Making terrorists

One detainee at a time:

A Kuwaiti man who complained about maltreatment during a three-year stay in the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was involved in a deadly suicide bombing in northern Iraq last month, the U.S. military confirmed yesterday.

Creating a consortium for all users of enriched uranium?

Via Pygalgia, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries make an offer to Iran:

DUBAI (Reuters) - U.S.-allied Gulf states are willing to set up a body to provide enriched uranium to Iran to defuse Tehran's stand-off with the West over its nuclear plan, Saudi Arabia's foreign minister told a newspaper on Thursday.

Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries -- Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates -- share Western concerns that Iran's nuclear energy program will lead to it acquiring atomic bombs, a claim Tehran denies.

"We have proposed a solution, which is to create a consortium for all users of enriched uranium in the Middle East," foreign minister Prince Saud al-Faisal told the Middle East Economic Digest (MEED).

"(We will) do it in a collective manner through a consortium that will distribute according to needs, give each plant its own necessary amount, and ensure no use of this enriched uranium for atomic weapons," he said, according to MEED's Web site.

Prince Saud said Iran was considering the offer, which envisages building a plant in a neutral country.

"We believe it should be in a neutral country -- Switzerland, for instance," said Prince Saud. "Any plant in the Middle East that needs enriched uranium would get its quota. I don't think other Arab states would refuse. In fact ... other Arab countries have expressed a desire to be part of the proposal."

"They (Iran) have responded that it is an interesting idea and they will come back to us. We hope the Iranians will accept this proposal. We continue to talk to them and urge them not only to look at the issue from the perspective of the needs of Iran for energy, but also in the interests of the security of the region."

The six Gulf Arab states have announced plans to start their own nuclear energy program, raising concern over an arms race in the world's top oil exporting region.

Um... not that this isn't a good idea, but just a reminder that Saudi Arabia is no real friend of the United States. So... using Switzerland would be a really nice idea...

Welcome the new boss, same as the old boss: Saddam without a moustache

I told you guys it was Saddam's moustache that drove Bush bonkers! So now we have come around full circle: (my bold)

The Bush administration has perfected the art of fall-guy selection. The more convoluted the plot, the more credible the fall guy must be. As Lewis "Scooter" Libby was the fall guy in Washington, Premier Nuri al-Maliki will be the fall guy in Baghdad.

The Baghdad conference on Saturday was a derivative talk-fest setting up three committees to prepare the way for another meeting at the foreign-minister level next month in Istanbul. The subtext, though never explicit, is more glaring: it is the absolute US impotence to guarantee security or stability in Iraq, and the desperate search for a way out, now pitting the "axis of fear" (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates) against the "axis of evil" (Iran and Syria).

[snip]

General David Petraeus, touted as the miracle worker who might save the occupation from itself, had to admit on the record that in fact the surge won't solve or stabilize anything. To "stabilize" Baghdad to a minimum, the US would have to deploy at least 120,000 combat troops.

But that's not the point. The point is that this gory chronicle of a failure foretold is inevitably slouching toward the "secret" US Plan B - which is none other than installing the new Saddam Hussein: in this case the same old "Saddam without a mustache" (as he is known in Baghdad) Iyad Allawi. Allawi's stellar record - former car-bomber, Ba'ath thug, alleged embezzler (in Yemen), Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) asset, corrupt interim prime minister and "butcher of Fallujah" - could have been penned by a Hollywood hack.

[snip]

Maliki will be the fall guy and a new Washington/Green Zone-engineered "coalition", led by perennial favorite Allawi, will usurp his power in Parliament. This coup-in-the-making has been rumored in Baghdad for months. At least this is how the ideal Bush administration scenario develops.

From a Bush administration point of view Allawi's legitimacy is a minor issue - as most Iraqi members of Parliament would rather legislate by remote control from London anyway. In real life the masses, Sunni or Shi'ite, despise them and totally ignore them. The really popular leaders in Iraq are, religiously, Grand Ayatollah Sistani and, politically, Muqtada al-Sadr - whose reach also includes a great deal of moderate Sunnis.

Sadrism, apart from the excesses of a minority, is in essence a nationalist liberation movement. Thus, for axis-of-evil cheerleaders, inevitably it is as dangerous as Hamas or Hezbollah.

Maliki, the fall guy, is already irrelevant. Any analysis of US imperial designs since the CIA-engineered coup against prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh in Iran more than half a century ago reveals the same pattern. If you want divide-and-rule and total domination, who's your man? A clever, charismatic nationalist or a ruthless CIA asset?