One of Ours

...despite the killings in Gaza this week, some important good things are happening there.

The first good thing is that the Israeli security fence is turning out to be a boon to stability, rather than an irritant. There was plenty of evidence that the fence would help reduce terror. The fence separating Israel from Gaza has been highly effective at preventing terrorist incursions, and with large stretches of the West Bank fence already erected in the north, there's been a drop in suicide bombings...

...the fence is generally following the route Bill Clinton had proposed as a possible border between Israel and a future Palestinian state.

Makovsky counted the populations of all the villages and settlements on each side of the fence. He found that "fewer than 13,000 Palestinians — that is, less than 1 percent of the West Bank total — will actually be stranded on the Israeli side of the barrier." About 54,000 Israeli settlers, a quarter of the settler population, will be on the Palestinian side.

In other words, the fence leaves 99 percent of the West Bank Palestinians on a contiguous 87.5 percent chunk of West Bank land. That is a reasonably fair provisional border, which the two sides can modify if they ever get around to cooperating.

The Israelis initially planned a much more intrusive fence. But skillful diplomacy by Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Stephen Hadley, Elliot Abrams and other U.S. officials led to modifications...

The second bit of good news is that Ariel Sharon's proposal to withdraw from Gaza and a few West Bank settlements has punctured the myth of Greater Israel and shifted the Israeli debate. Now discussion of the settlements centers not on the murky issues of security or history, but on the clearer issue of democracy.

An overwhelming Israeli majority opposes the far-flung settlements, so they are now seen as antidemocratic...It is only a matter of time before democratic institutions catch up with the will of the majority.

...as long as there is no Palestinian partner to negotiate with, Israel will have to withdraw, fight and coordinate: withdraw from most territories, fight Hamas and coordinate with Egyptian and Palestinian pragmatists to make sure that fundamentalists don't fill the vacuum left by retreating Israeli forces.

Don't look for glorious handshakes on the White House lawn. But we could see a series of grudging unilateral actions that will lead to less death.

These days, that's cause for giddy celebration.

Sen. John F. Kerry (Mass.) may take the unprecedented step of delaying formal acceptance of his nomination as the Democratic candidate for president this summer in an effort to reduce President Bush's financial advantage for the general election campaign, Kerry advisers said Friday.

Campaign officials confirmed that they are actively considering an extraordinary plan, under which Kerry would not be formally nominated at the Democratic National Convention in late July and instead would be designated as the party's nominee weeks later, around the time of the Republican convention at the end of August.

Prisoners posed in three of the most infamous photographs of abuse to come out of the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq were not being softened up for interrogation by intelligence officers but instead were being punished for criminal acts or the amusement of their jailers...

...documents show that MPs staged the photographs to discipline the prisoners for acts ranging from rioting to an alleged rape of a teenage boy in the prison.

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...when Darby returned to Abu Ghraib from leave in November and heard about a shooting at the prison's "hard site," which contains Tier 1A, he told military investigators. He said that he asked the MP in charge of the tier's night shift, Spec. Charles A. Graner Jr., if he had any photographs of the cell where the shooting took place.

Darby said Graner handed him two CDs of photographs. "I thought the discs just had pictures of Iraq, the cell where the shooting occurred," Darby told investigators. Instead, Darby said, he viewed hundreds of photographs showing naked detainees being abused by U.S. soldiers. "It was just wrong," Darby said. "I knew I had to do something."

He said that he asked Graner, a Pennsylvania prison guard in civilian life, about the photographs. Graner replied: "The Christian in me says it's wrong, but the corrections officer in me says, 'I love to make a grown man piss himself.'"

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...MPs or their attorneys have said that Graner served as the liaison on the cellblock between the MPs and the intelligence officers, who had taken control of Tier 1A by the fall of 2003.

Davis said Graner told him, "the agents and MI soldiers would ask him to do things, but nothing was ever in writing, he would complain."

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"Why did you not inform your chain of command about this abuse?"

"Because I assumed that if they were doing anything out of the ordinary or outside the guidelines, someone would have said something," Davis said. "Also, the wing belongs to MI and it appeared MI personnel approved of the abuse."

[...]

Davis said the intelligence officers told Graner and Frederick: "Loosen this guy up for us. Make sure he has a bad night. Make sure he gets the treatment." "What is the name of the MI staff member who made the previously stated comments?" investigators asked. "I don't know the name because they often don't wear uniforms, and if they do they don't have name tapes," Davis said.

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...they [also] said detainees were beaten and sexually humiliated as punishment or for fun.

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...a detainee jokingly referred to as "Gilligan" by the MPs was forced to stand on a box of food, with wires connected to his figures, toes and penis. Harman said she attached the wires to "Gilligan" and told him he would be electrocuted if he fell off the box. "Why did you do this to the detainee 'Gilligan'?" a military investigator asked. "Just playing with him," Harman said...

The Defense Intelligence Agency has concluded that a U.S.-funded arm of Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress has been used for years by Iranian intelligence to pass disinformation to the United States and to collect highly sensitive American secrets, according to intelligence sources.

“Iranian intelligence has been manipulating the United States through Chalabi by furnishing through his Information Collection Program information to provoke the United States into getting rid of Saddam Hussein,” said an intelligence source Friday who was briefed on the Defense Intelligence Agency’s conclusions, which were based on a review of thousands of internal documents.

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He described it as "one of the most sophisticated and successful intelligence operations in history."

"I'm a spook. I appreciate good work. This was good work," he said.

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The links between the INC and U.S. intelligence go back to at least 1992, when Karim was picked by Chalabi to run his security and military operations.

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At the center of the alleged Iranian intelligence operation, according to administration officials and intelligence sources, is Aras Karim Habib, a 47-year-old Shia Kurd who was named in an arrest warrant issued during a raid on Chalabi's home and offices in Baghdad Thursday. He eluded arrest.

Karim, who sometimes goes by the last name of Habib, is in charge of the information collection program.

[...]

In 1995, for instance, Khidhir Hamza, who had once worked in Iraq’s nuclear program and whose claims that Iraq had continued a massive bomb program in the 1990s are now largely discredited, gave UN nuclear inspectors what appeared to be explosive documents about Iraq’s program. Hamza, who fled Iraq in 1994, teamed up with Chalabi after his escape.

The documents, which referred to results of experiments on enriched uranium in the bomb’s core, were almost flawless, according to Andrew Cockburn’s recent account of the event in the political newsletter CounterPunch.

But the inspectors were troubled by one minor matter: Some of the techinical descriptions used terms that would only be used by an Iranian. They determined that the original copy had been written in Farsi by an Iranian scientist and then translated into Arabic.

And the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded the documents were fraudulent.

...The women and men of our diplomatic corps and intelligence community are genuine trustees. With intellect and sensibility, character and courage, you represent America to the world. Equally important, you show the world to America. You hold in trust our role and reputation among nations, and ultimately our fate. Yours is the gravest, noblest responsibility. Never has the conscience you personify been more important...

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You know that showcase resignations at the top -- Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld or flag officers fingered for Abu Ghraib -- change nothing, are only part of the charade. It is the same with Secretary of State Colin Powell, who may have been your lone relative champion in this perverse company, but who remains the political general he always was, never honoring your loss by giving up his office when he might have stemmed the descent.

No, it is you whose voices are so important now. You alone stand above ambition and partisanship. This administration no longer deserves your allegiance or participation. America deserves the leadership and example, the decisive revelation, of your resignations.

Your resignations alone would speak to America the truth that beyond any politics, this Bush regime is intolerable -- and to an increasingly cynical world the truth that there are still Americans who uphold with their lives and honor the highest principles of our foreign policy.

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As you consider your choice now, beware the old rationalizations for staying -- the arguments for preserving influence or that your resignation will not matter. Your effectiveness will be no more, your subservience no less, under the iron grip of the cabal, especially as the policy disaster and public siege mount. And your act now, no matter your ranks or numbers, will embolden others, hearten those who remain and proclaim your truths to the country and world.

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...Three ranking Foreign Service officers -- Mary Wright, John Brady Kiesling and John Brown -- resigned in protest of the Iraq war last spring. Like them, you should join the great debate that America must now have.

Unless and until you do, however, please be under no illusion: Every cable you write to or from the field, every letter you compose for Congress or the public, every memo you draft or clear, every budget you number, every meeting you attend, every testimony you give extends your share of the common disaster.

The America that you sought to represent in choosing your career, the America that once led the community of nations not by brazen power but by the strength of its universal principles, has never needed you more. Those of us who know you best, who have shared your work and world, know you will not let us down...

Only those who have no experience with war, such as George Bush, would use war as an insturament [sic] of foreign policy.

RAMADI, Iraq - This is my third deployment with the 1st Marine Division to the Middle East. This is the third time I've heard the quavering cries of the talking heads predicting failure and calling for withdrawal. This is the third time I find myself shaking my head in disbelief.

Setbacks and tragedy are part and parcel of war and must be accepted on the battlefield. We can and will achieve our goals in Iraq...

Waiting for war in the Saudi Arabian desert as a young corporal in 1991...

The panicky predictions failed to come true...Nobody from my platoon died. Strength, ingenuity and willpower won the day. Crushing the fourth-largest army in the world in four days seemed to crush the doubts back home.

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In the spring of last year, I was a Marine captain, back with the division for Operation Iraqi Freedom...

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...Mourning our losses quietly, the Marines drove to Baghdad, then to Tikrit, liberating the Iraqi people while losing fewer men than were lost in Desert Storm.

In May of last year, I was sitting with some fellow officers back in Diwaniyah, Iraq, the offensive successful and the country liberated from Saddam. I received a copy of a March 30 U.S. newspaper on Iraq in an old package that had finally made its way to the front. The stories: horror in Nasariyah, faltering supply lines and demonstrations in Cairo. The mood of the paper was impenetrably gloomy, and predictions of disaster abounded. The offensive was stalled; everyone was running out of supplies; we would be forced to withdraw. The Arab world was about to ignite into a fireball of rage, and the Middle East was on the verge of collapse...

Returning to Iraq this past February...

Just weeks ago, I read that the supply lines were cut, ammunition and food were dwindling, the "Sunni Triangle" was exploding, cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was leading a widespread Shiite revolt, and the country was nearing civil war.

As I write this, the supply lines are open, there's plenty of ammunition and food, the Sunni Triangle is back to status quo, and Sadr is marginalized in Najaf. Once again, dire predictions of failure and disaster have been dismissed by American willpower and military professionalism.

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...as a professional, I have the luxury of putting politics aside and focusing on the task at hand. Protecting people from terrorists and criminals while building schools and lasting friendships is a good mission, no matter what brush it's tarred with.

Nothing any talking head will say can deter me or my fellow Marines from caring about the people of Iraq, or take away from the sacrifices of our comrades. Fear in the face of adversity is human nature, and many people who take the counsel of their fears speak today. We are not deaf to their cries; neither do we take heed. All we ask is that Americans stand by us by supporting not just the troops, but also the mission.

We'll take care of the rest.

...Muqtada al-Sadr met with local tribal chieftains from Najaf and its environs, who gave him a letter asking his forces to vacate the holy places of Najaf. The letter threatened that if he did not do so voluntarily, the tribes are strong enough to kick him out.

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"Everyone knows that the militia will not be able to expel the US-led army. So there is a dominant feeling in the Iraqi street of the futility of these battles," he added. He pointed out that the timing for the breakout of such battles could have negative repercussions, as the Iraqis await the 30 June transfer of power. "There is a general feeling among the majority of Iraqis -- not just the Shia -- that this confrontation was unnecessary, particularly when Al-Sadr's goals are not clear enough."..."Sayed Al-Sistani has demanded that Najaf be evacuated of all armed militias. They don't approve of the city being turned into a battlefield"...

...[Lesley-Anne Jones, who teaches fifth grade at Public School 158 in the East New York section of Brooklyn] drives the children to a nearby private school, the Trey Whitfield School. Every month, she and her husband send the school a check for $900, the equivalent of almost two weeks' take-home pay from her job. They make the sacrifice because Trey Whitfield offers their children a demonstrably safer and better education than what is available at either P.S. 158 or their local school, Public School 149.

There is nothing effete about the private education at the Whitfield School. Its campus consists of three cinder-block barracks tucked behind a Baptist church. The curriculum eschews the fashionable pedagogies of whole language and constructivist math. From pre-kindergarten to eighth grade, every pupil wears a uniform. And not a single child in a student body of 470 is white...

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When white families pull their children out of big-city public schools, everybody pays attention and debates whether the cause is educational failure, racial bias or some other factor. When African-American parents do the same thing, hardly anyone seems to care or comment, as if blacks are just supposed to accept whatever the neighborhood school dishes up - good, mediocre or abysmal.

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...leaders in public education would be wise to pay attention to why a stable, devout, upwardly mobile segment of the African-American population is deserting.

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...every family that manages to depart its neighborhood school leaves behind deepening problems for those who cannot escape.

"Many of the most empowered parents and families are removing their children," said Dr. Foster, who has studied black independent schools. "What's left, in even working-class communities, are schools filled with the least empowered families. Families with the least parent involvement to offer, families with the least help with homework to offer. There's been a continual outflow for at least 10 years, and it isn't stopping now."