Rand Paul Slams Obama, Defends Israel by *W. James Antle

During his Senate campaign, Rand Paul walked a careful line on foreign policy: he shared his father's basic skepticism of interventionism but tried to be much more respectful of the majority viewpoint within the Republican Party. Sometimes that led him to state his positions differently from his father; sometimes it led him to take different positions than his father.

So it was interesting to read the Kentucky senator's statement on President Obama's Middle East speech. As expected, Paul slammed Obama's liberal interventionism: "Our mistakes in foreign policy have always been from hubris. We somehow believe that we can dictate the policies of the world, and enforce them with our military and economic strength. While this might sound like a good idea to many, it has its limits and its consequences." Yet even in opposing the Libya war, Paul took a pro-Israel line: "For example, instead of seeking proper authority from Congress and the Constitution to go to war with Libya, President Obama empowered the United Nations and the Arab League, two bodies that together endanger the security and sovereignty of our ally Israel."

Senator Paul continued his criticism of Obama's stance on Israel:

It is the United Nations who is threatening to impose a Palestinian state without a guarantee of safety for Israel. It is members of the Arab League who foment hostilities or refuse to recognize the right to safety and security of Israel.

But far worse than that, today it was an American President who stood before the world and once again demanded Israel act against her own strategic interest in the name of a false peace.

Peace from weakness or peace from outside coercion of Israel is a fool's errand. Unfortunately, the President today proved himself willing to play that fool.

Israel and her enemies have fought wars for the better part of the past 60 years. And terror-supporting countries in the region have spent the better part of those years feigning interest in peace while lobbing rockets across borders.

For President Obama to stand up today and insist that Israel should once again give up land, security and sovereignty for the possibility of peace shows an arrogance that is unmatched even in our rich history of foreign policy.

Paul then concludes on a noninterventionist note:

I agree with the President. This is in fact a moment of opportunity. It is time to seize control of our foreign policy from those who have spent the past decade policing the world, trying in vain to build nations after destroying them, and bankrupting our children and grandchildren in the process.

This opportunity will pass us by if we simply repeat the same mistakes, over again.

W. James Antle, is associate editor of The American Spectator.

When It Comes To Whistleblowers Obama Worse Than Nixon & Far Worse Than Bush

The New Yorker features a lengthy story on NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake who is scheduled to appear in court next month where he will face a ten-count indictment:

According to a ten-count indictment delivered against him in April, 2010, Drake violated the Espionage Act—the 1917 statute that was used to convict Aldrich Ames, the C.I.A. officer who, in the eighties and nineties, sold U.S. intelligence to the K.G.B., enabling the Kremlin to assassinate informants. In 2007, the indictment says, Drake willfully retained top-secret defense documents that he had sworn an oath to protect, sneaking them out of the intelligence agency’s headquarters, at Fort Meade, Maryland, and taking them home, for the purpose of “unauthorized disclosure.” The aim of this scheme, the indictment says, was to leak government secrets to an unnamed newspaper reporter, who is identifiable as Siobhan Gorman, of the Baltimore Sun. Gorman wrote a prize-winning series of articles for the Sun about financial waste, bureaucratic dysfunction, and dubious legal practices in N.S.A. counterterrorism programs…

Obama, prior to his election, during his ‘change’ campaign, had pledged his support for protecting national security whistleblowers, and had done so on record. As with the rest of his promises it didn’t take him long to switch positions on this front. In fact, he has broken the record among all US presidents, one that puts him in US history as the worst president when it comes to whistleblowers, truth-telling and transparency. Think Bradley Manning. Think Jeffrey Sterling. Think James Risen. Think Pentagon’s Fahrenheit 451 revisited- burning Lt Col Anthony Shaffer’s books. Think the Grand Jury on Wikileaks. And of course, think Thomas Drake:

When President Barack Obama took office, in 2009, he championed the cause of government transparency, and spoke admiringly of whistle-blowers, whom he described as “often the best source of information about waste, fraud, and abuse in government.” But the Obama Administration has pursued leak prosecutions with a surprising relentlessness. Including the Drake case, it has been using the Espionage Act to press criminal charges in five alleged instances of national-security leaks—more such prosecutions than have occurred in all previous Administrations combined. The Drake case is one of two that Obama’s Justice Department has carried over from the Bush years.

Gabriel Schoenfeld, a conservative political scientist at the Hudson Institute, who, in his book “Necessary Secrets” (2010), argues for more stringent protection of classified information, says, “Ironically, Obama has presided over the most draconian crackdown on leaks in our history—even more so than Nixon.”

If you ever come across a cool-aid drinking vote waster who argues against Obama being far worse than his predecessor when it comes to whistleblowing, truth-telling and transparency, please send him or her my way. I believe what I went through as a whistleblower for seven years under the Bush presidency gives me unarguable moral authority. As the most gagged woman in the history of this nation who has received two separate state secrets privilege invocations, whose right to due process via the judiciary branch has been taken away, whose case has put the United States Congress under a gag order, who has been subjected to torturous polygraph tests and having her home computer confiscated …Well, you see what I mean by my moral authority, and with that I am saying it again firmly: Obama has been far worse than Bush in cases of government whistleblowers- truth-tellers exposing government waste, fraud, abuse and criminality.

The Boiling Frogs

Understanding Obama and His America by *Dr. Haider Mehdi

Pakistan is in for its eventual long and difficult battle for survival, likely to be unfolding in the coming months at the hands of Obama’s America, and in no less measure, by the courtesy of Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the CIA’s hit man in his own country, and indeed, the NRO US-Britain-blessed and backed incumbent Zardari-Gilani PPP regime in Islamabad.  The Pakistani nation would have liked to escape the coming conflict, but we know there is no point in it.  This conflict is going to be forced on this nation – there is no escape from so the nation must prepare itself for this eventuality.

Hence, it is imperative now that we understand who political Barack Obama is, what he is, and why he is what he is! 

Does the Pakistani civil-military establishment and the nation know how Obama is going to “come at” Pakistan (using a phrase borrowed from the epic film The Godfather) for its planned destruction as a nation?

Close friends and associates of Barack Obama, the “Political Man, will tell you that the American President’s favorite film is Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece The Godfather.  It is well known in the President’s circle that Obama regularly and repeatedly views this film with religious zealousness, profound political interest, and mythical fascination reserved only for mystical experiences in life.  Several political observers believe that the American President has, since the beginning of his political career, developed an occult-intellectual captivation of and enchantment with the narrative, intriguing plot and historical social-cultural and political phenomena that this film depicts.  Film critics and social psychologists claim that there are political strategic management techniques and lessons that can be learned from this movie which are historically relevant and accurate in the context of the obsessive American political cultural doctrine of capitalism and the individualism cult – the fundamental base of American social and political psyche nationwide and specifically of its ruling elite. 

In essence, The Godfather’s entire plot is about the ultimate power of wealth, even obtained without ethical constraints, the limitless power and influence of individual charisma and its associated diabolical die-hard resolves, irrespective of their moral human determinants, the colossal power of the Western adage that “the end justifies the means,” and the massive power of the fantasy of violence and its imaginative applications (as applied in the film). Indeed, above all, it is about the demonstrated power of the purely American ideological motive “nothing succeeds like success” – the rest, including humanitarian ethics and divine morality in politics is all trash – the lame excuse and the escape of losers.

The amazing thing is that although this movie treats humanity as if it were a piece of merchandize, it’s violence is non-stop, gross and brutal, and the main theme revolves around human carnage for material prosperity, Coppola, in an astonishing filmmaking endeavor, makes all of it look heroic, fascinating and brave – even likeable. 

Indeed, Barack Obama’s permanent fascination with The Godfather is meaningful and revealing of the “Political Man” that he is: it illustrates a link between the individual who is Barack Obama, born of an American mother and foreign father, and the making of Barack Obama, the “Political Man,” who has conceived a specific mindset, a political management vision and an ideological-temperamental world view through which he operates and functions as the President of the United States of America – the sole world Superpower and the most powerful man in global politics.  But Obama is a hostage of his own political mindset. The American President practices what his favorite movie preaches: The application of undeterred brutal power against America’s adversaries, and the promotion of the ideological doctrine, capitalism. Ironically, the spread of worldwide capitalism has proven to be a historical failure in our present times.  Capitalism has not resolved global problematics – it is not part of a solution; it is the problem. 

In my perceptual view, Obama’s Abbottabad plan of Osama Bin Laden’s assassination, if it ever took place, or simply the enacted drama for public consumption (indeed, Obama’s ratings jumped instantly), owes its entire conception to the President’s essential political nature, the “Political Man,” that this film has turned him into in his para-psychological  fascination with The Godfather.  In fact, with two specific episodes in the film’s sequels: the narrative and the execution of the assault in Abbottabad has a striking resemblance to Joey Zasa’s murder by Michael Corleone’s nephew who shoots his victim point blank out of vengeance and because of disrespect to the Corleone family.  And to the other scene of baptism in a church:  while Michael Corleone acts as godfather to his sister’s child, his “soldiers” brutally and in cold blood, murder his adversaries all over town.  Though both of these scenes are depicted as uncontrolled vengeance, and meticulously pre-planned organized violence, Coppola is able to make them look like acts of pride, gallantry, bravery, and unsurpassed organizational skills in their execution.  Similarly, Joey Zasa’s assassination is portrayed as an act of daring courage and justified revenge. 

Do you get the point? Do you see the connection? Do you see the thread that runs between the “Political Man” that Obama has become and how this “Political Man,” the American President, is going to deal with America’s adversaries – most specifically Pakistan, during his re-election campaign. 

Obama’s paramount political objective now is his re-election for the second presidential term.  Obama’s (the “Political Man”) global political objectives, as the incumbent president, are: US hegemony in South Asia and Central Asia vigorously promoted with an aggressive US military political foreign policy initiative to ensure containment of China through an Indian alliance.  Hence, Pakistan will be subjected to a US policy of massive pressures to make it subservient to India’s global preeminence. 

America’s policy modus operandi towards Pakistan is:  all means justify the ends – including whatever it takes to do the job!!

So, what is on the US menu for Pakistan?  More drone attacks, more US unilateral incursions in Pakistan’s domestic and external affairs, more manipulated demands to accommodate India’s interests, more threats, more propaganda, more bribing, more NGO funding, more IMF-World Bank pressures, more psychological warfare, more organized violence, more enacted dramas, more suicide bombings, more internal destabilization, an ultimate plan to denuclearize Pakistan as part of a plot to make this country’s capabilities to respond to Indian aggression null and void, neutralizing Pakistan’s armed forces, and more support to reactionary, backward and American-centric political forces in this nation.  The picture as of now is extremely bleak – but as realistic as it can be. 

“Americans have a right to grieve and remember those who died on 9/11”wrote Gary Younge in Guardian News.  “But they have no monopoly on memory, grief or anger.  Hundreds and thousands of innocent Afghanis, Iraqis and Pakistani’s have been murdered as a result of America’s response to 9/11.”  And unfortunately, Coppola’s “Political Man,” Barack Obama, is going to continue this human carnage against these sad countries, and God knows, wherever else. 

Pakistan needs to switch over to a level-headed full sovereignty mode over its internal and external affairs and a political diplomatic offensive in telling the US that this is the end of the road.  We will not go further nor allow the US to do so.  As Imran Khan has said in his recent article, “Let us reclaim our Pakistan” !!

Indeed, the PPP regime in Islamabad cannot do it – Let the masses stage a Kalma Chawk or Constitutional Avenue revolution in Pakistan.

We have no choice now: this is a battle for our national survival!!

We would have liked to escape this conflict, but we know there is no point in it!!

*Dr. Haider Mehdi, is a university faculty member and regular columnist for The Nation newspaper of Pakistan.

Rebranding Israel by *Alan Hart in Israel

Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, a master of Zionist double-speak and deception, is about to undertake the most important assignment of his life. Because of its continuing occupation and oppression of the Palestinians (not to mention on-going property and land grabs), Israel is becoming a pariah state so far as a growing number of the citizens of nations are concerned. The main purpose of Netanyahu’s forthcoming trip to America is to launch a public relations campaign to rebrand Israel in the hope of stopping the rot of its growing isolation.

The highlights of this campaign launch will be a meeting with President Obama on 20 May; an address to AIPAC’s annual convention the following day; and, the climax, a speech to a joint session of Congress on 24 May.

When he meets with Obama, I imagine Netanyahu will say something very like the following: “Mr. President, you have demonstrated the strength of your commitment to fighting and winning the war against terrorism by bringing your policy into line with ours on the matter of targeted assassinations.” (I also imagine that Netanyahu has given Mossad the greenlight to liquidate Hamas leaders).

With most Republicans who run for election to Congress now as willing as most Democrats to speak from Zionism’s script in order to secure Zionist lobby organized campaign funds and votes, it can be taken for granted that the applause Netanyahu will receive in Congress for his propaganda nonsense will match that he’ll get at AIIPAC’s convention. The truth can be simply stated. On matters to do with Israel-Palestine, it is not the Congress of the United States of America. It’s the

Congress of Zionism and its deluded Christian fundamentalist allies.

The line Netanyahu will take has been trailed by the Zionist lobby, which probably wrote more of the words he will deliver than his advisers in Israel. In its response to the resignation of George Mitchell, Obama’s Middle East envoy, the lobby said in a statement that it “deeply regrets Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas’ continued unwillingness to negotiate directly with his Israeli counterpart without preconditions.” Mitchell, the statement went on to say, had made it clear to both parties that the only way to “true peace” was via direct, bilateral negotiations. But instead of making peace with Israel, the statement added, Abbas opted for reconciling with Hamas, “a U.S-designated terrorist organization responsible for the death of countless civilians and unwilling to recognize the existence of the Jewish state.”

So the name of Netanyahu’s game will be, as ever, to blame the Palestinians for the failure to get a peace process going and to present Israel as the only party seriously interested in peace.

The timing of Mitchell’s resignation is not without interest. I thought the BBC’s Kim Ghattas reporting from Washington was probably about right in her analysis (my emphasis added).

 “Mr Mitchell is said to be resigning for personal reasons. He is 77 and the travelling has probably taken a toll. But if Mr Mitchell had sensed that success was within reach, it's unlikely he would be quitting his job. The timing is also interesting: an indication the policy disagreement had reached an impasse. Mr Obama is expected to make a speech about his Middle East strategy next week. Mr Mitchell was in favour of a more hands-on approach, maybe even pushing to put a detailed US peace plan on the table”.

Kim’s conclusion? “It looks like the administration may have decided to take a step back.”

From reading between the lines of recent reports in the New York Times, I think it is possible to identify the particular step back Obama has taken and which probably did cause Mitchell to resign.

For quite some time, urged on by Mitchell behind closed doors, Obama was seriously considering the idea of putting a U.S. plan on the table as the only hope for getting a real peace process going, but that idea was killed by Israel’s predictable response to the agreement between the PA and Hamas. When Israel said it would not deal with the PA if it was doing business with Hamas, Obama’s advisers said that now was not the time for an American initiative. (They meant something like, “It will seriously damage your chances of re-election, Mr. President.”)

A report in the New York Times by Mark Landler offered this insight. Interviews with several administration officials suggested that the tensions in Obama’s Middle East policy “are less the product of a debate among advisers than of a tug of war within the president himself.”

In my reading of Obama that makes a lot of sense. He knows that it’s not in America’s own best interests to go on supporting Israel right or wrong. He knows that he ought to be putting an American peace plan on the table and challenging Netanyahu and the Zionist lobby and its stooges in Congress to reject it. But he also knows that would be political suicide for himself and many other Democrats who’ll be running for re-election next year.

On 24 April there was an editorial in the New York Times with the headline President Obama and the Peace Process. It’s opening paragraph was this. “President Obama began his presidency vowing to negotiate an Israeli-Palestinian peace. He backed off in the face of both sides’ obstinacy and after a series of diplomatic missteps. Since then, the stalemate, and the mistrust, have only deepened, and it is clear that nothing good will happen until the United States fully engages.”(My emphasis added).

The U.S. is not going to fully engage. Only bad things can come out of Netanyahu’s visit to America. And I mean bad things for all of us, everywhere.

*Alan Hart, former BBC Reporter

Is Iran Still Center Of Middle East's 'Great Game?' by *Inside Iran

From being the most assertively visible actor in the Middle East, it has seemingly become quiet and unnoticed, almost the forgotten country. Yet three months into what has become known as the "Arab awakening," non-Arabic-speaking Iran remains the giant elephant in the living room for foreign-policy makers in Washington.

Indeed, some view current developments as little more than a temporary lull in the long-running contest for influence between the United States and the Islamic regime, an interpretation that appears to be shared by senior officials in Tehran.

"The New York Times" crystallized the trend by reporting on April 2 that the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama regarded events in Libya, where Western powers have sided with rebels trying to unseat Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, as a "sideshow" and that it "sees the region through a Persian lens."

Under the headline, "The Larger Game In The Middle East: Iran," the paper wrote, "Containing Iran's power remains their [administration officials'] central goal in the Middle East. Every decision -- from Libya to Yemen to Bahrain to Syria -- is being examined under the prism of how it will affect what was, until January, the dominating calculus in the Obama administration's regional strategy."

Trita Parsi, head of the Washington-based National American Iranian Council, says the preoccupation is evident in conversations with U.S. officials as well as in administration decisions, including its hesitation over whether to back the mass protests that ultimately ousted the former Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak.

"In my own conversations with administration officials in regard to what is happening in the region, it's been very clear that the frame through which they are looking at these things consistently is: 'How does this affect the competition between the United States and Iran?'" Parsi says. "When looking at what was happening in Egypt, the real question was not what was best for the Egyptian people or democracy. It was: how will this affect the geopolitical rivalry between Iran and the United States? Will any of the decisions the U.S. make[s], or any of the developments, undermine Iran's position in the region?"

Pushing The Old Order Out

Fueling that tendency is the widespread feeling that the upheavals are working in Iran's favor. Suzanne Maloney, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy, says the revolts play to the Islamic regime's inclination to sow and exploit discord.

"I think Iran is the beneficiary of almost everything that is happening in the region, including what has happened in Bahrain," Maloney says. "The one exception is the recent upheaval in Syria. But everything else has really put many of Iran's old adversaries on the defensive and has obviously forced Washington to scramble and revisit some policies and deal with new elites and leaders."

She describes this as a "real positive" for Iran, because the Islamic republic "has a natural predisposition toward uncertainty and turmoil. They don't need a wholly sympathetic or identical system of government as the Iranians themselves [have developed]. They simply need to see some of their old adversaries pushed out of power and they need to have opportunities to cultivate new allies."

The turbulence in Bahrain -- where Saudi troops were recently deployed to help the U.S.-backed Sunni monarchy suppress an uprising among the Shi'ite majority -- seems to capture the Iranian specter in microcosm.

Events there have been heavily covered by Iran's state-controlled media, which has sided with their fellow Shi'a. This is in contrast to the deadly clashes in Syria, Tehran's close ally, which have been virtually ignored. Iranian officials, including President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, have also bitterly criticized the Saudi involvement in Bahrain, with some predicting the imminent collapse of Saudi Arabia's Western-backed dynasty.

The global intelligence website Stratfor recently depicted the turmoil in Bahrain as the center of a wider struggle with greater strategic importance than events in Libya or elsewhere in North Africa. "Bahrain is the focal point of a struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran for control of the western littoral of the Persian Gulf," wrote Stratfor's chief executive officer, George Friedman, who added that Tehran's goal was to be "the dominant power" in the gulf.

The Wrong Frame Of View

Yet the portrayal of Iran as "the biggest show in town" rankles some specialists, who believe it runs the risk of blinding policymakers to underlying currents in the region. Scott Lucas, head of the EA World View website and an Iran analyst at Birmingham University in Britain, describes it as a "terrible approach."

"The U.S. is applying a relatively old strategy of linking up with elites in the region to a new situation and I don't think they're really thinking through the consequences" argues Lucas, who says the approach is unsuited to an "asymmetrical battle" that is being waged. "The issue of political legitimacy is the one that people are pushing. It's not the U.S.-Iran contest, it's not even the question of economic factors and if you are seen in any way as basically not really being on board with that question of political legitimacy, if you are seen as in effect trying to impose this Iran question on top of it, I think it'll bite you on the backside."

The regime in Tehran has mirrored the tendency to view the Arab revolts in geostrategic terms, portraying them as rebellions, inspired by Iran's Islamic Revolution of 1979, against unpopular U.S.-backed governments.

The difference, Lucas says, is that Iran's approach is driven by propaganda purposes stemming from a need to distract its own discontented population still smarting over Ahmadinejad's bitterly disputed reelection in 2009. The U.S. policy, by contrast, is being shaped by "mistaken conceptions" about Iranian power that overlook the country's internal weakness.

"What Egypt should have proven to us is that the old way of looking at this as some kind of "Great Game", where these countries are just pawns in the Great Game and the people are just pawns, [is] absolutely out of date," Lucas says. "It also completely wipes out the internal considerations regarding Iran. This is a country which has serious internal issues. All you do by projecting this Iran game in the Middle East is ignore those issues. The U.S. made this mistake in 2009 when it went with a nuclear-first approach to Iran and missed what was happening. It's making the same mistake in 2011."

And according to Parsi, fixating on the time-honored Washington-versus-Tehran policy frame obscures the emergence of new contests in the region.

"The inherent weakness of all frames is that they may not be capable of incorporating completely new and unforeseen developments," Parsi says. "The competition between Iran and the United States is still there but it's not the only competition. There are new developments taking place in the region and the major question going forward is going to be how the relationship between Egypt, Turkey, and Iran will change the picture."

From being the most assertively visible actor in the Middle East, it has seemingly become quiet and unnoticed, almost the forgotten country. Yet three months into what has become known as the "Arab awakening," non-Arabic-speaking Iran remains the giant elephant in the living room for foreign-policy makers in Washington.

Indeed, some view current developments as little more than a temporary lull in the long-running contest for influence between the United States and the Islamic regime, an interpretation that appears to be shared by senior officials in Tehran.

"The New York Times" crystallized the trend by reporting on April 2 that the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama regarded events in Libya, where Western powers have sided with rebels trying to unseat Colonel Muammar Qaddafi, as a "sideshow" and that it "sees the region through a Persian lens."

Under the headline, "The Larger Game In The Middle East: Iran," the paper wrote, "Containing Iran's power remains their [administration officials'] central goal in the Middle East. Every decision -- from Libya to Yemen to Bahrain to Syria -- is being examined under the prism of how it will affect what was, until January, the dominating calculus in the Obama administration's regional strategy."

Trita Parsi, head of the Washington-based National American Iranian Council, says the preoccupation is evident in conversations with U.S. officials as well as in administration decisions, including its hesitation over whether to back the mass protests that ultimately ousted the former Egyptian president, Hosni Mubarak.

"In my own conversations with administration officials in regard to what is happening in the region, it's been very clear that the frame through which they are looking at these things consistently is: 'How does this affect the competition between the United States and Iran?'" Parsi says. "When looking at what was happening in Egypt, the real question was not what was best for the Egyptian people or democracy. It was: how will this affect the geopolitical rivalry between Iran and the United States? Will any of the decisions the U.S. make[s], or any of the developments, undermine Iran's position in the region?"

Pushing The Old Order Out

Fueling that tendency is the widespread feeling that the upheavals are working in Iran's favor. Suzanne Maloney, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution's Saban Center for Middle East Policy, says the revolts play to the Islamic regime's inclination to sow and exploit discord.

"I think Iran is the beneficiary of almost everything that is happening in the region, including what has happened in Bahrain," Maloney says. "The one exception is the recent upheaval in Syria. But everything else has really put many of Iran's old adversaries on the defensive and has obviously forced Washington to scramble and revisit some policies and deal with new elites and leaders."

She describes this as a "real positive" for Iran, because the Islamic republic "has a natural predisposition toward uncertainty and turmoil. They don't need a wholly sympathetic or identical system of government as the Iranians themselves [have developed]. They simply need to see some of their old adversaries pushed out of power and they need to have opportunities to cultivate new allies."

The turbulence in Bahrain -- where Saudi troops were recently deployed to help the U.S.-backed Sunni monarchy suppress an uprising among the Shi'ite majority -- seems to capture the Iranian specter in microcosm.

Events there have been heavily covered by Iran's state-controlled media, which has sided with their fellow Shi'a. This is in contrast to the deadly clashes in Syria, Tehran's close ally, which have been virtually ignored. Iranian officials, including President Mahmud Ahmadinejad, have also bitterly criticized the Saudi involvement in Bahrain, with some predicting the imminent collapse of Saudi Arabia's Western-backed dynasty.

The global intelligence website Stratfor recently depicted the turmoil in Bahrain as the center of a wider struggle with greater strategic importance than events in Libya or elsewhere in North Africa. "Bahrain is the focal point of a struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran for control of the western littoral of the Persian Gulf," wrote Stratfor's chief executive officer, George Friedman, who added that Tehran's goal was to be "the dominant power" in the gulf.

The Wrong Frame Of View

Yet the portrayal of Iran as "the biggest show in town" rankles some specialists, who believe it runs the risk of blinding policymakers to underlying currents in the region. Scott Lucas, head of the EA World View website and an Iran analyst at Birmingham University in Britain, describes it as a "terrible approach."

"The U.S. is applying a relatively old strategy of linking up with elites in the region to a new situation and I don't think they're really thinking through the consequences" argues Lucas, who says the approach is unsuited to an "asymmetrical battle" that is being waged. "The issue of political legitimacy is the one that people are pushing. It's not the U.S.-Iran contest, it's not even the question of economic factors and if you are seen in any way as basically not really being on board with that question of political legitimacy, if you are seen as in effect trying to impose this Iran question on top of it, I think it'll bite you on the backside."

The regime in Tehran has mirrored the tendency to view the Arab revolts in geostrategic terms, portraying them as rebellions, inspired by Iran's Islamic Revolution of 1979, against unpopular U.S.-backed governments.

The difference, Lucas says, is that Iran's approach is driven by propaganda purposes stemming from a need to distract its own discontented population still smarting over Ahmadinejad's bitterly disputed reelection in 2009. The U.S. policy, by contrast, is being shaped by "mistaken conceptions" about Iranian power that overlook the country's internal weakness.

"What Egypt should have proven to us is that the old way of looking at this as some kind of "Great Game", where these countries are just pawns in the Great Game and the people are just pawns, [is] absolutely out of date," Lucas says. "It also completely wipes out the internal considerations regarding Iran. This is a country which has serious internal issues. All you do by projecting this Iran game in the Middle East is ignore those issues. The U.S. made this mistake in 2009 when it went with a nuclear-first approach to Iran and missed what was happening. It's making the same mistake in 2011."

And according to Parsi, fixating on the time-honored Washington-versus-Tehran policy frame obscures the emergence of new contests in the region.

"The inherent weakness of all frames is that they may not be capable of incorporating completely new and unforeseen developments," Parsi says. "The competition between Iran and the United States is still there but it's not the only competition. There are new developments taking place in the region and the major question going forward is going to be how the relationship between Egypt, Turkey, and Iran will change the picture."

*A project of The Century Foundation

Cheney, Rumsfeld, other Bush officials claim credit for nabbing Bin Laden, talk up waterboarding

A parade of former Bush administration officials went on the Sunday political shows to talk up waterboarding and claim a measure of credit for bagging Osama Bin Laden.


Former Vice President Dick Cheney said waterboarding - which the Obama administration nixed as torture - "probably" played a role in tracking down Bin Laden and should be brought back.


"It was a good program. It was legal program. It was not torture," Cheney told Fox News Sunday. "I would strongly recommend we continue it."


Former Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld called it "a mistake" to rule out waterboarding. "It's clear that those techniques that the CIA used worked," he said on CBS.


Officials have said the key to finding Bin Laden was locating his courier. Captured terrorist Khalid Sheikh Mohammed gave the courier's nickname in 2003 after being waterboarded 183 times.


Torture opponents say Mohammed never gave up the real name, even under so-called "enhanced interrogation," and suggest regular questioning might have worked better.


Further, they say torture is a betrayal of American values, whether it works or not.


Rumsfeld said he thought Obama made "the right decision" to gamble on a SEAL raid, but added, "I would have preferred a lot less discussion out of the White House about intelligence, personally."


Last week, the Daily News reported that former President Bush declined an invitation to visit Ground Zero with President Obama because he thought Obama wasn't sharing credit for the raid. His loyal aides set out to change the narrative Sunday.


Former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice praised Obama's "brave decision," but stressed that the operation - which she called a "victory across presidencies" - took many years to set up.


"You don't just stumble upon Osama Bin Laden. It takes a lot of work to get there," she said on CNN.


"These leads developed quite a long time ago."


Former Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff said on NBC, "Both presidents deserve a lot of credit for maturing the apparatus over 10 years."


On Saturday, former Bush chief of staff Andrew Card criticized Obama's visit to Ground Zero as grandstanding.


"I think he has pounded his chest a little too much," Card told the German newspaper Der Spiegel. "He can take pride in it, but he does not need to show it so much."


Card oversaw one of history's worst-conceived presidential victory laps: when his boss donned a flight suit to jet to an aircraft carrier draped with a banner announcing "Mission Accomplished" in 2003, just five weeks into the Iraq war that still rages.


*Helen Kennedy,Daily News Staff Writer

Panic from the Houses of Congress and Aipac? by *Dr. Franklin Lamb

On April 13, 2011, more than a dozen Israel “First, last and always” US congressional leaders from both houses of Congress held an urgent conference call organized by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).  Their purpose was to discuss how best to promote Israel during next month’s US visit by Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu and more importantly how to confront the rapidly changing Middle East political landscape. One consensus was that no one saw it coming and that it was dangerous for Israel.

Among those participating were former Jewish Chairman of powerful committees including Reps. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), who headed the Banking Committee; Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), ex-chairman of the Commerce and Energy committee; Howard Berman (D-Calif.), ex-chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee; and Nita Lowey (D-N.Y.), ex-chairwoman of the foreign operations subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee as well as Eric Cantor, House Majority leader, the highest ranking Jewish member of Congress in history.

 What AIPAC operatives reportedly told the conference attendees was that Netanyahu is once again furious with President Obama and outraged by what he sees as a vacillating US Government attitude towards Israeli needs. They were told that the Israeli PM sees real political danger for Israel in the shifting US public opinion in favor of the young sophisticated attractive Arab and Muslims increasingly seen on satellite channels from the region who remind the American public of their own ideals.

Netanyahu, the conferees were told, wants Congress to flex its muscle with the White House and deliver a strong message to President Obama that his political future is tied to Israel’s. Hence the current “America needs Israel more than ever stupid!” campaign wafting from the Israel lobby across the talk radio airwaves.

In addition, as more Israeli officials are indicted for various domestic crimes, and some harbor fears of arrest for international ones, 68% of the American Jewish community, according to one by poll commissioned last month by Forward, believe the US Israel lobby is increasingly fossilized with the likes of ADL (Anti-Defamation League) director Abe Foxman’s vindictive infighting among several of the largest Jewish lobby organizations which continue to lose memberships, especially among the young.

Congressman Eric Cantor lamented that “Israel is badly losing the US College campuses”, despite heavy financial investments the past few years to curb American students growing support for Gaza, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, all dreaded symbols of the growing opposition to the 19th Century Zionist colonial enterprise.  Support for Palestine is skyrocketing he claimed. “Until Palestine is freed from Zionist occupation no Arab or Muslim is truly free of Western hegemony,” according to one assistant editor of Harvard University’s student newspaper, the Crimson.

Admitting that the Mossad did not foresee even the Tunisian or Egyptian uprisings, some AIPAC  staffers, of whom there are more than 100, admit to not knowing how to react to the topics they were presented with for discussion, some of which included:

• The Egyptian public emphatic insistence that the 1978 Camp David Accords be scrapped and that the Rafah crossing be opened.  The latter has just been announced and the former is expected to be achieved before the end of the year.
• The change of regimes and the dramatic rise in publicly expressed anti-Israel sentiment and insistence that Israel close its embassy and Egypt withdraw its recognition of the Zionist state.
• The apparent rapprochement between Fatah and Hamas which has been increasingly demanded by the Palestinians under occupation and in the Diaspora.
• The fact that the new regime in Cairo is seeking to upgrade its ties with Gaza's Hamas rulers as well as Iran.
• With respect to possible PA-Hamas rapprochement, U.S. National Security Council spokesman Tommy Vietor is trying to reassure Israel before Netanyahu’s visit by announcing this week that "The United States supports Palestinian reconciliation on terms which promote the cause of peace, but to play a constructive role in achieving peace, any Palestinian government must renounce violence, abide by past agreements, and recognize Israel's right to exist."

AIPAC frequently knocks heads with the Israeli embassy in Washington for control of visiting Israeli PMs' and important government’s schedules will control what Netanyahu says and does.  AIPAC Executive Director Howard Kohr recently told a group of visiting Jewish student activists from California that “sometimes there is confusion in this town over just where the Israeli Embassy is located but let me assure you it’s no more than 300 yards from the Capitol Dome on North Capitol Street, NW.”

AIPAC, not the Israeli Embassy will write the final draft of Netanyahu’s speeches including the themes he will emphasize.  According to a Congressional  source with AIPAC connections, Netanyahu’s visit will focus on the following:

• Bashing Iran to please the White House. However, this mantra will have to compete with   the democratic revolutions that are sweeping the Arab world and which are terrifying not just Netanyahu, but also AIPAC and their hirelings in congress.
• Warning against the dangers to “the peace process” of any PA-Hamas unity government.
• Warnings about the threats to Israel from Egypt and popular calls for scrapping of the 1978 Camp David Accords, ending the Egyptian subsidy and supply of 40% of Israel’s natural gas, calls for closing the Israeli Embassy, the dangers of permanently opening the Rafah border crossing “that will allow Hamas to in the words of, an Israeli official speaking on condition of anonymity to the Washington Post that Gaza's Hamas rulers had already built up a "dangerous military machine" in northern Sinai which could be further strengthened by opening the border.
• The tried and tested bromide that “Israel has no peace partner to negotiate with will be used but this too has lost its bite given that the Palestine Papers has shown that the PA for five years habitually caved into Israel demands and are widely viewed as collaborators with Israel in preserving the status quo– so what more could be expected from them? The truth is that Mahmoud Abbas and Salem Fayyad are Netanyahu, Liberman’s and Barak’s favorite “peace partners.”
• Netanyahu will hint at and AIPAC will drill in the idea that the Obama administration has been too hard on Israel.

While Netanyahu announced this week that "I will have the opportunity to air the main parts of Israel’s diplomatic and defense policies during my visit in the United States”, informed sources report that his main goal and timing of his visit is to undermind a rumored initiative that President Obama’s team has been working on Netanyahu, according to AIPAC, also plans to attack the UN’s plan to admit Palestine and its offices are preparing a media blitz in an attempt to undermine the U.N. recognition of Palestine by arguing that such a General Assembly action would not in reality mean Palestinian sovereignty over the West Bank and East Jerusalem because of the fact that Israel currently controls those territories. AIPAC is arguing that such United Nations recognition of Palestine would only reiterate the principle, previously articulated by the U.N which denies the legitimacy of Israel's claim to territories acquired by force in the war of June 1967.

In reality, and as AIPAC well knows, UN recognition of Palestine would have a devastating effect on Israel’s legitimacy and would fuel an international campaign to force every colonist out of the West Bank. Given the feelings of virtually all people in the Middle East and North Africa toward Israel this could dramatically undermine the apartheid state. AIPAC and Israel’s agents in Congress also ignore the fact that the U.N. is the only the international body that admitted Israel as a member state in May 1949, although the resolution noted a connection between Israel's recognition and the implementation of resolution 181 of November 1947, which called for partition of what had been British Mandate Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states.

The reason that intense angst and even fear stalks the Houses of Congress and AIPAC is that Netanyahu will remind his hosts in the coming days that Israel has always called “home” is that some US officials are starting to express treasonous thoughts long kept to themselves.

One seemingly shocking statement was made to a visiting Oregon delegation during a recent visit to Congressional offices by a Member of Congress never known for being publicly critical of Israel.  As reported via email:  “He said recent events suggest that while ( the revolts spreading, across the Middle East) are not the immediate  end of the State of Israel, he believes they are harbingers and signal the  ‘beginning of the end of the State of Israel as we have known it. And that will be good for America and humanity.”

“What seems to have particularly upset him was his own mentioning to the group was a recent report about a conference of Rabbis in Israel who are demanding.

He quoted Dov Lior, the rabbi of Kiryat Araba, anillegal settlement near Hebron, who according to media reports told a conference organized to discuss how to get non-Jews in mandatory Palestine to leavethe country for the sake of Jewish immigrants who had no roots in Palestine: "Today there is a lot ofland in Saudi Arabia and in Libya, too. There is a lot of land inother places. Send them there." As scholar Khalid Amayreh reminds us, it was Lior, who in 1994 praised arch-terrorist BaruchGoldstein for massacring 29 Arab worshipers at the Ibrahimi Mosque indowntown Hebron, said peace in the Holy Land was out of the question becausethe Arabs wouldn't allow Jews to usurp the land