U.S. Foreign Policy

The Obama administration has released several Bush era memos issued by the Office of Legal Council between the years of 2002 and 2005. The memos elaborate, in detail, a legal justification of such controversial interrogation techniques as waterboarding.

The ACLU has made the memos available in PDF format here

Glenn Greenwald, from Salon.com, has given the memos, and their legal implications, a thorough examination here.

In Video:

.... Watch Part II of Keith Olbermann's Countdown.


Commentary:

Is Torture Really Over?	Obama: Memo release a weighty decision.

by William Bache
03 February 2009

San Antonio, Texas - Nothing would telegraph the message that "America is back" in the Middle East with a balanced, smart-power policy better than for US President Barack Obama to immediately send a US Naval hospital ship to Gaza.

The deployment of a hospital ship should be the centrepiece of a highly visible American-led, sea-based disaster response and humanitarian relief effort. This action will help restore America's global image as a nation that cares about the downtrodden, who are, in this case, predominantly Muslims and Arabs.

The time is right for the dramatic deployment of a humanitarian relief task force to respond to the desperate needs of the people locked in the Gaza Strip. Over 1,300 Palestinians have been killed– and over 5,000 wounded – by military violence. Most of the casualties are civilians who were caught in brutal combat operations in densely populated urban areas. "I have seen only a fraction of the destruction. This is shocking and alarming", said UN Secretary General Ban Ki Moon after his visit to Gaza on 21 January.

Thousands of survivors of the violence need definitive medical care to survive their wounds and recover this winter. Yet, the Israeli and Egyptian governments continue to refuse the transportation of the injured into their respective countries for medical care.

The visible and explicit support of this war by the Bush administration was not in the great humanitarian tradition of the United States. Something must be done to counter Bush's legacy. The US military possesses great capabilities to support humanitarian relief efforts in the area, and can make a real difference in relieving human suffering.

"Thousands of survivors of the violence need definitive medical care to survive their wounds and recover this winter. Yet, the Israeli and Egyptian governments continue to refuse the transportation of the injured into their respective countries for medical care."

There are two US Navy hospital ships, each with a self-contained definitive treatment facility with 12 fully-equipped operating rooms, a 1,000-bed hospital facility, radiological services, a medical laboratory, a pharmacy, an optometry lab, a CAT scan and two oxygen-producing plants. Helicopters can deliver patients to the ship while it is at sea. As non-combatant vessels they are protected by The Hague and Geneva Conventions, and therefore free from any military interference.

The movement of medical supplies and of the US military hospital, pre-positioned in Israel, to Gaza or Egypt to support casualty triage and the efforts of local medical personnel should start immediately. The helicopters from a US aircraft carrier can provide medical evacuation from the triage area in Gaza to the hospital ship and/or to airfields in Israel or Egypt for subsequent medical evacuation to Europe or the United States.

The 18-month Israeli embargo of Gaza has resulted in the degradation of the electrical power infrastructure and failure of the sewage treatment system. A US Navy nuclear submarine can provide emergency electrical power for Gaza this winter, as one did for the Virgin Islands after Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Military construction battalions, especially the famous Navy "Sea Bees", should be part of the effort to restore critical infrastructure degraded by the embargo and combat operations.

President Obama should immediately direct his Secretary of State and Defense Secretary to coordinate an American inter-agency disaster response effort.

To show our willingness to work with everyone interested in taking care of the widows, orphans and wounded of the Gaza disaster, Arab countries should be invited to provide Arabic-speaking medical personnel to work side-by-side with Americans on the hospital ship.

President Obama could again make history. A deployment of the hospital ship in Gaza would be remembered by Arabs everywhere for generations to come.

_____________________

William Bache, of VIM Consultants, is a retired US Army Colonel, writer and interfaith study facilitator based in Istanbul. This article originally appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle's SFGate blog and was written for the Common Ground News Service (CGNews).

Source: Common Ground News Service (CGNews), 3 February 2009, www.commongroundnews.org
Copyright permission is granted for publication.

By Daoud Kuttab

A curious thing has happened as Americans were choosing their first black president. Democracy suddenly ceased to be a bad word for many genuine democrats in the Middle East.

In the aftermaths of the war on Iraq and as part of President Bush's attempts to win the hearts and minds of Arabs, a public democracy campaign was launched aimed at injecting Arabs with the democracy virus. Millions of dollars and years later, the effort has been pronounced as a failure. Democracy salespeople had a problem selling their goods while the Bush administration was occupying the Arab country of Iraq, supporting the continued occupation and illegal settlements of the West Bank while simultaneously placing a worldwide financial siege on a truly elected Palestinian government.

Arabs easily dismissed the democracy surge by simply pointing to what was being done by Americans, and in the name of Americans, in the region. Scenes and images from the Abu Ghraib prison to Guantanamo poured cold water on these efforts to convince Arabs of democracy, U.S. style. The arguments passed around in coffee shops and sitting rooms throughout the Arab world was that American democracy is in reality a facade. That while elections do take place on the surface, a behind-the-scenes process led by a handful of people really decides who rules America.

This has continued to be the lead anti-democracy argument ... until this week.

When you speak to supporters at rallies and reporters in interviews day after day, eventually you're bound to make a mistake, as both of our presidential candidates know all too well. Some of these gaffes, like mispronouncing "Ahmadinejad," are funny but all too forgivable. Other gaffes end up having serious policy implications that put candidates in hot water.

Here, just for fun, are 10 of the significant foreign policy gaffes on the campaign trail to date, fairly evenly divided between the two campaigns and ranging from the utterly silly to the downright terrifying:

10) Israel is a Strong Friend of Israel's

9) Obama Confused about Afghan Language

Obama, midthought, seems to realize that Afghanistan isn't a predominately Arabic-speaking country. Pashto and Dari are the official languages of Afghanistan.

8) McCain mistakenly claims that Iran is training Al Qaeda.

With a whisper in the ear from Joe Lieberman, he immediately corrects himself.

See the top 7 Political Gaffes >>>>>

Political video featuring several prominent Israelis who support Obama, including Moshe Ivgy, an Israeli actor; Amos Schocken, publisher of Haaretz; and Itai Anghel, Senior Correspondant for FACT, Israel's equivalent of "60 Minutes."

The Jewish Council for Education & Research has officially endorsed Obama. They have created a short film expressing why Obama is better for Israel. In this short film, many of the most respected military and intelligence experts in Israel discuss the impact of the Bush/McCain foreign policy on Israel, the need for the United States to engage directly with Iran, and their personal feelings about Sen. Barack Obama. Produced by ReviseFilms and presented by the Jewish Council for Education and Research (JCER).

Retired Generals of the Israeli Defense Forces and high-ranking Mossad officials on Barack Obama... from www.JCER.info on Vimeo.

According to a recent article in the Jerusalem Post several Israeli generals interviewed in this video claim they were misled about the purpose of the interview and the nature of the report, believing that they were being interviewed more generally about how the next U.S. President must approach the conflict and not asked specifically whether or not they endorsed Barack Obama. Read the Jerusalem Post article.

by Bilal Y. Saab and Bruce Riedel
16 September 2008

Washington, DC - The indirect negotiations between Syria and Israel that began last May have gone as far as they can. Their purpose – to break the ice between the two states after eight years of not talking, and to test one another’s resolve over certain issues – has been achieved. Now, Syrian President Bashar Assad wants to move forward, as evidenced in his proposal to Israel for direct peace talks at a recent four-way summit in Damascus involving Syria, Turkey, France and Qatar.

But Assad knows there are still two big uncertainties surrounding the prospects of a historic peace deal with the Israelis: the position of the next US administration and the results of a possible Israeli election. While Assad is grateful for the role Turkey has played so far in hosting four rounds of negotiations (a fifth is scheduled for 18-19 September, according to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan), and for France’s pledge of help in any direct Syrian-Israeli talks, he is only interested in a peace agreement with Israel if it is mediated by the United States.

An agreement endorsed by Washington would not only guarantee the return of the Golan to Syria (in exchange for a long-term security deal with Israel), but also – and perhaps more significantly – end Syria’s isolation in the world. The most important lesson Bashar Assad learned from his father is that good relations with Washington, more than any other foreign capital, serve Syria’s strategic interests. But, until a new US administration is in place, he knows there’s little point in proceeding with the negotiations he’s proposing.