Eric Umansky

Airhard Gerhard

As Bush is trying to change the subject, it's good to know Germany will keep the pressure on Putin. From an interview in Time:

Q: ARE YOU TOO UNCRITICAL OF WHAT MANY SEE AS RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN'S MOVES TOWARD AUTHORITARIANISM?

A:  We all want to see a strong, prosperous and democratic Russia. I think President Putin is on the right path to get there.

Extraordinary Rendition

Rep. Ed Markey, smelling an opportunity, has reintroduced a  bill that would bar the  U.S. from  kidnapping detaining suspects and shipping them off to countries that are known to torture prisoners. 

1) Anybody gotten the administration's response to the bill?

2) E.R. coverage has been gaining a bit of steam (see the NYer and Newsweek)--hence Markey's move.  But I'd be surprised if the administration gave up the practice, unless of course some photos make it out.

Complex Persecution

Randy Paul notes the death of Cuban writer Guillermo Cabrera Infante.   Infante was a son of the revolution:

He fell out of favour after opposing the government's decision to ban a documentary on Havana nightlife made by his brother. Castro publicly rebuked him in a trial and he was henceforth forbidden to publish.

I'm reminded of a line I once read by Infante,  "There is no such as a persecution complex in a place where the persecution is so complex." I can't recall the name of the book because I gave it to Cuban journalist Claudia Marquez.  She emailed in December to say she's been given permission to leave and last I heard she's still stuck there.

As I was saying, etc.

Anti-secrecy mensch Steven Aftergood has posted another  batch of Congress Research Service reports.Those are the reports  that aren't classified, that you and I pay for, and that we're not allowed to see because Congress declared no-touchies. There are about a dozen new reports. Three deal specifically with jihadism:

"Islamic Religious Schools, Madrasas: Background," updated February 10, 2005:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS21654.pdf

"The Islamic Traditions of Wahhabism and Salafiyya," updated February 10, 2005:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/RS21695.pdf

"Terrorism in Southeast Asia," updated February 7, 2005:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/terror/RL31672.pdf

In an ode to procrastination, I flipped through that last report. Lo-and-behold, there's  more evidence that NYT op-ed contributor John Burnett doesn't know he's talking about. As I mentioned below Burnett said the Acehenese  rebel group, known as GAM, is tight with jihadists: "Many terrorism experts cite its links to Jemaah Islamiyah, the Islamist group suspected in the Bali nightclub bombings of 2003, and to Al Qaeda."

Here's what the CRS  report says about that:

Past efforts by Laskar Jihad and JI to become involved in Aceh have been rejected by GAM. Though GAM supporters are devout Muslims, they do not embrace the sort of radicalism embraced by JI.

 

The dangers and distortions of a single prism

Today's NYT has an op-ed about the dangers of piracy on the high seas. It's focused on the potential for terrorists to wreak havoc by taking over a ship in one of the world's choke points  such as the  Malacca Strait, which connects the Indian and Pacific Oceans and is  at one-point just one-mile wide.  It's written by  John Burnett,  author of   Dangerous Waters: Modern Piracy and Terror on the High Seas, and notes:

Despite the global decline in the number of reported attacks (many experts feel that there are hundreds more each year that go unreported), the number of attacks in the Malacca Strait increased last year to 37 from 28 in 2003. And, while many raids are likely carried out by crime syndicates, there is evidence that many have been the work of the Free Aceh Movement of northern Sumatra, an Islamist separatist organization that has been fighting to gain independence from Indonesia since 1976. While the United States does not officially call the group a terrorist organization, the Indonesian government does. And many terrorism experts cite its links to Jemaah Islamiyah, the Islamist group suspected in the Bali nightclub bombings of 2003, and to Al Qaeda.

Here's the thing: Burnett doesn't know what the fuck he's talking about.  The Free Aceh Movement, or GAM, is nationalist. No doubt GAMs hands are dirty; I've  heard reports that they shaken down tsunami relief organizations. But that doesn't make them al-Qaida loving jihadists.  The U.S. hasn't ID'd them as a terrorist group because they're not. 

GAM is in peace talks with the Indonesian government. In fact, the group's spokesman asserted  today that GAM isn't even seeking independence, it just wants   'autonomy. '  From al-Jazeera:

"The conflict cannot be solved like that and we have to come to terms with that," Free Aceh Movement (GAM) spokesman Bakhtiar Abd Allah said on Monday when asked if the goal of full independence had been abandoned in the interest of achieving greater autonomy.

 

"That (self-government) is the main thing on the table," he said in

Helsinki

where peace talks with the

Jakarta

government were in their second day. "Of course, in the negotiations we go with the tangible things that are on the table."

That sound like jihadists to you?

Kicking the Can Down the Road (Part IX)

To review: In January of 2004, former top  weapons searcher David Kay announced:  "We were all wrong" and that Saddam had neither banned weapons nor  even programs.  That had been obvious for a while, but in the weird world of news, a kerfuffle ensued. And the White House, facing pressure, named a commision that appeared  to answer the  calls. 

Except it was a Potemkin Panel. The commision didn't have subpoena power nor was it tasked with looking at pre-war intel assessments. Rather it was larded it up with a wide-ranging  to-do list, mostly generic stuff about how to deal with future WMD threats.  As one GOP staffer explained, the White House's strategy was to "kick the can down the road."

Which brings us to the present: The commision is scheduled  to  present its report next month. Meanwhile, the president has been adding items to  its to-do list. From a recent Wash Post piece:

Since its appointment Feb. 6, 2004, Bush has given the commission additional responsibilities beyond reviewing intelligence successes and failures over the past four years. For example, after the president signed the intelligence restructuring bill on Dec. 17, the panel was ordered to review how it could be implemented.

Bush also directed that CIA Director Porter J. Goss send the panel his recommendations for increasing by 50 percent the number of case officers and analysts. And the president ordered the Pentagon and CIA groups looking at future handling of clandestine paramilitary operations to send their reports to the commission.

One word that didn't merit mention in the Post's panel check-in: Iraq.

Quote of the Day (Taking Responsibility edition)

"The credentialing is all handled at the staff assistant level," White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

P.S.  That comes from a NYT piece that actually seems to have a good explanation for how  "Gannon" kept getting into the White House: He never got a permanent press pass, which would have required a serious background check. Instead, he just kept getting one-day passes, which are apparently handed out after the aforementioned " staff assistant level" scrubs  do a quick criminal database scan.

Soy tan 2004.

I didn't know Google had a translation page.

And yeah,  their Mapquest-killer is cool too.

Mark Your Calendar

From the Wash Post's Reliable Source:

Message-control Alert: George Tenet, who retired as CIA director amid controversy over intelligence failures, and outspoken former treasury secretary Paul O'Neill, who was shown the door by the Bush White House, will share a stage next week in Pittsburgh at a fundraiser for Gilda's Club, the cancer patient support charity named for late comedienne Gilda Radner. A PR release yesterday promised "a rare insider's view of presidential decision-making." And perhaps it will even be a candid discussion: The moderator is author Ron Suskind.

Dept. of Bold Headlines

"Lebanon Entering Volatile Period" - Washingtonpost.com, right now.