Obsidian Wings

At Close Range

by Eric Martin

Apparently, this was self defense:

Nine Turkish activists killed in an Israeli raid on a Gaza-bound aid ship were shot a total of 30 times and five died of gunshot wounds to the head, Britain's Guardian newspaper reported on Friday.

Autopsy results showed the men were hit mostly with 9mm bullets, many fired at close range, the Guardian said, quoting Yalcin Buyuk, vice-chairman of the Turkish council of forensic medicine which carried out the autopsies on Friday. [...]

The autopsy results showed that a 60-year-old man, Ibrahim Bilgen, was shot four times in the temple, chest, hip and back, the Guardian said.

A 19-year-old, named as Fulkan Dogan, who also has U.S. citizenship, was shot five times from less than 45 cm (18 inches) away, in the face, the back of the head, twice in the leg and once in the back, it said.

Two other men were shot four times. Five of those killed were shot either in the back of the head or in the back, the Guardian quoted Buyuk as saying.

In addition to those killed, 48 others suffered gunshot wounds and six activists were still missing, he added.

Paintball.

Flipped Pieces of Coin, Broken Bottles, Exchanged for Birthright

by Eric Martin

When discussing the blockade of Gaza, the tendency in the Western media is to focus on what is Israel's legitimate interest in denying arms shipments in light of the rocket attacks emanating from that territory.  However, the reality is that the blockade goes far, far beyond interdicting arms shipments, and instead becomes a policy of collective punishment aimed at severely impoverishing the Gaza region in order to retaliate against the entire population for the majority's election of Hamas, and perhaps to inspire the population to reject Hamas' leadership.  As Matt Yglesias points out, it should be remembered that the majority of Gaza's residents are children, making this form of collective punishment particularly odious.

Via Matt, Yousef Munayyer provides a concise an informative breakdown of just what the blockade has meant to the civilians in Gaza:

Electricity: The siege has led to a significant lack of power in the Gaza Strip. In 2006, Israel carried out an attack on Gaza's only power plant and never permitted the rebuilding to its pre-attack capacity (down to producing 80 megawatts maximum from 140 megawatts). According to the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN OCHA), the daily electricity deficit has increased since January of 2010 with the plant only able to operate one turbine producing only 30 megawatts compared to its previous average of 60-65 megawatts in 2009. The majority of houses have power cuts at least eight hours per day. Some have no electricity for long as 12 hours a day. The lack of electricity has led to reliance on generators, many of which have exploded from overwork, killing and maiming civilians. Oxfam reported that "[in 2009], a total of 75 Palestinians died from carbon monoxide gas poisoning or fires from generators, and 15 died and 27 people were injured in the first two months of this year."

Water: Israel has not permitted supplies into the Gaza Strip to rebuild the sewage system. Amnesty International reports that 90-95 percent of the drinking water in Gaza is contaminated and unfit for consumption. The United Nations even found that bottled water in Gaza contained contaminants, likely due to the plastic bottles recycled in dysfunctional factories. The lack of sufficient power for desalination and sewage facilities results in significant amounts of sewage seeping into Gaza's costal aquifer--the main source of water for the people of Gaza.

Industry: Prior to the siege, the industrial sector employed 20 percent of Gaza's labor force. One year after the siege began, the Palestinian Federation of Industries reported that "61% of the factories have completely closed down. 1% was forced to change their scope of work in order to meet their living expenses, 38% were partially closed (sometimes means they operate with less than 15% capacity)". A World Health Organization report from this year states: "In the Gaza Strip, private enterprise is practically at a standstill as a consequence of the blockade. Almost all (98%) industrial operations have been shut down. The construction sector, which before September 2000 provided 15% of all jobs, has effectively halted. Only 258 industrial establishments in Gaza were operational in 2009 compared with over 2400 in 2006. As a result, unemployment rates have soared to 42% (up from 32% before the blockade)."

Health: Gaza's health sector, dramatically overworked, was also significantly damaged by Operation Cast Lead. According to UN OCHA, infrastructure for 15 of 27 of Gaza's hospitals, 43 of 110 of its primary care facilities, and 29 of its 148 ambulances were damaged or destroyed during the war. Without rebuilding materials like cement and glass due to Israeli restrictions, the vast majority of the destroyed health infrastructure has not been rebuilt. Many medical procedures for advanced illnesses are not available in Gaza. 1103 individuals applied for permits to exit the Israeli-controlled Erez crossing for medical treatment in 2009. 21 percent of these permits were denied or delayed resulting in missed hospital appointments, and several have died waiting to leave Gaza for treatment.

Food: A 2010 World Health Organization that "chronic malnutrition in the Gaza Strip has risen over the past few years and has now reached 10.2%. Micronutrient deficiencies among children and women have reached levels that are of concern." According to UN OCHA: "Over 60 percent of households are now food insecure, threatening the health and wellbeing of children, women and men. In this context, agriculture offers some practical solutions to a humanitarian problem. However, Israel's import and access restrictions continue to suffocate the agriculture sector and directly contribute to rising food insecurity. Of particular concern, farmers and fishers' lives are regularly put at risk, due to Israel's enforcement of its access restrictions. The fact that this coastal population now imports fish from Israel and through tunnels under the Gaza-Egypt border speaks to the absurdity of the situation." 72 percent of Gaza's fish profit comes from beyond the three nautical mile mark, but further restrictions by Israel's naval blockade prevents Gazans from fishing beyond that mark. Between 2008 and 2009 the fishing catch was down 47 percent.

To reiterate: Israel is justified in preventing arms shipments to Gaza.  Israel is in no way morally or ethically justified to debilitate over a million Gazans, most of which are children, in these ways.  It is shameful.

Fake Headlines

by Eric Martin

Steve Hynd has a fairly comprehensive round-up of first hand accounts of the Israeli raid on the flotilla as provided by journalists covering the event, as well as the activists on board. 

As Israel releases detained activists and journalists after the assault on the Gaza relief flotilla, they are beginning to tell their version of events...

Most importantly, every witness who has so far spoken out contradicts the Israeli account of some kind of self-defense, saying that the Israelis first attacked in boats and that they had already opened fire on the flotilla before commandos began descending from helicopters. They also agree that several people were shot from behind or above, that the Israeli attackers didn't immediately allow treatment of convoy wounded and that weapons ripped from the hands of commandos were stripped of their ammunition and thrown overboard.

Perhaps the best eyewitness account to begin with is that of Paul McGeough, twice named Australia's journalist of the year. He writes:

The Israeli attack was timed for dawn prayers – when a good number of the men aboard the Mavi Marmara were praying on the aft deck of the big Turkish passenger ferry, as it motored steadily through international waters in the eastern Mediterranean Sea.

...Suddenly sound bombs and tear gas were exploding on the main aft deck, where prayers were held five times a day. The life-jacketed passengers on the rails at first seemed oblivious as those behind them donned the few gas masks that were on board and others, wearing asbestos gloves, sought to grab the devices and hurl them back at the Israeli commandos before they exploded.

In failing to get their grappling irons to hold on the rails of the five-deck ferry, the commandos in their Zodiac-style assault craft continued to be an irritant, or perhaps a decoy because at this point the Israelis opted for a critical change of plan – if they could not come up from the water, they would have to drop from the sky.

On hearing the machines, activists on the upper decks rushed to the top level of the ship – grabbing the commandos even before they landed, disarming them; beating them until, according to some who were present, leaders demanded the Israelis not be harmed; but in one case, one of the Israelis was hurled from one deck of the ship to the next.

...There were conflicting accounts of the first commando landing – some activists said he was injured and was being carried inside the ship for treatment by the flotilla doctors. However, a Serbian cameraman, Srojan Stojiljkovic, said some of the activists had armed themselves with lengths of chain and metal posts that had served as cordons around the ship's lifeboats.

"Some of the people caught the first commando before he touched the deck – a few started to hit him, but a lot of people moved in to shelter him with their bodies," the cameraman said. "Another soldier with a bleeding nose was brought in ... a few people threw punches, but not as many as I would have expected."

Matthias Gardel, a leader of the Swedish Palestinian support group, confirmed the soldiers had been beaten, but insisted those involved were unarmed and in keeping with the ship's non-violent charter, the soldiers' weapons were thrown overboard.

McGeough also notes that at least two people were shot from behind while treating wounded, another was shot from above.

The Turkish actor Sinan Albayrak said he had witnessed one of the most senior of the Turkish activists ordering passengers to cease beating two of the Israeli soldiers. Later, he saw a Turkish photographer who had been shot in the back of the head; while he and others had been attempting to assist another injured activist, "Israeli troops had opened fire on them . . . we ran away from the injured man".

The dead include a Turkish journalist, Chetin Genghis, whose head wounds suggested he had been shot from above – possibly from one of the helicopters. After witnessing his dying moments, his colleague Hisham Goruney said:"I want to forget – I still don't believe that I saw it."

Another of the dead was said to be an Indonesian cameraman, Sura Fachrizaz, shot in the chest. Also among the dead was a Malaysian doctor who, activists said, was shot while treating the wounded.

All of these elements are confirmed by other witness accounts.

Indeed, there are several accounts compiled by Hynd, and they are all in general agreement about this sequence of events.  Each and every one claims that Israeli commandoes were using stun grenades, tear gas and possibly some other ordnance before the commandos began rapelling on to the deck.

Kind of changes things in terms of judging the reaction of those being boarded.

Also of note, Israeli journalist Noam Sheizaf claims that Israel has confiscated all of the film and photgraphs taken by the journalists and activists, as well as the ship's own security camera footage:

Israel has confiscated some of the most important material for the investigation, namely the films, audio and photos taken by the passengers [and] journalists on board and the Mavi Marmara’s security cameras. Since yesterday, Israel has been editing these films and using them for its own PR campaign. In other words, Israel has already confiscated most of the evidence, held it from the world and tampered with it. No court in the world would [trust] it to be the one examining it.

There needs to be an investigation, and it can't be conducted by Israel.

Zombie Lee Atwater

by Eric Martin

Kevin Drum reads a piece by Edmund Andrews on one of the recent reappearances of the housing bubble/CRA zombie lies and Kevin gets...shrill.

The evidence is pretty clear on this: CRA had essentially no effect at all on the housing bubble, and Fannie and Freddie can be blamed, at most, for throwing a couple of logs onto a bonfire that Wall Street had touched off long before. Those logs cost them (i.e., you) a helluva lot of money, but they weren't responsible for the financial crisis.

But it's a convenient story for the Sarah Palin wing of the conservative movement, since it deflects blame from the private sector to the public sector, from George Bush to Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, and from rich white guys to working class black and brown folks — as the Michael Ramirez cartoon above graphically demonstrates. The only problem is that it's demonstrably not true. Read Andrews's post and follow the links for more.

One of those links in Andrews' post is to a piece by Krugman, with helpful facts and graphics:

Just to repeat the basic facts here:

1. The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977 was irrelevant to the subprime boom, which was overwhelmingly driven by loan originators not subject to the Act.

2. The housing bubble reached its point of maximum inflation in the middle years of the naughties.

3. During those same years, Fannie and Freddie were sidelined by Congressional pressure, and saw a sharp drop in their share of securitization...while securitization by private players surged.

Andrews adds:

What makes this smear so repellant is that it blames poor people — mostly minorities — for bringing on the crisis. But what makes it so maddening is that it’s so demonstrably false. We have reams of evidence that banks and mortgage lenders actively targeted blacks, Hispanics and other immigrant groups for reckless loans. The lenders weren’t forced. They were making a fortune.

Speaking of which:

Camille Thomas, a 40-year-old African-American, loved working for Wells Fargo. “I felt like I could help people,” she recalled over coffee.

As the subprime market heated up, she said, the bank pressure to move more loans — for autos, for furniture, for houses — edged into mania. “It was all about selling your units and getting your bonus,” she said.

Ms. Thomas and three other Wells Fargo employees have given affidavits for the city’s lawsuit against the bank, and their statements about bank practices reinforce one another.

“Your manager would say, ‘Let me see your cold-call list. I want you to concentrate on these ZIP codes,’ and you knew those were African-American neighborhoods,” she recalled. “We were told, ‘Oh, they aren’t so savvy.’ ”

She described tricks of the trade, several of dubious legality. She said supervisors had told employees to white out incomes on loan applications and substitute higher numbers. Agents went “fishing” for customers, mailing live checks to leads. When a homeowner deposited the check, it became a high-interest loan, with a rate of 20 to 29 percent. Then bank agents tried to talk the customer into refinancing, using the house as collateral.

Several state and city regulators have placed Wells Fargo Bank in their cross hairs, and their lawsuits include similar accusations. In Illinois, the state attorney general has accused the bank of marketing high-cost loans to blacks and Latinos while selling lower-cost loans to white borrowers. John P. Relman, the Washington, D.C., lawyer handling the Memphis case, has sued Wells Fargo on behalf of the City of Baltimore, asserting that the bank systematically exploited black borrowers.

Lovely.  But why let facts get in the way of the welfare queens driving cadillacs to pick up t-bone steaks for the young bucks at home.

If There Was a Sequel

by Eric Martin

Dan Froomkin at Huffington Post discussing President Bush's recent remarks confirming his order to torture certain detainees, and his defense of that decision:

George W. Bush's casual acknowledgment Wednesday that he had Khalid Sheikh Mohammed waterboarded -- and would do it again -- has horrified some former military and intelligence officials who argue that the former president doesn't seem to understand the gravity of what he is admitting. Waterboarding, a form of controlled drowning, is "unequivocably torture", said retired Brigadier General David R. Irvine, a former strategic intelligence officer who taught prisoner of war interrogation and military law for 18 years. "As a nation, we have historically prosecuted it as such, going back to the time of the Spanish-American War," Irvine said. "Moreover, it cannot be demonstrated that any use of waterboarding by U.S. personnel in recent years has saved a single American life." Irvine told the Huffington Post that Bush seems not to understand how much harm his countenancing of torture has done to his country. [...]

James P. Cullen, a retired brigadier general in the United States Army Reserve Judge Advocate General's Corps, told HuffPost that the net effect of Bush's remarks -- and former Vice President Cheney's before him -- is "to establish a precedent where it will be permissible to our enemies to use waterboarding on our servicemen in future wars." ... "This is not the last war we're going to fight," Cullen said. "Americans not yet born are going to be prisoners of war in those conflicts. And our enemies are going to be able to point back to President Bush and Vice President Cheney saying that waterboarding is OK. "It's just shocking to me how he can be so flip about something that is so serious," Cullen said.

Matthew Alexander, the pseudonymous former Air Force interrogator and author of "How To Break A Terrorist" e-mailed HuffPost that Bush's statement "is de facto approval of the deaths of hundreds, if not thousands, of American soldiers in Iraq who were killed by foreign fighters that Al Qaida recruited based on the President's policy of torture and abuse of detainees. "At least now we know where the blame for those soldiers' deaths squarely belongs. President Bush's decision broke with a military tradition dating back to General George Washington during the Revolutionary War and the consequences are clear: Al Qaida is stronger and our country is less safe."

This is indeed an ugly precedent, and unfortunately Obama isn't doing enough to correct it.  In his defense, it would be a political minefield.  On the other hand, this is torture.*  Bush's boasts are as unseemly as they are reckless, and there will likely be repercussions.

Nevertheless, Ed Morrissey is impressed with Bush's unapologetic advocacy of torture.  His commentary on the matter is muddled at best:

Never let it be said that George W. Bush relied on a hindsight argument to back away from his wartime decisions.  Had Bush said this in the first few months after he left office, the media would have pilloried him as a hopelessly blind warmonger who didn’t know how to make America safe.  Now, though, after three terrorist attacks against the US reached fruition and one resulted in 14 murders, the context has shifted enough to where the media will be more inclined to ignore it. [...]

The two more extensive terrorist attacks failed to work.  The Christmas Day attack attempt by Umar Farouk Abdelmutallab would have killed hundreds of passengers in the air; Faisal Shahzad’s Times Square bomb would have killed hundreds more on the ground, potentially [EM: Unlikely, actually, given the crude nature of the bomb].  In another sense, though, both worked in that they have Americans second-guessing their presence in New York City or on international flights.  Terrorism works not because it kills a lot of people — which it often does — but because it frightens many, many more into changing their behavior and their policies, or at least that’s the intent behind it.

Susan Anne Hiller says this is what real leadership looks like:

Those decisive decisions from Bush kept America safe for 7 years. Now we have got Obama the apologist and panderer and we’ve had four Jihad attacks on American soil in less than 17 months–June 1, 2009 army recruiting base murder, 2009 Christmas Day undie bomber, November 13, 2009 Ft. Hood, and the May 1, 2010 Times Square bomber.

Whose strategy do you think is or was more effective and has America’s best interests at heart?

What exactly does this mean?  Is Morrissey and/or Hiller actually suggesting that had the United States continued to waterboard detainees that those attempts and attacks would not have occurred?  How?  Also, in what way has Obama's policies, as opposed to Bush's, increased the likelihood of attempted attacks?

It's also ironic that Morrissey discusses the efficacy of terrorism in its ability to change behavior and policies in the same piece that he praises Bush's decision to make torture the official policy of the U.S. government in response to a terrorist attack.  Self awareness watch.

Odder still, Morrissey's next paragraph refutes the prior passages regarding torture's effectiveness as a counterterrorism measure:

The controversy over waterboarding has largely died down since early last year, even though the US had stopped the practice after just three detainees went through it, all of them high-ranking AQ operatives involved in the 9/11 conspiracy.  Therefore, the contribution of information gleaned from waterboarded detainees (not actually during the waterboarding process, though) would have diminished in relation to the time of their detention.  They had all been interrogated by 2002, and in 2008 their information was probably doing less to expose attack plots than to track the various financial and recruiting efforts of AQ.

So Bush kept us safe by waterboarding three detainees way back when, but continuing the use of torture wouldn't yield any valuable intel now (it didn't back then either, but that's another story).  Nevertheless, Obama's refusal to continue waterboarding detainees* (even though Bush stopped too) is making us less safe. 

Got it.

[* There have been several reports that the use of torture continues in Afghanistan and other locales at black sites operated by Special Forces and certain U.S. intelligence agencies]

[UPDATE: Adam Serwer is right:

We have now both the former president and his vice president on record copping to an act that was prosecuted as a crime in the United States as recently as 1983. Republicans have insisted that investigating this matter would turn the U.S. into a "banana republic," but the opposite is true -- in a true democracy the powerful are not above the law merely because they happen to be powerful. Certainly in Britain, democracy is not viewed as so fragile that government leaders can escape accountability for wrongdoing.

Torture apologists enjoy restricting the debate to KSM, because he's so clearly an awful person, but this only highlights the fact that torture is a crime -- if it wasn't wrong, they wouldn't need such a terrible example to justify what they'd done. But he wasn't the only person who was tortured. Someone should ask Bush if he would again send Maher Arar to Syria to be tortured, even though he wasn't guilty of anything. If he would subject Khaled El-Masri to the treatment he received in Afghanistan, merely because his name was similar to that of a suspected terrorist. Someone should ask him if he thinks it was appropriate for guards at Gitmo to subject Mohammed Jawad to the "Frequent Flier" sleep deprivation program while possessing little evidence of his guilt or complicity in any crime. And why, if there was nothing wrong with torture, did Bush continue to insist while in office that the United States did not torture? Why does it matter if it "saved lives," as Bush claims?

These questions, of course, are harder to answer, but the typical response is something along the lines of, "you can't make an omelet without breaking some eggs." But of course, once you allow government officials to break as many "eggs" as they want without legal accountability, what you're saying is that the government is above the law, and that in matters of national security, all individual rights are forfeit. That's much harder to defend -- indeed, it's indefensible from the standpoint of a democratic society, and it's why torture requires minimizing what was done by any means available. It also goes without saying that by refusing to investigate torture, the current administration is fully implicated in establishing a de-facto legal immunity for government officials when they break the law in the name of security. The GOP's fears about the U.S. government growing to resemble a banana republic, a state with a corrupt, unaccountable elite have been realized, just not in the way they imagined. ]

Out of Control on Videotape

by Eric Martin

Wow.  Just wow.

In response to a flood of Facebook and YouTube videos that depict police abuse, a new trend in law enforcement is gaining popularity. In at least three states, it is now illegal to record any on-duty police officer.

Even if the encounter involves you and may be necessary to your defense, and even if the recording is on a public street where no expectation of privacy exists.

The legal justification for arresting the "shooter" rests on existing wiretapping or eavesdropping laws, with statutes against obstructing law enforcement sometimes cited. Illinois, Massachusetts, and Maryland are among the 12 states in which all parties must consent for a recording to be legal unless, as with TV news crews, it is obvious to all that recording is underway. Since the police do not consent, the camera-wielder can be arrested. Most all-party-consent states also include an exception for recording in public places where "no expectation of privacy exists" (Illinois does not) but in practice this exception is not being recognized.

Massachusetts attorney June Jensen represented Simon Glik who was arrested for such a recording. She explained, "[T]he statute has been misconstrued by Boston police. You could go to the Boston Common and snap pictures and record if you want." Legal scholar and professor Jonathan Turley agrees, "The police are basing this claim on a ridiculous reading of the two-party consent surveillance law - requiring all parties to consent to being taped. I have written in the area of surveillance law and can say that this is utter nonsense."

The courts, however, disagree. A few weeks ago, an Illinois judge rejected a motion to dismiss an eavesdropping charge against Christopher Drew, who recorded his own arrest for selling one-dollar artwork on the streets of Chicago. Although the misdemeanor charges of not having a peddler's license and peddling in a prohibited area were dropped, Drew is being prosecuted for illegal recording, a Class I felony punishable by 4 to 15 years in prison.

In short, recordings that are flattering to the police - an officer kissing a baby or rescuing a dog - will almost certainly not result in prosecution even if they are done without all-party consent. The only people who seem prone to prosecution are those who embarrass or confront the police, or who somehow challenge the law. If true, then the prosecutions are a form of social control to discourage criticism of the police or simple dissent. [...]

A recent arrest in Maryland is both typical and disturbing.

On March 5, 24-year-old Anthony John Graber III's motorcycle was pulled over for speeding. He is currently facing criminal charges for a video he recorded on his helmet-mounted camera during the traffic stop.

The case is disturbing because:

1) Graber was not arrested immediately. Ten days after the encounter, he posted some of he material to YouTube, and it embarrassed Trooper J. D. Uhler. The trooper, who was in plainclothes and an unmarked car, jumped out waving a gun and screaming. Only later did Uhler identify himself as a police officer. When the YouTube video was discovered the police got a warrant against Graber, searched his parents' house (where he presumably lives), seized equipment, and charged him with a violation of wiretapping law.

2) Baltimore criminal defense attorney Steven D. Silverman said he had never heard of the Maryland wiretap law being used in this manner. In other words, Maryland has joined the expanding trend of criminalizing the act of recording police abuse. Silverman surmises, "It's more [about] ‘contempt of cop' than the violation of the wiretapping law."

3) Police spokesman Gregory M. Shipley is defending the pursuit of charges against Graber, denying that it is "some capricious retribution" and citing as justification the particularly egregious nature of Graber's traffic offenses. Oddly, however, the offenses were not so egregious as to cause his arrest before the video appeared.

To be blunt, our politicians and policymakers are overly deferential to police officers and overly concerned with establishing "tough on crime" credentials.  As a result, they are far too often hesistant to establish common sense regulations and checks on abuses of power, not to mention being unduly wedded to harsh sentences for non-violent offenses (see, ie, the disastrous "War on Drugs").

But the above cited abuse of power is unjust, undemocratic and fails the standards of any proper liberal society.  It would be nice if our leaders had the courage to actually do something about it.

L’Étranger

by von

Listening to Bill O'Reilly talk about gay folks is, well, an experience that can be missed.  The guy is an embarrassment.  Not to you, me, the country, or Fox News.  To himself.  He doesn't really get the fact that gay people are, well, people.  And not some stange creatures to be talked about as though they weren't really there. 

But I ain't putting O'Reilly in some box.  We all have our ignorances and embarrassments.  I've said stupier things than O'Reilly (who, obviously, doesn't really think that being gay is the same as being in al Qaeda).  The difference between him and I is that I don't have a television show.  I still enjoy the "benign indifference of the world."

Boy, wasn't that last line a misfit.  I should be embarrassed.

Talk among yourselves.  (This is an open thread.)

(FWIW, though the acting in this McD's ad is top-notch -- get that kid an Emmy -- I doubt it will sell many Royale Cheeses.)

Pieces, in one big chess game

by von

And now, from the UN Security Council:

WASHINGTON — The White House said Thursday it was confident the UN Security Council would back toughened sanctions on Iran in the next week, despite the furor over Israel's Gaza flotilla raid.

Some Middle East observers have warned that the outrage over the raid by America's close ally could detract from diplomatic efforts by Washington to finally pass a sanctions resolution against Iran in the Council.

But President Barack Obama's spokesman Robert Gibbs portrayed progress towards a resolution as robust and said a vote could be coming soon.

I hope the Obama Administration comes out swinging -- hard -- in favor of a tough sanctions resolution.  I've called the Israeli raid stupid.  I've said that Netanyahu's government damages US interests.  It's true; this is Exhibit A.  But I also know which side the bread is buttered on.  These concern trolls -- "[s]ome Middle East observers" -- can go to hell.  Full speed ahead, damn the torpedos, and other assorted cliches.  Sanction Iran.

Iran is progressing towards a nuclear weapons capability.  There is no "misunderstand[ing]."  Iran has not stopped enriching uranium.  Iran's current government wants nukes:  

Iran has transferred pyroprocessing equipment that could help isolate weapon-usable plutonium out of a facility in Tehran, International Atomic Energy Agency chief Yukiya Amano said in a report circulated yesterday to members of his organization's 35-nation governing board (see GSN, May 28).

The agency was informed in January that Iran was carrying out pyroprocessing work at its Jabr Ibn Hayan Multipurpose Research Laboratory; inspectors found during an April inspection that equipment for the experiments was no longer at the site.

The situation would add to questions regarding Iran's atomic activities, which to date has focused on uranium enrichment, a process that could also be used to produce nuclear-weapon material, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Pyroprocessing, which Tehran now denies conducting, would "bring Iran close to being able to separate plutonium and thus have a second path to a nuclear weapon," former U.S. State Department nonproliferation official Mark Fitzpatrick said. "Given the evidence of military connections to Iran's nuclear program, it is worth asking the purpose for which Iran is studying the production of uranium metal" (Daragahi/Damianova, Los Angeles Times, May 31).

Iran has continued to stonewall inquiries by the U.N. nuclear watchdog regarding nuclear-weapon design activities allegedly carried out by the nation, says the report.

"Since August 2008 ... Iran has declined to discuss outstanding issues with the agency or to provide any further information or access to locations and people necessary to address the agency’s concerns, asserting that the allegations relating to possible military dimensions to its nuclear program are baseless and that the information to which the agency is referring is based on forged documents," the report states. Iran has long insisted its atomic ambitions are strictly peaceful.

So:  blast the Netanyahu government for a hamfisted attempt at a raid. I have.  But don't lose sight of the larger picture.  Or conflate issues.  The wonderful thing about reality is that it's not a zero sum game:  Sometimes, everyone is wrong.  Israel can do a shitty thing and Iran can still be a giant douche.  And it bears remembering that Iran is a particular kind of douche that Israel is not.  Stewardess and gay stewards are not scrambling to avoid overnighters in Israel because "unpleasant things [have] happened to them there."  (Who blames them?  Iran has, among other things, executed teenage boys for being gay.) 

Iran's current government is a rogue regime that, surely, views its liberal Western sympathizers as useful idiots.  At best. 

* * * * * * *

Darth Cheney is not the only one to favor sanctions.  The litmus test to join my side is not a burning desire for war. Sanctions are the right move here.  They are the measured move; the realist move.  Sanctions are correctly targeted (primarily at the Republican guard) and are linked to a simple goal:  return to the negotiating table. 

If Iran was going to keep its alleged deal with Turkey and Brazil -- if that wasn't just a ploy to delay the UNSC -- then Iran should also be able to reach agreement with the US and the IAEA.  Or remove all doubt regarding its true intentions.

Neocontrol

by Eric Martin

Robert Farley has a very interesting piece on the reaction of the Republican Party establishment to Obama's resumption of Reagan-era arms control treaties with Russia, and what that reaction says about the evolution of foreign policy ideas in the GOP:

Ironically, the attacks launched by the conservative foreign policy establishment against the Obama administration could also have been used against Ronald Reagan’s administration. The defense and nuclear policy of the Reagan administration is often understood as the zenith of hawkish, anti-Soviet sentiment. While this largely applies to Reagan’s first term in office, in the second term Reagan pursued far more conciliatory policies toward the Soviet Union and arms control. Reagan himself, as demonstrated by several historians, held almost radical views about the eventual abolition of nuclear weapons.[8] In one famous case, Reagan’s advisers had to restrain him from coming to an overarching deal with Soviet premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, that would have substantially reduced global nuclear weapon stockpiles.[9]

As Max Bergman, Deputy Policy Director at the National Security Network, has argued, a divide has emerged between the “realist” wing of the Republican foreign policy establishment and its more radical right-wing counterpart.[10] The debate over nuclear policy has demonstrated that the latter now essentially dominates the institutional apparatus of right-wing foreign policy thinking. Ideas and arguments that were welcome in the Reagan administration can now find no purchase at Heritage, or the Weekly Standard, or anywhere else on the right.

Many of the moderate Republicans who favored arms control and engagement with the Soviet Union are still around, but they have minimal influence on the institutional right. Henry Kissinger, James Baker, Brent Scowcroft, Colin Powell, and George Schultz have all played key roles in developing foreign policy for multiple Republican administrations. However, none have developed an extensive base within the institutional right wing, the constellation of independent organizations and foundations (including the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute) that have emerged as key players in internal Republican Party debates. This faction has, by and large, concluded that the greatest threat posed by Russian nuclear weapons is loss, theft, or accidental launch, rather than pre-emptive attack. [...]

In addition, prominent political figures have been able to promote the studies and reports produced by these groups, including for instance Sarah Palin, who despite her clear lack of knowledge on the subject tried to use that hardline rhetoric in attacking Obama’s arms control initiatives.

Sarah Palin, though almost obsessive in her repeated praise and evocation of Reagan, seems entirely ignorant of her implied criticism of Reagan's actual arms control policies.  Farley continues:

Over the past month, the question of “cognitive closure” on the right has been discussed extensively in the blogosphere. Cognitive closure refers to the concept that the Republican political establishment and major conservative pundits review information from within a very limited circle of sources. The nuclear critique mounted by the right wing represents an example of conservative “cognitive closure,” with the ironic outcome that those most eager to wave the banner of the Reagan administration’s foreign policy are offering arguments that Reagan himself would have rejected. [...]

The nature of these attacks against the Obama administration’s nuclear policy are not so much evidence of a battle within conservative foreign policy circles as they are a sign of the ascendancy of one particular faction. One key to achieving this dominant position in the discourse on the right has been the establishment and nurturing of institutions for developing and promoting their views. The wing of the GOP foreign policy establishment once regarded as “realist” failed to construct an institutional structure to develop and promulgate its ideas. Consequently, the major organs of conservative foreign policy-making now follow one line, serious debate is marginalized, and there are fewer new voices on the right arguing for responsible nuclear weapons policy.

I would only add that while Farley is right that the neocon wing is prone to heap effusive praise on Reagan's foreign policy despite deriding the particulars, the incoherence has roots.  During Reagan's tenure, the same neocon thinkers, pundits, periodicals and institutions were highly critical of Reagan's arms control measures and his outreach to Gorbachev (both of which were highly successful measures). 

In short, the neoconservative trend has been more hawkish than Reagan from the outset.  Also, consistenly wrong.  Nevertheless, they have clearly come to dominate the Republican Party almost entirely.

(via J-Sig)

To Bert, From Ernie

by von

Look, I understand that you're feeling a little backed into a corner.  It's hard not be feel that way.  Your generals are describing your foreign policy as "incompetent and crazy."  Your Generals!  Imagine what your Lt. Cols. are saying!  It probably starts with "dum" and ends with "ucks".  And it only gets worse when you go down the chain of command.  Trust me on this.  I've gotten bitched out by my ex-Marine secretary* for failing to format my letters correctly.  The lower the rank, the more perceptive the criticism.

But, anyhoo, I digress.  I'm here to offer you some advice.  And I'm a really good friend.

I understand why you're backing away.  Every time someone tells you they're a really good friend, it kinda ends badly.  For example:  Come to Spain!  We love you in Spain.  Wonderful weather, good wine, folks strumming guitars, the Alhambra -- what's not to like?

Oh, right.  That whole Inquisition thing.  Well, at least you'll have refuge in Germany ....

So I get it. Well, a little bit.  I'm not going to pretend.  I don't really get much, and very few people get me.  I can tell you about the Jewish vons, my love of really good bagels, and how some of my best friends are Zionists .... but why should you believe me?  And why should it matter?   I go by "von" on the internet.  That's a f-ckin' preposition.  In German. 

Don't rely on my sympathies.  You should probably trust my self interest instead.

It's in the US's interest to have a strong Israel.  That means it's in my interest.  I'm not going to apologize for being tribal on this count; we can't stop nationalism, we can only hope that we not become assholes in American flag shirts.  So take the following to heart, because I'm one of the few goys who routinely defends Israel without being an Islamophobe and without hopin' that y'all die so that Christ can come back.

Other than Israel, no state in the middle east has the capability or willingness to project power in that region, damn the consequencies.  No other state in the region has been a good friend for so long.  No other state in the region is so, well, connected to the US.  You're like a good drinking buddy:  Opinionated, controversial, and ready to fight.

But you have got to stop being absolutely useless.  Because when you're useless, it's not much in my interest to defend you.  I mean, do you defend countries that ignore you and constantly f-ck things up?  Is France on your speed-dial?  No?  Wonder why ...

I'd love to defend you in this latest debacle.  I'd love to keep on waiting for more facts to come in.  But I can't.  What your leaders did was indefensible and utterly stupid. Dr. Heinz Doofenshmirtz has a better grasp on strategy.  And it comes on the heels of you insulting us.  (Leave aside whether these settlements were justified:  could you have not made the announcement while our Vice President was visiting?)

You have to fix this.  It starts with firing somebody.  Probably your Prime Minister.  You don't seem to have noticed, but he's a total nudnik.  A moron too.  I won't insist, because I can't -- and friends don't do that anyway. But I am going to suggest. In a really passive-aggressive way. Because you're smart enough to realize that it's in your best interest.

*Former secretary, in fairness.