Forum

Bonjour,
Un bon article, avec quelques formules aux quelles j\‘adhère.
Du coup, je vous mets en \“sujet\” le titre d\‘u article que j\‘ai écrit, il y a 2 ans.
A bientôt, peut-être à ^paris
Michel Tibon-Cornillot

Si Mr Sarkozy était écarté de la présidence, il pourrait s’exhiber fructueusement dans un cirque,
en se présentant comme le roi des caméléons.

Les Français qui se sont montrés tellement lucides devant le piège que leur avait tendu Me Giscard, sous forme d’un traité pour une constitution, pourraient fort bien penser que les mues de l’animal sarkozien auraient beaucoup de chances
de continuer, une fois la présidence acquise.

Le karcher de p’tit Nico est remisé, pour l’instant, dans le placard, mais pourrait
fort bien en ressortir après l’élection.

Faisons confiance à la sagesse populaire
(et non pas populiste, SVP).

Solana calls for EU-level debate on missile shield

29.03.2007 - 17:41 CET | By Andrew Rettman

EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS -

EU states should hold a joint debate on US plans to install a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, the EU’s top man on foreign policy, Javier Solana, told MEPs in Brussels on Thursday (29 March), in a lively meeting that opened the question of EU treaty limitations on national sovereignty in defence.

“The EU is not a defence alliance, we all know this, but it does have an external security policy and it can and should debate this subject,” Mr Solana said in a prelude to a potential formal debate among EU heads of state or foreign ministers in future. “I think that’s what most political leaders in the EU want,” he added, noting the US plan could “affect” EU-Russia relations.

“We’re not calling for people to take a decision on the subject, but it would be a mistake not to talk about it,” he added, tiptoeing through Title V of the EU treaty on the limits of EU competency on security issues. “On security matters, the Treaty allocates sovereignty to member states. But that sovereignty has to be compatible with our general interests in security.”

Article 17 of the treaty states the EU “shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy” of member states. But articles 11 and 16 also state that EU countries “shall refrain from any action which is contrary to the interests of the union or likely to impair its effectiveness as a cohesive force” as well as obliging members to “inform and consult” each other on defence plans.

Thursday’s debate comes in the context of the Czech Republic the day earlier opening formal negotiations with the US on the details of the radar bases the country is to host. US president George Bush also spoke with Russia’s Vladimir Putin by telephone on Wednesday to offer to hold detailed talks on the scheme, amid Russian complaints it has not been properly consulted so far.

Polish conservative MEP and the head of the parliament’s foreign affairs committee, Jacek Saryusz-Wolksi, backed Mr Solana’s idea, saying “we [the EU] do not have the competency to decide on missile defence, but we do have competency to discuss missile defence.” He invited Mr Solana and NATO head Jaap de Hoop Scheffer to debate the issue in his committee on 7 May.

German conservative MEP and the former head of the foreign affairs committee, Elmar Brok, also supported Mr Solana’s plan. “People clamour for solidarity in the energy sector. But we have to show solidarity in other areas as well and have a clear common position,” he said.

Poles and Czechs bristle
Polish and Czech deputies who are also members of the two states’ main ruling parties, Law and Justice and ODS, respectively, bristled at the idea they are putting EU security in danger, however.

The US, Polish and Czech line on the missile defence scheme is that it is far too small to affect Russia’s nuclear deterrent, that it will protect the wider EU from any missiles fired by rogue states like Iran, and that it cements the EU-US alliance.

“The danger is that a number of EU states are adopting the Russian view…relying on false arguments to divide the European Union,” Law and Justice deputy Konrad Szymanski said. “I’m surprised that former chancellor Schroeder’s SPD party is parroting the arguments of Vladimir Putin. It would make more sense for it to follow the arguments of the United Kingdom and Poland.”

The SPD reference is linked to German SPD foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who has criticised the US plan. Mr Schroeder, an intimate friend of Putin who became an employee of Russian energy firm Gazprom, is a deeply disliked figure in Poland. Mr Steinmeier, the former cabinet chief of Mr Schroeder, is seen by Warsaw as a Schroeder proxy in Berlin’s grand coalition government.

Other Polish MEPs were during Thursday’s debate talking of anti-American “hysteria” and “demagoguery.”

“We all know this is not against Russia and Russia knows this as well,” Czech ODS member Jan Zahradil said. “The implementation of the missile shield will strengthen the trans-Atlantic alliance, and I hope this is not the [real] Russian concern. The EU does have its limits in terms of national security and this is one of those limits,” he added.

Several conservative EPP-ED group members also expressed fears about the missile shield, but it was left to the European socialists, liberals and greens to really hammer against the Warsaw-Prague line. “How about a dialogue about not deploying these systems?” German socialist group leader Martin Schulz asked, calling for the $58 billion price tag to be spent on poverty eradication instead.

US could split EU
Romanian socialist Adrian Severin called for a political climate in which the US and Russia can work in a “global partnership” for peace, in ideas similar to Russian analyst Sergei Karaganov’s concept of an “effective coalition of powerful and responsible nations” to act as world policemen alongside the UN. Lithuanian socialist Justas Paleckis urged an EU, NATO and Russia-wide debate.

“The message we are sending to the Russians is we are engaging in a new arms race,” ALDE leader and British deputy Graham Watson said, with some MEPs turning the Polish argument on its head by accusing the US of trying to split Europe by promoting defence unilateralism in a conversation reminiscent of the 1980s when Europe saw itself caught in a tug-of-war between the then two superpowers.

“There is a big risk of us being exploited,” Belgian liberal MEP Annemie Neyts said. “We might end up being split up by the two superpowers.” French green group leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit added that “if this is supposed to be against Iran it’s totally ridiculous. If Iran wanted to attack us, they have suicide attackers to do that with…once again the Americans are deciding unilaterally what a part of Europe needs.”

Does EU have a foreign policy?
The debate reinforced the idea the EU has no common foreign policy today despite the limited “Common Foreign and Security Policy” provisions of the EU treaty. The notion that the lack of firm legal basis for foreign cooperation has been aggravated by 2004 enlargement was also fortified, amid classic political divisions of Russia-friendly EU states such as Germany, France and Italy and the pro-US, Russia-wary club of the UK, Poland and the Czech Republic.

Mr Solana tried to quash this line of thinking however, pointing to his own intervention in an Arab League summit in Riyadh on Wednesday, where he plied the EU line on Palestine and Lebanon.

The EU foreign policy chief also spoke on the critical issue of Iran nuclear enrichment, not only on behalf of Europe, but also on behalf of the five permanent members of the UN security council - the US, the UK, France, Russia and China - as well as Germany.

“I have just returned from Riyadh and I wish some of you had been there with me. When we are there in these meetings, we count, we really count,” he said. “Never before in our common history has something like this taken place,” he said on his job as an envoy for the five UN powers.

“Whatever is the fate of the constitutional treaty, you are our foreign minister,” Poland’s Mr Saryusz-Wolski remarked.

Raining On The ABM Parade

http://www.spacewar.com/reports/Raining_On_The_ABM_Parade_999.html

If you thought the United States had a secure, state-of-the-art ballistic missile defense shield deployed around Fort Greely, Alaska, that could have shot down any North Korean ICBM during the crisis last July, think again.

Pyongyang’s attempt to test fire an ambitious Taepodong-2 intercontinental ballistic missile failed and the ambitious giant rocket exploded not long after take-off. But at least it got off the ground. The much-vaunted Ground-based Midcourse Interceptors, or GBIs, around Fort Greely never even got that far.

For this week, the Project on Government Oversight, or POGO—a non-government U.S. watchdog body founded in 1981—reported that several of the key interceptors could never even have been launched, not because of North Korea sabotage, or sabotage by anyone else, but because of rain.

The POGO report is quite extraordinary and will be quoted from at considerable length to assure our readers we are not hyping it, or exaggerating its conclusions in any way.

“A significant portion of the U.S. missile defense capability was wiped out during the summer of 2006 because torrential rains caused ground-based interceptor silos to be damaged by flood waters,” POGO said in a statement.

“Boeing, the contractor that is at least partly responsible for failing to protect the silos, will most likely still receive an estimated $38 million to repair the silos and a $100 million no-bid contract to build more silos. Boeing would also receive a $7 million award fee added to the contract,” the group said.

POGO noted that “the flooding occurred during a three-week period between the end of June and early July 2006 when Ft. Greely received several inches of rain. Ft. Greely and Vandenberg Air Force Base in California house the nation’s only Missile Defense Agency interceptor missiles.”

“The flooding damaged 25 percent of the U.S. interceptor missiles’ launch capability. These silos house the interceptor missiles that would be used to attempt to intercept a missile aimed at the United States. No interceptors were in the flooded silos,” the group’s report said.

POGO also reported that the flooding debacle had set off a fierce row between the U.S. military and Boeing, the prime contractor for building the Fort Greely interceptor fields.

“Insiders report that Boeing, the lead contractor responsible for building the fields disputes its role in the disaster,” the POGO report said. “Boeing argues that NORTHCOM, the U.S. military command responsible for defending North America, is primarily responsible because it ordered Boeing to stop working on the interceptor fields in case the missiles were needed to respond to a North Korean missile launch. “

POGO said “Boeing’s internal assessment shows that one of the missile fields has seven flooded interceptor silos—with up to 63 feet of water in one silo and 50 feet in another.

The group noted that so far Fort Greely houses 26 launch silos and that “as of Feb. 7, 2007, 13 interceptors had been installed.”

POGO noted another aspect of the dispute between Boeing and NORTHCOM. The giant contractor claims it was going ahead with plans to protect the silos from falling rain,” sources told the group.

“However, these same sources say it is questions whether the silos could have handled the rainfall anyway because they are poorly designed. In addition, an environmental impact study of the facilities at Fort Greely notes there is “little rainfall in the region,” the watchdog body said

POGO noted that the annual bill for the GBI program currently runs at around $9 billion a year.

Seven Silo Interface Vaults, or SIVs, beside the silos housing the GBIs were also flooded, “two of them by as much as 15 feet of water,” the POGO report said. It noted that the SIVs are essential to the successful maintenance and operational capabilities of the ABMs.

“Boeing’s internal assessment reports that three SIVs must have all electronic and mechanical systems replaced. Four other SIVs have partial damage. One SIV was so damaged that it shifted vertically in the ground like a house shifting off its foundation,” POGO said.

The POGO report throws remarkable new light on the recent surprise request by the U.S. Missile Defense Agency, or MBA, for funding “to build an entirely new missile field of 20 missiles, along with associated support facilities,” as the POGO report puts it.

We had previously reported, without comment, this request in our companion BMD Watch column. The POGO report suggests that the real reason for the new missile field was “to avoid the problem of working near missiles in undamaged silos. Also it is not cost effective to refurbish the damaged silos and SIVs.”

Readers of these columns will recall this is not the first time we have monitored reports of the failure of crucial, state-of-the-art anti-ballistic missile interceptor systems because the concrete silos housing them could not keep out something as common, old-fashioned and low-tech as plain water.

In February 2005, an ABM interceptor failed to ignite and launch from a silo on the Pacific island of Kwajalein in an MDA test to intercept an ICBM in flight. One of the three lateral seismic support arms holding for the interceptor in the silo did not completely retract because some salt water had got into the bottom of the silo after it had been modified to accept the operational booster configuration and corroded a hinge mechanism on the support arm.

Source: United Press International

Solana calls for EU-level debate on missile shield
29.03.2007 - 17:41 CET | By Andrew Rettman
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - EU states should hold a joint debate on US plans to install a missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic, the EU’s top man on foreign policy, Javier Solana, told MEPs in Brussels on Thursday (29 March), in a lively meeting that opened the question of EU treaty limitations on national sovereignty in defence.

“The EU is not a defence alliance, we all know this, but it does have an external security policy and it can and should debate this subject,” Mr Solana said in a prelude to a potential formal debate among EU heads of state or foreign ministers in future. “I think that’s what most political leaders in the EU want,” he added, noting the US plan could “affect” EU-Russia relations.

“We’re not calling for people to take a decision on the subject, but it would be a mistake not to talk about it,” he added, tiptoeing through Title V of the EU treaty on the limits of EU competency on security issues. “On security matters, the Treaty allocates sovereignty to member states. But that sovereignty has to be compatible with our general interests in security.”

Article 17 of the treaty states the EU “shall not prejudice the specific character of the security and defence policy” of member states. But articles 11 and 16 also state that EU countries “shall refrain from any action which is contrary to the interests of the union or likely to impair its effectiveness as a cohesive force” as well as obliging members to “inform and consult” each other on defence plans.

Thursday’s debate comes in the context of the Czech Republic the day earlier opening formal negotiations with the US on the details of the radar bases the country is to host. US president George Bush also spoke with Russia’s Vladimir Putin by telephone on Wednesday to offer to hold detailed talks on the scheme, amid Russian complaints it has not been properly consulted so far.

Polish conservative MEP and the head of the parliament’s foreign affairs committee, Jacek Saryusz-Wolksi, backed Mr Solana’s idea, saying “we [the EU] do not have the competency to decide on missile defence, but we do have competency to discuss missile defence.” He invited Mr Solana and NATO head Jaap de Hoop Scheffer to debate the issue in his committee on 7 May.

German conservative MEP and the former head of the foreign affairs committee, Elmar Brok, also supported Mr Solana’s plan. “People clamour for solidarity in the energy sector. But we have to show solidarity in other areas as well and have a clear common position,” he said.

Poles and Czechs bristle
Polish and Czech deputies who are also members of the two states’ main ruling parties, Law and Justice and ODS, respectively, bristled at the idea they are putting EU security in danger, however.

The US, Polish and Czech line on the missile defence scheme is that it is far too small to affect Russia’s nuclear deterrent, that it will protect the wider EU from any missiles fired by rogue states like Iran, and that it cements the EU-US alliance.

“The danger is that a number of EU states are adopting the Russian view…relying on false arguments to divide the European Union,” Law and Justice deputy Konrad Szymanski said. “I’m surprised that former chancellor Schroeder’s SPD party is parroting the arguments of Vladimir Putin. It would make more sense for it to follow the arguments of the United Kingdom and Poland.”

The SPD reference is linked to German SPD foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who has criticised the US plan. Mr Schroeder, an intimate friend of Putin who became an employee of Russian energy firm Gazprom, is a deeply disliked figure in Poland. Mr Steinmeier, the former cabinet chief of Mr Schroeder, is seen by Warsaw as a Schroeder proxy in Berlin’s grand coalition government.

Other Polish MEPs were during Thursday’s debate talking of anti-American “hysteria” and “demagoguery.”

“We all know this is not against Russia and Russia knows this as well,” Czech ODS member Jan Zahradil said. “The implementation of the missile shield will strengthen the trans-Atlantic alliance, and I hope this is not the [real] Russian concern. The EU does have its limits in terms of national security and this is one of those limits,” he added.

Several conservative EPP-ED group members also expressed fears about the missile shield, but it was left to the European socialists, liberals and greens to really hammer against the Warsaw-Prague line. “How about a dialogue about not deploying these systems?” German socialist group leader Martin Schulz asked, calling for the $58 billion price tag to be spent on poverty eradication instead.

US could split EU
Romanian socialist Adrian Severin called for a political climate in which the US and Russia can work in a “global partnership” for peace, in ideas similar to Russian analyst Sergei Karaganov’s concept of an “effective coalition of powerful and responsible nations” to act as world policemen alongside the UN. Lithuanian socialist Justas Paleckis urged an EU, NATO and Russia-wide debate.

“The message we are sending to the Russians is we are engaging in a new arms race,” ALDE leader and British deputy Graham Watson said, with some MEPs turning the Polish argument on its head by accusing the US of trying to split Europe by promoting defence unilateralism in a conversation reminiscent of the 1980s when Europe saw itself caught in a tug-of-war between the then two superpowers.

“There is a big risk of us being exploited,” Belgian liberal MEP Annemie Neyts said. “We might end up being split up by the two superpowers.” French green group leader Daniel Cohn-Bendit added that “if this is supposed to be against Iran it’s totally ridiculous. If Iran wanted to attack us, they have suicide attackers to do that with…once again the Americans are deciding unilaterally what a part of Europe needs.”

Does EU have a foreign policy?
The debate reinforced the idea the EU has no common foreign policy today despite the limited “Common Foreign and Security Policy” provisions of the EU treaty. The notion that the lack of firm legal basis for foreign cooperation has been aggravated by 2004 enlargement was also fortified, amid classic political divisions of Russia-friendly EU states such as Germany, France and Italy and the pro-US, Russia-wary club of the UK, Poland and the Czech Republic.

Mr Solana tried to quash this line of thinking however, pointing to his own intervention in an Arab League summit in Riyadh on Wednesday, where he plied the EU line on Palestine and Lebanon.

The EU foreign policy chief also spoke on the critical issue of Iran nuclear enrichment, not only on behalf of Europe, but also on behalf of the five permanent members of the UN security council - the US, the UK, France, Russia and China - as well as Germany.

“I have just returned from Riyadh and I wish some of you had been there with me. When we are there in these meetings, we count, we really count,” he said. “Never before in our common history has something like this taken place,” he said on his job as an envoy for the five UN powers.

“Whatever is the fate of the constitutional treaty, you are our foreign minister,” Poland’s Mr Saryusz-Wolski remarked.
© EUobserver.com 2007
Printed from EUobserver.com 30.03.2007
——
EU tries to ease Russian fears over US missile project
02.03.2007 - 09:21 CET | By Helena Spongenberg
The EU has no plans to participate in a US anti-missile system but its member states are free to join, the bloc’s foreign and security affairs chief said on Thursday (2 march) in an attempt to ease Russian concerns over the project.

“We are not as Europeans concerned to establish a mechanism of that type,” said Javier Solana, according to news agency AP. “This is for every country to decide.”

Mr Solana was attending an informal EU defence ministers meeting in the German city of Wiesbaden on Thursday where US plans to build an anti-missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic were discussed.

Washington has asked Warsaw and Prague, two of its strongest allies, to host a system aimed at intercepting ballistic missiles fired from, for example, Iran or North Korea - a plan which has been endorsed by key Polish and Czech politicians.

But the move has sparked strong criticism from Russia, with president Vladimir Putin telling a Munich security conference last month that the system would “completely neutralise’’ the deterrence threat posed by Russia’s own nuclear missiles.

Moscow may develop an “asymmetric response” of its own to “overcome’’ such systems, he added.

Mr Solana countered these fears on Thursday. “Poland and the Czech Republic don’t present a threat to anybody,” he said, according to German agency DPA.

While it was “questionable” whether the EU faced any security threat today, the situation could change in the future, he added.

“We must do our utmost…to have good, solid relations with Russia,” said Mr Solana, adding that the international community needed to discuss issues like Iran’s nuclear programme and Middle East violence with Moscow.

He also insisted that since Mr Putin’s speech “the situation is much more calm” adding, “I don’t think we have to dramatize that.”

EU states reduce troops in Bosnia
At the meeting in Wiesbaden, the 27 defence ministers also brought forward a move to cut their peacekeeping troops in Bosnia from 6,500 to around 2,500 this year, as security in the former hotspot has improved.

“As a first step, we want to withdraw around 3,500 soldiers, then watch what happens before we move on,” said German defence minister Franz-Josef Jung, who hosted the gathering, reports Deutsche Welle.

“The situation in Bosnia is way better. Security is going very well,” said Mr Solana, but he added that “politically there are still a lot of things to do.”

He also urged Bosnia to continue with its police reforms.

http://euobserver.com/13/23611

“Il est toujours possible que la thèse des “complotistes” soit fondée et que la capture des 15 Britanniques n’est que la préparation d’un casus belli pour attaquer l’Irak. “

Petit lapsus scriptae,  apparamment tout le monde aura compris que c’est Iran qu’il fallait lire et non Irak

Ce petit détail étant signalé.

Sur cette affaire.
Pourrait elle être une provoc pour un Casus Belli .(remarquez,cela vaut mieux qu’un nouvel attentat sur le sol U.S comme Zbignew B. a “semblé” chercher à nous en prévenir)
Mais si c’est une provocation organisée ,alors la façon dont les Britanniques vont réagir en négociant ou, pas ? En faisant semblant, un peu ou beaucoup ?etc… Bref tout cela devrait permettre une lecture dans un sens ou l’autre
donc ,on y verra plus clair dans quelques temps !

“cela revient presque à un aveu des Britanniques qu’ils ont déjà violé “intentionnellement” les eaux territoriales iraniennes”

Je crois que “eaux territoriales iraniennes” mériterait aussi des guillemets…

Il ne me semble pas que l’Iran et l’Irak ait jamais pu passer un accord officiel sur le partage des aux à cet endroit là...
On pourrait peut être appliquer le “droit international” (mais basé sur des accords auxquels l’Iran n’est pas partie) et tenter de marquer ainsi une “frontière” qui serait à l’avantage des britanniques. Mais il faudrait d’abord être assuré que ceux-ci disent la vérité quand à l’emplacement de leurs soldats, ce qui me paraît sujet à caution, l’actuelle administration britannique n’ayant pas jusque là fait la preuve de son honneteté, notamment en Irak, bien au contraire.

Enfin,il faudrait reconnaître un droit pour les britanniques à faire évoluer des militaires dans cette zone. Bien que l’occupation ait été “reconnu” par des instances internationales, il n’en reste pas moins que l’agression US et britanniques en Irak reste ce qu’elle a toujours été, une guerre d’agression, elle aussi prévue par les lois internationales…

Il est aberrant de voir les médias et institutions prendre immédiatement partie pour le camp britannique, compte tenu des données de l’espèce: les britanniques ont violé le droit international en agressant et occupant l’Irak, et demandent maintenant l’application du droit international pour récupérer leurs soldats…

Mes excuses aux amoureux du bon français et des images cohérentes pour le comique involontaire de « diamétralement opposé à leur valeur faciale ».

Je m’en voudrais de croire naïf le pertinent site De Defensa.Org , mais je doute précisément de ce point:

« Il nous semble hors de question, après une telle campagne tonitruante qui ne va faire qu’en rajouter dans les semaines restantes, qu’un candidat devenu Président sur une telle rhétorique (l’hypothèse d’un Sarko élu) puisse changer un iota dans la politique que la pression des circonstances et l’évidence française lui imposent. »

Vous montrez sans cesse sur votre site à quel point la politique actuelle , en Europe en France et ailleurs , est apte à multiplier les rapports fallacieux entre les valeurs , les discours et les actes.

Sarko a la plus grande décontraction possible comme prince électoral , personne ne fera de serments plus enflammés , et personne ne les oubliera plus vite .(ou ne leur trouvera après coup un sens diamétralement à leur valeur faciale.)

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2411393.ece

Is surge working? US commanders hail fall in Baghdad killings
Six weeks on, and America’s bid to quell the insurgency in the capital is showing signs of success. But violence throughout Iraq is as bad as ever. Raymond Whitaker and Rupert Cornwell report
Published: 01 April 2007

US military commanders in Iraq have accused insurgents of using children in suicide bombings and staging poison gas attacks in a campaign to undermine the month-old security “surge” in Baghdad and Anbar province.

The clampdown in the capital is credited with bringing a sharp reduction in civilian deaths in recent weeks, even though the number of attacks has remained fairly constant. “There are tanks and Humvees on every street corner,” said an independent observer who returned from Baghdad last week. “There is a real change of atmosphere from earlier this year, before the operation began.” According to David Kilcullen, senior counter-insurgency adviser to General David Petraeus, the US commander in Iraq, heightened security has forced suicide bombers to detonate their devices at checkpoints well away from targets such as markets and other public gatherings, “killing far fewer people than intended, and far fewer than in similar attacks last year”.

Colonel Kilcullen, an Australian former special forces officer, added that several bombs failed to explode, “showing a loss of skill as key bomb-makers are taken off the streets”. Other reports show a steep decline in the number of bodies found dumped overnight, indicating that the “surge” is curbing the activities of death squads.

Civilian deaths in Baghdad were at record levels in the final months of last year, and remained high in January. Then, the start of the “surge” around 20 February saw the number of deaths fall in that month by more than two thirds, to 446. But the difficulty of maintaining the improvement was shown by events in March. Another reduction in deaths seemed on the cards until last Thursday, when two suicide attackers wearing explosives vests blew themselves up in a market in the mainly Shia Shaab district, killing nearly 80 people.

Though counter-insurgency officials point out that suicide bombers are increasingly being forced by the security measures to attack their targets on foot rather than in vehicles, and that it will never be possible to prevent all bombings until the populace has been won over by follow-up measures, the dramatic loss of life is still a setback. Yesterday a car bomb killed another five people outside the Sadrayn hospital in the sensitive area of Sadr City, the Shia stronghold in Baghdad.

So far directors of the “surge” have managed to steer a course between Shia and Sunni suspicions. The operation began with heavy fighting in Doura, a heavily Sunni area in the south of the city, followed by clashes in the mixed Haifa Street district. Early this month, American and Iraqi forces moved into Sadr City without resistance from the Mehdi Army of the radical Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The onus is now on them, however, to show that they can prevent attacks by Sunni insurgents.

On Friday Nasser al-Rubaie, parliamentary spokesman for Mr Sadr’s bloc, gave crucial support for the operation, saying “there is no alternative ... except anarchy”. But those seeking to provoke anarchy are hitting back. The crackdown in Baghdad is driving violence into other areas, with the US military admitting last week that suicide and car bomb attacks in the whole of Iraq had jumped 30 per cent since the operation began.

Al-Qa’ida in Iraq is accused of involvement in a spate of bombings around Ramadi and Fallujah which have released chlorine gas, while a Pentagon spokesman, Major General Michael Barbero, pointed to two recent suicide attacks using children. In one, a car was allowed through a checkpoint because there were two small children on the back seat. The attackers later abandoned the car, allowing it to blow up with the children still inside.

More recently, an Iraqi police convoy was pursuing a suspicious vehicle in Anbar province. As they passed a 12-to-14 year old boy riding a bicycle, a bomb in his backpack exploded. “These acts - the use of poison gas and the use of children as weapons - are unacceptable in any civilised society and demonstrate the truly dishonourable nature of this enemy,” Gen Barbero said.

Col Kilcullen argued that attacks by Sunnis against members of their own community, including the first use of poison gas in Iraq since Saddam Hussein killed thousands of Kurds in Halabja in 1988, showed “an incredible level of desperation”. They were “own goals” which had contributed to a major shift in Anbar province, where he said only one out of 18 major tribes supported the Iraqi government a year ago. “Today 14 out of the 18 tribes are actively securing their people, providing recruits to the Iraqi police and hunting down al-Qa’ida.”

But Gen Petraeus and his advisers emphasise that their strategy, with the troop “surge” only due to be complete by the end of June, will take time - possibly years - to achieve results. President George Bush’s beleaguered administration in Washington needs dramatic success much more quickly.

TV news bulletins show daily rocket attacks on the supposedly secure Green Zone in Baghdad, and daily mass suicide bombings. While the capital may be getting marginally safer, all viewers in the US know is that slaughter is continuing on a daily basis in Iraq.

The Senate and House of Representatives have both voted for withdrawal next year as part of a military spending bill. All they have to agree on before sending the bill to Mr Bush is which month. The stage is set for a battle over hearts and minds in Washington which will rival any in Iraq for its influence on what happens to American forces on the ground. Unless the security operation in Baghdad can rescue Mr Bush, those conducting it are unlikely to be given the time they say they need.

Adjunct Professor of International Affairs

March 26, 2007

MEMORANDUM FOR: Colonel Michael Meese

Professor and Head Dept of Social Sciences

CC: Colonel Cindy Jebb

Professor and Deputy Head Dept of Social Sciences

SUBJECT: After Action Report—General Barry R McCaffrey USA (Ret)

VISIT IRAQ AND KUWAIT 9-16 March 2007

1. PURPOSE: This memo provides feedback on my strategic and operational assessment of security operations in both Iraq and Kuwait in support of US Central Command. Look forward to providing lectures to the Faculty Seminar and National Security Seminar during upcoming visit on 4 April 2007.

http://www.defensetech.org/archives/Iraq%20After%20action.pdf

————————————————————————————————————————

These are the facts.

Iraq is ripped by a low grade civil war which has worsened to catastrophic levels with as many as 3000 citizens murdered per month. The population is in despair. Life in many of the urban areas is now desperate. A handful of foreign fighters (500+)—- and a couple of thousand Al Qaeda operatives incite open factional struggle through suicide bombings which target Shia holy places and innocent civilians. Thousands of attacks target US Military Forces (2900 IED’s) a month—-primarily stand off attacks with IED’s, rockets, mortars, snipers, and mines from both Shia (EFP attacks are a primary casualty producer)—-and Sunni (85% of all attacks—-80% of US deaths—16% of Iraqi population.)

Three million Iraqis are internally displaced or have fled the country to Syria and Jordan. The technical and educated elites are going into self-imposed exile—-a huge brain drain that imperils the ability to govern. The Maliki government has little credibility among the Shia populations from which it emerged. It is despised by the Sunni as a Persian surrogate. It is believed untrustworthy and incompetent by the Kurds.

There is no function of government that operates effectively across the nation—- not health care, not justice, not education, not transportation, not labor and commerce, not electricity, not oil production. There is no province in the country in which the government has dominance. The government cannot spend its own money effectively. ($7.1 billion sits in New York banks.) No Iraqi government official, coalition soldier, diplomat, reporter, foreign NGO, nor contractor can walk the streets of Baghdad, nor Mosul, nor Kirkuk, nor Basra, nor Tikrit, nor Najaf, nor Ramadi—-without heavily armed protection.

The police force is feared as a Shia militia in uniform which is responsible for thousands of extra-judicial killings. There is no effective nation-wide court system. There are in general almost no acceptable Iraqi penal institutions. The population is terrorized by rampant criminal gangs involved in kidnapping, extortion, robbery, rape, massive stealing of public property—-such as electrical lines, oil production material, government transportation, etc. (Saddam released 80,000 criminal prisoners.) 4

The Iraqi Army is too small, very badly equipped (inadequate light armor, junk Soviet small arms, no artillery, no helicopters to speak of, currently no actual or planned ground attack aircraft of significance, no significant air transport assets (only three C-130’s), no national military logistics system, no national military medical system, etc. The Iraqi Army is also unduly dominated by the Shia, and in many battalions lacks discipline. There is no legal authority to punish Iraqi soldiers or police who desert their comrades. (The desertion/AWOL numbers frequently leave Iraqi Army battalions at 50% strength or less.)

In total, enemy insurgents or armed sectarian militias (SCIRI, JAM, Pesh Merga, AQI, 1920’s Brigade, et. al.) probably exceed 100,000 armed fighters. These non-government armed bands are in some ways more capable of independent operations than the regularly constituted ISF. They do not depend fundamentally on foreign support for their operations. Most of their money, explosives, and leadership are generated inside Iraq. The majority of the Iraqi population (Sunni and Shia) support armed attacks on American forces. Although we have arrested 120,000 insurgents (hold 27,000) and killed some huge number of enemy combatants (perhaps 20,000+)—- the armed insurgents, militias, and Al Qaeda in Iraq without fail apparently re-generate both leadership cadres and foot soldiers. Their sophistication, numbers, and lethality go up—- not down—- as they incur these staggering battle losses.

US domestic support for the war in Iraq has evaporated and will not return. The great majority of the country thinks the war was a mistake. The US Congress now has a central focus on constraining the Administration use of military power in Iraq—-and potentially Iran. The losses of US Army, Marine, and Special Operations Force casualties in Iraq now exceed 27,000 killed and wounded. (Note: The Iraqi Security Forces have suffered more than 49,000 casualties in the last 14 months.) The war costs $9 Billion per month. Stateside US Army and Marine Corps readiness ratings are starting to unravel. Ground combat equipment is shot in both the active and reserve components. Army active and reserve component recruiting has now encountered serious quality and number problems. In many cases we are forced to use US contractors to substitute for required military functions. (128,000 contractors in Iraq—-includes more than 2000 armed security personnel.) Waivers in US Army recruiting standards for: moral turpitude, drug use, medical issues, criminal justice records, and non-high school graduation have gone up significantly. We now are enlisting 42 year old first term soldiers. Our promotion rates for officers and NCOs have skyrocketed to replace departing leaders. There is no longer a national or a theater US Army strategic reserve. (Fortunately, powerful US Naval, Air Force, and nuclear capabilities command huge deterrence credibility.)

We are at the “knee of the curve.” Two million+ troops of the smallest active Army force since WWII have served in the war zone. Some active units have served three, four, or even five combat deployments. We are now routinely extending nearly all combat units in both Iraq and Afghanistan. These combat units are being returned to action in some cases with only 7-12 months of stateside time to re-train and re-equip. The current deployment requirement of 20+ brigades to Iraq and 2+ brigades in Afghanistan is not sustainable.

We will be forced to call up as many as nine National Guard combat brigades for an involuntary second combat tour this coming year. (Dr Chu at DOD has termed this as “no big deal.”) Many believe that this second round of involuntary call-ups will topple the weakened National Guard structure—- which is so central to US domestic security. The National Guard Bureau has argued for a call up of only 12 months instead of 18 months. This misses the point—DOD will without fail be forced to also extend these National Guard brigades in combat at the last minute given the continuation of the current emergency situation.

Iraq’s neighbors are a problem—- not part of the solution (with the exception of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait). They provide little positive political or economic support to the Maliki government.

Our allies are leaving to include the courageous and well equipped Brit’s—by January 2008 we will be largely on our own.

In summary, the US Armed Forces are in a position of strategic peril. A disaster in Iraq will in all likelihood result in a widened regional struggle which will endanger America’s strategic interests (oil) in the Mid-east for a generation. We will also produce another generation of soldiers who lack confidence in their American politicians, the media, and their own senior military leadership.

L’Observatoire du communautarisme publie, en exclusivité, l’introduction du prochain essai de Pierre-André Taguieff, Les Contre-réactionnaires. Le Progressisme entre illusion et imposture (Denoël).

http://www.communautarisme.net/Les-Contre-reactionnaires-Le-Progressisme-entre-illusion-et-imposture_a915.html

http://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8934738

NATO, Europe and missile defences
A few interceptors, a big gap

Mar 29th 2007
From The Economist print edition
Some old sores (and a few new ones, too) have been opened by Europe’s muddled reaction to America’s missile-defence plans

ON THE face of things, the argument is all about a handful of missiles which, whatever their wider role, will make no difference to the balance of power in Europe. But the deep, multiple fault lines that the row is laying bare—both within the Atlantic alliance, and between the alliance and Russia—seem all too reminiscent of cold-war politics at their dismal worst.

To cut a lengthening story short, America hopes to deploy parts of an anti-ballistic-missile system on the soil of two NATO allies: just ten fairly simple interceptors in Poland, and a radar system, able to track incoming missiles as they hurtle through space, in the Czech Republic. And senior Russians, especially the top brass, are growling in response. They are adamant that the new installations threaten their national security—despite America’s insistence that the interceptors are aimed only at stopping the rockets from rogue (potential) nuclear powers like Iran.

Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, gave the argument a new twist this week by asserting that shafts used for interceptors could easily be adapted to accommodate offensive weapons. At the same time, indignant Russians add, the new kit is not such a threat that they couldn’t deal with it easily. “Since missile-defence elements are weakly protected, all types of our aircraft are capable of applying electronic counter-measures against them or physically destroying them,” declared one general, Igor Khvorov, this month.

The American in charge of building the new shield, General Henry Obering, has painstakingly spelled out reasons why the system’s location should be a source of reassurance, not concern, to the Kremlin: the sites on NATO’s eastern flank are in the wrong place to stop missiles launched from Russian soil. Moreover, he added this week, France, Germany, Italy and even western Russia are all potential beneficiaries of a system that could, if it works, stop a missile from a pariah state in its tracks.

In any case, Russia’s strategic rocket force still comprises hundreds of launchers, and thousands of warheads; its capacity, like that of America, to annihilate any enemy will remain firmly intact. In franker moments—whether in the private comments of officialdom or the public words of President Vladimir Putin—the Russians admit that their firepower is not really threatened.

Nor can Russia claim to have been surprised. American officials reel off at least ten occasions when they discussed the missile-defence project with Russian opposite numbers. Both Robert Gates, the present defence secretary, and his predecessor, Donald Rumsfeld, told their Russian counterparts about the plan; General Obering has given a briefing in Moscow; and there have been two set-piece discussions in the NATO-Russian Council.

But the dishonesty is not all on the Russian side. Take the muddled reaction of politicians in Germany, and the unconvincing efforts by the left-right coalition to present a united front over the issue.

The instinctive reaction of Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s foreign minister and a member of the centre-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), was to rebuke America for “startling” Russia with talk of placing fancy new kit in the neighbourhood. “Because the stationing sites are getting closer to Russia, one should have talked with Russia first,” he chided. The SPD chairman, Kurt Beck, went further. He has called the missile-defence plan a prelude to an arms race, and said: “We don’t need new missiles in Europe.”

In a fitting response, perhaps, to an artificial row, Germany’s political masters have devised an artificial solution—at least to the internal German dilemma. Chancellor Angela Merkel, a Christian Democrat whose instincts are more Atlanticist than those of her coalition partners, has signalled through a spokesman that she wants to “NATO-ise” the issue of new missile defences.

What does that mean? Not much, in practice—but this ugly word reflects the political fact that to some European ears, the common deliberations, and ultimately common decisions, of NATO have a slightly softer, fuzzier sound than anything done unilaterally by the United States. NATO, after all, is a partnership in which all members, at least formally, have a say.

Others are now jumping aboard the “NATO-ising” bandwagon, including politicians in the Czech Republic, where a poll showed just 31% of voters in favour of the shield. According to the foreign minister, Karel Schwarzenberg, many Czech legislators would find it much easier to support the installation if “it could be included somehow in the NATO system”.

In hard military reality, the new system cannot be included. The radars and interceptors will be built by America, and controlled by America, and deployed by bilateral agreement with the hosts. If people hope for a non-American, or NATO, finger on interceptor buttons, they will be let down. In Berlin earlier this month, General Obering was asked whether his system should be brought into NATO. “I believe this system would complement NATO very nicely,” he replied carefully.

As it happens, NATO has for years been preparing for the more limited option of a theatre missile defence, which could indeed be jointly procured and managed by the alliance. But strategic interceptors, albeit few in number, are another matter: the Pentagon won’t share the keys with anyone. This week, a Pentagon official stated, at a congressional hearing, that the need for unanimous decision-making in NATO made it the wrong place to decide how missile defences should be deployed.

Even if it is phoney in parts, the missile-defence row cannot be shrugged off easily. Senior American officials find it dispiriting that Russia has again divided Europe. When Russian generals threatened to attack missile-defence sites in Poland and the Czech Republic, some European politicians fretted that Russia was being “pushed into a corner”, to quote Luxembourg’s foreign minister. The fact that Europeans are more protective of Russia than of their newish NATO partners does not bode well for alliance solidarity.

One centre-right German member of parliament, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, said it was “worrisome” that so many German voters, even on the right, proved receptive to Russian arguments. Mr Putin’s anti-American speech at a conference in Munich last month seems—as Mr zu Guttenberg puts it—to have been “rather ridiculous, but effective”.

Even among new NATO members where voters are broadly pro-American, affection is wearing thin, and the Iraq war’s toxic effect is being felt. Iraq explains why 51% of Poles opposed the missile-defence plan in one recent survey, says Radek Sikorski, an Atlanticist Pole who recently lost his job as defence minister amid a row over how exactly to negotiate with the United States over missile defences.

The Polish government may agree to host interceptors, but parliament could still say no, says Mr Sikorski: “This is blowback from Iraq. We used to take things on trust from the United States in the security field”—but that is no longer the case.

America wants a swift decision from Poland and the Czech Republic, ideally this year, so the first interceptors can be in place in 2011 (though Tony Blair’s offer of Britain as an alternative site for interceptor missiles remains on the table). Such assent is not a foregone conclusion.

The missile-defence row has also exposed a second fissure in NATO’s ranks, about the very idea of deterrence. The nuclear states, Britain and France, broadly agree that peace is guaranteed by great powers being able to deter threats credibly: hence France’s (discreet) support for an American shield.

But in some parts of Europe, America’s wish to keep a deterrent capability in the face of new threats is seen as destabilising. Mr Steinmeier asserted this month that peace was “no longer based on military deterrence but on the willingness for co-operation.” Others close to the SPD grassroots are blunter. Rolf Mützenich, an SPD spokesman on disarmament, argues that if missile defence gives a sense of “100% security” to Americans, “that will bring some problems for stability.”

As one NATO hand puts it, the row over missile defences has made plain a broader challenge to America’s moral sway over its old allies. Four years after the assault on Iraq, America can sound a warning about threats from rogue states—only to find many European voters would rather hear the opposite message from Russia.

pourquoi l’introduction est-elle en français? c’est curieux non? ce blog n’est-il pas fait uniquement pour ceux qui parlent anglais?

What about the possibility of pulling out of Iraq, letting Iran invade and lose resources fighting their own kind,
and then come in and mop up the dregs?