The blast that rocked Beirut yesterday—killing three and injuring scores more—sends a clear message to the Bush administration, Franklin Lamb writes:

It is doubtful that it was a failed attempt to assassinate Ambassador Feltman. Had they targeted him it is likely the Ambassador would be dead.

… For many in Lebanon, the American Embassy under the Bush administration has become an Israel Embassy in the way that John Bolton became a second Israeli UN Ambassador. Once an Embassy joins one side in an internal conflict as it did in 1982 it loses its diplomatic status and under international law can be targeted as if a participant in hostilities against the Country.

What little credibility the Bush administration had was lost when it intensified the US record of facilitating Israel’s destruction of Lebanon, a string of five wars armed and funded, largely unknowingly, by American taxpayers and without their consent during 1978, 1982, 1993, 1996 and 2006. The Bush performance this week in occupied Palestine erases any doubt about its objectivity.

Few in Lebanon, Palestine, or the wider Middle East take Bush for anything more than a dangerous zealot in the service of Israel, not America. Bush’s midlife crisis exhibited by his dancing around with a sword in Saudi returns him full circle to his alcohol fuelled toga fraternity parties.

What might be a sensible prescription to remedy this mess? Read on for the article in full, and click on image thumbnails for the often unabashedly provocative full-size cartoons by Latuff et. al. Read the rest of this entry »

Franklin Lamb reflects upon the recent term of Bush administration-appointed (to Lebanon) and former Israel-posted US Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman.

Before his appointment as US Ambassador to Lebanon in July 2004 and commencement in August of that year, Mr. Feltman served at the Coalition Provisional Authority office in Irbil, Iraq, from January-April 2004. Prior to this, as Franklin Lamb mentions in his article below, he served for seven years in Israel.

Fouad Siniora’s government in Lebanon has been dubbed “Feltman’s Government” by several opposition parties in Lebanon.

See also this Daily Star Editorial (20 Oct): There’s a better - and cheaper - way that Washington can help Lebanon (URL updated: now direct link; for all Daily Star editorials, click here)

(Photo: Jeffrey Feltman)

October 26th, 2007

As US Ambassador Jeffrey Feltman packs his bags and prepares to depart Lebanon for his next assignment, he probably should be forgiven for feeling a bit abused these past few months.

His pique surfaced on October 22 when he rudely insulted his host, his Christian eminence Bishop Mattar specifically, and Lebanese journalism in general when he likened it to a court clown tasked with bringing him some laughter in the morning which helps him forget his Lebanese concerns. Beirut’s media, including Al Safir, has been having a field day commenting on the American Ambassador’s unprecedented pro Israel activities while claiming to “love Lebanon.”

Talal Salman, editor in chief of As-Safir in Beirut wrote on October 24:

If there had been a true state in Lebanon, the America ambassador in Beirut Jeffery Feltman would have been “deported” back to his country. … Never in the history of relations between countries has a foreign ambassador given himself such license to interfere, through public and secret personal communications, daily televised statements, and written journalistic columns of late, in the most critical of internal affairs of the state to which he was sent. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in the press and making news again is speculation about the possible US airbase in northern Lebanon, renewed by the Lebanese daily As-Safir (Arabic). Only this time, there’s more. In English, the idea was best enunciated by Franklin Lamb in Its The Airbase, Stupid (see also ‘Does “Loving” Lebanon Mean the Bush Administration Never Has To Say Its Sorry?’), and he is cited again in the article from Al-Manar below.

The Daily Star also carries an article on the issue, and how this week’s visit to Lebanon by US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman has renewed speculation that Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s government has plans to turn the country into a forward base from which the Pentagon can counter what it sees as resurgent Russian influence in Syria, as claimed in Y-Net. Is the Cold War making a comeback?

All this would involve a string of bases in Lebanon: one in the Christian region of Bsharri; one in the Bekaa; and one in the plains of Damour south of Beirut. This would be in addition to the airstrip at Kleiaat being used as an airbase, two naval bases near Tripoli, and a wish-list for radar stations in Qornet Sawda, Barouk and Dahr al-Baidar. This is denied by US Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman. What we can be more sure of is that what is being pushed for is a less neutral stance towards the resistance (namely, Hezbollah) and Syria — and a reassessment of Lebanese relations towards Israel—that’s right, let’s forget the willful invasion and nefarious destruction of the country by Israel’s hafrada regime last year ever happened.

See also Iran’s Press TV; Israel’s Ha’aretz carries AP’s Hezbollah slams U.S. call for ‘partnership’ with Lebanon army and the International Herald Tribune also carries the AP piece: US to build “strategic partnership” with Lebanese army, says Pentagon official. In the blogosphere have a look at Zentor’s In the Middle of the East blog with The Mother of all Sparks and Mustapha’s Beirut Spring blog with A US Military Base in Lebanon? On a different but related topic, see Robert Fisk’s Secret armies pose sinister new threat to Lebanon.

Lebanon US base to counter Qaeda, Hezbollah or Russia?

Mohamad Shmaysani

18 Oct 2007 Al Manar

The issue of building a US airbase in northern Lebanon has resurfaced. Senior US political and military officials have been flocking into Lebanon since the Israeli war against Lebanon in 2006, the last of whom is Eric Edelman, the US Undersecretary of Defense for policy, heading a Pentagon delegation. The Lebanese daily Assafir raised speculations of a likelihood to build US military bases in Lebanon and alter the Lebanese army’s creed. “It is perceived that the US is focusing on the army’s directive which includes the fundamental national policy adopted by the army, particularly article five which stresses on the brotherly and special ties between Lebanon and Syria and article eight which underscores supporting the resistance,” Assafir said.In the report which the daily said is based on “reliable sources”, the Eric Edelman delegation met with the head of the unconstitutional government Fouad Saniora, Defense Minister Elias el-Murr and Army General Michel Suleiman and tackled four issues: the military situation in Lebanon, security and intelligence, the situation of the Lebanese Army and Lebanese state policy.

US Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffery Feltman, who reportedly attended the Pentagon delegation meeting dismissed Assafir daily report as insulting to the Lebanese army. Sources closed to Saniora’s unconstitutional government brushed aside as fabricated reports that the US had proposed building military bases.

Earlier reports revealed that a US airbase in the north of Lebanon would be built in the model of El-Udeid base in Qatar, for covert operations against the Syrian regime and to safeguard the oil pipelines of Baku-Tiflis-Ceyhan and Mosul-Kirkuk-Ceyhan. Read the rest of this entry »

I present Hersh’s latest New Yorker article in full here not because I treat his articles as gospel — one should always treat every piece, especially those who purport to have insider knowledge, critically — but because of the salient facts and administration ‘mood’ gleaned from the following.

Shifting Targets: The Administration’s plan for Iran

Seymour M. Hersh
October 8, 2007 edition of The New Yorker

ILLUSTRATION: GUY BILLOUT

In a series of public statements in recent months, President Bush and members of his Administration have redefined the war in Iraq, to an increasing degree, as a strategic battle between the United States and Iran.

“Shia extremists, backed by Iran, are training Iraqis to carry out attacks on our forces and the Iraqi people,” Bush told the national convention of the American Legion in August. “The attacks on our bases and our troops by Iranian-supplied munitions have increased. . . . The Iranian regime must halt these actions. And, until it does, I will take actions necessary to protect our troops.” He then concluded, to applause, “I have authorized our military commanders in Iraq to confront Tehran’s murderous activities.”

The President’s position, and its corollary—that, if many of America’s problems in Iraq are the responsibility of Tehran, then the solution to them is to confront the Iranians—have taken firm hold in the Administration. This summer, the White House, pushed by the office of Vice-President Dick Cheney, requested that the Joint Chiefs of Staff redraw long-standing plans for a possible attack on Iran, according to former officials and government consultants. The focus of the plans had been a broad bombing attack, with targets including Iran’s known and suspected nuclear facilities and other military and infrastructure sites. Now the emphasis is on “surgical” strikes on Revolutionary Guard Corps facilities in Tehran and elsewhere, which, the Administration claims, have been the source of attacks on Americans in Iraq. What had been presented primarily as a counter-proliferation mission has been reconceived as counterterrorism.

The shift in targeting reflects three developments. First, the President and his senior advisers have concluded that their campaign to convince the American public that Iran poses an imminent nuclear threat has failed (unlike a similar campaign before the Iraq war), and that as a result there is not enough popular support for a major bombing campaign. The second development is that the White House has come to terms, in private, with the general consensus of the American intelligence community that Iran is at least five years away from obtaining a bomb. And, finally, there has been a growing recognition in Washington and throughout the Middle East that Iran is emerging as the geopolitical winner of the war in Iraq. Read the rest of this entry »

Accompanied by the superlative cartoonists Andy Singer and Carlos Latuff, here is Pepe Escobar in a piece aptly entitled Welcome to Planet Gaza (Asia Times Online, 22 Sept 2007). For a related piece, see also Chris Marsden, Israel’s Collective Punishment of Gaza.

Just added: see also Sonja Karkar, The Quality of Mercy in Gaza, Counterpunch (25 Sept) and Chris Doyle, Life Behind the Wire, Guardian CiF (24 Sept)

Escobar reflects upon the recent decision by the apartheid Israeli regime to designate the occupied territory of Gaza, for which it has responsibility it is attempting to abrogate, a “hostile entity”, and rendering the region’s population as Unpeople in the service of neocon US and Israeli exceptionalism. He writes:

It is one of the most scandalous instances of collective punishment anywhere in the world in recent times. And what is the response of the high-minded “international community”? It’s the standard “three monkeys” - willfully deaf, dumb and blind.

This Thursday, the Israeli cabinet’s decision to declare the 8-kilometer-wide, 23km-long, arid Gaza Strip a “hostile territory” has started to be translated by facts on the ground. The Israel Defense Forces have begun “gradually” to cut the supply of fuel and electricity to the 1.5 million population, one of the highest densities on Earth, 50% of them already living under the poverty line, 50% of them under-15s, 33% of them refugees.

Gaza uses about 200 megawatts of electricity; 120 come from Israel; 65 are produced in Gaza; and only 17 come from Egypt. Israel says supply to generators at Gaza’s hospitals will not be affected.

There’s more to come: a trade ban, no freedom of movement, no visits to prisoners in Israeli jails, an overall hardcore financial squeeze, and sooner rather than later, another military onslaught. As the Israeli daily Ha’aretz so nicely put it, this is just a “plan to limit services to civilians”.

Nobody will get in. Few, if any, will get out. If someone wants to go to Gaza, the only way will be via Egypt.

This comes on top of other “restrictions” already in place. No fewer than 200,000 kids went back to school in occupied Palestine this September - just like millions of other kids around the world. But they had nothing apart from their textbooks because the State of Israel deems paper, ink, ballpoint pens and binding materials not to be “fundamental humanitarian needs”. Read the rest of this entry »

From the Fars News Agency, via Global Research, seven chancellors and presidents of Iranian universities and research centres have sent a letter addressed to their counterpart at Colombia University, Lee Bollinger, inviting him to provide responses to 10 questions by Iranian academics and intellectuals.

Perhaps we can add a few questions of our own for Mr Bollinger.

I’ve added the visuals –click on thumbnails to view the full-size.

The following is the full text of the letter:

Mr. Lee Bollinger
Columbia University President

We, the professors and heads of universities and research institutions in Tehran, hereby announce our displeasure and protest at your impolite remarks prior to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s recent speech at Columbia University.

We would like to inform you that President Ahmadinejad was elected directly by the Iranian people through an enthusiastic two-round poll in which almost all of the country’s political parties and groups participated. To assess the quality and nature of these elections you may refer to US news reports on the poll dated June 2005.

Your insult, in a scholarly atmosphere, to the president of a country with a population of 72 million and a recorded history of 7,000 years of civilization and culture is deeply shameful.

Your comments, filled with hate and disgust, may well have been influenced by extreme pressure from the media, but it is regrettable that media policy-makers can determine the stance a university president adopts in his speech.

Your remarks about our country included unsubstantiated accusations that were the product of guesswork as well as media propaganda. Some of your claims result from misunderstandings that can be clarified through dialogue and further research.

During his speech, Mr. Ahmadinejad answered a number of your questions and those of students. We are prepared to answer any remaining questions in a scientific, open and direct debate.

You asked the president approximately ten questions. Allow us to ask you ten of our own questions in the hope that your response will help clear the atmosphere of misunderstanding and distrust between our two countries and reveal the truth.

1- Why did the US media put you under so much pressure to prevent Mr. Ahmadinejad from delivering his speech at Columbia University? And why have American TV networks been broadcasting hours of news reports insulting our president while refusing to allow him the opportunity to respond? Is this not against the principle of freedom of speech?

2- Why, in 1953, did the US administration overthrow Iran’s national government under Dr Mohammad Mosaddegh and go on to support the Shah’s dictatorship?

3- Why did the US support the blood-thirsty dictator Saddam Hussein during the 1980-88 Iraqi-imposed war on Iran, considering his reckless use of chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers defending their land and even against his own people?

4- Why is the US putting pressure on the government elected by the majority of Palestinians in Gaza instead of officially recognizing it? And why does it oppose Iran’s proposal to resolve the 60-year-old Palestinian issue through a general referendum?

5- Why has the US military failed to find Al-Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden even with all its advanced equipment? How do you justify the old friendship between the Bush and Bin Laden families and their cooperation on oil deals? How can you justify the Bush administration’s efforts to disrupt investigations concerning the September 11 attacks?

Read the rest of this entry »