“Downward spiral:” U.S. Study Is Said to Warn of Crisis in Afghanistan
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- Written by MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT, NY Times MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT, NY Times
- Published: 09 October 2008 09 October 2008
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October 9, 2008 U.S. Study Is Said to Warn of Crisis in Afghanistan
By MARK MAZZETTI and ERIC SCHMITT WASHINGTON — A draft report by American intelligence agencies concludes that Afghanistan is in a “downward spiral” and casts serious doubt on the ability of the Afghan government to stem the rise in the Taliban’s influence there, according to American officials familiar with the document.
The classified report finds that the breakdown in central authority in Afghanistan has been accelerated by rampant corruption within the government of President Hamid Karzai and by an increase in violence by militants who have launched increasingly sophisticated attacks from havens in Pakistan.
The report, a nearly completed version of a National Intelligence Estimate, is set to be finished after the November elections and will be the most comprehensive American assessment in years on the situation in Afghanistan. Its conclusions represent a harsh verdict on decision-making in the Bush administration, which in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks made Afghanistan the central focus of a global campaign against terrorism.
Beyond the cross-border attacks launched by militants in neighboring Pakistan, the intelligence report asserts that many of Afghanistan’s most vexing problems are of the country’s own making, the officials said.
The report cites gains in the building of Afghanistan’s national army, the officials said. But they said it also laid out in stark terms what it described as the destabilizing impact of the booming heroin trade, which by some estimates accounts for 50 percent of Afghanistan’s economy.
The Bush administration has initiated a major review of its Afghanistan policy and has decided to send additional troops to the country. The downward slide in the security situation in Afghanistan has also become an issue in the presidential campaign, along with questions about whether the White House emphasis in recent years on the war in Iraq has been misplaced.
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Food fight: Lebanon to sue Israel for marketing hummus as its own
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- Written by Jenny Percival and agencies Jenny Percival and agencies
- Published: 07 October 2008 07 October 2008
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A new war has broken out between Lebanon and Israel – but this time it is over chickpeas and fava beans rather than guns and territory.
A Lebanese official says Lebanon is preparing to file an international lawsuit against Israel for claiming ownership of traditional dishes it believes are originally Lebanese.
The president of the Lebanese Industrialists' Association, Fadi Abboud, accuses Israel of "stealing" Lebanon's cuisine by marketing dishes such as hummus as its own.
He says that while Lebanon is partly to blame because it has never registered its main food trademarks, Israel's adoption of these dishes causes Lebanon to lose millions of dollars in trade.
Reports in the Arabic media say Abboud is also concerned about Israel's marketing of not just of hummus but falafel and tabbouleh.
Abboud said the lawsuit would be based on the 2002 case in which Greece won a ruling that only its cheese can be called Feta.
Hummus, falafel and tabbouleh are common across the Middle East and attempts to identify their origins are complicated. One legend says that hummus was first prepared in the 12th century by Saladin, Sultan of Egypt and Syria.
The Egyptians are often credited with inventing falafel, while tabbouleh is said to be a product of Ottoman Syria which includes the modern states of Syria, Lebanon, Palestine and Jordan.
Ehud Olmert’s Parting Words Dared To Offer Painful Truth
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- Written by Editorial, The Jewish Daily Forward Editorial, The Jewish Daily Forward
- Published: 07 October 2008 07 October 2008
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Editorial
It is a rule of thumb in democracies that lame duck leaders should steer clear of bold new initiatives and sharp turns of policy. They’re supposed to sit tight until their elected successors can settle in and take the wheel. A decent respect for the opinions of the electorate demands that the voters’ decisions be honored, including the decision to repudiate an incumbent. Ehud Olmert, Israel’s outgoing prime minister, broke that rule September 29. And rightly so.
Olmert had resigned from his post a week earlier, chased from office by persistent corruption charges. He then became a caretaker prime minister, required to stay on until a new chief executive is sworn in. And yet, just days after resigning, in a dramatic newspaper interview on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, Olmert announced a historic turn in Israeli foreign policy. He vowed to spend his remaining days on the job pursuing his newly declared objective.
Breaking with every past Israeli leader, Olmert declared that Israel must give up control of East Jerusalem, the Golan Heights and virtually the entire West Bank if it hopes to achieve peace with its neighbors. He insisted that Israel currently is as strong as it has ever been — militarily, economically, diplomatically — and can afford to take risks. Haggling endlessly over an extra hill here or an extra kilometer of strategic depth there does little for Israel’s security in an age of long-range missiles, he said. He warned that the current Palestinian leadership might very soon be replaced by something far more intractable if Palestinians aren’t shown concrete gains. And he warned that the alternative to sweeping concessions is continuing tension and likely war.
Predictably, Olmert’s remarks have touched off a furious debate in Israel. Critics on the left complain that he should have said these things years ago, before the peace process lost its momentum and popular backing. Critics on the right say he is speaking foolishness, because the Palestinians don’t really recognize Israel, whatever they may say, and that makes peace impossible. Withdrawing to the pre-1967 borders, as Olmert urges, would weaken Israel’s defenses. Besides, the critics say, beyond strategic considerations, giving up Israeli sovereignty in East Jerusalem would rip the heart out of Jewish nationhood.
In any case, the critics add, Olmert has no right to launch a controversial new policy while heading a caretaker government. By resigning, they say, he has lost his mandate to lead. All he can do is manage day to day until his replacement is named — whether through new elections or by negotiating a new governing coalition within the current Knesset.
But the critics are wrong. They’re wrong on facts, wrong on law and, most important, wrong on substance. Olmert hasn’t lost his mandate from the voters, because he didn’t lose an election. He was elected two years ago to a four-year term. Last month, with two years left to serve, he resigned on his own because mushrooming corruption investigations were undermining his ability to do the job. Under Israel’s current election law — a law enacted by a government led by Benjamin Netanyahu’s own Likud party — the removal of a prime minister does not remove the ruling party’s mandate and force new elections. The first response, by law, must be an attempt to form a new coalition within the existing Knesset. That’s what Tzipi Livni, the new leader of Olmert’s Kadima party, is trying to do right now. Until she or someone else takes office, Olmert remains prime minister, with a full legal and electoral mandate to govern.
Most important, Olmert was elected with a mandate to do just what he is doing now. He was the first Israeli prime minister elected to office on an explicit platform of trading land and Palestinian statehood for peace. True, he intended to achieve a peace agreement without going back to the 1967 borders or giving up East Jerusalem. Since then, he’s learned that it can’t done. His previous view was based on a decades-old illusion, as he admitted in his newspaper interview. He shared that illusion, he said, and he was wrong.
Not that the truth was a secret. At least four Israeli-Palestinian model peace agreements have been hammered out over the past 20 years, from the controversial 1988 Amirav-Husseini agreement to the semi-official 1995 Beilin-Abu Mazen agreement, the official Camp David-Taba talks in 2000 and the unofficial Geneva Initiative in 2002. The outcomes have all been pretty much the same. There was never a realistic possibility of achieving anything different. Olmert is simply the first Israeli leader to admit it out loud. That’s partly because he is, despite his reputation, a man of principle. Partly, too, it’s because he is that rare politician who no longer needs to worry about losing an election.
Olmert probably won’t be able to conclude a deal in his final weeks in office, but he has left an important legacy: clarity. It’s been clear for a long time that peace would require, as Ariel Sharon often said, painful choices. Now we know what those choices are. Israelis must now decide whether they’re willing to go that extra mile for peace, or whether they would rather hold out for the whole pot — and sacrifice another generation to war.
Already heading down the memory hole: Debate on Oregonian's DVD distribution hidden on web site.
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- Written by AUPHR AUPHR
- Published: 02 October 2008 02 October 2008
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Killer of the year: Mossad chief named "man of the year"
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- Written by Gideon Levy Gideon Levy
- Published: 02 October 2008 02 October 2008
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By way of supporting their decision they presented a "rare journalistic achievement": a glimpse of a meeting between our hero Dagan and outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. The images echoed Communist Romania or North Korea: Olmert hosting Meirkeh, as the Mossad head is called by U.S. President George Bush, in his office. Both said very little in front of the cameras. "You did well," the prime minister said to Rosen, about the recognition. Then two character witnesses were called in. Major Gen. (res.) Yossi Ben Hanan spoke about how Dagan once killed a terrorist with his own hands, though of course he did not specify how, and reminisced about how they had once traveled together in the Far East. National Infrastructure Minister Benjamin Ben-Eliezer added: "I recommend that you don't get too close to him - I suggest your story had best be favorable."
Later the panel made intimations about his doings in the past year: The killing of senior Hezbollah leader Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus, a few more mysterious and unnecessary killings and, of course, the bombing of the alleged nuclear site in Syria, operations that they said should make Meirke deserving of "at least 10 Israel Prizes."
Indeed, our man of the year is a declared killer. Whether by box-cutter or car bomb, his craft is killing. His killer instincts are our source of pride, the peak of our creativity. We should be thankful to Rosen and friends: They did not even try to sugar-coat anything. They did not pick a humanist, a scientist, an industrialist or an author; Attorney General Menachem Mazuz came in second and Olmert third, but Dagan is our killer of the year. He himself is not the problem. Rather, it's the disgusting worship of people of his kind. Never has the head of the Mossad been such a dark figure with so much blood on his hands. Never has anyone thought of picking the Mossad chief, of all people, as man of the year. It is doubtful whether there is any other free country where the top journalists would consider choosing the head of such an organization as man of the year. Only in Israel.
Only in Israel are Dagan's past activities still censored. He is responsible for much of the blood that was shed in Gaza in the 1970s and Lebanon in the '80s. A shocking expose prepared by two reputable journalists a few years ago about his doings in Lebanon was never published. That report would have only made the Channel 2 dream team panel worship Dagan evern more, and supported his image as a killer with a knife in his teeth.
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