Are We Giving Saudi Arabia Nukes?

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No no, not the bomb. Strictly a peaceful civil program, you understand, just like the Iranians say they’re developing.

As Bush flew into Riyadh, the White House said the United States, the world’s largest energy consumer, had agreed to help protect the resources of the world’s top oil exporter and help it in developing peaceful nuclear energy.

"The United States and Saudi Arabia have agreed to cooperate in safeguarding the kingdom’s energy resources by protecting key infrastructure, enhancing Saudi border security, and meeting (its) expanding energy needs," a White House statement said.

"The U.S. and Saudi Arabia will sign a memorandum of understanding in the area of peaceful civil nuclear energy cooperation."

The announcement came as Bush ended a three-day trip to Israel where he vowed to oppose Iran’s nuclear ambitions. Tehran says its program is peaceful but Bush said it would be "unforgivable" if Iran were allowed to get the bomb.

So we’re giving Saudi Arabia nukes while still refusing to allow Iran nukes.

And for all that, Saudi Arabia isn’t even willing (though I question whether, at this point, they are able) to lower gas prices?

While Bush is likely to find common ground on Iran when he meets King Abdullah, the Saudi monarch is expected to rebuff for the second time this year Bush’s face-to-face call to get OPEC pumping more oil to world markets.

Wasn’t it just yesterday that Bush was decrying negotiations with evil dictators? Does giving them nuclear technology while getting nothing in exchange count as "appeasement"?

Grandson of Nazi Enabler Decries Talking to Nazis

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Boy, George Bush must not have liked his Granddaddy Prescott very much. Here’s what he just said to Israel’s Knesset:

Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

Or maybe it’s just negotiating with Nazis that’s the problem–making tons of dough by serving as their banker? The Bush family doesn’t appear to have any problem with that.

George Bush’s grandfather, the late US senator Prescott Bush, was a director and shareholder of companies that profited from their involvement with the financial backers of Nazi Germany.

The Guardian has obtained confirmation from newly discovered files in the US National Archives that a firm of which Prescott Bush was a director was involved with the financial architects of Nazism.

His business dealings, which continued until his company’s assets were seized in 1942 under the Trading with the Enemy Act, has led more than 60 years later to a civil action for damages being brought in Germany against the Bush family by two former slave labourers at Auschwitz and to a hum of pre-election controversy.

If we had a press corps with any historical memory, I guess, such a statement might get Bush in trouble (not to mention make it difficult for his hosts who invited a lame duck grandson of a banker to the Nazis to speak to the Knesset). But instead they’re likely to focus on the false claim that Obama wants to appease Hamas.

A Big Day for BIFFO?

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One of the first things people asked me when I arrived in Ireland on Sunday was whether I had seen Bertie Ahern’s address to Congress last Wednesday. It was the swan song of his time as Ireland’s Taoiseach (Prime Minister-pronounced Tea Shack), a celebrated address in America that had gotten very big play on Irish telly. After a drawn out influence scandal had finally sunk his credibility, Bertie had announced about six weeks ago that he would turn in his resignation on May 6.

Bertie’s resignation was actually a bit of big news in Offaly, mr. emptywheel’s county, since Bertie’s presumed replacement (it’ll become official while I’m on the flight home) is Brian Cowen, the TD from Offaly. In just about every town in the county (particularly Tullamore, the county seat and the home of mr. emptywheel’s parents), there’s a picture of Cowen, congratulating him on ascending to Taoiseach. He’ll be back in Offaly on Saturday for a big celebration.

People call Cowen "BIFFO," the slur one uses for Offaly men–Big Ignorant Fucker from Offaly–presumably invoking the day when Offaly was mostly sheep farms and peat bogs.

That was before Ireland joined the EU, though, and certainly before the time when Cowen took on a leadership role in Fianna Fail, Ireland’s equivalent to the Republican Party. Tullamore has become a bedroom community for Dublin and has attracted a bit of corporate investment itself, so there’s a brand new giant Tesco and new housing developments going up everywhere.

Also, Ireland has started decentralizing the government outside of Dublin. So, as the Finance Minister, Cowen had gotten Ireland’s finance ministry moved to Tullamore, into a building almost across the street from mr. emptywheel’s boyhood home, in what had been a big empty field. (It seems like the decentralization has resulted in national offices springing up in the county seats of all the TDs who have served as ministers in Bertie’s government, but after Cowen shuffles the cabinet, it’ll result in the TD from Cork having to commute from Cork to both Tullamore and Dublin to fulfill all his roles.) And now that Cowen will be Taoiseach, my father-in-law figures, it’ll hasten the completion of the motorway connecting Tullamore to Dublin, and ensure the main streets will be improved.

Pork is not just an American institution, you know.

So today, Cowen will become Taoiseach and, if Tullamore is lucky, it’ll mean lots of pork for Offaly.

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Burma Shave – Bush Busts Out A Compassion Beard

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This is shaping up to be a monumental week with important news flying in like a furious wind from every direction, from the primary election battle, to all of the various political scandals, to diplomatic agendas, the Iraq war that has taken a shockingly deadly turn for the worse on all fronts with little notice by the distracted and weary public, to, of course, the economy. Saddle up cowboys and cowgirls, it could be a rough ride. Oh yes, and Marcy will be back soon, rested and ready herself.

The first blow to land for the week did not fly in like a furious wind, it was a furious wind. Specifically a typhoon that blew a path of waste and destruction through the already destitute and oppressed tinderbox that is currently known as Myanmar, and was formerly known as Burma.

The cyclone and storm surge that tore through Myanmar’s Irrawaddy delta killed at least 15,000 people and left 30,000 missing, officials said on Tuesday, warning the toll could rise in low-lying, remote villages.
…
Giving the first detailed account of the worst cyclone to hit Asia since 1991, when 143,000 people died in Bangladesh, Foreign Minister Nyan Win said on state television 10,000 people had died just in Bogalay, a town 90 km (50 miles) southwest of Yangon.

After a meeting with Myanmar’s ambassador to Bangkok, Thai Foreign Minister Noppadol Pattama said he had been told 30,000 people were missing after Saturday’s devastating storm.
…
The total left homeless by the 190 km (120 miles) per hour winds and 12 foot (3.5 meter) storm surge is in the several hundred thousands, United Nations aid officials say.

The scale of the disaster in the military-ruled southeast Asian nation drew a rare acceptance of outside help from the diplomatically isolated generals, who spurned such approaches in the aftermath of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami.

If there are words sufficient to describe the desperate plight of the people of Myanmar, then they surely escape me. It does add a degree of relative perspective to the mere struggles of democracy we labor on here daily. The random vagaries and inequalities of the human condition on this planet are both stunning and stark; but for a virtually indecipherable molecular difference in a couple of genetic alleles, there may go you or I. Very sobering. I will leave substantive analysis of what, if anything, can be done for these Read more →

Syriana

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Aurora Borealis (ionization of the upper atmosphere)(While I have been trying to find a resolution to MI’s DNC delegation in the last few days, the Admin put on their nukes in Syria dog and pony show. Partly because I didn’t have the time to do the Syria presentation justice, and partly because Professor Foland–whom you know from his great comments–has a lot more expertise on this area than I, I asked him to do a post assessing the presentation. Thanks for the really informative post, Prof! -ew)

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over the course of this Administration, it’s that if Dana Perino one day announces that the sky is blue, I will be forced to assume that an alien invasion has commenced with the total ionization of Earth’s upper atmosphere.

With that in mind, there’s an awful lot of cognitive dissonance for me in analyzing the evidence on the raid (apparently named "Operation Orchard" by the Israelis) on a Syrian desert site (apparently named "Al-Kibar"). Having started my own blog motivated by "the incredible amount of lies & hyperbole on the Iran situation of early 2006", I don’t find it easy to accept anything this Administration puts forth as evidence. I’m having all this difficulty because the pictures they showed last Thursday are clearly pictures of a nuclear reactor.

In what follows, I will lay out the history of what we’ve known about Operation Orchard and al-Kibar, what the latest photographs show, and what questions we should probably be asking.

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Elliott Abrams Gave the Israelis a Hall Pass

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The Israelis say that George Bush gave them written permission to expand settlements in the West Bank.

A letter that President Bush personally delivered to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon four years ago has emerged as a significant obstacle to the president’s efforts to forge a peace deal between the Israelis and Palestinians during his last year in office.

Ehud Olmert, the current Israeli prime minister, said this week that Bush’s letter gave the Jewish state permission to expand the West Bank settlements that it hopes to retain in a final peace deal, even though Bush’s peace plan officially calls for a freeze of Israeli settlements across Palestinian territories on the West Bank. In an interview this week, Sharon’s chief of staff, Dov Weissglas, said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice reaffirmed this understanding in a secret agreement reached between Israel and the United States in the spring of 2005, just before Israel withdrew from Gaza.

The part of this story that you’ll really like, though, is that Colin Powell says he never made such an agreement.

Weissglas said that the letter built upon a prior understanding between then-Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, which would allow Israel to build up settlements within existing construction lines. But Powell denied that. "I never agreed to it," he said in an e-mail.

Whereas Weissglas admits that the final settlement came in an agreement with Iran-Contra alum Elliott Abrams.

Weissglas said he then negotiated a "verbal understanding" with deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams that would permit new construction in those key settlements; Rice and Sharon then approved the Weissglas-Abrams deal. "I do not recall that we had any kind of written formulation," Weissglas said.

Would it surprise anyone that Elliott Abrams concluded some super-secret, cross-my-fingers, Neocons-only deal with the Israelis? Or that Condi Rice, agreed to that settlement, but now pretends she didn’t?

There’s one part of this purported settlement, though, that is especially lovely. In true Neocon fashion, they used "market demand" as their fig leaf to rationalize the new settlements.

Israel could add homes in settlements expected to keep, as long as the construction was dictated by market demand, not subsidies.

It sounds like a remarkable piece of Elliott Abrams work: the West Bank for Gaza, in another freelance, off-the-books act of foreign policy, all the while enshrining the sanctity of the market.

Hillary’s Iran Comments

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There’s a lot of outrage over Hillary’s comments on nukes and Iran yesterday (some of which will be broadcast today on the Today show). Some of that is not surprising, given the way the comments make her sound like Dick Cheney without his meds.

But there’s a kernel of sense in her comments that is being missed–and we’d be much better off pointing out that kernel and understanding it and its limits–than magnifying the sound bites that make her look so bad.

Here’s the transcript that Ab2kgj put together.

Well what we were talking about was the potential for a nuclear attack by Iran, if Iran does achieve what appears to be it’s continuing goal of obtaining nuclear weapons, and I think deterrence has not been effectively used in recent times, we used it very well during the Cold War when we had a bipolar world, and what I think the president should do and what our policy should be is to make it very clear to the Iranians that they would be risking massive retaliation were they to launch a nuclear attack on Israel.

In addition, if Iran were to become a nuclear power, it could set off an arms race that would be incredibly dangerous and destabilizing because the countries in the region are not going to want Iran to be the only nuclear power. So I can imagine that they would be rushing to obtain nuclear weapons themselves. In order to forestall that, creating some kind of a security agreement where we said, ‘No, you do not need to acquire nuclear weapons if you were the subject of an unprovoked nuclear attack by Iran the United States and hopefully our NATO allies would respond to that as well.’ It is a theory that some people have been looking at because there is a fear that if Iran, which I hope we can prevent, becoming a nuclear power, but if they were to become one, some people worry that they are not deterrable, that they somehow have a different mindset and a worldview that might very well lead the leadership to be willing to become martyrs. I don’t buy that, but I think we have to test it. Read more →

“The Game Is Over”

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I’ve been wondering, ever since Viktor Bout got arrested, what he meant by his sole public statement at the time: "The game is over." Who knows in what language he uttered the statement or how well it was translated, but the statement seemed to convey the closure of a particularly finite project rather than a long life of eluding death and the law. Getting rich, after all, is not a game, it’s a presumably boundless process. Whereas a game–that implies a beginning and an end, winners and losers.

Suffice it to say that I’m wondering even more now, as I hear news of the wrangling between Russia, the US, and Thailand. First, there’s the story (admittedly told by Bout’s lawyer and brother, not independent observers) that the Thais tried to ship him off the US immediately upon his arrest.

Thai authorities tried to force Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout to get on a plane to the United States hours after his arrest in Bangkok earlier this month, the legal counsel for the alleged "Lord of War" claimed on Monday.

Bout, dubbed the "Merchant of Death" by his detractors, was arrested in Bangkok on March 6 in a US-led sting operation that allegedly caught him making a deal with Colombian rebels.

On March 7, Thai police said Bout, 41, would remain in the kingdom to face possible charges of committing illegal activities in the country. If Thai courts turn down the case, Bout faces extradition to the US.

But Bout’s Russian lawyer Dasgupta Yan on Monday told a press conference in Bangkok that Thai authorities had tried to force his client to board a plane to the US immediately after his arrest. He said US officials were also present at the time.

"Some government officials at the moment of his detention tried to send him to the United States without proper extradition procedures," said Yan, of the Gridnav & Partners law firm.

"They told my client you need to take an aircraft to the United States, they want to talk to you there. But my client was saying I’m not ready to go, because I don’t understand why I’m arrested and secondly I didn’t have any plans to go to the United States," said Yan. [my emphasis]

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AP Calls BushCo on Its Spin

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Tell me. When you saw this headline in the WaPo today, who did you think wrote the story?

Bush Aides Put Upbeat Spin on Summit

Dan Froomkin, perhaps?

Nope. It was an AP story, tracing, in detail, the Administration’s efforts to get the press to back off its conclusion that Bush’s summit with Vladimir Putin was a disaster.

ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE — White House officials waged an extraordinary campaign during an 11-hour Air Force One flight to put a positive spin on the outcome of Sunday’s summit talks between President Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Four times on the long flight back to Washington from Sochi, Russia, Bush aides trooped back to the press cabin to make the case that the summit had turned out well, particularly on missile defenses.

It was the heaviest lobbying campaign veteran reporters could recall ever occurring on the president’s plane. Press accounts of the summit had been sent to Bush’s plane and administration officials thought they were too negative. Clearly, Bush’s aides were disappointed.

Some of the officials’ statements were on the record. Some of them were off-the-record _ not to be used _ or on "deep background" _ not to be attributed to anyone in the administration. Some were on "background" _ to be attributed to a senior administration official. It was hard keeping track of the conditions.

[snip]

There had been an anticipation in the White House press corps that Bush would invite reporters up to his conference room on the plane to reflect on the trip, as he has done on occasion. Four additional reporters were allowed to fly back with Bush, heightening those expectations. But it did not happen and White House officials did not dispute that Bush was steamed with the coverage.

AP reporter Terence Hunt goes on to explain the Administration’s desperate efforts to get Putin to agree to say Bush Administration efforts at assuaging his concerns about the missile defense plans for Europe have, indeed, assuaged his concerns. He describes Stephen Hadley going to absurd lengths to redefine the definition of what success looks like.

Wow. Imagine such reporting on the machinations aboard Air Force One if it had come from the week of July 7, 2003 (though, to be fair, Matt Cooper tried to write just such an article, though without the necessary cooperation of John Dickerson).

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Bush: Let Colombia Kill Union Organizers–Or Hugo Chavez Wins

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Oh, this should be fun. Bush chose today to send the Colombia Free Trade pact to Congress today, just one day after Mark Penn’s former contract with Colombia led to his firing resignation forfeiture of his Chief Strategist title with the Clinton campaign. I especially like this bit:

The president also has said that failing to approve a free-trade deal with Colombia would have the effect of encouraging Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez’s anti-American regime and casting the United States as untrustworthy and impotent across South America.

You see, I’m not convinced that Penn was fired resigned gave up his title because he mis-stated Clinton’s stance on the Colombia Trade pact.
If he had gone that far off the reservation, after all, you’d think he’d have been fired outright. So this may be just cover–to prevent unions from balking at Penn’s comment. Or a slap on the wrist, to ensure that Penn doesn’t speak out again in the remaining time of the campaign. Or, it could be that Penn doesn’t want responsibility for what’s going to happen in the next several weeks of the campaign. Or, it could be an attempt on Penn’s part to regain the business with Colombia.

But one thing’s clear. Anything short of a full end of the relationship between Penn and Clinton suggests only lukewarm disapproval that his meeting with the Colombians was reported in the press. Take that to mean what you will.

So now, after Democrats had hoped that Bush wouldn’t make the Senate vote on the pact, he’s doing just that.

Moreover, Democratic leaders balked at forcing the matter to a vote.

I can see why, when the economy is tanking and the country is being devastated by foreclosures and Wall Street is getting addicted to public financing, Bush would think the most important way to spend the Senate’s time is to consider sending more jobs to places where environmental regulations and pesky unions won’t trouble the captains of capitalism.

But I’m particularly intrigued that Bush is turning the US-Colombia pact into an issue of Chavez. Bush would love to start war-mongering against Chavez, along with Iran, and you could argue the Administration and its Colombian allies have already started doing just that. Of course, the US could make no credible military threat against Venezuela right now–we’ve squandered that ability in Iraq.

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