Leaked documents reveal No 10 cover-up over Iraq invasion

• Inquiry to hear how Blair hid true intentions for war
• Military ‘ill-prepared’ for aftermath of invasion

• Richard Norton-Taylor

British soldiers visit locals in a village south of Basra in 2003, at the start of the US-led invasion. Photograph: Dan Chung

Military commanders are expected to tell the inquiry into the Iraq war, which opens on Tuesday, that the invasion was ill-conceived and that preparations were sabotaged by Tony Blair‘s government’s attempts to mislead the public.

They were so shocked by the lack of preparation for the aftermath of the invasion that they believe members of the British and US governments at the time could be prosecuted for war crimes by breaching the duty outlined in the Geneva convention to safeguard civilians in a conflict, the Guardian has been told.

The lengths the Blair government took to conceal the invasion plan and the extent of military commanders’ anger at what they call the government’s “appalling” failures emerged as Sir John Chilcot, the inquiry’s chairman, promised to produce a “full and insightful” account of how Britain was drawn into the conflict.

Fresh evidence has emerged about how Blair misled MPs by claiming in 2002 that the goal was “disarmament, not regime change”. Documents show the government wanted to hide its true intentions by informing only “very small numbers” of officials.

The documents, leaked to the Sunday Telegraph, are “post-operational reports” and “lessons learned” papers compiled by the army and its field commanders. They refer to a “rushed” operation that caused “significant risk” to troops and “critical failure” in the postwar period.

One commander said the government “missed a golden opportunity” to win support from Iraqis. Another commented: “It was not unlike 1750s colonialism where the military had to do everything ourselves”. One, describing the supply chain, added: “I know for a fact that there was one container full of skis in the desert”.

Some troops were deployed in civilian flights to countries neighbouring Iraq with their equipment “brought in by hand baggage”. Items considered dangerous, including penknives and nail scissors, were confiscated from them.

Interviewed for the postwar report drawn up by the MoD, Brigadier Bill Moore, commander of 19 Brigade, was asked: “Did you receive the correct level of advice for the nation-building you faced?” He replied: “We got absolutely no advice whatsoever. The lack of advice from the FCO [Foreign and Commonwealth Office], the Home Office and DFID [the Department for International Development] was appalling.”

The “lessons learned” report stated: “Never again must we send ill-equipped soldiers into battle”. However, many of the failures recounted in leaked documents and given in evidence to Commons committees, notably relating to equipment, were repeated in Afghanistan as inquests have shown.

Significantly, the documents support what officials have earlier admitted – that the army was not allowed to prepare properly for the Iraq invasion in 2002 so as not to alert parliament and the UN that Blair was already determined to go to war.

The documents add: “In Whitehall, the internal operational security regime, in which only very small numbers of officers and officials were allowed to become involved [in Iraq invasion preparations] constrained broader planning for combat operations and subsequent phases effectively until Dec 23 2002.”

Blair had in effect promised George Bush that he would join the US-led invasion when, as late as July 2002, he was denying to MPs that preparations were being made for military action. The leaked documents reveal that “from March 2002 or May at the latest there was a significant possibility of a large-scale British operation”.

Documents leaked in 2005 show that, almost a year before the invasion, Blair was privately preparing to commit Britain to war and topple Saddam Hussein, despite warnings from his closest advisers that it was unjustified. They also show how Blair was planning to justify regime change as an objective, despite warnings from Lord Goldsmith, the attorney general, that the “desire for regime change was not a legal base for military action.

Chilcot says he and his team would not shrink from making criticisms of individuals or organisations if they were justified. But he stressed the inquiry was not a court of law set up to determine issues of guilt and innocence.

US pours millions into anti-Taliban militias in Afghanistan

[It's much easier to create enemy "strawmen" if you can just hand them the money, instead of having to give it to the  ISI and their friends first, so they get a cut of everything.]

• Special forces funding fighters in Afghanistan
• Fears strategy could further destabilise country

• Jon Boone
• guardian.co.uk

A former Taliban fighter hands over his arms to join government troops in Herat. Photograph: Reza Shirmohammadi/AFP/Getty Images

US special forces are supporting anti-Taliban militias in at least 14 areas of Afghanistan as part of a secretive programme that experts warn could fuel long-term instability in the country.

The Community Defence Initiative (CDI) is enthusiastically backed by Stanley McChrystal, the US general commanding Nato forces in Afghanistan, but details about the programme have been held back from non-US alliance members who are likely to strongly protest.

The attempt to create what one official described as “pockets of tribal resistance” to the Taliban involves US special forces embedding themselves with armed groups and even disgruntled insurgents who are then given training and support.

In return for stabilising their local area the militia helps to win development aid for their local communities, although they will not receive arms, a US official said.

Special forces will be able to access money from a US military fund to pay for the projects. The hope is that the militias supplement the Nato and Afghan forces fighting the Taliban. But the prospect of re-empowering militias after billions of international dollars were spent after the US-led invasion in 2001 to disarm illegally armed groups alarms many experts.

Senior generals in the Afghan ministries of interior and defence are also worried about what they see as a return to the failed strategies of the Soviet Union during its occupation of Afghanistan.

Thomas Ruttig, co-director of the Afghanistan Analysts Network, said the US risked losing control over groups which have in the past turned to looting shops and setting up illegal road checkpoints when they lose foreign support.

“It is not enough to talk to a few tribal elders and decide that you trust them,” Ruttig said. “No matter how well-trained and culturally aware the special forces are they will never be able to get to know enough about a local area to trust the people they are dealing with.”

Another controversial aspect of the programme is the involvement of Arif Noorzai, an Afghan politician from Helmand who is widely distrusted by many members of the international community.

Although many western officials want to sideline Noorzai and give oversight to the Afghan army and police, some of the CDI militias will build upon the 12,500 militiamen in 22 provinces Noorzai helped to set up this summer in the run up to the presidential elections on 20 August, an official said.

Despite the lack of any announcement about the programme, which could radically affect conditions in unstable areas across Afghanistan, it has begun in 14 areas in the south, east and west, but is expected to extend far beyond that.

Another diplomat in the south-east of the country said in the last six weeks special forces have held several meetings with elders in restive districts in Paktia, close to the Pakistani border, seeking to embed themselves with the local people.

The diplomat said: “It is not clear anything has happened yet, but the elders in the area are all seeing dollar signs and very much want to qualify for this programme.”

According to some western officials, the US government will make a pot of $1.3bn (£790m) available for the programme, although the US embassy said it could not yet comment on CDI.

A US military spokesman also declined to comment saying the programme was still in its early phases and public discussion could jeopardise the lives of some of the Afghans involved.

The plan represents a significant change in tack from a scheme promoted just last year by General McChrystal’s predecessor, David McKiernan. The Afghan Public Protection Force (APPF) was piloted in Wardak province and involved the rigorous vetting of recruits who were then given basic training, a uniform and came under the authority of the Afghan police.

“McChrystal was always quite dismissive about APPF,” a senior Nato official in Kabul said. “It was too resource-intensive and so slow we would have lost long before it had been spread to the whole country.”

He added: “He wanted to move to a much more informal model, which is far less visible and unaccountable, using Noorzai to find people through his own networks and then simply paying out cash for them to defend their areas.”

The US has shared few details of its plans with its allies. The programme is controlled by a newly created special forces group that reports directly to McChrystal as head of US forces in the country, but which sits outside the authority of the International Security Assistance Force, the Nato mission in Afghanistan.

US builds up its bases in oil-rich South America

From the Caribbean to Brazil, political opposition to US plans for ‘full-spectrum operations’ is escalating rapidly

By Hugh O’Shaughnessy

US air force officers and Congressmen tour the Palanquero base in Puerto Salgar, Colombia, in August. The base is expected to host US air force counter-narcotics missions under the new bilateral deal

The United States is massively building up its potential for nuclear and non-nuclear strikes in Latin America and the Caribbean by acquiring unprecedented freedom of action in seven new military, naval and air bases in Colombia. The development – and the reaction of Latin American leaders to it – is further exacerbating America’s already fractured relationship with much of the continent.

The new US push is part of an effort to counter the loss of influence it has suffered recently at the hands of a new generation of Latin American leaders no longer willing to accept Washington’s political and economic tutelage. President Rafael Correa, for instance, has refused to prolong the US armed presence in Ecuador, and US forces have to quit their base at the port of Manta by the end of next month.

So Washington turned to Colombia, which has not gone down well in the region. The country has received military aid worth $4.6bn (£2.8bn) from the US since 2000, despite its poor human rights record. Colombian forces regularly kill the country’s indigenous people and other civilians, and last year raided the territory of its southern neighbour, Ecuador, causing at least 17 deaths.

President Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, who has not forgotten that US officers were present in government offices in Caracas in 2002 when he was briefly overthrown in a military putsch, warned this month that the bases agreement could mean the possibility of war with Colombia.

In August, President Evo Morales of Bolivia called for the outlawing of foreign military bases in the region. President Manuel Zelaya of Honduras, overthrown in a military coup d’état in June and initially exiled, has complained that US forces stationed at the Honduran base of Palmerola collaborated with Roberto Micheletti, the leader of the plotters and the man who claims to be president.

And, this being US foreign policy, a tell-tale trail of oil is evident. Brazil had already expressed its unhappiness at the presence of US naval vessels in its massive new offshore oilfields off Rio de Janeiro, destined soon to make Brazil a giant oil producer eligible for membership in Opec.

The fact that the US gets half its oil from Latin America was one of the reasons the US Fourth Fleet was re-established in the region’s waters in 2008. The fleet’s vessels can include Polaris nuclear-armed submarines – a deployment seen by some experts as a violation of the 1967 Tlatelolco Treaty, which bans nuclear weapons from the continent.

Indications of US willingness to envisage the stationing of nuclear weapons in Colombia are seen as an additional threat to the spirit of nuclear disarmament. After the establishment of the Tlatelolco Treaty in 1967, four more nuclear-weapon-free zones were set up in Africa, the South Pacific, South-east Asia and Central Asia. Between them, the five treaties cover nearly two-thirds of the countries of the world and almost all the southern hemisphere.

The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the world’s leading think-tank about disarmament issues, has now expressed its worries about the US-Colombian arrangements.

With or without nuclear weapons, the bilateral agreement on the seven Colombian bases, signed on 30 October in Bogota, risks a costly new arms race in a region. SIPRI, which is funded by the Swedish government, said it was concerned about rising arms expenditure in Latin America draining resources from social programmes that the poor of the region need.

Much of the new US strategy was clearly set out in May in an enthusiastic US Air Force (USAF) proposal for its military construction programme for the fiscal year 2010. One Colombian air base, Palanquero, was, the proposal said, unique “in a critical sub-region of our hemisphere where security and stability is under constant threat from… anti-US governments”.

The proposal sets out a scheme to develop Palanquero which, the USAF says, offers an opportunity for conducting “full-spectrum operations throughout South America…. It also supports mobility missions by providing access to the entire continent, except the Cape Horn region, if fuel is available, and over half the continent if un-refuelled”. (“Full-spectrum operations” is the Pentagon’s jargon for its long-established goal of securing crushing military superiority with atomic and conventional weapons across the globe and in space.)

Palanquero could also be useful in ferrying arms and personnel to Africa via the British mid-Atlantic island of Ascension, French Guiana and Aruba, the Dutch island off Venezuela. The US has access to them all.

The USAF proposal contradicted the assurances constantly issued by US diplomats that the bases would not be used against third countries. These were repeated by the Colombian military to the Colombian congress on 29 July. That USAF proposal was hastily reissued this month after the signature of the agreement – but without the reference to “anti-US governments”. This has led to suggestions of either US government incompetence, or of a battle between a gung-ho USAF and a State Department conscious of the damage done to US relations with Latin America by its leaders’ strong objections to the proposal.

The Colombian forces, for many years notorious for atrocities inflicted on civilians, have cheekily suggested that with US help they could get into the lucrative business of “instructing” other armies about human rights. Civil strife in Colombia meant some 380,000 Colombians were forced from their homes last year, bringing the number of displaced since 1985 to 4.6 million, one in ten of the population. This little-known statistic indicates a much worse situation than the much-publicised one in Islamist-ruled Sudan where 2.7 million have fled from their homes.

Amnesty International said: “The Colombian government must urgently bring human rights violators to justice, to break the links between the armed forces and illegal paramilitary groups, and dismantle paramilitary organisations in line with repeated UN recommendations.”

Palanquero, which adjoins the town of Puerto Salgar on the broad Magdalena river north-west of the capital, Bogota, is one of the seven bases that the government of President Alvaro Uribe gave to Washington last month despite howls from many Colombians. Its hangars can take 100 aircraft and there is accommodation for 2,000 personnel. Its main runway was constructed in the 1980s after Colombia bought a force of Israeli Kfir warplanes. At 3,500 metres, it is 500 metres longer than the longest in Britain, the former US base outside Campbeltown, Scotland. The USAF is awaiting Barack Obama’s signature on a bill, already passed by the US Congress, to devote $46m to works at the base.

Many Colombians are upset at the agreement between the US and Colombia that governs – or, perhaps more accurately, fails to govern – US use of Palanquero and the other six bases. The Colombian Council of State, a non-partisan constitutional body with the duty to comment on legislation, has said that the agreements are unfair to Colombia since they put the US and not the host country in the driving seat, and that they should be redrafted in accordance with the Colombian constitution.

The immunities being granted to US soldiers are, the council adds, against the 1961 Vienna Convention; the agreement can be changed by future regulations which can totally transform it; and the permission given to the US to install satellite receivers for radio and television without the usual licences and fees is “without any valid reason”.

President Uribe, whose studies at St Antony’s College, Oxford, were subsidised by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, has chosen to disregard the Council of State.

Pakistan to US: Don’t surge in Afghanistan, talk to Taliban

Pakistan contradicts US Gen. McChrystal’s strategy of pulling back from Afghanistan borders, and disagrees with the strategy of a surge to defeat the Taliban.

By Saeed Shah | McClatchy Newspapers

Islamabad, Pakistan – The Pakistani government has some advice the Obama administration may not want to hear as it contemplates sending additional US troops to neighboring Afghanistan: Negotiate with Taliban leaders and restrain India.

Pakistan embraces US efforts to stabilize the region and worries that a hasty US withdrawal would create chaos. But Pakistani officials worry that thousands of additional American soldiers and Marines would send Taliban forces retreating into Pakistan, where they’re not welcome.

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani’s office said Friday that he told visiting CIA Director Leon Panetta of “Pakistan’s concerns relating to the possible surge of the US and ISAF forces in Afghanistan which may entail negative implications for the situation in Baluchistan,” the Pakistani province that borders Afghanistan to the south.

The Pakistanis’ advice is almost diametrically opposed to the strategy outlined by Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal, the US military commander in Afghanistan: Don’t send additional forces to protect Afghan cities, but send them to outposts along the Pakistani border — where McChrystal has withdrawn troops.

It’s just one example of how Pakistan, a critical US ally in the struggle against Islamist extremists and a major recipient of American military aid, continues to deal differently with the violence that threatens not only the US-backed government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai, but also impoverished, nuclear-armed Pakistan.

The two countries’ divergent views of the threat posed by Islamist extremists, and the Obama administration’s efforts to press Pakistan to move against groups that menace Afghanistan have produced strains between the two countries and between Pakistan’s civilian government and its powerful military and Inter Services Intelligence agency (ISI) — and a growing drumbeat of Pakistani allegations about alleged nefarious CIA activities in Pakistan.

“The Pakistanis say some things in public — often for reasons related to internal politics, it seems — that they don’t focus on in private,” said a senior US intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because intelligence matters are classified. “That’s not to say that we see eye-to-eye on everything behind closed doors, but both sides realize that — whatever the disagreements of the moment might be — the long-term partnership is essential. After all, Pakistani contributions to counterterrorism since 9/11 have been decisive, and our government recognizes that.”

Don’t escalate, negotiate

Instead of escalating the war in Afghanistan, however, top Pakistani officials are pressing the administration to try to negotiate a political settlement with top Taliban commanders that would allow the US to exit Afghanistan.

Pakistani officials argue that such a negotiating strategy can’t work unless the rebel leadership is involved, right up to Jalaluddin Haqqani, the head of the most dangerous insurgent faction, and Mullah Mohammed Omar, the one-eyed founder of the Afghan Taliban and Osama bin Laden’s ally and host.

Because Pakistan is a longtime patron of the Taliban and of the Haqqani network, Pakistani officials think they could broker a deal to reduce Afghan President Hamid Karzai to a figurehead leader and divide power between the Pashtun Taliban and Afghanistan’s Tajik, Uzbek, and Hazara minorities.

US and some Pakistani officials, however, are skeptical, arguing that the Taliban have little incentive to negotiate when their strength and sway in Afghanistan is growing and public and international support for the US-led war in Afghanistan is waning.

Najmuddin Shaikh, formerly the top bureaucrat in the Pakistani Foreign Ministry, said the Taliban could be brought to the negotiating table if they saw a greater American military commitment and more investments in the Afghan countryside.

“It’s a little premature for talks [with the Taliban],” Shaikh said. “There has to be a change in the ground situation, things happening in the next six to eight months that shows the ‘ink spots’ strategy – [McChrystal's idea of protecting Afghan population centers] – is taking hold, that some foot soldiers are being weaned away, then talks become possible.”

Nevertheless, behind the scenes talks with mid-level Taliban officials already have begun, and Pakistani officials think they could rapidly accelerate now that Karzai has begun his second term.

“We’ve already been talking to them [the Taliban],” said a senior Pakistani official in Islamabad, who couldn’t be named because of the sensitivity of the issue. “If the US helps the process, some arrangements can be worked out for political reconciliation. I’m not for a moment suggesting that it’s an easy task, but otherwise you will be fighting these people for the next hundred years.”

Money talks

The United States and other NATO forces also favor talking to some Taliban, but they focus on “non-ideological” insurgents who can be peeled away, partly through bribery. Retired British general Graeme Lamb was appointed for this task in August, but so far the effort has produced little success.

“The Americans have wasted a lot of time over this ‘moderate Taliban’ idea. It is never going to pan out. It misunderstands the Taliban phenomenon,” said Simbal Khan, an analyst at Institute of Strategic Studies, a policy institute funded by the Pakistani government. “If you try to break off elements with cash, they’ll take your money and still fight you.”

Pakistan worries about India, not Al Qaeda

The Pakistani military and ISI still consider arch rival India, not militant Islam, the main threat, and unlike US officials, Pakistani officials distinguish between the Taliban and other militant groups whose target is Afghanistan and groups that are seeking to impose their extreme brand of Islam on Pakistan.

Pakistan has for eight years declined to mount any serious pursuit of bin Laden and the other top Al Qaeda leaders who sought shelter in Pakistan after the 2001 US invasion drove them out of Afghanistan.

Pakistan also has quietly tolerated the presence of Mullah Omar, who US officials said is based near the Baluchistan city of Quetta and shuttling between there and Karachi, Pakistan’s largest city and a key financial and logistics center for Islamic militants. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because intelligence on terrorist groups is classified. Officially, Pakistan denies that bin Laden and Omar are in the country.

Pakistan’s laissez-faire attitude toward Al Qaeda, Omar and Afghan militants such as Haqqani doesn’t appear likely to change in the face of stepped-up American pressure.

US national security adviser James Jones last week delivered a message to Gilani and other Pakistani officials from President Barack Obama, who urged Pakistan to take action against Afghan militant groups operating from Pakistani soil.

The Pakistanis politely told Jones that Pakistan is doing all it can, and that it must concentrate on groups that are attacking Pakistan, rather than those that are a threat in Afghanistan. Gilani’s office said he told Jones that Pakistan’s “forces were over-stretched because of continuous tension on the eastern border” with India.

Gilani’s office said Friday that, “The new Afghan policy of the US government should not disturb the regional balance in South Asia.”

Pakistani officials say that relations with India remain dangerously strained, requiring military resources on Pakistan’s eastern border. Pakistan is also concerned about India’s growing influence in Afghanistan, which Islamabad fears is part of a move to encircle Pakistan.

With Pakistani forces already fighting the Pakistani Taliban in South Waziristan, the country fears opening too many battlefronts and furiously rejects Washington’s constant mantra of “do more.”

US officials say the Pakistani military is obsessed with the Indian border, where they say there’s no active threat, and reluctant to address the threats that are a product of Pakistan’s refusal to quash the insurgency on Pakistan’s western border with Afghanistan.

“When we get into the position of stabilizing, then we can help the other side (the US),” said a senior Pakistani military officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the issue publicly. “There are limits of our power. You cannot be expected to use your force against all [militant] groups because then your power will be diluted. That’s exactly what’s happening on the other side [to the US in Afghanistan], they’re all over the place and virtually in control of nothing.”

(Shah is a McClatchy special correspondent.)

Political minefield awaits health bill

[If we are lucky, none of it will make it to the other side.]

Political minefield awaits health bill

Following the Thanksgiving recess, the U.S. Senate is braced for a difficult debate on the $848 billion healthcare reform bill.

//

BY DAVID LIGHTMAN

McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The Senate is ready to begin a volatile, high-stakes healthcare debate that’s sure to be punctuated by tense and unpredictable battles over some of the most incendiary issues in American politics today.

Debate on the $848 billion bill to overhaul the nation’s healthcare system is expected to start next week, after the Senate returns from its Thanksgiving recess, and many lawmakers already consider it a golden opportunity to win long-sought projects and local aid for their constituents.

The flashpoints will be familiar — abortion, federal deficits, government involvement in healthcare decisions and other hot topics — and many Democrats already have said they want to see, and are well-positioned to seek, changes in the bill.

In fact, the legislation is moving ahead only because it got 60 votes Saturday night to proceed — the minimum needed — two weeks after the House of Representatives’ version squeaked through by five votes.

“I, along with others, expect to have legitimate opportunities to influence the healthcare reform legislation that is voted on by the Senate later this year or early next year,” said Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., who was Saturday’s 60th vote to break a Republican filibuster and start debating the bill.

Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., was the 59th vote, and the bill could provide her state with an estimated $300 million in help for healthcare for the poor.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., got the bill altered Friday so more people would have access to its health exchanges, marketplaces where consumers could shop for coverage and rates. Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., was said to be pleased that the bill lacked changes in federal antitrust law protection for the insurance industry.

They all voted yes Saturday, saying they were motivated by a desire to let debate proceed, but many Democrats still had qualms.

“There is a great deal more work that needs to be done,” Landrieu said, particularly to help small businesses.

Moderates like Nelson, Landrieu, Lincoln and Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., have warned that they might not support the final bill.

Lieberman said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he voted to end debate only because he wants a chance to amend it.

Specifically, he said, he wants to remove the so-called public option provision, under which some consumers would be offered an optional government insurance plan that would compete with private insurers.

“I don’t want to fix our healthcare system in a way that creates more of an economic crisis,” he said, predicting that a public plan would drive up coverage costs, not lower them.

 

Democrats can expect little help from Republicans, who stuck together Saturday to oppose proceeding and vowed that Democrats would pay a political price if the bill remained largely intact.

“This 20-pound bill is the size of most people’s turkeys next week,” said Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., “and that’s what most people in North Carolina think of this bill.”

The measure would require most people to obtain insurance coverage.

It would set up health insurance exchanges and offer them the alternative of a government-run program, or public option. In most cases, people would pay fines if they didn’t get coverage.

At least four areas are likely to be major flashpoints:

• Abortion. At least four Democratic senators are considered staunch abortion foes, and they’re likely to be uncomfortable with the Senate bill’s provisions that allow abortion coverage in federally subsidized plans, as long as only private funds are used to pay for such coverage. The House legislation is more restrictive.

• Public option. The plan in the Senate bill, which would allow states to opt out, makes a lot of Democrats nervous; at the moment, it lacks the 60 votes needed to overcome procedural hurdles.

“Who pays if it fails to live up to expectations?” asked Lincoln.

• Budget deficits. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates that the bill would cut $130 billion from the deficit over 10 years, but many experts and legislators are skeptical that it can achieve that without cuts in Medicare and other programs that politicians are unlikely to make.

• Affordability. “Many Americans will be required to purchase health insurance that is more expensive . . . than the coverage they currently have,” said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a GOP moderate.

The CBO did find that people enrolling in the public option “would typically have premiums that were somewhat higher than the average premiums for the private plans” people could buy through the new exchanges.

Despite all these controversies, Democratic leaders said that near-universal coverage legislation, a goal of party leaders since the 1940s, has now proceeded farther than ever before.

British Disinformation on the Saudi Aggression in Yemen

[The writer does her best to convince us that the Saudis must defend themselves in Yemen because of the threat from "al Qaida" if they don't.  People are not believing this kind of crap anymore; many of us know that the Saudis are "al Qaida," or at least its creators.]

Saudi Arabia goes to war

Mai Yamani

guardian.co.uk

A crucially important conflict, woefully under-reported in the west, has now come to a head in the Middle East. In response to an ongoing fight that could spill out beyond the Arabian peninsula, Saudi Arabia has entered into direct war with the Houthi rebels in northern Yemen.

Saudi military intervention marks the first time in the kingdom’s history that its army has crossed its borders without an ally. Previously, the kingdom engaged only in proxy wars. The Saudis used royalist Yemenis to fight Nasser’s Egypt in the 1960s, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein to fight Iran in the 1980s, and the US to fight Iraq in the 1990s.

Indeed, Saudi Arabia has fought every “ism” that has sought to dominate the Middle East, including Nasser’s pan-Arabism, communism, and today’s Islamism of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas, the terrorism of al-Qaida and the Shi’ism of Iran. The tools it relied upon were oil money and Wahhabi Islam. During the 1980s, Saudi Arabia spent more than $75bn on the propagation of Wahhabi doctrine, funding schools, mosques, and charities across the Islamic world in an effort to bolster its influence.

A large share of these resources was reserved for its back garden, Yemen. Thousands of schools were established, covering every city and village in Yemen. Saudi Arabia created in Yemen a strong Wahhabi current that was politically and ideologically loyal to the ruling al-Saud. Indeed, Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, used imported Wahhabism to defeat his domestic opponents – first the communists, then the Houthis – despite being a Zaidi Shi’a.

But now this policy has backfired, with the Houthis openly rebelling against Wahhabi encroachment on their religious ideology, while themselves encroaching on neighbouring Saudi territory as they fight the government.

After four months of fighting, Saleh’s domestic forces had failed to contain the revolt. So, unable to prosecute the war on his own, Saleh turned a domestic rebellion into a sectarian and security threat to the entire Arabian peninsula, thereby manoeuvring the Saudis – eager from the outset to help Saleh, whom they view as their proxy – into providing military backing.

The Saudis’ justification for intervening is that their national territory is under threat. But that argument is weak, and there is no national support for this war in either country. Rather, Saudi military intervention reflects the kingdom’s wariness toward a hostile Shia region on its southern border, especially given that the same tribes and sects that populate northern Yemen dominate the southern Saudi regions of Jizan and Najran. The Saudi state doubts the loyalty of its own Ismaili and Zaidi populations, whose natural sympathies are suspected to lie with the Houthis.

Southern Saudi Arabia and northern Yemen have thus become a microcosm of the broader civil war playing out in the Muslim world. But Saudi Arabia’s intervention in the conflict has also turned what had been a cold war – a war of position and influence within the region – into a hot war with international repercussions.

The principal conflict is between the Saudis and Iran, which has established powerful political bridgeheads in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, and Gaza. Saleh played a key role in reinforcing Saudi perceptions of a dangerous Iranian security threat, thereby helping to turn the Houthi rebellion into a geopolitical conflict.

Both the Saudi and Yemeni governments have also claimed that there are strong links between the Houthis and al-Qaida, thereby gaining American support. But the Houthis are not terrorists. Abdul Malik al-Houthi, a leader of the insurgency in Yemen’s Sa’dah region, said this month that the Houthis, who are Zaidi Shia, are ideologically and strategically antithetical to Wahhabi Sunni al-Qaida.

At the same time, al-Qaida has benefited from the conflict, as the chaos on the rugged and mountainous 1,500km border allows it to smuggle arms and fighters into Saudi Arabia in an attempt to destabilise the kingdom. Sunni areas of Yemen – a weak state, if not a failed one – have become a safe haven for al-Qaida.

But the Saudis are unlikely to succeed militarily in Yemen. Yemen’s army of 700,000 could not suppress the Houthi rebellion, despite five attempts since 2004. Now they are leaving Saudi Arabia’s untested army of 200,000 men to do the job for them. And, while the Saudis are currently relying on their air force, a full-scale land battle will have to follow – on the same harsh terrain that helped defeated Nasser’s battle-hardened troops in the 1960s.

The Houthis, for their part, lack aircraft and armoured vehicles, but have tactical advantages owing to their numbers, experience of the terrain, and skilful use of land mines. They also benefit from disciplined training, reminiscent of Hezbollah’s activities in Lebanon.

Saleh has declared that there is no end to this war, but a peaceful solution at this stage would put the Houthis in a stronger position to win their demands, which primarily concern the preservation of culture and identity. For example, the Houthis want a Zaidi university.

Is there a way out? Qatar acted as a mediator last year, and persuaded the Yemeni government to accept a ceasefire. Syria, which enjoys good relations with Yemen, has also offered to mediate. Each of these offers was unacceptable to the Saudi rulers, who fear that submitting the conflict to outside mediation would diminish the kingdom’s regional power. For this reason, Iran’s offer to mediate was seen as the ultimate provocation.

So the war continues, with no immediate possibility of a peaceful solution – and with the policy failure of Saudi Arabia’s military intervention eroding its position in the Arab world. The dilemma for the Saudis is that now the damage will be much greater if they do not crush the Houthis, as this would embolden al-Qaida. This is the biggest threat facing Saudi Arabia, but its rulers’ ill-considered war strategy has only brought that threat closer.

MK ULTRA, PROJECT TALENT

Duncan O’Finioan and David Corso, both survivors of the first generation of the US Military’s highly classified super-soldier program, take the platform to talk about MK-ULTRA and PROJECT TALENT, a…

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