and other U.S. agencies are capable of employing to break those they identify as “terrorists”.

Rape is one of the most barbaric forms of sexual humiliation and terror. Since the Civil War, rape has been increasingly integrated into what is known as total warfare. Women, girls and some boys have been increasingly singled out for systematic sexual abuse during civil conflicts and military campaigns. However, rape has only been limitedly employed against adult male captives detained in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantánamo or CIA black sites around the world. [see “’The Hard Hand of War’: Rape as an Instrument of Total War,” CounterPunch, Apri1 4, 2008]

The U.S. has employed (and, most likely, continues to employ) a host of other techniques of sexual terrorization to break male inmates. An act of sexual humiliation serves two purposes: to physically harm and to emotionally scar those subjected to such abuse. Sexual terrorization seeks to inflict both pain and shame, to make the recipient suffer and loath himself. Sexual humiliation is intended to break the victim both physically and spiritually, to leave scars on (and inside) the body and in the psyche.

If (or when) top officials of the Bush administration face either an American or international war crimes tribunal over their conduct related to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, sexual humiliation and terror should not be absent from the indictment.

* * *

According to an ABC News report, in response to September 11th the CIA adopted six "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" in mid-March 2002. These techniques were to be used on a dozen or more alleged al Qaeda leaders detained in CIA black sites. These “approved” techniques consisted of:

• The Attention Grab: the interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.

• The Attention Slap: an open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.

• The Belly Slap: a hard open-handed slap to the stomach; the aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury.

• Long Time Standing: prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours.

• The Cold Cell: the prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees and is periodically doused with cold water.

• Water-Boarding: also known as “the water cure” or “simulated drowning,” the prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet; cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him.

Obviously missing from the CIA’s list of interrogation techniques is sexual humiliation, degradation and terrorization. [ABC News, November 18, 2005]

Reconstructing U.S. military and intelligence officials use of sexual interrogation techniques begins in 2004 with Abu Ghraib and Seymour Hersh’s invaluable “New Yorker” article and the CBS “60 Minutes II” broadcast of soldiers’ photos. Their combined impact not only exposed the horrendous treatment of Iraqi prisoners, but made “celebrities” out of three of the perpetrators, Army reservists Charles Graner, Sabrina Harmon and Lynndie England. [see New Yorker, April 30, 2004 and March 24, 2008]

The best single source for details on abuses at Abu Ghraib is the study conducted by Major General Antonio Taguba. In the report’s executive summary, the following "sadistic, blatant, and wanton criminal abuses” are identified as having been used at the prison:

• videotaping and photographing naked male and female detainees;

• forcibly arranging detainees in various sexually explicit positions for photographing;

• forcing detainees to remove their clothing and keeping them naked for several days at a time;

• forcing naked male detainees to wear women's underwear;

• forcing groups of male detainees to masturbate themselves while being photographed and videotaped;

• arranging naked male detainees in a pile and then jumping on them;

• positioning a naked detainee on a MRE [meals ready to eat] Box, with a sandbag on his head, and attaching wires to his fingers, toes, and penis to simulate electric torture;

• placing a dog chain or strap around a naked detainee's neck and having a female soldier pose for a picture;

• sodomizing a detainee with a chemical light and perhaps a broom stick.

In a description of a meeting about the report with Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and other high-ranking Defense Department officials, Taguba told Hersh: “I described a naked detainee lying on the wet floor, handcuffed, with an interrogator shoving things up his rectum, and said, ‘That’s not abuse. That’s torture.’ There was quiet.” Images of these practices, like similar images of cruelty from the Vietnam and other wars, have become enshrined in the nation’s memory.

Making matters even more sadistic, the festive, if not chaotic, conditions at the prison led male soldiers to engage in “consensual” sexual liaisons with female prisoners and even record their trysts for posterity. According to the Taguba report, “a male MP guard [was] having sex with a female detainee.” [Taguba report, “Article 15-6 Investigation of the 800th Military Police Brigade”; New Yorker, June 25, 2007]

Subsequent to the Hersh and CBS exposés, additional photos, videotapes and personal accounts by military personnel and former detainees have come out. More than one hundred photographs and four videos taken at Abu Ghraib were initially suppressed by the Army's Criminal Investigations Division. In September 2005, and only after ACLU litigation and a ruling by District Judge Alvin Hellerstein, was all the “evidence” finally released to the public. (Dozens of photos can be accessed through google and other sources.) They provide further examples of the sexual abuse systematically employed by U.S. personnel on alleged or suspected terrorists.

Drawing from a host of media reports, a jig-saw-puzzle picture of sexual torture employed in the War on Terror begins to emerge. Two examples are illustrative:

1. Scotland’s “Sunday Herald” reports that a former Iraqi prisoner claimed that there is a photo of a civilian translator raping a male juvenile prisoner; he stated, “They covered all the doors with sheets. I heard the screaming, … and the female soldier was taking pictures.”

2. The Associated Press reports that a former inmate, Dhia al-Shweiri, was ordered by American soldiers to strip naked, bend over and place his hands on a wall; while not sodomized, he says he was humiliated: “We are men. It’s OK if they beat me,” al Shweiri said. “Beatings don’t hurt us; it’s just a blow. But no one would want their manhood to be shattered. They wanted us to feel as though we were women, the way women feel, and this is the worst insult, to feel like a woman.”

Accepting the patriarchal sexism, the humiliation was deeply upsetting.

The experience of another former inmate, Hayder Sabbar Abd, is similarly revealing. Abd is memorialized as the man in the hood in Lynndie England’s infamous photo. In that photograph, the smiling England gives a thumbs-up gesture and points at Abd's exposed genitals.

As reported by the “Independent”:

Mr. Abd said he recalled having his hood removed and being told by the soldiers' Arabic translator to masturbate as he looked at Ms England. "She was laughing and she put her hands on her breasts," he told the newspaper. "Of course I couldn't do it, so they beat me in the stomach and I fell to the ground. The translator said, 'Do it, do it. It's better than being beaten.' I said 'How can I do it?' So I put my hand on my penis, just pretending."

At this point, one of the other prisoners, ­a friend of Mr Abd's identified as Hussein, ­was pushed towards his genitals while the hood was put back over his own head.

"They made him sit next to me. My penis was very close to his mouth. I did not know it was my friend because of the hood. It was humiliating. We didn't think that we would survive. All of us believed we would be killed and we would not get out alive," said Mr Abd.

One can only wonder what England now thinks about Abu Ghraib as she sits in her jail cell at San Diego’s Naval Consolidated Brig Miramar. And how she appreciates the “bad apples” theory in the face of the recent revelation of Bush administration “Principals” approving “harsh” interrogation techniques.

Surprising to many, nearly a year before Abu Ghraib was exposed, in May 2003, British private Gary Bartlam, previously stationed in Basra and the port of Umm Qasr, was arrested in his hometown of Tamworth, Staffordshire. He had brought in a roll of pictures he shot in Iraq to his local photo-developer for processing. A shocked clerk, after reviewing the shots, called the police. Among his photos were:

* a picture showing an Iraqi man being forced to perform oral sex on a (white) man;

* a picture showing two Iraqis apparently being forced to perform anal sex;

* a picture showing two naked Iraqis cowering on the ground.

A flabbergasted Bartlam told the police that he took the shots to show his mom what was going on in Iraq.

Such interrogation practices were not limited to Iraq. According to a report in the “Sydney Morning Hearld”: “Female interrogators tried to break Muslim detainees at Guantanamo Bay by sexual touching, wearing a miniskirt and thong underwear and in one case smearing a Saudi man's face with fake menstrual blood, according to an insider's written account.”

This allegation was confirmed by former Army Sergeant Erik Saar in his book, “Inside the Wire: A Military Intelligence Soldier's Eyewitness Account of Life at Guantanamo.” Saar worked as an Arabic translator at Gitmo from December 2002 to June 2003; Major General Geoffrey Miller, the architect of Abu Ghraib intelligence techniques, was his commander.

According to Saar, a female interrogator employed an innovative technique to "break" a Saudi detainee. He says she removed her uniform top to expose a tight-fitting T-shirt and began taunting the detainee, touching her breasts, rubbing them against the prisoner's back and commenting on his apparent erection. In a draft of his book, Saar’s describes her most ingenious proceedure:

She then started to place her hands in her pants as she walked behind the detainee. As she circled around him he could see that she was taking her hand out of her pants. When it became visible the detainee saw what appeared to be red blood on her hand. She said, 'Who sent you to Arizona?' [the detainee had taken a pilot course] He then glared at her with a piercing look of hatred.

She then wiped the red ink on his face. He shouted at the top of his lungs, spat at her and lunged forward so fiercely that he broke loose from one ankle shackle.

"He began to cry like a baby," the draft says, noting the interrogator left saying: "Have a fun night in your cell without any water to clean yourself."

“The concept,” observes Saar, “was to make the detainee feel that after talking to her he was unclean and was unable to go before his God in prayer and gain strength.” Strict interpretation of Islamic law forbids physical contact between a man and a woman not his wife or family member or with a menstruating woman, who is considered unclean. [The Sun, June 4, 2003;Independent, May 6, 2004; Washington Blade, May 7, 2004; Sydney Morning Hearld, January 28, 2005]

* * *

The American people, through human rights groups, the ACLU, Congress and the Courts, have fought a protracted battle with the Bush administration over the precise meaning of “enhanced interrogation techniques” used in Iraq, Guantánamo and CIA black sites. Recent revelations show just how far the Bush administration will go to cover its tracks with regard to questionable (if not illegal) interrogation techniques.

In December ’07, it was revealed that the CIA destroyed videotapes it made in 2002 (two years before Abu Ghriab) of the interrogation of those it designated “top terrorist” suspects; these tapes were destroyed, as CIA director Michael Hayden explained, because CIA officials at the time were afraid that keeping them "posed a security risk”.

In March ‘08, Bush vetoed an intelligence bill that would have limited the CIA to interrogation techniques approved by the Army Field Manual. It would have banned water-boarding as well as stripping prisoners naked, forcing them to perform sexual acts or to mimic sexual acts, mock executions and beating or burning of prisoners.

In April, ABC News revealed that the highest officials of the Bush administration, what is know as the "Principals," met dozens of times after September 11th to review and approve interrogation techniques. Those who participated in the White House Situation Room meetings included Dick Cheney, Colin Powel, Condoleezza Rice, George Tenet and John Ashcroft; the president was intentionally excluded from the meeting in apparent fear of a possible war crimes indictment.

According to ABC, “the high-level discussions about these ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ were so detailed, these sources said, some of the interrogation sessions were almost choreographed — down to the number of times CIA agents could use a specific tactic.” The Times mentions that CIA operatives actually demonstrated some of these techniques, including water-boarding, for the principal war criminals. One can only wonder if any of the techniques of sexual humiliation were demonstrated or if the gathered officials had to rely on their vivid (if perverse) imaginations to conjure up the actual practices and their likely consequences for the hapless victims.

Ashcroft is reported to have been the only one troubled by the use of the techniques. Nevertheless, when queried about the meetings, Bush stated that he knew of and "approved" the techniques.

And later in April, the Times ran Mazzetti’s article further detailing CIA interrogation tactics and revealing Bush’s ’07 executive order permitting U.S. intelligence operatives to circumvent restrictions on the use of humiliating and degrading interrogation techniques.

The clock is ticking down on the Bush administration. For all their respective protestations, one can only wonder whether the next president will (secretly) approve the use of cruel, humilating and degrading interrogation techniques, especially sexual terror. Hidding behind plausible deniability is one of the oldest practices of those in power. Morality and the law nearly always take second place to expedience and necessity, whether real or invented.

The Bush administration and the Congress are unlikely to make public the full scope of sexual terrorism used to break the detainee in both body and mind during the War on Terror. Yet, detailing the actual techniques both approved and used by the interrogators (whether CIA, military or civilian contractors) is critical to establishing the true history of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. While wishfull thinking, this accounting might support subsequent war crimes prosecutions.

David Rosen can be reached at drosen@ix.netcom.com.

A deadly miscalculation in Lebanon - May 14, 2008

A deadly miscalculation in Lebanon
By Sami Moubayed

DAMASCUS - The Lebanese government made a fatal underestimation of how far leaders of the Shi'ite group Hezbollah would go to preserve what they believe are their rights, such as an intelligence network and the freedom to carry weapons.

The result is at least 81 people dead in clashes across the country since violence erupted on May 6; a political and military victory for Hezbollah and Iran and a stinging setback for the government and Saudi Arabia.

The crises was sparked last week in Beirut when the government
of Prime Minister Fouad al-Siniora ordered the communication and surveillance network at Runway 17 of Beirut Airport be dismantled, claiming it was "illegal and unconstitutional".

The decision was taken at a cabinet meeting on May 6 that lasted until 4 am, lobbied for by Telecommunications Minister Marwan Hamadeh. The network is one of the primary espionage tools used by Hezbollah in its war against Israel, keeping tabs on comings and goings at Beirut Airport.

Adding insult to injury, the Lebanese government dismissed Wafiq Shuqayr, the Shi'ite security commander of the airport, for planting the system in accordance with Hezbollah's wishes, supposedly behind the back of Siniora.

Hezbollah cried foul, claiming the network had been in place for years, adding that dismantling it was a red line because otherwise Beirut Airport would be "transformed into a base for the the CIA, the FBI and Mossad, referring to American and Israeli intelligence.
Hezbollah secretary general Hasan Nasrallah spoke just hours after the crisis started, saying the communication system and Shuqyar were "red lines" that could not be crossed. He reminded his audience that when Siniora became prime minister in 2005, one of the main points of his political program was "supporting the resistance" and giving it (Hezbollah) a free hand to wage its "war of liberation" against Israel in any way it saw fit.

Veteran Shi'ite cleric Abdul-Amir Qabalan, deputy chairman of the Higher Shi'ite Council, contacted the Lebanese government and advised it to back down, warning that Nasrallah must not be provoked and that he would not stand by and watch his security system being torn down. Qabalan said, "Touching this [communication] system affects our nationalism, integrity and loyalty to the nation."

The government refused to change course, arguing that security must be monopolized by the state and that it was inconceivable that a non-state party like Hezbollah could run a parallel security system at Beirut Airport.

In this stubbornness, the government failed to anticipate the value Hezbollah places on what it believed its key rights. Worse, Defense Minister Elias al-Murr, Interior Minister Hasan al-Sabe and Public Persecutor Said Mirza were tasked to create a team to look into other security violations committed by Hezbollah.

Engineering the escalation was Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, a one-time Nasrallah friend now turned enemy, who knew that within 48 hours the United Nations Security Council was due to discuss resolution 1559, regarding the disarmament of Hezbollah, which has yet to be fully implemented.

Nasrallah angrily replied that "we will cut the arm" of whoever tries to dismantle the arms of Hezbollah, claiming that security networks were weapons, just like missiles and guns. He then reminded that in the past, he would always say that "our weapons will never be used internally", but this time he warned that "weapons will be used to guard weapons".

He was not understating the situation. By the evening of May 7, all hell had broken lose in Beirut.

Hezbollah troops took to the streets of the capital and were confronted by armed men loyal to parliamentary majority leader Saad al-Hariri and Druze leader Jumblatt. Road blocks were set up all over the city, bringing back haunting memories of the 17-year civil war that ended in 1990, and snipers showed up on rooftops.

The Hariri-led March 14 Coalition cried foul, claiming that Hezbollah had launched a coup and taken over the (in the lightening speed of six hours). Parallels were drawn between Hezbollah's behavior in Beirut and the Hamas takeover of Gaza in 2007.

Nasrallah denied a coup was in the making, saying, "Had we wanted a coup, they [government leaders] would have woken up to find themselves in jail, or [thrown) in the sea."

Hezbollah fighters did storm entire neighborhoods of Beirut loyal to Hariri, aided by Amal militiamen loyal to the Shi'ite speaker of parliament, Nabih Berri, an ally of Nasrallah. The poor training and weaponry of the Hariri team was no match for the sophisticated war machine of Hezbollah, which managed to ward off a massive Israeli attack in 2006.

So amateurish were Hariri's men that it almost seemed as if they had no arms at all. They were round up in hours, disarmed and handed over to the Lebanese army. Rather than take control of the districts - to prove that this was not a coup - Hezbollah fighters called up the army, a third party, asking it to take control.
Vandalism did take place, and so did an ugly exchange of words between Hezbollah's team, who are all Shi'ite, and Hariri's men, who are all Sunnis. One of the most telling acts was shutting down all of Hariri's media outlets, which were very active in spreading anti-Hezbollah propaganda, including Future TV, Future News, Orient Radio and Future Newspaper. All of these were taken over by Hezbollah and then handed to the army, yet hoodlums did manage to break into Future TV and set one floor ablaze.

Many saw this as a proxy war between the Saudi Arabia-backed March 14 Coalition and the Iran-backed Hezbollah. Telecommunications Minister Hamadeh said the entire crisis was the doing of Tehran. His boss, Jumblatt, went even further, asking for the expulsion of the Iranian ambassador from Beirut.

Jumblatt's tone changed, however, 48 hours into the confrontation, when the fighting ended in Beirut and shifted to Druze villages overlooking the Lebanese capital. Hezbollah fighters surrounded his palace in Beirut, near the American University of Beirut, but did not invade. It was clear for Jumblatt, one of the United States' main and newfound allies in Lebanon, that it was pointless to resist Hezbollah.

Jumblatt got on the phone with Nabih Berri, the Nasrallah-allied speaker of parliament, and said, "I am a hostage now in my home in Beirut. Tell Sayed Hasan Nasrallah I lost the battle and he wins. So let's sit and talk to reach a compromise. All that I ask is your protection."

Nasrallah and Jumblatt had been good friends and strong allies during the heyday of the Syrian presence in Lebanon. The Druze leader had positioned himself as one of the main protectors of Hezbollah arms throughout the 1990s. A political animal, however, he changed sides when it was clear the Syrians had fallen out with Washington after the Iraq war and he transformed himself into one of the loudest critics of Syrian power in Beirut.

He put his full bet on the Americans, patched up with the George W Bush White House (which he had once accused of staging the September 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington) and became an aggressive critic of Nasrallah. In his speech on the eve of hostilities, Nasrallah said that the plan to transform Beirut Airport into a base for the US Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Mossad was the brainchild of "the government of Walid Jumblatt".

Intense fighting between Druze forces and Shi'ite militiamen raged on in the villages of Shouf, the towns of Aley and Shuwayfat, raising red sirens throughout Lebanon. This is where heavy fighting had taken place in the civil war - and although the war ended nearly 20 years ago - the wounds have not healed.

Two Hezbollah members were killed in the Druze districts, and another disappeared, prompting Jumblatt to give an urgent press conference, accepting blame for the entire ordeal and calling on his troops to lay down their arms, avoid a sectarian outburst, and transfer order of the districts to the Lebanese army.

Jumblatt added, "I must admit that the Iranians are smart and they knew how to play it in Lebanon. They chose a time when the US is weak in the Middle East and did it."

Calm was restored to Beirut when the government, with as much face-saving as possible, revoked its earlier decisions by transferring the issue of the communication system, and the security commander of Beirut Airport, to the army. Instead of executing the orders Army Commander Michel Suleiman, a neutral third party, declared both null. It is still unclear if the Siniora cabinet will issue a formal apology for its actions, as the Hezbollah-led opposition is requesting.

Regardless, it was a political and military victory for Hezbollah.

The March 14 claims it was a moral victory for itself as well, saying that they had helped prevent a civil war by backing down on their earlier legislation. To date, while fighting continues in the Druze mountains, and has even reached as far north as Tripoli, the government has not resigned. Not even has Interior Minister Hassan al-Sabe, who is a member of March 14.

Rumors circulated in Beirut that Siniora wanted to step down when the fighting was at its peek, but was prevented from doing so by Saudi Arabia. The Saudis, enraged by what was happened in Beirut, realized that Iran - and the Syrians - had taken the upper hand in Beirut.

True, Hezbollah has restored all "occupied" districts to the army, but it is clear they were far superior in power, training, arms and logistics to Saudi Arabia's proxies in Lebanon. Additionally, they have done it once. Nothing prevents them from doing it again at any time the Saudi-backed government tries to dismantle, crush or curb Hezbollah's influence.

When a coup is not a coup
Speaking at the southern village of Bint Jbeil in 2005, Nasrallah once said, "There is talk of disarming the resistance. Any thought of disarming the resistance is pure madness. We do not want to attack anyone. We have never done so. And we will never allow anyone to attack Lebanon. But if anyone, no matter who, even thinks about disarming the resistance, we will fight him like the martyr-seekers in Karbala."

That sums it up. Nasrallah will not allow anybody to touch the arms of Hezbollah and is willing to fight to maintain his status, and that of his party, in the Arab-Israeli conflict. His supporters argue that as a pragmatic leader, and a cunning statesman who excels in psychological warfare, he does not want to rule Beirut.

He is neither interested nor politically able (although it would be easy, in military terms). He realizes that the confessional system of Lebanon is too complicated for such a task, and said it bluntly last Wednesday, "If they told us to come take over, we would say 'no thank you'."

Had he wanted a real coup, he would not have transferred control to the Lebanese army, nor would he have laid down his arms in Beirut. He would have invaded and stormed the homes of Jumblatt and Hariri and arrested both of them, along with Siniora, and set up a new government, to his liking, and to that of Iran. But that is an illogical scenario that would never pass.

What he did last week in Beirut was show his power - flex his muscles - and tell the world, "I am still here. Still in control and still powerful - or as some would say, king - in Lebanese politics."
It was a rude wake-up call to all those who imagined he would never go this far to bring his message to the region and the international community.

Sami Moubayed is a Syrian political analyst.

(Copyright 2008 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.)

Timeline: Crisis in Lebanon

The Lebanese Shia group Hezbollah has been leading a political campaign against the cabinet seen as anti-Syria, led by Fouad Siniora, the prime minister.

The crisis has paralysed much of the government and left Lebanon with no president for five months.

Hezbollah, allegedly backed by Iran and Syria, was the only Lebanese faction allowed to keep its weapons after the civil war ended in 1990, to fight Israeli forces occupying the south.

Israel withdrew in 2000 and the fate of Hezbollah's weapons is at the heart of the current political crisis.

Here is a chronology of events:

2006

November 11 - Five pro-Syrian Shia Muslim ministers from Hezbollah and its ally, the Amal movement, resign after the collapse of talks on giving their camp more say in government.

November 21 - Pierre Gemayel, the industry minister, is assassinated.

December 1 - Hezbollah, Amal and supporters of Michel Aoun, a Christian leader, camp outside the office of Fouad Siniora, the prime minister, in Beirut in open-ended campaign to topple the government.

2007

January 25 - Aid conference in Paris pledges more than $7.6bn to help Lebanon recover from its 2006 war with Israel.

June 13 - Anti-Syrian parliamentarian Walid Eido and five other people killed by a car bomb near a Beirut beach club.

September 2 - Lebanese troops seize complete control of Nahr al-Bared camp after months of fighting with Fatah al-Islam fighters which kills more than 420 people, including 168 soldiers.

September 19 - Car bomb in Beirut kills anti-Syrian Christian legislator Antoine Ghanem and six other people.

November 23 - Emile Lahoud leaves presidential palace at end of his term without successor being elected. Next day Siniora says his cabinet is assuming executive powers.

December 5 - Speaker Berri says rival Lebanese leaders have agreed on General Michel Suleiman as president, although parliament has yet to elect him.

December 12 - Car bomb kills Brigadier-General Francois al-Hajj, the army's head of operations, in a Christian town east of Beirut.

2008

January 15 - Car bomb in Christian area of Beirut kills at least three people and wounds 16, damages a US embassy car and destroys others.

January 25 - Wisam Eid, a captain in a Lebanese police intelligence unit, is killed by a bomb blast in mainly Christian east Beirut. At least five other people are killed.

February 11 - Three army officers and 16 soldiers are charged over the killing of seven opposition protesters on January 27.

February 14 - Hezbollah holds mass Beirut funeral for its assassinated commander Imad Moughniyah, who was killed in a bomb blast in Syria the day before.

April 20 - In the Christian town of Zahle, two local officials of the Christian Phalange party, a member of the ruling anti-Syrian coalition, are killed.

April 22 - Parliament fails to hold a session to elect a president, the 18th time it has been unable to hold a vote.

May 6 - Tension between the government and Hezbollah escalates when the cabinet says the group's communication network was an attack on the country's sovereignty.

Hezbollah says it is infuriated by government allegations it was spying on Beirut airport and by the cabinet's decision to fire the head of airport security who is close to the opposition.

May 7 - About 10 people are wounded as government supporters clash with fighters loyal to the Hezbollah-led opposition in Beirut after followers of Hezbollah paralysed the capital.

May 8 - Hassan Nasrallah, Hezbollah's leader, says the government has declared war against the group after its decision to dismantle and take legal action over the group's communication network.

Gun battles break out in Beirut, leaving several dead and many wounded.

An offer by Saad al-Hariri, the governing coalition leader, to refer the issue to the army, which has stayed neutral, is rejected by Hezbollah.

May 9 - Opposition forces seize control of west Beirut.

May 10 - Fouad Siniora, Lebanon's prime minister, declares that the government will never declare war on Hezbollah but says the Shia group is trying to stage a coup.

The army rescinds government's demands, saying it will reinstate Beirut airport's head of security, who the government alleged was close to Hezbollah, and will handle the issue of the Hezbollah's communication network.

Army also calls on the opposition to withdraw its fighters from the streets.

Hezbollah and other groups allied to the opposition begin to pull their forces from Beirut, with the army taking over in a neutral security role.

May 10-11 - Pro- and anti-government fighters clash overnight in the northern city of Tripoli. The Lebanese army is deployed to restore calm.

Yvonne Ridley's Speech at the 2006 Global Peace & Unity Conference, London. UK.

Yvonne Ridley's Speech at the 2006 Global Peace & Unity Conference, London. UK.

Written by Yvonne Ridley

Thursday, 30 November 2006

Do you know, five years ago I had never even heard of The Prophet, pbuh, but now I would give my last drop of blood to protect his name, his honour and his memory. I originally dedicated my speech at the Global Peace and Unity conference to Imam Anwar Al Awlaki, a prominent Muslim scholar highly regarded in English speaking Islamic circles, who was arrested in Yemen two months ago. But I must also thank brother Fahad Ansari from the Islamic Human Rights Commission, author of God Save The Deen, whose written work inspired me to write this speech. Much credit of content is due to him. Islamically, I am very young, having reverted in 2003 – and while I have much to learn I can identify with the frustrations shared by Muslims today. I know 9/11 had a huge impact on the world, but it wasn’t really the start of something … it was the continuation of a legacy of US imperialism and its fear of Islam. Just over ten years ago, fit, young Muslims across the globe flooded into Bosnia to help their brothers and sisters fight for their survival against the Serbs who were carrying out a genocide sanctioned by the silence of a watching world. The jihad brought together Muslims from all nationalities, status and culture. All were united, even those who could not travel to fight helped in other ways such as fund-raising, public awareness events and demonstrations. The impact was to stop the genocide. Western intervention, when it happened, came only after it was obvious the Bosnian Muslims were heading for victory. The establishment of an Islamic state deep in the heart of Europe was simply too much to bear and so the West intervened. This is not my conclusion, but US President Bill Clinton admitted it in his autobiography. This fear of Islam has now evolved in the last 10 years to such an extent that the blood of our brothers and sisters is now flowing like rivers across Chechnya, Kashmir, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and we saw recently what happened to Lebanon. I have walked through many of these killing fields and let me tell you the twisted, blown up limbs of our Muslim brothers and sisters look exactly like those pulled from the rubble of the Twin Towers. Yet the message of today is quite clear. Muslim blood is a cheap commodity. Meanwhile tens of thousands of innocent Muslims continue to be tortured in far away lands like Guantanamo Bay, Bagram airbase in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib, Diego Garcia and ghost prisons throughout the world. Meanwhile, in the dungeons of Syria, Jordan, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria Egypt … brothers are being tortured at the behest and request of the United States. And don't think the British Government is not involved ... British intelligence officers will soon be named and shamed for their roles. Even now nine British residents remain in Guantanamo Bay - the Americans don't want them, but neither does this Government. Despite the weasel words of the Foreign Office all it will take is a phone call to have the brothers released. And don't think it is just brothers being incarcerated and tortured - Moazzam Begg can still hear a sister's screams down the corridors of the torture cells in Afghanistan where he was held by the Americans. See him at the Cage Prisoners stand today and ask him what you can do to help. Because we can help. Hardly a single detainee has been released due to legal action, but through political pressure ... that is when governments get involved. You here today, can make a difference. Don't just sit here and get angry - get even. Put pressure on your politicians and remind them you are their political masters. In Surah Al Asr – God promises that the whole of mankind, including Muslims is at loss. Except – those who BELIEVE, DO RIGHTEOUS DEEDS, and those who ENJOIN THE TRUTH, and PATIENCE. Only by fulfilling these four criteria, will we be able to meet Allah, however if we bury our heads in the sand, and pretend there is no oppression in the world, and that these brothers and sisters mean nothing to us, then maybe we will not get to meet Him. Even Ken McDonald, Britain’s chief prosecutor, is disgusted by this government's actions - he has launched a scathing attack on secret courts. These courts try terror suspects who are not allowed to see the evidence against them. It is an affront to justice. In an exclusive interview with Islam Channel News, he said: "We should be clear these principles are not negotiable. Whatever the political pressures, whatever the climate, these are the essence of fairness: trials routinely opened and reported before independent and impartial tribunals. " We don't want secret courts, we don't want vetted judges, we don't want secret justice. Equality of arms; fairness between the Prosecution and the Defence is not negotiable; the right to call and cross-examine witnesses under equal conditions is not negotiable; the right to full disclosure of the State's case against you is not negotiable. "Defendants are entitled to know what the case against them is, and they're entitled to have material in the possession of the Crown which either undermines the Crown's case or assists the Defence’s case. A protected right of appeal is not negotiable. "And the presumption of innocence, the criminal standard of proof - beyond a reasonable doubt - with the burden of proof resting squarely on the Crown's shoulders, none of that is negotiable." And of course he is right - but Tony Blair says Muslims have got to stop having a victim mentality. Well when the Director of Public prosecutions starts whingeing, then may be we have a point. Think about what sort of message that sends out to our young people? They read about the heroic exploits of Saladin Ayyoubi, Khalid bin Walid, Tariq bin Ziad and listen intently to stories of courage and bravery about our beloved Prophet Mohamed, peace be upon him. Do you know, five years ago I had never even heard of The Prophet, pbuh, but now I would give my last drop of blood to protect his name, his honour and his memory. Even in death he showed how strong he was by uniting the Ummah in protest at those vile cartoons from Denmark. Our modern day heroes include those two sixties martyrs Malcolm X and Sayyid Qutb, both whose writings have helped define me as a Muslim. These are the sort of role models and influences our youth need to follow, but instead they receive confused and mixed messages. If Blair gets his way he will try and ban this book Milestones - he is told this is a book Usama bin Ladin has read ... well he's also read Sheikh Zubair that's Shakespeare to you and me. Should we ban 12th Night, Hamlet and other great classics? One minute our youth are told the fear no one but Allah (swt) while the next minute they are told to dilute their Islam and keep their heads down. Since the events of 9-11, there has been an unrelenting campaign launched to change Islam into something more palatable to Western society. The vision is a secular and cultural Islam at peace with the world through her submission to her oppressors rather than to Allah; an Islam devoid of jihad, shari’ah and khilafah – the very things we are commanded by Allah to implement in order to establish Allah’s deen on this earth. And it is in evidence everywhere I look. Hijabs are being ripped off the heads of my sisters in Tunisia, France and Turkey. Sisters in Holland and Germany are also in the firing line. And in Britain, we have Jack Straw, the former British Foreign Secretary who questioned the veil – he might not like the nikab, but I wish he would put it on with a great big gag. I am not having a white, middle-aged man telling me or my sisters how to dress. The nikab, like the veil, like the hijab has become a symbol of a rejection of those negative Western lifestyles like drug-taking, binge-drinking and promiscuity. It is a statement telling the West we don’t want to be like you. Muslims who choose to be more western than Westerners make me laugh – do they realize how silly they look to the rest of the world? They hide behind such descriptions as moderate – again what sort of message does that send to our young people? If we ask them to be moderate does that not suggest that there is something wrong with Islam that it needs to be toned down, diluted? What is a moderate and what is an extremist? I really don’t know. I am a simple Muslim. I follow no scholars or sects … I merely follow The Prophet (pbuh) and the Sunnah. Does that make me an extremist? I don't think Tony Blair knows himself - I wrote to him three months ago and am still waiting for a reply. Being a Muslim is a bit like being pregnant. You are or you are not. Whoever heard of anyone being moderately pregnant? Islam has been under attack for 1400 years and we should have learned by now to put our trust in no one but Allah. Yet there are those who continue to kiss the hand which slaps them. I am afraid that we can no longer put our trust in to someone just because they might wear Islamic dress. There are those Muslim leaders who claim to guide and protect us but not all of them have our interests at heart. Our young people are going to have to be very discerning since the events of 9/11, Bali, Madrid and the London Bombings, to name a few. There are individuals who for years rallied the masses to stand up for justice and support mujahideen groups around the world and now some have become embarrassingly silent while others condemn armed jihad, portraying mujahideen as terrorists and extremists who follow a distorted version of Islam. In some ways we are all to blame. Our greatest shame has been our silence while martyrdom operations in Palestine and other occupied lands have been condemned as acts of terror as witnessed in 9/11 and the July 7 bombings. Our young people have to be taught that what is happening in Palestine, Kashmir, Chechnya, Iraq and Afghanistan is legitimate resistance against a brutal military occupation, while crimes like 9/11 and the London bombings are blatant terrorism. Equating the two only betrays our brothers and sisters who have no other option but to fight or face being wiped off the face of this planet. The new slaves of the West criticize Islamist parties and governance by shari’ah. I call them the Happy Clappies. They are being flown in by the Government from the US, Canada, Yemen and Mauritania to preach a diluted form of Islam. The end result of all this has been a dilution of the deen of Allah, a weak and pacified Islam willing to accept the status quo in which Muslims are oppressed and subjugated; an Islam in which Muslims condemn the actions of their brothers and sisters who courageously resist occupation and oppression with whatever they have. Even making dua for them now has become a crime – how long before we are told not to even pray for the mujahideen? One of the greatest military generals the world has known, Saladin Ayyubi, the liberator of al-Quds, was once asked why he didn’t smile. He answered back that how could he smile while knowing that Masjid al-Aqsa, remained under Crusader occupation. I wonder what he would make of the state of the world today? This is a world where Arab leaders belly-danced shamelessly in front of America while handing Iraq over on a plate. The same Arab leaders look the other way as our beautiful Palestine is continually raped and sodomized, and that other great daughter of the Arab world, Lebanon … where was the Arab world when she was so brutally assaulted. And the war drums are beating again. Not only is the whole world watching, but so are our children, our youth, our future. We must nuture them, and inspire them with tales of the Prophet and the Sahaba. As long as the Ummah continues to throw up figures like Khalid bin Walid, Saladin Ayyoubi, Sayyid Qutb and Malcolm X all is not lost. The more we are oppressed by the tyrants the more we will fight back. That is the nature of Islam. And this is the Islam our youth need to follow, be guided by and inspired. We need to replace those leaders who have castrated themselves in a pathetic attempt to become more Western than the Westerners. Many Muslim youth are now realising that no matter how hard they compromise their deen to blend in with the wider society, when things go sour, they will be treated with suspicion. The more we are told to forget shari’ah, khilafah and jihad, the more Muslims will pay the blood price to uphold these values. The jihad we are witnessing in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Kashmir and Chechnya is something noble, a just war against injustice and tyranny. The actions of the jihadists pose absolutely no threat to the West or Western lifestyles and their resistance is not only justified but embraced and encouraged by international law. The real religious extremists who pose the greatest threat to radicalizing our youth are the Christian Fundamentalists in the White House and Downing Street. Bush and Blair have become al-Qaida’s finest recruiting officers. More and more young Muslims are waking up with the realisation that it is not terrorism or extremism that is being targeted but Islam itself. It is up to the Ummah to lead and inspire our youth, just as The Prophet led and inspired millions and continues to do so. And the first lesson we must teach our youth is to fear none but Allah (swt).

The Iranians, though no military powerhouse, have the ability to cause real damage to American forces and interests.

The Iranians, though no military powerhouse, have the ability to cause real damage to American forces and interests.

By Pepe Escobar

• Five ways to think about Iran under the gun

More than two years ago, Seymour Hersh disclosed in the New Yorker how George W. Bush was considering strategic nuclear strikes against Iran. Ever since, a campaign to demonize that country has proceeded in a relentless, Terminator-like way, applying the same techniques and semantic contortions that were so familiar in the period before the Bush administration launched its invasion of Iraq.

The campaign's greatest hits are widely known: "The ayatollahs" are building a nuclear bomb; Iranian weapons are killing American soldiers in Iraq; Iranian gunboats are provoking U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf -- Iran, in short, is the new al-Qaeda, a terror state aimed at the heart of the United States. It's idle to expect the American mainstream media to offer any tools that might put this orchestrated blitzkrieg in context.

Here are just a few recent instances of the ongoing campaign: Secretary of Defense Robert Gates insists that Iran "is hell-bent on acquiring nuclear weapons."

Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admits that the Pentagon is planning for "potential military courses of action" when it comes to Iran. In tandem with U.S. commander in Iraq Gen. David Petraeus, Mullen denounces Iran's "increasingly lethal and malign influence" in Iraq, although he claims to harbor "no expectations" of an attack on Iran "in the immediate future" and even admits he has "no smoking gun which could prove that the highest leadership [of Iran] is involved."

But keep in mind one thing the Great Saddam Take-out of 2003 proved: that a "smoking gun" is, in the end, irrelevant. And this month, the U.S. is ominously floating a second aircraft carrier battle group into the Persian Gulf.

But what of Iran itself under the blizzard of charges and threats? What to make of it? What does the world look like from Tehran? Here are five ways to think about Iran under the gun and to better decode the Iranian chessboard.

** Don't underestimate the power of Shias. Seventy-five percent of the world's oil reserves are in the Persian Gulf. Seventy percent of the Gulf's population is Shia.

** Iran happens to be a nation-state at the crucial intersection of the Arabic, Turkish, Russian, and Indian worlds. It is the key transit point of the Middle East, the Persian Gulf, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the Indian subcontinent. It lies between three seas (the Caspian, the Persian Gulf, and the sea of Oman). Close to Europe and yet at the gates of Asia (in fact part of Southwest Asia), Iran is the ultimate Eurasian crossroads. Isfahan, the country's third largest city, is roughly equidistant from Paris and Shanghai.

Members of the Iranian upper middle classes in North Tehran might spin dreams of Iran recapturing the expansive range of influence once held by the Persian empire; but the silky, Qom-carpet-like diplomats at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will assure you that what they really dream of is an Iran respected as a major regional power.

To this end, they have little choice, faced with the enmity of the globe's "sole superpower," but to employ a sophisticated counter-encirclement foreign policy. After all, Iran is now completely surrounded by post-9/11 American military bases in Afghanistan, Central Asia, Iraq, and the Gulf states. It faces the U.S. military on its Afghan, Iraqi, Pakistani, and Persian Gulf borders, and lives with ever tightening U.S. economic sanctions, as well as a continuing drumbeat of Bush administration threats involving possible air assaults on Iranian nuclear (and probably other) facilities.

The Iranian counter-response to sanctions and to its demonization as a rogue or pariah state has been to develop a "Look East" foreign policy that is, in itself, a challenge to American energy hegemony in the Gulf. The policy has been conducted with great skill by Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, who was educated in Bangalore, India. While focused on massive energy deals with China, India, and Pakistan, it looks as well to Africa and Latin America.

To the horror of American neocons, an intercontinental "axis of evil" air link already exists -- a weekly commercial Tehran-Caracas flight via Iran Air.

Iran's diplomatic (and energy) reach is now striking. When I was in Bolivia early this year, I learned of a tour Iran's ambassador to Venezuela had taken on the jet of Bolivian President Evo Morales. The ambassador reportedly offered Morales "everything he wanted" to offset the influence of "American imperialism."

Meanwhile, a fierce energy competition is developing among the Turks, Iranians, Russians, Chinese, and Americans -- all placing their bets on which future trade routes will be the crucial ones as oil and natural gas flow out of Central Asia.

As a player, Iran is trying to position itself as the unavoidable bazaar-state in an oil-and-gas-fueled New Silk Road -- the backbone of a new Asian Energy Security Grid. That's how it could recover some of the preeminence it enjoyed in the distant era of Darius, the King of Kings. And that's the main reason why U.S. neo-Cold Warriors, Zio-cons, armchair imperialists, or all of the above, are throwing such a collective -- and threatening -- fit.

** What is Ahmadinejad up to?: Ever since the days when former Iranian President Mohammed Khatami suggested a "dialogue of civilizations," Iranian diplomats have endlessly repeated the official position on Iran's nuclear program: It's peaceful; the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has found no proof of the military development of nuclear power; the religious leadership opposes atomic weapons; and Iran -- unlike the U.S. -- has not invaded or attacked any nation for the past quarter millennium.

Think of George W. Bush and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as the new Blues Brothers: Both believe they are on a mission from God. But only Bush, despite his actual invasions and constant threats, gets a (sort of) free pass from the Western ideological machine, while Ahmadinejad is portrayed as a Hitlerian believer in a new Holocaust.

Ahmadinejad is relentlessly depicted as an angry, totally irrational, Jew-hating, Holocaust-denying leader who wants to "wipe Israel off the map." That infamous quote, repeated ad nauseam but out of context, comes from an October 2005 speech at an obscure anti-Zionist student conference.

What Ahmadinejad really said, in a literal translation from Farsi, was that "the regime occupying Jerusalem must vanish from the pages of time." He was actually quoting the leader of the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Khomeini, who said it first in the early 1980s. Khomeini hoped that a regime so unjust toward the Palestinians would be replaced by another more equitable one. He was not, however, threatening to nuke Israel.

In the 1980s, in the bitterest years of the Iran-Iraq War, Khomeini also made it very clear that the production, possession, or use of nuclear weapons is against Islam. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei later issued a fatwa -- a religious injunction -- under the same terms. For the theocratic regime, however, the Iranian nuclear program is a powerful symbol of independence vis-à-vis what is still widely considered by Iranians of all social classes and educational backgrounds as Anglo-Saxon colonialism.

Ahmadinejad is mad for the Iranian nuclear program. It's his bread and butter in terms of domestic popularity. During the Iran-Iraq War, he was a member of a support team aiding anti-Saddam Hussein Kurdish forces. (That's when he became friends with "Uncle" Jalal Talabani, now the Kurdish president of Iraq.) Not many presidents have been trained in guerrilla warfare.

Speculation is rampant in Tehran that Ahmadinejad, the leadership of the Quds Force, an elite division of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), plus the hardcore volunteer militia, the Basij (informally known in Iran as "the army of twenty million") are betting on a U.S. attack on Iran's nuclear facilities to strengthen the country's theocratic regime and their faction of it.

Reformists refer to Russian President Vladimir Putin's visit to Tehran last October, when he was received by the Supreme Leader (a very rare honor). Putin offered a new plan to resolve the explosive Iranian nuclear dossier: Iran would halt nuclear enrichment on Iranian soil in return for peaceful nuclear cooperation and development in league with Russia, the Europeans, and the IAEA.

Iran's top nuclear negotiator of that moment, Ali Larijani, a confidant of Supreme Leader Khamenei, as well as the Leader himself let it be known that the idea would be seriously considered. But Ahmadinejad immediately contradicted the Supreme Leader in public. Even more startling, yet evidently with the Leader's acquiescence, he then sacked Larijani and replaced him with a longtime friend, Saeed Jalili, an ideological hardliner.

** A velvet revolution is not around the corner: Before the 2005 Iranian elections, at a secret, high-level meeting of the ruling ayatollahs in his house, the Supreme Leader concluded that Ahmadinejad would be able to revive the regime with his populist rhetoric and pious conservatism, which then seemed very appealing to the downtrodden masses. (Curiously enough, Ahmadinejad's campaign motto was: "We can.")

But the ruling ayatollahs miscalculated. Since they controlled all key levers of power -- the Supreme National Security Council, the Council of Guardians, the Judiciary, the bonyads (Islamic foundations that control vast sections of the economy), the army, the IRGC (the parallel army created by Khomeini in 1979 and recently branded a terrorist organization by the Bush administration), the media -- they assumed they would also control the self-described "street cleaner of the people." How wrong they have been.

For Khamenei himself, this was big business. After 18 years of non-stop internal struggle, he was finally in full control of executive power, as well as of the legislature, the judiciary, the Revolutionary Guards, the Basij, and the key ayatollahs in Qom.

Ahmadinejad, for his part, unleashed his own agenda. He purged the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of many reformist-minded diplomats; encouraged the Interior Ministry and the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance to crackdown on all forms of "nefarious" Western influences, and filled his cabinet with revolutionary friends from the Iran-Iraq War days. These friends proved to be as faithful as administratively incompetent -- especially in terms of economic policy. Instead of solidifying the theocratic leadership under Supreme Leader Khamenei, Ahmadinejad increasingly fractured an increasingly unpopular ruling elite.

Nonetheless, discontent with Ahmadinejad's economic incompetence has not translated into street barricades and it probably will not; nor, contrary to neocon fantasyland scenarios, would an attack on Iran's nuclear facilities provoke a popular uprising. Every single political faction supports the nuclear program out of patriotic pride.

There is surely a glaring paradox here. The regime may be wildly unpopular -- because of so much enforced austerity in an energy-rich land and the virtual absence of social mobility -- but for millions, especially in the countryside and the remote provinces, life is still bearable. In the large urban centers -- Tehran, Isfahan, Shiraz, and Tabriz -- most would be in favor of a move toward a more market-oriented economy combined with a progressive liberalization of mores (even as the regime insists on going the other way).

No velvet revolution, however, seems to be on the horizon.

At least four main factions are at play in the intricate Persian-miniature-like game of today's Iranian power politics -- and two others, the revolutionary left and the secular right, even though thoroughly marginalized, shouldn't be forgotten either.

The extreme right, very religiously conservative but economically socialist, has, from the beginning, been closely aligned with the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood. Ahmadinejad is the star of this faction.

The clerics, from the Supreme Leader to thousands of provincial religious figures, are pure conservatives, even more patriotic than the extreme right, yet generally no lovers of Ahmadinejad. But there is a crucial internal split. The substantially wealthy bonyads -- the Islamic foundations, active in all economic sectors -- badly want a reconciliation with the West. They know that, under the pressure of Western sanctions, the relentless flight of both capital and brains is working against the national interest.

Economists in Tehran project there may be as much as $600 billion in Iranian funds invested in the economies of Persian Gulf petro-monarchies. The best and the brightest continue to flee the country. But the Islamic foundations also know that this state of affairs slowly undermines Ahmadinejad's power.

The extremely influential Revolutionary Guard Corps, a key component of government with vast economic interests, transits between these two factions. They privilege the fight against what they define as Zionism, are in favor of close relations with Sunni Arab states, and want to go all the way with the nuclear program.

The current reformists/progressives of the left were originally former partisans of Khomeini's son, Ahmad Khomeini. Later, after a spectacular mutation from Soviet-style socialism to some sort of religious democracy, their new icon became former President Khatami (of "dialogue of civilizations" fame). Here, after all, was an Islamic president who had captured the youth vote and the women's vote and had written about the ideas of German philosopher Jurgen Habermas as applied to civil society as well as the possibility of democratization in Iran. Unfortunately, his "Tehran Spring" didn't last long -- and is now long gone.

The key establishment faction is undoubtedly that of moderate Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former two-term President, current chairman of the Expediency Council and a key member of the Council of Experts -- the only institution in the Islamic Republic capable of removing the Supreme Leader from office. He is now supported by the intelligentsia and urban youth.

Colloquially known as "The Shark," Rafsanjani is the consummate Machiavellian. He retains privileged ties to key Washington players and has proven to be the ultimate survivor -- moving like a skilled juggler between Khatami and Khamenei as power in the country shifted.

Rafsanjani is, and will always remain, a supporter of the Supreme Leader. As the regime's de facto number two, his quest is not only to "save" the Islamic Revolution, but also to consolidate Iran's regional power and reconcile the country with the West.

If the Bush administration had any real desire to let its aircraft carriers float out of the Gulf and establish an entente cordiale with Tehran, Rafsanjani would be the man to talk to.

** Heading down the New Silk Road: Reformist friends in Tehran keep telling me the country is now immersed in an atmosphere similar to the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s in China or the 1980s rectification campaign in Cuba -- and nothing "velvet" or "orange" or "tulip" or any of the other color-coded Western-style movements that Washington might dream of is, as yet, on the horizon.

Under such conditions, what if there were an American air attack on Iran? The Supreme Leader, on the record, offered his own version of threats in 2006. If Iran were attacked, he said, the retaliation would be doubly powerful against U.S. interests elsewhere in the world.

From American supply lines and bases in southern Iraq to the Straits of Hormuz, the Iranians, though no military powerhouse, do have the ability to cause real damage to American forces and interests -- and certainly to drive the price of oil into the stratosphere. Such a "war" would clearly be a disaster for everyone.

The Iranian theocratic leadership, however, seems to doubt that the Bush administration and the U.S. military, exhausted by their wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, will attack. They feel a tide at their backs. Meanwhile the "Look East" strategy, driven by soaring energy prices, is bearing fruit.

Ahmadinejad has just concluded a tour of South Asia and, to the despair of American neocons, the Asian Energy Security Grid is quickly becoming a reality.

Two years ago, at the Petroleum Ministry in Tehran, I was told Iran is betting on the total "interdependence of Asia and Persian Gulf geo-economic politics." This year Iran finally becomes a natural gas-exporting country. The framework for the $7.6 billion Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, also known as the "peace" pipeline, is a go. Both these key South Asian U.S. allies are ignoring Bush administration desires and rapidly bolstering their economic, political, cultural, and -- crucially -- geostrategic connections with Iran.

An attack on Iran would now inevitably be viewed as an attack against Asia.

What a disaster in the making, and yet, now more than ever, Vice President Dick Cheney's faction in Washington (not to mention possible future president John McCain) seems ready to bomb.

-- Pepe Escobar, born in Brazil, is the roving correspondent for Asia Times and an analyst for The Real News. He's been a foreign correspondent since 1985, based in London, Milan, Los Angeles, Paris, Singapore, and Bangkok. Since the late 1990s, he has specialized in covering the arc from the Middle East to Central Asia, including the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He has made frequent visits to Iran and is the author of Globalistan and also Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge, both published by Nimble Books in 2007.

Copyright 2008 Pepe Escobar

TomDispatch

Source: Middle East Online