Friday, November 2, 2007

In this Issue:

The No-News from Iraq
By Lt. Colonel Gordon Cucullu

The Cult of Israel Hatred
From: Guide to the Perplexed Blog
By Joel Pollak

The No-News from Iraq

By Lt. Colonel Gordon Cucullu
Gerard Group International Director of Intelligence

If the old saw "no news is good news" has any truth to it, then things must be going very well indeed in the Iraq war. Increasingly obvious signs of success as a result of the so-called "surge" under the able leadership of General David Petraeus have all but rendered the mainstream media speechless on the issue. From the days of constant television showing black, smoking video from burning car bombs in marketplaces we have now reached the stage of "if it doesn't bleed it doesn't lead." When, for example was the last time you saw a detailed listing of U.S. and Iraqi casualties in the top right column of the NY Times or Washington Post?

So forget good news. You aren't going to hear about it. This is unfortunate because many of our less-informed countrymen will be left with the impression that the war is going poorly and that America is suffering unbearable human and resource losses. In fact, the reverse is true.

Friendly casualties are lower than they have been in years, across the board: U.S. and allied forces, Iraqi security forces, and Iraqi civilian losses are all at near-record lows. Contrasted to this time last year and the comparison is staggering. And for all the recent caterwauling from craven Foreign Service Officers about a tour in Iraq being a "death sentence and you know it" so far the State Department has not lost anyone except contractors hired at extravagant cost to protect its officers. Can anyone say "Blackwater"?

On the rise, however, are al Qaeda Iraq (AQI) losses, although expect to see them falling in the near future. Declining not because the al Qaeda foreign fighters are not being hunted down and killed, rest assured that is indeed happening. But AQI casualty reports will decline simply because target populations are declining. Fewer and fewer recruits are coming through Syria into Iraq to join the fight.

There are reasons, of course. Huge attrition rates have reduced AQI presence in Iraq dramatically. Partially as a result of these high losses, the brightness of the al Qaeda's appeal among foreign fighters from Saudi Arabia, Chechnya, and other disturbed places around the region has dimmed. Yes, the terrorist training camps in Syria are still functioning and Damascus does little practically to impede transit of its territory by foreign jihadists. But after a time the pool of suicide bombers is exhausted. Those radicals who prefer to fight the infidel face to face begin to seek more accommodating ground. Hence a resurgence of fighting in Chechnya and Afghanistan.

According to Rear Admiral Greg Smith, spokesman for the Multi-National Force - Iraq, this largely unreported good news is attributable to the strategy General Petraeus brought with him on this his third tour of duty in Iraq. "More than a majority in Anbar Province area have morally and physically rejected al Qaeda," Smith reported in a conference call on October 31. "The movement called Concerned Local Citizens - often referred to as the Anbar Awakening - has now spread across the entire country." This is decidedly good news for those who love freedom and extraordinarily bad new for Al Qaeda Iraq.

"There are more than 120 separate Concerned Local Citizens groups around the country," Greg notes, "Many in the predominately Sunni areas that were former AQI strongholds." By rejecting the terrorists and embracing a solution within the Iraqi government, tribal leaders and sheiks - still the key opinion formers in the new republic - have "tilted the kinetics" hard in the direction of a non-violent solution to Iraqi problems.

How are we seeing this? In many ways. One of the most significant is targeting. "We continue to go after foreign fighters," Smith said, "and have expanded our targeting to include AQI propaganda arm, money laundering and finance, and operations." According to Smith "with the capture of the eighth AQI media cell, al Qaeda's ability to broadcast or make propaganda videos inside Iraq is severely degraded."

Not to overstate the success. "We've still got a long way to go," Smith affirms. When asked how the tempo of returning Iraqi provinces to the responsibility of Iraqi security forces Smith was cautiously optimistic. "Eight of 18 provinces are now under Iraqi control," he noted. "We expect two more to transfer shortly." What about the final 8?

"They won't be transferred this year, although we had originally hoped to achieve that goal. However, we expect that not far into 2008 the transfers will be complete."

How about the sectarian militias that media pundits have gloomily characterized as portending a civil war? "Moqtadar al Sadr has ordered his followers to support the Iraqi government," Smith notes. His forces were among those considered most threatening to stability.

Jaysh al Mahdi (JAM) forces, under the titular control of Moqtadar al Sadr, were described in a report to Congress in August 2006 as "increasingly linked to retaliatory violence." According to Smith, JAM has now assumed a much diminished role. A returning British general officer described JAM activities in Basra and the south of Iraq as drifting increasingly into a criminal, mob style rule rather than one that is ideological, Shi'a based. He characterized activities as more "mafia-like" than religious, and observed that from the "glass-half-full" perspective the various organized crime gangs were at least committed to keeping Iranian agents out of their business affairs and hence out of the area.

This secularization movement seems to be growing rapidly within JAM and the Mahdi Army community. While controlling criminal gangs presents its own set of challenges, at least for the moment the threat of actual civil war or breakup of the country seems increasingly remote.

As Smith confirmed, "I have spoken with representatives high and low from all over Iraq and none favor partition or breakup. They all identify themselves first as Iraq citizens and then as part of a religious affiliation or tribe." If true then this is indeed good news, at least for those other than NBC that ponderously announced last year that after "due consideration" it had decided that "a civil war exists in Iraq."

On the infrastructure side, Smith explained that while electric power requirements still exceed demand there is more power generated than in pre-war Iraq. "Power shortages continue from time to time in Baghdad," he elaborated, "but that is because in the old days Saddam directed that most of the power be allocated to Baghdad. Now we are spreading it across the entire country." In effect all ships will rise with the higher electric tide.

So that's the good news from Iraq. Not violent, sexy, or especially titillating, but strongly indicative of a rising confidence level and improving security situation among a people who have lived far too long with a knife at their throats.

The Cult of Israel Hatred

From: Guide to the Perplexed Blog
By Joel Pollak

Printed with the express permission of the author.

Tonight I headed on down to the Old South Church [in Boston] to attend the opening of the Sabeel conference on "The Apartheid Paradigm in Palestine-Israel." The church is a beautiful building; what a shame it was to see it defiled by such hatred. The pews were packed with people who dislike Israel in one way or another; one guy wore a t-shirt depicting a burning Israeli flag.

I walked around the room to see where the microphones for question-and-answer would be. There weren't any, and at the start of the evening we were told that if we wanted to ask a question we'd have to fill out an index card and hand it to one of the ushers. Screened in advance! I should have known. I complained to Phyllis Bennis, one of the moderators, who told me: "This is not an open discussion." Indeed!

I sat down in a pew near the front and opened the folder of conference materials. The back page of the official program was entitled "Apartheid?" and was filled with quotes and maps aimed at proving the Israel-apartheid analogy. They had a line from Jimmy Carter, a line from Archbishop Desmond Tutu (the conference's keynote speaker), and a line from-no, wait, really?-Nelson Mandela:

"Apartheid is a crime against humanity. Israel has deprived millions of Palestinians of their liberty and property. It has perpetuated a system of gross racial discrimination and inequality. It has systematically incarcerated and tortured thousands of Palestinians, contrary to the rules of international law. It has, in particular, waged a war against a civilian population, in particular children."

Sounds rather damning, doesn't it? And who could disagree with Nelson Mandela? There's only one problem: Nelson Mandela never said, wrote or endorsed those words . They are the creation of an Arab journalist named Arjan El Fassed. When I exposed El Fassed's fraud earlier this year, he claimed: "There is no possible basis for Pollak to say I intended people to believe the memo was written by anyone other than myself."

In spite of El Fassed's admission, the Israel-haters continue to use his Mandela quote to promote their views. But El Fassed's "Mandela Memo" is a fraud-just as much a lie as the Israel-apartheid equation itself. The entire evening was built on such lies. Keynote speaker Naim Ateek, for example, claimed that the Israeli government has an "intense desire to ethnically cleanse Palestinians."

But I'm jumping ahead. The evening began with an address by the Right Reverend M. Thomas Shaw, the local Episcopalian bishop, who equated the anti-Israel movement with the anti-apartheid movement: it is "like any movement we've had for justice in human history," he said. "God smiles on this assembly," he added. This was a feature throughout the evening: religious blessing of hatred against Israel.

After a hymn-"Guide my feet, Lord"-Archbishop Tutu stood up and recited an invocation. "Lead us from prejudice to truth," he prayed. Amen, I muttered. I flipped through the Bible in front of me and landed on an appropriate verse, Psalm 36:3: "The words of their mouths are mischief and deceit; they have ceased to act wisely and do good."

A Muslim cleric, Imam Mahdi Bray, then stood up and gave a silly speech about how he had personally experienced apartheid because he had grown up as a black American in the South and his house had been firebombed et cetera. He did not explain how that qualified him to speak about Israel, but nevertheless went on and on in fiery style about the rights of the dispersed Palestinian people.

Next up was Sara Roy. She devoted most of her speech to attacking Jews, telling the audience that Jewish leaders exploit the Holocaust and other examples of Jewish suffering like the Inquisition. (?!?) She then went on at length about "my Holocaust background," how her parents were survivors and lived through "loneliness and longing," and how that formed her opinions of Israel. (Hello, exploitation?)

Israelis and Jews, she said, are "racist," aside from a few exceptions. Though Jews have a strong tradition of dissent, it is unacceptable among Jews to admit "that Palestinians share our humanity," she said. Spoon-fed this slander from a person with an unimpeachable "Holocaust background," the audience swallowed every word and rewarded her with a spirited burst of applause.

Ateek was the last to speek, and was introduced by Hilary Rantisi, who claimed that the event organizers had come under pressure to "disinvite" him. She attacked his critics but did not attempt to explain his religious bigotry, reported recently by Jeff Jacoby in the Boston Globe (whose article was distributed with the conference materials, along with a defense of the event by a local reform Rabbi).

Ateek said that he opposed violence on both sides, and supported a two-state solution and Israel's right to live within the 1967 borders (which only a handful of people in the room applauded). However, he said that the government of Israel doesn't listen and refuses to end the "evil" occupation. He then quoted a Ha'aretz article in which Israeli Jews themselves had used the word "apartheid."

He equated the Hebrew word hafradah ("separation"), used by some Israelis to describe the security barrier, with the Afrikaans apartheid. He claimed this was a sign that Israelis now support an apartheid policy. (What hafradah actually refers to is separation from land, not people-from the occupied territories, not from Arabs, who are more integrated into Israel now than ever before.)

There was a break, and after confirming that there were to be no questions from the floor, I decided to leave. Karl Popper once said that a theory is only scientific if it is falsifiable, i.e. if it is open to being disproved. In the same way, any political idea which is not open to challenge and debate cannot possibly be true. However, if you repeat it often enough, as the saying goes, people start to believe it.

Fraudulent accusations against the Jewish state, based on fabricated evidence. Religious endorsement of hatred, couched in the rhetoric of social justice. False caricatures and stereotypes of an entire people. The parading of token Jews to verify everything said from the stage. Sound familiar? They used to have a word for that. But you can't use "antisemitism" anymore. So I'll just call it a disgrace.

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