Members of the Iraq Survey Group charged with finding Saddam's weapons of mass destruction quit their search six months ago because they were faced with other very real weapons that threatened their own destruction. This emerged Wednesday in US news reports following which the White House finally admitted that the WMD were not there.
Indeed, neither the WMD nor the devastating insurgency were present in Iraq when coalition troops checked their chemical and biological protective clothing on March 19, 2003, hours before the invasion. WMD, key to Washington's planning, was a lie. That is why President George Bush, who issued dire warnings about Iraq's WMD capability prior to the US-led invasion, argues even now that the war was "absolutely" worth fighting.
The post-invasion insurgency, however, was not even considered by Washington's desktop strategists. Therein lies the fatal misjudgment of Bush. Obsessed with the destruction of a threat that was not there, he played midwife to a worse threat that seems all set to plunge Iraq into chaos and violence and deliver the United States its greatest humiliation since Vietnam.
Nothing sums up the vacuousness of US policy toward Iraq more than the hundreds of millions of dollars that have been wasted, sending weapons experts the length and breadth of the country on one wild goose chase after another. It is becoming ever clearer that there has been a consistent disconnect between Washington and its commanders and administrators on the ground in Iraq. In May 2003, when the Americans were already struggling to work out what to do next, Gen. Jay Garner was replaced by Paul Bremer as US administrator. Bremer came in as Washington's man but was soon echoing his predecessor's demands for more troops and more focus in US policy. Neither materialized in sufficient quantity. Now retired Gen. Gary Luck has been sent in to conduct a security review in advance of the elections.
The dispatch of this senior officer says much about the confidence Washington places in its top brass already in the country. It also suggests the rising surge of panic in the White House as Bush's place in history looks more and more like being a Vietnam-style swamp. Indeed the arrival of Luck in Iraq is very similar to the start of the high-level military missions to Vietnam, which in the end concerned themselves exclusively with equipping the South Vietnamese Army just well enough to fight off the enemy, while US forces and civilians rapidly disengaged and hurried home.
Vietnam showed how aggressive US administrations could dig themselves and their allies ever deeper into a hole. Now America's friends in this region want to believe that the Bush White House has the imagination and flexibility to recast its failing Iraqi policy. They want to believe that someone in Washington knows what the US is doing in the Middle East, that someone understands how a deadly insurrection has been conjured out of defeat and how Iraq has been turned into a shooting gallery for the international terrorists whom the invasion was supposed to defeat.
ARABNEWS.COM

Occasionally, you might read a letter or an opinion written by an Israeli Arab in one of Israel's leading newspapers. Certainly, there are very few Arab columnists but those who do appear are limited to a narrow vision of self-deprecating themes.
One of the complaints from Israelis is that when Arabs do express their opinions, they are "racist" and "anti-Semitic", the usual response to anything critical of Israeli policies toward Arabs, the occupation, non-Jews and almost anything else the Israelis dislike.
Yet, the Israelis are the first on their feet to criticize Arab speech. They especially love to exaggerate the complaint that official Arab texts and literature disparage the Israelis.
One of the most popular accusations is that the Arabs deny Israel's existence and exclude "Israel" from its maps. Of course, the Israelis are experts on this subject as they often do unto others what they complain bitterly others do unto them.
This week, during the trial of five Islamic extremists in Haifa, the judge allowed "expert testimony" from a prosecution witness named Dr. Rafi Israeli.
As reported in Ha'aretz {/italic}, this week Rafi testified that the Arab mentality shows "a sense of being a victim", "pathological anti-Semitism" and "a tendency to live in a world of illusions".
Professor Israeli, a lecturer in Middle Eastern studies at Hebrew University, added that the Arabs neglect sanitation in their communities. "Most of the Arab villages are dirtier, physically--it's a fact," he said.
Imagine the uproar from the Israelis if a Palestinian professor expressed similarly racist stereotypes of Jews in, say, an Israeli University or maybe an American University. Notorious bigot Daniel Pipes would be all over that hapless Palestinian professor and probably have his job.
But not Professor Israeli. The dirty Pipes web page was void of any reference or condemnation of Professor Israeli's racism. And most likely, a majority of Israelis reading the newspaper nodded their heads in silent agreement.
Israelis love to point out the racism of others. It helps strengthen their defense against Palestinians whose homes and land they have stolen over the years. It helps to justify the illegal violations of Palestinian rights that have continued undeterred since 1948 in Israel and in the occupied territories.
Yes, many of the Palestinian villages are "dirtier" than many Israeli villages and cities.
But maybe someone might ask why?
I did. I interviewed Tawfiq Zayad, the late mayor of Nazareth, the Christian city in the Galilee. Mayor Tawfiq Zayad explained that Israel provides endless government funding to Jewish cities and Jewish citizens, but offers far less support to "Arab cities".
Some Palestinians argue that the intent is clear, a part of the Israeli mentality to make life so miserable for Christians and Muslims in Israel and the occupied territories that they will flee. Go somewhere else so the privileged people of Israel can lie there and enjoy their comforts unbothered by the "riff raff".
Israeli textbooks are replete with passages denying Palestinian rights, denying Israeli state terrorism against Palestinian civilians, denying Palestinian grievances and portraying Palestinians who challenge Israel as extremists, fanatics and terrorists.
These are "acceptable" to many Israelis. But similar passages in Palestinian textbooks draw the ire of Israelis and the heavy dose of exaggerated media attention.
Ray Hanania
METIMES.COM

Junichiro Koizumi

To promote national interest in diplomacy, it is essential to set goals, establish basic policies to achieve them and work out overall strategies, while keeping in mind the links between individual goals and between those of nations and regions. However, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi lacks such strategies. He needs to restructure Japan's diplomacy toward Asia from a global perspective.
Conspicuous among diplomatic problems Koizumi faces are Sino-Japanese relations aggravated by his visits to Yasukuni Shrine. He must distinguish his visits to the shrine, which honors the nation's war dead, from the diplomatic problems they are causing. He is no ordinary citizen; he is a prime minister who bears the heaviest political responsibility in Japan.
In 2005, Japan's trade with China is likely to surpass that with the United States. It is clear that Japan and China depend on each other for their prosperity. Nevertheless, Sino-Japanese relations are very chilly. Japanese and Chinese leaders have not reciprocated official visits, holding occasional summits on the sidelines of international conferences in other countries.
Unbalanced Sino-Japanese political and economic relations affect other relations between the two countries, which in turn have a major influence on Asian affairs.
In recent months, China's actions have threatened Japan's sovereignty. Top Chinese officials repeatedly rebuked Japan over its perceptions of history, a Chinese nuclear submarine invaded Japanese waters, and China is moving to exploit natural-gas fields in the East China Sea close to Japan's exclusive economic zone. China should refrain from encroaching on Japan's maritime rights and agree to a Japanese request for talks to settle the problems.
A recent public opinion poll by the Cabinet Office shows that the proportion of respondents that feel affinity toward China has fallen to a record low 37 percent--less than half of the 78 percent 25 years ago. In the governing Liberal Democratic Party, some lawmakers are calling for abolition of Japanese official development assistance to China as Sino-Japanese relations continue to deteriorate.
Improving relations with China is the top diplomatic challenge for Koizumi, but he has lost considerable diplomatic freedom as a result of his obsession with the Yasukuni visits. His persistence in returning to Yasukuni will give China a stronger diplomatic card.
Japan's diplomacy toward North Korea has been thrown into chaos by leader Kim Jong Ill's crafty strategies for survival.
Koizumi achieved a diplomatic coup with his surprise visit to Pyongyang in 2002, signing the Japan-North Korean declaration, which was aimed at settling in a comprehensive manner the issues of Japanese abductees and North Korea's nuclear-arms development. The declaration was to have paved the way for Japan-North Korean diplomatic normalization, but North Korea has since reneged on its commitments.
Should Koizumi lose his cool in his quest for further achievements, he would play into Pyongyang's hands. He should try to strengthen solidarity with the U.S. and South Korea and, with the support of China and Russia, lay siege to Pyongyang in the six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear-arms development. Toward that end, Japan must pursue cooperation with China, which chairs the talks.
This year, an Asian summit will be held with the participation of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations plus Japan, China and South Korea, at a time when regionalism is growing. China is leading the pack in concluding free trade agreements (FTAs) with other Asian countries. Japan is falling behind because of its difficulty in ironing out complicated domestic interests.
JAPANTIMES.CO.JP

A specter of despair haunts late twentieth-century America. The quality of our lives and the integrity of our souls are in jeopardy. Wealth inequality and class polarization are escalating-with ugly consequences for the most vulnerable among us. The lethal power of global corporate elites and national managerial bosses is at an all-time high. Spiritual malnutrition and existential emptiness are rampant. The precious systems of caring and nurturing are eroding. Market moralities and mentalities fueled by economic imperatives to make a profit at nearly any cost-yield unprecedented levels of loneliness, isolation, and sadness. And our public life lies in shambles, shot through with icy cynicism and paralyzing pessimism.
This bleak portrait is accentuated in black America. The fragile black middle class fights a white backlash. The devastated black working class fears further underemployment or unemployment. And the besieged black poor struggle to survive. Over thirty years after the cowardly murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., black America sits on the brink of collective disaster.
Yet most of our fellow citizens deny this black despair, downplay this black rage, and blind themselves to the omens in our midst. So now, as in the past, we prisoners of hope in desperate times must try to speak our fallible truths, expose the vicious lies, and bear our imperfect witness.
In 1946, when the great Eugene O'Neill's play The Iceman Cometh was produced, he said America was the greatest example of a country that exemplifies the Biblical question, "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world but lose his own soul?" Artists like Harry Belafonte and Coltrane and Toni Morrison and others have been asking the same question, as the young people say, "How do we keep it real?"
The country is in deep trouble. We've forgotten that a rich life consists fundamentally of serving others, trying to leave the world a little better than you found it. This is true at the personal level. But there's also a political version, which has to do with what you see when you get up in the morning and look in the mirror and ask yourself whether you are simply wasting your time on the planet or spending it in an enriching manner.
We need a moral prophetic minority of all colors who muster the courage to question the powers that be, the courage to be impatient with evil and patient with people, and the courage to fight for social justice. In many instances we will be stepping out on nothing, hoping to land on something. That's the history of Black folks in the past and present, and of those of us who value history and struggle. Our courage rests on a deep democratic vision of a better world that lures us and a blood-drenched hope that sustains us.
This hope is not the same as optimism. Optimism adopts the role of the spectator who surveys the evidence in order to infer that things are going to get better. Yet we know that the evidence does not look good. The dominant tendencies of our day are unregulated global capitalism, racial balkanization, social breakdown, and individual depression. Hope enacts the stance of the participant who actively struggles against the evidence in order to change the deadly tides of wealth inequality, group xenophobia, and personal despair. Only a new wave of vision, courage, and hope can keep us sane-and preserve the decency and dignity requisite to revitalize our organizational energy for the work to be done. To live is to wrestle with despair yet never to allow despair to have the last word.
Cornel West
COMMONDREAMS.ORG

Acehnese Muslim women attend Friday prayers at the grand mosque in the tsunami-hit city of Banda Aceh, on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, Jan. 14. (Reuters Photo)

Not one of you truly believes until he loves for his brother what he loves for himself, declared the Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), thereby sealing the universal brotherhood of man and enjoining on the society as a whole the upkeep of the downtrodden among their ranks. The Koran definitely declared 1,400 years ago that the most noble among men is not the wealthiest nor the one with the princely lineage, but he with the greatest God-consciousness (Taqwa). And how does one attain God-consciousness? By spending out of that which one loves. The believers are praised in the Koran: "And they feed the poor, the orphans, the prisoners, out of his love, saying 'We desire neither thanks nor reward' save for the pleasure of God, for indeed we fear from our lord the distressful day of fate."
In the better days of the Islamic state, the coffers of the public treasury were overflowing to the extent that there was excess in supply of funds for the help of the community. Alas, today the Muslim world faces not a unified caliphate but a handful of Islamic nations, each with its own interests and problems. And yet it is in light of these circumstances that we must take on our collective responsibility of aiding our Muslim brothers who have fallen under distress with the recent tsunami disaster in South and Southeast Asia.
It should not be considered offensive to suggest that for the Muslim countries, it is not only our religious obligation but a vitally important strategic necessity to assert our influence in this part of the world. Because, whether we like it or not, this is how the West is perceiving this opportunity. The Independent (UK) notes: "There is already talk of an updated 'Marshall Plan' for Asia, similar to the postwar aid for Europe, that would save lives and repair America's tattered reputation across the world." Even more dangerous than quasi-imperialist designs, however, is the much more latent threat of "predatory evangelists", who are swarming Indonesia's heavily affected Aceh region, "mixing Christian missionary work with humanitarian aid", as reported by the Baltimore Sun.
The question that now arises is simply: What must be done? The wealthy Muslim countries, especially the oil-rich Persian Gulf states, must now contribute to the relief effort in amounts commensurate with their wealth. We cannot and must not allow the rehabilitation of the world's most populous Muslim country, Indonesia, to be co-opted by hostile forces as another volley in the battle of "imperialism in the name of liberation". It is indeed a sad state of the ummah when we are forced, out of our weakness, to accept the aid of nations who, at the same time they are feeding starving children in Sumatra, are massacring other starving children in Samarra. Nor is there any real reason that we have to accept the idea of thousands of evangelical missionaries teeming around a Muslim state, preying on weak souls, with the goal of supplanting Islam with their own faith.
As members of the brotherhood of Islam, we must help our downtrodden fellow believers in their time of need.
M. Hamdan Azhar Yousuf
ATIMES.COM