Congress's Ill-Timed Iran Bills
By Danielle Pletka
Posted: Tuesday, August 28, 2007

ARTICLES
Washington Post
Publication Date: August 28, 2007


Danielle Pletka, vice
president for foreign
and defense policy
studies

This month, the Bush administration tightened the screws on Iran yet again. Its move to formally designate Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization is the latest in a wave of state, federal and international efforts to pressure the regime of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad into reconsidering its nuclear weapons program and increasingly aggressive sponsorship of terrorism throughout the Middle East.

Five bills are pending in Congress that would encourage divestment and eliminate loopholes in the Iran Sanctions Act, among other things. At the state level, bills are pending in at least 13 legislatures to compel state pension funds to divest from companies and financial institutions doing business with Iran; in Florida and Louisiana, such measures have become law. More broadly, the U.N. Security Council will consider a third resolution in September responding to Iran's failure to suspend its uranium enrichment program.

There is growing recognition that Iran's nuclear activities must be stopped, and the voluntary divestment movement is gaining ground. Yet this moment of harmonious convergence--possible only because of the gravity of the threat from Iran--may come to an abrupt end if Congress has its way.

There is growing recognition that Iran's nuclear activities must be stopped, and the voluntary divestment movement is gaining ground.

Most of the bills pending in the House and Senate would, if passed, tighten the provisions of the Iran Sanctions Act (formerly known as the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act) and strip the president of authority to waive U.S. sanctions on a variety of firms, many in Europe. Currently, the act allows the president to waive sanctions on firms that invest more than $20 million in Iran's energy sector or to choose from a menu of sanctions, ranging from a slap on the wrist to major penalties.

Soon after the Iran-Libya Sanctions Act became law in 1996, the Clinton administration made clear to European governments that it had no intention of implementing its provisions. European leaders, uniformly insistent that engagement with Iran was the most effective means of moderating Iranian misbehavior, roundly rejected efforts to punish Tehran's business partners. The Clinton administration, and later the Bush administration, looked away as tens of billions of dollars flowed into Iran's energy sector. European investment in Iran skyrocketed with no pressure from London, Paris or Berlin on nuclear or terrorism issues. And with Iran earning upwards of 85 percent of its foreign currency from the sale of petroleum and related products, it was possible to draw a direct line from that investment to the funds available to the regime for nuclear weapons, missiles and funding for terrorist groups.

Congress acquiesced in this executive disregard for more than a decade. Yet, just as lawmakers have gotten riled about enforcing the law, European nations are beginning to grasp the importance of curtailing their economic ties with Tehran. Since early last year, France, Germany and Britain, among other European Union nations, have cut back export credits--essentially taxpayer subsidies--to companies doing business in Iran. Germany's export credit agency, Hermes, has reportedly cut guarantees 30 percent and aims to cut a further 10 percent this year. Deutsche Bank last month announced that it is ceasing to do business with Iran. Two major British banks, HSBC and Standard Chartered, have cut back significantly. The French Embassy touts hundreds of millions in French divestment from Iran in recent years.

On principle, many European foreign and finance ministries continue to resent American hectoring on trade with Iran. A senior German Foreign Ministry official recently characterized Treasury Department lobbying against business with Iran as "outrageous." Such protestations notwithstanding, word has quietly spread from Paris, London and Berlin that banks and companies now do business with Iran at their own risk.

Japan, once Iran's top trading partner, has also begun to cool its once warm relations, though not to the same extent as the Europeans. But it is a model when compared with China and Russia, which have raced to do business where the West has pulled back. Indeed, China and Russia have been facilitators not just for Iran's energy sector but also for its missile and nuclear programs.

As Congress watches the international community crawl toward a consensus, slapping down European firms that irresponsibly continue to underwrite Iran's energy sector will be tempting. To be sure, Europe could do much more. But the European Union has come a great distance since the 1990s, and with each month, Europeans are doing more to withdraw support from the Iranian economy.

A more appropriate focus of congressional action would be Russian arms and nuclear sales to Iran and growing Chinese investment in Iran's energy sector. Closing loopholes that permit U.S. firms to do business with Tehran through subsidiaries would also show admirable consistency.

For many years, a key element of Iranian strategy has been to divide Europe from the United States, leaving America with only unilateral options. It would be a cruel irony if, just as European governments finally begin doing the right thing, Congress deepens the Atlantic rift.

Danielle Pletka is the vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at AEI.

Timelines and Defeat
By Frederick W. Kagan
Posted: Tuesday, August 28, 2007

ARTICLES
National Review Online
Publication Date: August 28, 2007


Resident Scholar
Frederick W. Kagan

Some aspects of war are complex and hard to understand, but others are very easy. As the discussion about Iraq swirls over the next month, it is essential to keep one simple fact in mind: Setting hard-and-fast timelines for the withdrawal of U.S. forces or imposing arbitrary caps on the size of those forces is equivalent to accepting failure in Iraq, with all its consequences. Nonetheless, there are many, including many in Congress, who think that success in Iraq is compatible with inflexible timelines. It is not; inflexible timelines will lead inevitably to defeat.

The Bush administration, its generals, and external proponents of the current strategy have been clear from the outset: the surge of forces in Iraq is, and was always, intended to be temporary. Its primary aim was to establish security for the people of Iraq (and clearly, it is succeeding in that aim). After security had been brought to a tolerable and stable level, it was expected that the Iraqi government could begin to make significant progress toward political reconciliation at the national level. In the meantime, Coalition forces would continue to work to increase the size of the Iraqi Security Forces, and to improve the quality of those forces. The expectation since the start of the surge has been that as both security and the capabilities of the ISF improved, it would become possible to begin to reduce American forces in Iraq, most likely sometime in 2008. All indicators on the ground now suggest that we are on track to achieving this goal.

The key point is that the reduction of U.S. forces in Iraq, according to this plan, will be driven by changes in the circumstances on the ground. Only when and where the ISF is able to take over maintaining security, will the American forces, accordingly, be able to pull back. In places where the ISF is not yet able to do so, the U.S. forces will remain. The decisions rest with the commanders on the ground who alone can evaluate these conditions.

If we mandate that U.S. commanders reduce forces in areas they believe cannot sustain their own security, then we are ordering them to accept an increase in violence and terrorist activity in their areas.

The American commanders, with whom these decisions reside, are fully cognizant of the strains the deployments are placing on the armed forces (they should know best, after all, since most of them are now serving their second, third, or fourth tours in Iraq or Afghanistan). Drawing on the evidence gathered in the course of their own frequent visits to U.S. and Iraqi units, combined with the intelligence at their disposal, American commanders in Iraq are uniquely qualified to offer an assessment. The only reason they would oppose withdrawing American troops from a given area is that they believe such a withdrawal would harm the mission, lead to in increase in violence and terrorist activity, and place American interests in danger.

Many Americans, and in particular many politicians, are naturally frustrated with the war and want to bring it to an end. Many are calling for the imposition of timelines for the reduction of American combat forces to certain levels, by certain dates. Congressmen and senators have proposed and voted for legislation containing such timelines. But timelines can really only mean one of two things: They can indicate goals from which commanders are free to deviate, depending upon the changing circumstances on the ground. According to this definition, timelines are not fundamentally different from the current strategy, which seeks to reduce the U.S. presence as rapidly as possible without compromising American interests in Iraq and the region.

Alternatively, they can indicate a fixed and inflexible requirement to be followed even if the situation on the ground does not justify them. Applied to the current situation in Iraq, this would translate into a requirement for defeat. In short, if we mandate that U.S. commanders reduce forces in areas they believe cannot sustain their own security, then we are ordering them to accept an increase in violence and terrorist activity in their areas. If we issue such an order for the entire country, we are issuing an order to accept failure country-wide.

Some argue that the U.S. has already failed in Iraq and success is impossible. The solid evidence of improving security and grassroots political movement seems clearly to undermine that argument, but if one sincerely believes that success is no longer possible, then it makes sense to demand a change in strategy. Even then, however, setting arbitrary timelines and force caps is extremely dangerous. If Harry Reid is right and the U.S. has already lost in Iraq, it does not follow that the U.S. can just pull out and let all its interests in the region slide.

Even leading war opponents, who advocate immediate troop reductions, recognize that the U.S. will have to continue to fight al Qaeda in Iraq and work to prevent genocide and regional conflict. Who can say in advance exactly how many troops will be needed to do that? And if it emerges that al Qaeda in Iraq is reconstituting more quickly than expected, will Congress forbid President Bush--or President Clinton--from reinforcing American troops there on the grounds that it would violate the timelines? Would any American want Congress to do that, accepting the risk that a revitalizing al Qaeda in Iraq could prepare to attack Americans everywhere, including the U.S.?

It is perfectly natural for the American people and their leaders to want to have some idea of what the military command expects will be necessary to fight this war, and the commanders in Iraq have been regularly offering their views. Military staff, of course, must estimate force requirements and make plans to ensure that there will be adequate troops available for the best, worst, and most likely cases. But as soon as the discussion moves away from what the situation in Iraq requires, and focuses exclusively on arbitrary dates and number of forces, it forgets about protecting America’s interests and citizens and moves toward accepting defeat. Some Americans may prefer to accept defeat with its laundry list of consequences, but it is hard to believe that there are very many of them.

Frederick W. Kagan is a resident scholar at AEI.

A Trying Time for CAIR

By Robert Spencer
FrontPageMagazine.com | 8/28/2007

It has been a bad week for the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). The group that has so successfully presented itself to law enforcement and media organizations as a Muslim civil rights group is seeing a radically different portrayal of its motives and goals coming to light in the Holy Land Foundation terror charity trial in Dallas. The Associated Press reported Monday that prosecutors in that trial have produced documents establishing that CAIR was part of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee. This was a group led by Mousa Abu Marzook, who once served as chairman of the Hamas Political Bureau. CAIR co-founder Nihad Awad has been placed at a meeting of Hamas supporters – which really shouldn’t surprise anyone, since in 1994, the year CAIR was founded, Awad stated publicly, “I am in support of the Hamas movement.”

CAIR Chairman Parvez Ahmed was dismissive, however, of the idea that CAIR had anything to do with Hamas. “That’s one of those urban legends about CAIR. It’s fed by the right-wing, pro-Israeli blogosphere.”

Unfortunately for Ahmed, however, the Holy Land trial itself was making this position ever more difficult to sustain. One document that has come to light at the trial sets out goals for the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States, “whose members,” according to AP, “included some of the Holy Land leaders now on trial.” The memo urges Brotherhood members in the U.S. to “understand that their work in America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within.”

Of course, CAIR would deny having any such agenda. CAIR officials have met with Presidents Clinton and Bush, and have long had the ear of the mainstream media. It has even conducted sensitivity training seminars for FBI agents. But the troubling aspects of its record are becoming increasingly well known. Shortly after 9/11, CAIR’s website called for donations for the Holy Land Foundation (under a photo of the burning World Trade Center towers), the same charity that is now on trial for funneling money to Hamas.

Consistent also with the Brotherhood memo is the now-notorious and controversial statement of CAIR’s cofounder and former Board Chairman Omar Ahmad. In 1998, he told a Muslim audience that “Islam isn’t in America to be equal to any other faith, but to become dominant…The Koran, the Muslim book of scripture, should be the highest authority in America, and Islam the only accepted religion on Earth.” Although Ahmad now denies saying this, the reporter who witnessed his speech stands by the accuracy of her story. CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper has himself said something similar: “I wouldn’t want to create the impression that I wouldn’t like the government of the United States to be Islamic sometime in the future.”

Several CAIR officials, including its Community Affairs Director, Bassem Khafagi; a Board member of CAIR’s Texas chapter, Ghassan Elashi; a communications specialist and civil rights coordinator for CAIR, Randall Todd Ismail Royer; and fundraiser Rabih Haddad have been convicted of various terrorism-related offenses. No current CAIR official has ever explained how these people were able to find work with the organization in the first place if it is really the moderate civil rights organization it claims to be.

CAIR is also involved in the notorious Flying Imams lawsuit. The “Flying Imams” are six imams who are suing US Airways because they were removed from a flight for suspicious behavior. They also originally brought suit against the passengers who reported them, although after immense public pressure they dropped this part of their suit. Still, the damage was done: after the wide publicity their suit against the passengers received, fewer people will dare without hesitation to report suspicious behavior in an airport or airplane. And jihad terrorists will be the principal beneficiaries. The lawyer for the Flying Imams is Omar T. Mohammedi, who as of 2006 was president of CAIR’s New York chapter.

Is the Flying Imams lawsuit, with its chilling effect on the reporting of suspicious behavior, part of a “grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within”? Maybe it isn’t. But longtime observers of the tactics and activities of the Council on American Islamic Relations, up to and including its officials’ repeated and adamant refusals to condemn Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups, can reasonably see in CAIR a pattern of behavior entirely consistent with this goal. CAIR, if it truly does not wish to see the destruction of Western civilization, has a chance now to demonstrate this by abandoning its strategies of legal intimidation and the bullying of its critics, and beginning to work honestly for the defense of that civilization.

Will it take that opportunity?
Robert Spencer is a scholar of Islamic history, theology, and law and the director of Jihad Watch. He is the author of seven books, eight monographs, and hundreds of articles about jihad and Islamic terrorism, including the New York Times Bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Religion of Peace?.

Militants Free 15 Pakistani Soldiers


By REUTERS
Published: August 28, 2007
Filed at 12:28 a.m. ET

WANA, Pakistan (Reuters) - Pro-Taliban militants in northwest Pakistan released 15 paramilitary troops on Tuesday after nearly three weeks in captivity, a tribal elder said.

"They have handed over the 15 soldiers," the elder Ameer Mohammad Mehsud told Reuters. Mehsud was involved in negotiations to free the men.

The militants abducted 16 paramilitary soldiers in the South Waziristan region near the Afghan border on August 9. They later killed one of the soldiers, videotaping a teenaged boy cutting the man's head off.

Mehsud said another four people, including a paramilitary officer and a government official, abducted in the same region last week would be released soon.

Pakistan's rugged Waziristan region is a hotbed of militant support. It has never been brought under the writ of any government.

Many al Qaeda and Taliban members took refuge in Waziristan and other remot

August 28, 2007
Iraq Weapons Are a Focus of Criminal Investigations

By JAMES GLANZ and ERIC SCHMITT
BAGHDAD, Aug. 27 — Several federal agencies are investigating a widening network of criminal cases involving the purchase and delivery of billions of dollars of weapons, supplies and other matériel to Iraqi and American forces, according to American officials. The officials said it amounted to the largest ring of fraud and kickbacks uncovered in the conflict here.

The inquiry has already led to several indictments of Americans, with more expected, the officials said. One of the investigations involves a senior American officer who worked closely with Gen. David H. Petraeus in setting up the logistics operation to supply the Iraqi forces when General Petraeus was in charge of training and equipping those forces in 2004 and 2005, American officials said Monday.

There is no indication that investigators have uncovered any wrongdoing by General Petraeus, the top commander in Iraq, who through a spokesman declined comment on any legal proceedings.

This article is based on interviews with more than a dozen federal investigators, Congressional, law enforcement and military officials, and specialists in contracting and logistics, in Iraq and Washington, who have direct knowledge of the inquiries. Many spoke on condition of anonymity because there are continuing criminal investigations.

The inquiries are being pursued by the Army Criminal Investigation Command, the Department of Justice, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation, among other agencies.

Over the past year, inquiries by federal oversight agencies have found serious discrepancies in military records of where thousands of weapons intended for Iraqi security forces actually ended up. None of those agencies concluded that weapons found their way to insurgents or militias.

In their public reports, those agencies did not raise the possibility of criminal wrongdoing, and General Petraeus has said that the imperative to provide weapons to Iraqi security forces was more important than maintaining impeccable records.

In an interview on Aug. 18, General Petraeus said that with ill-equipped Iraqi security forces confronting soaring violence across the country in 2004 and 2005, he made a decision not to wait for formal tracking systems to be put in place before distributing the weapons.

“We made a decision to arm guys who wanted to fight for their country,” General Petraeus said.

But now, American officials said, part of the criminal investigation is focused on Lt. Col. Levonda Joey Selph, who reported directly to General Petraeus and worked closely with him in setting up the logistics operation for what were then the fledgling Iraqi security forces.

That operation moved everything from AK-47s, armored vehicles and plastic explosives to boots and Army uniforms, according to officials who were involved in it. Her former colleagues recall Colonel Selph as a courageous officer who was willing to take substantial personal risks to carry out her mission and was unfailingly loyal to General Petraeus and his directives to move quickly in setting up the logistics operation.

“She was kind of like the Pony Express of the Iraqi security forces,” said Victoria Wayne, who was then deputy director of logistics for the overall Iraqi reconstruction program.

Still, Colonel Selph also ran into serious problems with a company she oversaw that failed to live up to a contract it had signed to carry out part of that logistics mission.

It is not clear exactly what Colonel Selph is being investigated for. Colonel Selph, reached by telephone twice on Monday, said she would speak to reporters later but did not answer further messages left for her.

The enormous expenditures of American and Iraqi money on the Iraq reconstruction program, at least $40 billion over all, have been criticized for reasons that go well beyond the corruption cases that have been uncovered so far. Weak oversight, poor planning and seemingly endless security problems have contributed to many of the program’s failures.

The investigation into contracts for matériel to Iraqi soldiers and police officers is part of an even larger series of criminal cases. As of Aug. 23, there were a total of 73 criminal investigations related to contract fraud in Iraq, Kuwait and Afghanistan, Col. Dan Baggio, an Army spokesman said Monday. Twenty civilians and military personnel have been charged in federal court as a result of the inquiries, he said. The inquiries involve contracts valued at more than $5 billion, and Colonel Baggio said the charges so far involve more than $15 million in bribes.

Just last week, an Army major, his wife and his sister were indicted on charges that they accepted up to $9.6 million in bribes for Defense Department contracts in Iraq and Kuwait.

Investigations span the gamut from low-level officials submitting false claims for amounts less than $2,500 to more serious cases involving, conspiracy, bribery, product substitution and bid-rigging or double-billing involving large dollar amounts or more senior contracting officials, Army criminal investigators said. The investigations involve contractors, government employees, local nationals and American military personnel.

Questions about whether the American military could account for the weaponry and other equipment purchased to outfit the Iraqi security forces were raised as early as May of last year, when Senator John W. Warner, Republican of Virginia and then the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a request to an independent federal oversight agency to investigate the matter.

But federal officials say the inquiry has moved far beyond the initial investigation of hundreds of thousands of improperly tracked assault rifles and semiautomatic pistols that grew out of Senator Warner’s query. In fact, Senator Warner said in a statement to The New York Times that he was outraged when he was briefed recently on the initial findings of the investigations.

“When I was briefed on the recent developments, I felt so strongly that I asked the Secretary of the Army to brief the Armed Services Committee right away, which he did in early August,” Senator Warner said in a statement.

An Army spokesman declined to comment on the briefing by the secretary of the Army, Pete Geren. In a sign of the seriousness of the scandal, the Defense Department Inspector General, Claude M. Kicklighter, will lead an 18-person team to Iraq early next month to investigate contracting practices, said Geoff Morrell, a Pentagon spokesman.

Mr. Morrell said Mr. Kicklighter, a retired three-star Army general, would stay in Iraq indefinitely to investigate contracting abuses, and was empowered to fix problems on the spot or take action if his team identified potential criminal activity.

Congressional officials who have been briefed on the Defense Department inspector general’s inquiry said Monday that one focus would be on weapons, munitions and explosives. In addition, Mr. Geren, the Army secretary, is expected to announce later this week the creation of a panel of senior contracting and logistics specialists to address any systemic problems they identify.

Senator Warner’s request last May for an independent federal oversight agency to investigate the accountability of weapons and equipment given to Iraqi security forces underscored concern about the issue.

That federal agency, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction, responded with a report in October 2006 that found serious discrepancies in American military records of where thousands of the weapons actually ended up. The military did not take the routine step of recording serial numbers for the weapons, the inspector general found, making it difficult to determine whether any of the weapons had ended up in the wrong hands.

In July 2007, the Government Accountability Office found even larger discrepancies, reporting that the American military “cannot fully account for about 110,000 AK-47 rifles, 90,000 pistols, 80 items of body armor, and 115,000 helmets reported as issued to Iraqi security forces as of Sept. 22, 2005.”