By Fred W. Baker III
American Forces Press Service
WASHINGTON, June 3, 2007 – Iraqi President Jalal Talabani apologized for the deaths of American troops in his country and vowed that his government would make sufficient progress by September to convince America that U.S. troops should stay in the region.

In an interview aired today on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos," Talabani said his government is committed to meeting U.S.-emplaced benchmarks for his country.
"We are committed to doing something tangible within the next weeks and months," he said.
"I think (U.S. congressmen) are right to worry, but withdrawing forces without achieving success would be ... against the national interest of the United States and the Iraqi people," Talabani said.
Still, Talabani said, most of the work the Iraqi government needs to finish will not be in place before the end of the year. He added that U.S. troops are needed in the region through 2008 to finish training the Iraqi army and police forces.
In fact, Talabani indicated the Iraqi desire for a long-term, but not permanent, presence of U.S. troops there. "The majority of the political forces who are represented in parliament ... are for having American forces stay," he said.
Talabani said U.S. troops may be needed long-term in specific parts of Iraq "to protect the sovereignty from outside interference."
Iraqi army and police will be ready to protect it's the country's government and provide stability in the region by the end of 2008, Talabani said. Any sooner would be "unrealistic," he added.
"To build an army after the collapse of a regime is not so easy," he said.
Citing progress in Iraq, Talabani called Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki a "straight man" capable of taking on the militias in the region.
He also discounted the regional impact of the return of radical Iraqi Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who recently ended four months of self-imposed exile in Iran and returned to Iraq. Sadr has repeatedly condemned the U.S.-led occupation in the region.
Talabani called Sadr "a religion man" who is "trying to turn his group into a political party."
"But there are people in his army that are not even loyal to him," Talabani said. He noted that Sadr has lost control of some of his militias.
Talabani also discounted recent polls that Stephanopoulos said show that the majority of Iraqi people want U.S. troops out of the country.
"Everyone in Iraq knows that ... the United States saved the Iraqi people," Talabani said. "The majority of (Iraqi) people are for having the American Army.
"We are grateful; we are thankful to the great and glorious American people who liberated us," Talabani said. "I am sorry for the blood of American soldiers shed there. I present my condolences to their families."
He said his government will show the American people "that their sacrifices were not in vain."

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Assyrian Priest, 3 Deacons Gunned Down in North Iraq

GMT 6-3-2007 19:30:33
Assyrian International News Agency
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(AINA) -- The Arabic language Assyrian (also known as Chaldnen and Syriac) website ankawa.com is reporting that 1 priest and 3 deacons were gunned down in Mosul as they left the Church after having finished Sunday Mass. Fr. Ragheed Ganni, Deacon Basman Joseph, Deacon Bassam and Deacon Ghassan of the Holy Spirit Church was killed by a hale of bullets from a group of gunmen. Their bodies were dumped in front of the church and remain their; residents are afraid to remove their bodies for fear of being shot. According to the AFP, the four had finished mass at 7.30 PM and were driving away in the priest's car when they were intercepted, about 100 meters from the church, by a car; four men got out and shot them.

Fr. Ganni was born in Mosul in 1972; he held a Bachelor of Science in civil engineering from the University of Mosul (1993). He studied in Rome from 1996 to 2003 where he Obtained a Masters in Divinity (Moscone Theology).

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Barnett: Iran: the ultimate scapegoat on Iraq
By Thomas P.M. Barnett, tom@thomaspmbarnett.com
June 3, 2007

The Bush administration says it does not seek war with Iran but engages in numerous policies and preparations that indicate otherwise. Like Tony Soprano's suicidal son, A.J., I sense Americans are being systematically prepared for a military campaign against Iran. I also fear these planned strikes constitute this administration's de facto exit strategy from Iraq.
There was never any doubt that Iran would benefit from America's decisions to topple both the Taliban and Saddam. What truly amazes me still is that, having removed Tehran's worst enemies to its east and west, the Bush team somehow managed to get absolutely nothing from Iran in return.

Telegraphing their punch in early 2002 by placing Iran on the "axis of evil" list, Bush-Cheney purposely precluded any attempt to enlist Tehran's cooperation in our now-tortuous occupations of its next-door neighbors. To no one's surprise, Iran has worked diligently from the start to complicate our attempts at nation-building in both Baghdad and Kabul, taking advantage of resurgent Shiite nationalism in the region at large.

Of course, Tehran elicits our special attention by its highly publicized pursuit of nuclear capabilities, the attraction of which can hardly be denied. After all, Washington has forgiven its friends in the region for acquiring such weapons, to include Israel, Pakistan and recently India. Plus, if you're still "listed" like North Korea, it's clear that acquiring your own bomb forces the Americans to the negotiating table - to wit, Bush's recent offer to normalize relations.

By refusing direct bilateral talks until Tehran yields - unconditionally - on its pursuit of the bomb, our government signals Iran that we'll continue targeting it for regime change until it acquires a nuclear deterrent. If that Catch-22 approach strikes you as designed to force a war between now and then, you're paying attention.

This administration's slow but steady drumbeat on Iran began almost immediately following Bush's second inaugural in January 2005, accelerating to front-burner status in early 2006, when the White House dramatically expanded its diplomatic push to punish Iran further with U.N. sanctions.

That push has been complicated by Russia's desire to maintain its status as Iran's main supplier of energy infrastructure, as well as India and China's growing thirst for Iranian oil and gas.

All three naturally fear being denied such access to a post-regime change Iran.

As things currently stand, the Bush administration just began talks with Iran, albeit solely on the issue of Iraq. Expect those showcase meetings to go well, with vague promises of cooperation but little actual follow-through by the Iranians, who clearly are served by the growing perception in Washington that the surge is having little sustainable positive effect.

As for the Bush administration, going through the motions of parley with Iran checks off the box that was the Iraq Study Group. By demonstrating the White House has made a good faith effort to regionalize a solution to Iraq, Bush and Cheney can thereupon accuse Iran of sabotaging the surge, opening the door to a simultaneous drawdown of our effort there and a build-up of military assets for strikes on Iran - the ultimate scapegoat for our failures in Iraq.

Toward that end, the White House recently initiated a covert CIA program - reported widely, of course - to destabilize the Iranian regime, and now President Bush warns ominously of a bloody summer in Iraq, reflecting the ramped-up activity of Tehran's super-secret Department 9000, which funnels material support to Shiite militias operating there.

Toss in our recent naval show of force off Iran's coast and the State Department's renewed efforts at stronger U.N. sanctions, and the stage appears prepped for the rapid redirection to Iran long predicted by investigative journalist Seymour Hersh.

Besides giving the Bush administration a defensible exit from Iraq, such a redirection meets the demands of both Israel and Saudi Arabia that America confronts and ultimately dismantles Iran's rising power - in effect, making this Tel Aviv and Riyadh's war of choice.

By adding Iran's 70 million people to the already war-torn populations of Afghanistan and Iraq, Bush's looming decision to strike militarily against Tehran's stubborn mullahs would represent a double-or-nothing bet to re-ignite the administration's strategy of re-engineering the Mideast through regime change.

With a Democrat-controlled Congress unable to yank Bush's leash on Iraq and op-ed columnists galore pounding the Iran war drumbeat, such an end-of-term gamble seems less fantastic with each passing week.

Thomas P.M. Barnett is a visiting scholar at the University of Tennessee's Howard Baker Center and the senior managing director of Enterra Solutions LLC. Contact him at tom@thomaspmbarnett.com.

India buys German windpower company
(May 28, 2007) MUMBAI (AP) - India's Suzlon Energy Ltd. will pay up to US$1.6 billion to buy German windpower turbine maker REpower Systems AG, Suzlon chairman Tulsi Tanti said Friday.

Suzlon, the world's fifth-largest wind turbine manufacturer by market share, reached an agreement on Thursday with a rival bidder, France's Areva SA, to end competing for the German company, clearing the way for the Indian firm, Tanti said.

Areva holds nearly 30 per cent of Hamburg-based REpower and wanted to buy the remaining stake. The battle for REpower began in February, when Suzlon announced a public offer topping Areva's bid.

Tanti said that there would be no job cuts in the German company.

Suzlon's management will meet with REpower and Areva within the next few weeks to discuss ways of cooperation, and increasing volumes and margins, Tanti said.

"Half the world's market is (in) Europe, and the highest margins also are in that market," he told reporters in Mumbai. "We already have a strong presence in India, the United States and China, but this buy will make us strong in the largest market."

Suzlon's shares soared 19 per cent to 1,379 rupees on the Mumbai stock market.

From Tom Barnett's blog are his comments on Bill Gertz article: INSIDE THE RING
which is below the comments. This is a long article but puts in context foreign policy in the 21st Century.

The problem with the anti-mil-mil cooperation argument is that adherents lack credible scenarios for U.S.-on-China war and vice versa.

I've seen all the scenarios and not one holds up to any rational scrutiny. They are fantastic relics of the past, as are those who cling to them.

Spin me out the plausible strategy where China gets away with sinking a U.S. carrier. You can't. You simply can't answer the "and then what?" questions.

There is no Chinese economy without profound and continuous access to U.S. markets. It simply comes to a stop, as does communist rule.

If China were to attack and sink a U.S. carrier, we'd sink their entire navy and decimate their air force to boot. We'd crush the crap out of them in a completely unfair fight. We'd do it out of both anger and the simple desire to signal to them and anybody else: do this and we'll kill you en masse.

Do I think we can push events in such a way as to get this type of lunatic response from the Chinese? Sure.

Do I think history would judge us as complete fools for doing so? Absolutely.

Are they some leaders in China dumb enough to entertain such ideas? Sure, but there are more here, and they worry me more because our advantages over China remain huge militarily.

You jettison the nonsensical Taiwan scenario--wet dream of platform builders across America--and the China hawks don't have a leg to stand on. There are no rational scenarios extended into the Middle East: all of the ones you can name have China facing more dependency and vulnerability than we do (they need that energy, we do not), so the spoiler role--so much more easily achieved--falls into our lap, not China's.

But Geertz is unredeemable--a total pawn of the Big War crowd and the mil-industrial complex, who feed him like the pet he is. People like him need to be escorted off the stage pronto. They hold up our much-needed and much-delayed adjustment to the war we have because they insist on holding on to the war--and the enemy image--they prefer.

Let me be perfectly clear here in a way Keating could never hope to be until he takes off his uniform:

This thinking kills our SOF every day.

This thinking kills our Marines every day.

This thinking kills our Army soldiers every day.

This thinking kills our Reservists every day.

This thinking kills our National Guard every day.

This thinking kills our contractors every day.

This painfully out-of-date non-strategic mindset kills Americans every single day by continuing this inexcusable idiocy of overfeeding the Leviathan and starving the SysAdmin.

And at some point it must be described as implicit collusion with al Qaeda and the radical Salafist movement, because no one can possibly be both that stupid and that cynical.

When you purposefully argue against the necessary adjustment to this Long War--year after year--how do you not eventually equate this position with aiding and abetting the enemies of this country?

When you so consistently argue against the strategic adjustment necessary to tapping the allies required for our victory, how can you pretend you stand with America and its security?

Or does Taiwan and the greed of the military-industrial complex come first?

I won't bother asking Geertz if he has no shame. He's that condition's poster child.

But what can you expect from the Wash Times and its master?

There is nothing particularly hard about maintaining a hedge against China--anymore than there is against the UK. By mentoring their rise as a naval power, we gain access and intelligence. What they get is some catch-up info that hardly turns their navy into ours. Anyone who tells you otherwise just plain doesn't have a clue about our capabilities, nor the complexity of doing what only our military can do.

As I have said many times before, this is not about trusting the Chinese to be anything but Chinese. But it's also not about steering through our rear-view mirror strategically.

To hold onto China as the big rising threat is a fundamental misreading of global economics and globalization's evolution--and willfully so.

China will seek to steal from us. China will confound us where it can and confront us when it has no choice, but it will so asymmetrically because symmetrical challenges would be suicidal. The reason why no carrier's been sunk since WWII is because WWII ended with the invention of nuclear weapons, and nukes kill great power war in all its kinetics. That's why terrorism rises to the top of the heap--duh!

That threat is a function of globalization's spread, just like China's rising income. Pretending you can isolate military threats from that larger economic reality is just plain goofy.

But that ignorance is what keeps America so stupid when it comes to its grand strategy: we rely on columnists and journalists for this vision, and they're feed by military experts with virtually no understanding of economics (witness how slowly we learn in Iraq).

There is no grand strategy that so willfully excludes economic rationality. It's just nonsense and crap.

And doing so in the name of respecting the "irrationality" of conflict is equally bogus. Because it's only in the absence of economic success that such irrationality emerges, so focusing on the yang while denying the yin's power is simply contemplating war solely within the context of war, like contemplating disease without any reference to good health.

Keating's a smart guy who's been around the block. If he sees strategic opportunity in creating dialogue and cooperation with China on their reach for power projection, then maybe--just maybe--he knows more about what he's doing that Geertz back in DC being fed the garbage he so routinely peddles on behalf of his "sources."

I believe in confronting America's threats, both external and internal. Our greatest internal threat are those dinosaurs who want the post-9/11 threat definition to be additive--as in, all the new PLUS all the old.

That--quite simply--is a recipe for exhaustion and defeat. Those who persist in that argument must have their motives questioned, because--deep down--behind all the half-baked rationales, you will find greed--pure and simple.

I forgive the stupidity, but not the greed.

===========================

Inside the Ring
http://www.nytimes.com/pages/politics/index.html
By Bill Gertz
THE WASHINGTON TIMES
Published June 1, 2007
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U.S. carrier help?
Pentagon officials are hoping that members of Congress will notice that the senior admiral in charge of the U.S. Pacific Command set the stage for violating congressional limits on military exchanges with China by recently offering to help Beijing build an aircraft carrier.
Adm. Tim Keating, the U.S. Pacific Command leader, told reporters during his visit to China last month that while building and operating a carrier battle group is complex, the United States is willing to help.
"We would, if they choose to develop [an aircraft-carrier program], help them to the degree that they seek and the degree that we're capable, in developing their programs," Adm. Keating said.
The first of the 12 restrictions outlined in a 2000 defense authorization law bars all military exchanges with China that might enhance "force projection operations" — of which aircraft carrier battle groups are the most visible. The law was enacted to limit military exchanges with China, which continues to view the U.S. as its main enemy, and to prevent visits that could help China build up its armed forces.
Capt. Jeff Alderson, a Pacific Command spokesman, said Adm. Keating is aware of the congressional restrictions.
"The offer of help was more philosophical, like how hard it is and the ramifications that a carrier would have on neighboring countries in the region," he said.
Officials who are concerned with China's arms buildup were sharply critical of Adm. Keating for the offer of help, calling the remark astounding and noting that China recently stole highly sensitive technology related to an advanced aircraft carrier catapult system through the spy ring headed by convicted Chinese agent Chi Mak, a defense contractor in California.
Critics say the comments are a sign that the U.S.-China military exchange program is spinning out of control under Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chief of naval operations, who recently hosted a visit to the U.S. by Chinese Adm. Wu Shengli. Adm. Wu visited a U.S. aircraft carrier — a move that defense officials say may have been the starting point for the Chinese interest in U.S. help with developing a carrier.
Richard Fisher, a specialist on the Chinese military with the International Assessment and Strategy Center, said the admiral's search for dialogue on carriers with China may be understandable, but that "Admiral Wu's reported expertise is in sinking American carriers, and the People's Liberation Army is deploying layers of anti-ship ballistic missiles, deep sea mines, submarines and cruise missiles for that job."
"So why on earth even suggest we can help China build carriers?" he said.

Gates speech
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates arrives in Singapore today for a speech tomorrow to the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, hosted by the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies. Officials familiar with a draft of the speech say it will have little to say about Asia, much less China and its military buildup.
Instead, the secretary, unless he revised the remarks while flying across the Pacific, will focus on U.S. efforts to wage the global war on terrorism.
Pentagon officials said China was urged by U.S. officials to send a defense ministry-level official to the annual meeting, which will include a number of regional defense chiefs. The Chinese government declined.
During a stopover yesterday in Hawaii, Mr. Gates nevertheless called on Beijing to be more transparent and explain its military buildup.
"One of the central themes of everyone who is talking to the Chinese is more transparency," he told reporters. "Tell us more about where you're headed, what are your intentions. ... That's the real issue."

Submarine secrets
A new book by veteran defense reporter Ed Offley sheds light on one of the secrets of the not-so Cold War: the loss of the nuclear attack submarine USS Scorpion and its 99-man crew in the eastern Atlantic on May 22, 1968.
"The Scorpion sinking is not a mystery," Mr. Offley said in an interview. "It is a Cold War secret that has been buried by both the U.S. and Soviet governments since 1968."
Mr. Offley said the Scorpion was attacked by a torpedo fired by a Soviet submarine during an underwater battle, two months after the loss of the Soviet Golf-II-class submarine K-129 and all hands. Moscow had blamed that loss on overaggressive U.S. anti-submarine warfare efforts.
"What my findings demonstrate is that the Cold War at sea in 1968 erupted into overt hostilities that killed 99 American sailors and another 98 Russians, and could have easily sparked a superpower clash," he said. "I have attempted to provide the surviving relatives of the Scorpion crew that full accounting that they have been denied for the past 39 years."
According to his book, "Scorpion Down: Sunk by the Soviets, Buried by the Pentagon: The Untold Story of the USS Scorpion," the submarine did not blow itself up through an internal mishap or mechanical failure, as the official inquiry stated.
The evidence uncovered in the book revealed that the Scorpion was engaged in surveillance of a Soviet navy formation that included an Echo-II-class attack submarine. The Soviets had been alerted to the Scorpion's spy mission through the case of Navy radioman John A. Walker Jr., who provided Moscow with secret communications codes that let them track the Scorpion.
Another key piece of evidence is underwater sound recordings from sound surveillance system (SOSUS) sensors heard by two sailors that depicted "an underwater dogfight" between the Scorpion and a Soviet submarine "that ended when the Soviet torpedoed the American sub," Mr. Offley said.
"I interviewed both the student and his senior instructor on the record in detail, and both confirmed this incident; the tape had come from a fleet SOSUS unit and had apparently eluded a Navy-wide search and seizure of all Scorpion evidence by the Office of Naval Intelligence within days of the sinking on May 22," he said.

Africa Command
The U.S. military and other civilian government agencies are preparing to invest forces and people in Africa to deal with an array of issues ranging from fighting Islamic terrorism in the north to securing energy resources in the west to promoting stability and health issues throughout the continent, the commander of U.S. forces in Europe said.
Army Gen. John Craddock told reporters at a recent breakfast that the Africa Command will differ from other worldwide U.S. combatant commands in drawing on civilians from other government agencies, not just the U.S. military.
"What we are looking to do here is address the challenges of the African continent first," he said. "If you look at that continent, there are very few challenges, problems, that can be solved by Department of Defense and the military. Sure, there are some that we can help. We can enable. But it's other things. It's Health and Human Services, and it's Commerce, it's probably Justice with the trafficking, [Drug Enforcement Agency] type stuff. It's Energy, it's Agriculture. So there's a lot of equity here across the U.S. government's agencies and departments."
About 25 percent of the new command will be civilians, a number that could increase to as much as 50 percent. The European Command currently has most of Africa as its area of responsibility.
From a terrorism standpoint, al Qaeda poses a main target for the military in Africa, with the terrorist group moving into Chad, Niger and Mali, the four-star general said. The North African Islamist group Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, known as GSPC, recently changed its name to al Qaeda Islamists in Magrab.
"They're now a franchise," Gen. Craddock said, noting that the group has stepped up attacks and kidnappings in North Africa.
c Bill Gertz covers the Pentagon. He can be reached at 202/636-3274 or at bgertz@washingtontimes.com.