Be very afraid, please

Reuters

AMERICA and Israel often hint at military action to stop Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons programme. The latest rumblings, however, may be more serious. The atmosphere has been charged by a combination of factors: Iran’s expanding uranium-enrichment programme, faltering diplomatic efforts to halt it, a dying American administration and a nervous Israel. Throw in the latest war games by Israel, America and Iran—and Iran’s apparent rejection of the latest international incentives to halt its nuclear work—and some reckon the sparks could soon fly.

On July 9th Iranian television showed the test-firing of nine missiles (see picture), a day after an aide to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, threatened to “burn” Tel Aviv and American ships in the Gulf, and strike at America’s “vital interests around the globe”, if it were attacked. More tests took place on July 10th.

This was a response to Israel’s demonstration of its own long arm in June, when about 100 Israeli jets took part in exercises that appeared to rehearse the bombing of distant targets. Western officials were struck by helicopter sorties of more than 800 miles (1,290km), about the distance from Israel to Iran, to simulate the rescue of downed pilots. Israel conducted the exercise with Greece, rather than its traditional partner, Turkey, maybe because Greece has some of the Russian SA-20 anti-aircraft missiles Iran recently bought.

In the Gulf, meanwhile, American, British and Bahraini ships are involved in a joint exercise to protect gas and oil installations. This seems to be a reaction to Iran’s threats to retaliate against any attack by closing the Strait of Hormuz, the passage for roughly 40% of the world’s traded oil, and striking at neighbouring countries.

Does this public bellicosity really make military action more likely? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s president, dismissed the idea this week as a “funny joke”. And, yes, Israel could well be bluffing, waving its big stick in order to make the rewards the Europeans, Americans, Russians and Chinese are offering Iran in return for an end to uranium enrichment look more tempting. But whether or not Israel has frightened Iran, it has clearly rattled others.

France’s Total, an energy giant, said this week it was giving up plans to invest in Iran because of the risk. A top British government official puts the chance of an Israeli strike at 30%. Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of America’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, was worried enough to say publicly that a third war (after Afghanistan and Iraq) would be “extremely stressful, very challenging, with consequences that would be difficult to predict”. As to whether Israel might act alone, he said: “This is a very unstable part of the world, and I don’t need it to become more unstable.”

One uncertainty is how close Iran is to being able to make a nuclear weapon (an aspiration it vehemently denies). America’s controversial National Intelligence Estimate, made public in December, said that Iran had indeed run a weaponisation programme but seemed to stop it in 2003. The Iranians continue (despite UN sanctions) to enrich uranium, but most Western experts think they have much to learn before being able to make the high-enriched variety for a bomb. America’s estimate is that the soonest Iran could make enough for one device would be the end of 2009, but that it could take five or more years longer.

Israeli officials are less sanguine. So far Iran has produced only a small amount of low-enriched uranium, but this could eventually be converted to the bomb-making sort. For all its sabre-rattling, Israel still says that diplomacy is preferable to war. But a number of political and military considerations may yet convince Israel to act alone—sooner rather than later.

One of these is the departure of the friendly Bush administration and the possible advent of a President Obama, who has promised to do “everything” to stop Iran getting a bomb but who is distrusted by many Israelis. Another is that Iran’s Russian-built reactor at Bushehr is due to start working in October. This is less worrying than the underground enrichment facility at Natanz. But if Israel intends to bomb it, it would be best to do so before it is loaded with nuclear fuel. Finally, it would be easier for Israel to act before Iran deploys its SA-20s, which may happen in early 2009.

That said, an effective attack against Iran’s buried and dispersed nuclear facilities would not be easy, even if Israel knew where all of them were. There will be no element of surprise, as when Israel bombed Iraq’s nuclear reactor in 1981, and a Syrian facility which America said afterwards was a secret reactor last September.

Another unknown is whether Israel would dare to strike Iran without a green or at least an amber light from the Americans. Without one, flying to Iran the direct way—through American-controlled Iraqi airspace—would be fraught with danger. An unauthorised Israeli strike that added to America’s miscellaneous woes in the Middle East would test even the closest alliance, jeopardising Israel’s relationship with its vital patron and armourer.

Against this must be weighed Israel’s visceral sense of vulnerability, sharpened not only by the Jewish state’s history but also by the implacability of Iran, whose government rules out any accommodation with the “Zionist regime” and repeatedly predicts its disappearance. Nobody can be quite sure that in a corner, confronting what it believed to be existential peril, Israel will not act—alone if necessary.

Zoom in on Iran Zoom out on the Middle East

Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, made headlines again yesterday, with a speech calling for the downfall of both Israel and the United States. Of Israel, the Iranian leader said, “the criminal and terrorist Zionist regime . . . has reached the end of its work and will soon disappear off the geographical scene.”

Of the United States, he said, “the time for the fall of the satanic power . . . has come and the countdown to the annihilation of the emperor of power and wealth has begun.”

Amid such animosity, we decided it was time to zoom in on Iran. So today, we’ll measure the nation by the numbers and place it squarely on your mental map. Then, tomorrow and Thursday, we’ll retrace Iran’s history, from Alexander the Great to the rise of the current regime.

ran, By the Numbers

1935 - The year Iran asked the West to stop labeling the place “Persia” and to start using the name natives use: “Iran.” The language is still called Persian, though, or Farsi–from the modern province Fars (ancient Parsa, called Persis by the Greeks). Today, Persian is written in Arabic script, a holdover from medieval times, when Persian rulers fell to Islamic caliphs in Damascus and Baghdad.

1979 - The year an Islamic revolution forced Iran’s western-supported shah (”king”) into exile and Iranians voted overwhelmingly to establish an Islamic republic. In the republic, all adult citizens can vote, but clerics can veto laws and candidates deemed un-Islamic.

636,300 - Iran’s total area, in square miles (1,648,000 sq km). That’s slightly larger than the state of Alaska, and nearly four times the size of Iraq. The country sits on a vast waterless plateau, ringed by forbidding mountain ranges. Most of the population lives at the foot of these mountains.

70 million - Iran’s total population. That’s more than France or the United Kingdom, but less than Germany or Turkey. It’s a youthful country–about half of its people are under 25–and increasingly urban. In 1950, about a quarter of the population lived in cities. Now, more than 60 percent do.

7.7 million - The population of Tehran, Iran’s largest and capital city. More than 13 million people live in its metropolitan area, at the southern foot of the Elburz Mountains, not far from the Caspian Sea. More than half of the country’s growing industry is based there.

89 - Percent of the population that is Shi’a Muslim. Nearly everyone else is Sunni Muslim. The Shi’ite branch of Islam is the official state religion, and the nation’s post-revolution constitution guarantees Islamic principles of government.

85 - Percent of government revenues that come from oil. Only Saudi Arabia exports more crude than Iran, which is also one of the world’s leading natural gas exporters.

Iran, On the Map

Get a printable map of Iran’s mountainous geography:
http://knowledgenews.net/moxie/pdf/iran_physical.pdf

Get a printable map of Iran’s mixed ethnicity:
http://knowledgenews.net/moxie/pdf/iran_ethno.pdf

Get a printable map of Iran’s population centers:
http://knowledgenews.net/moxie/pdf/iran_pop.pdf

–Michael Himick

Terror Fight Blurs

Line Over Domain;
Tracking Email

By SIOBHAN GORMAN
March 10, 2008; Page A1

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Five years ago, Congress killed an experimental Pentagon antiterrorism program meant to vacuum up electronic data about people in the U.S. to search for suspicious patterns. Opponents called it too broad an intrusion on Americans’ privacy, even after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But the data-sifting effort didn’t disappear. The National Security Agency, once confined to foreign surveillance, has been building essentially the same system.

The central role the NSA has come to occupy in domestic intelligence gathering has never been publicly disclosed. But an inquiry reveals that its efforts have evolved to reach more broadly into data about people’s communications, travel and finances in the U.S. than the domestic surveillance programs brought to light since the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Congress now is hotly debating domestic spying powers under the main law governing U.S. surveillance aimed at foreign threats. An expansion of those powers expired last month and awaits renewal, which could be voted on in the House of Representatives this week. The biggest point of contention over the law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, is whether telecommunications and other companies should be made immune from liability for assisting government surveillance.

Largely missing from the public discussion is the role of the highly secretive NSA in analyzing that data, collected through little-known arrangements that can blur the lines between domestic and foreign intelligence gathering. Supporters say the NSA is serving as a key bulwark against foreign terrorists and that it would be reckless to constrain the agency’s mission. The NSA says it is scrupulously following all applicable laws and that it keeps Congress fully informed of its activities.

According to current and former intelligence officials, the spy agency now monitors huge volumes of records of domestic emails and Internet searches as well as bank transfers, credit-card transactions, travel and telephone records. The NSA receives this so-called “transactional” data from other agencies or private companies, and its sophisticated software programs analyze the various transactions for suspicious patterns. Then they spit out leads to be explored by counterterrorism programs across the U.S. government, such as the NSA’s own Terrorist Surveillance Program, formed to intercept phone calls and emails between the U.S. and overseas without a judge’s approval when a link to al Qaeda is suspected.

The NSA’s enterprise involves a cluster of powerful intelligence-gathering programs, all of which sparked civil-liberties complaints when they came to light. They include a Federal Bureau of Investigation program to track telecommunications data once known as Carnivore, now called the Digital Collection System, and a U.S. arrangement with the world’s main international banking clearinghouse to track money movements.

The effort also ties into data from an ad-hoc collection of so-called “black programs” whose existence is undisclosed, the current and former officials say. Many of the programs in various agencies began years before the 9/11 attacks but have since been given greater reach. Among them, current and former intelligence officials say, is a longstanding Treasury Department program to collect individual financial data including wire transfers and credit-card transactions.

It isn’t clear how many of the different kinds of data are combined and analyzed together in one database by the NSA. An intelligence official said the agency’s work links to about a dozen antiterror programs in all.

A number of NSA employees have expressed concerns that the agency may be overstepping its authority by veering into domestic surveillance. And the constitutional question of whether the government can examine such a large array of information without violating an individual’s reasonable expectation of privacy “has never really been resolved,” said Suzanne Spaulding, a national-security lawyer who has worked for both parties on Capitol Hill.

NSA officials say the agency’s own investigations remain focused only on foreign threats, but it’s increasingly difficult to distinguish between domestic and international communications in a digital era, so they need to sweep up more information.

The Fourth Amendment

In response to the Sept. 11 attacks, then NSA-chief Gen. Michael Hayden has said he used his authority to expand the NSA’s capabilities under a 1981 executive order governing the agency. Another presidential order issued shortly after the attacks, the text of which is classified, opened the door for the NSA to incorporate more domestic data in its searches, one senior intelligence official said.

The NSA “strictly follows laws and regulations designed to preserve every American’s privacy rights under the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” agency spokeswoman Judith Emmel said in a statement, referring to the protection against unreasonable searches and seizures. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which oversees the NSA in conjunction with the Pentagon, added in a statement that intelligence agencies operate “within an extensive legal and policy framework” and inform Congress of their activities “as required by the law.” It pointed out that the 9/11 Commission recommended in 2004 that intelligence agencies analyze “all relevant sources of information” and share their databases.

Two former officials familiar with the data-sifting efforts said they work by starting with some sort of lead, like a phone number or Internet address. In partnership with the FBI, the systems then can track all domestic and foreign transactions of people associated with that item — and then the people who associated with them, and so on, casting a gradually wider net. An intelligence official described more of a rapid-response effect: If a person suspected of terrorist connections is believed to be in a U.S. city — for instance, Detroit, a community with a high concentration of Muslim Americans — the government’s spy systems may be directed to collect and analyze all electronic communications into and out of the city.

The haul can include records of phone calls, email headers and destinations, data on financial transactions and records of Internet browsing. The system also would collect information about other people, including those in the U.S., who communicated with people in Detroit.

The information doesn’t generally include the contents of conversations or emails. But it can give such transactional information as a cellphone’s location, whom a person is calling, and what Web sites he or she is visiting. For an email, the data haul can include the identities of the sender and recipient and the subject line, but not the content of the message.

Intelligence agencies have used administrative subpoenas issued by the FBI — which don’t need a judge’s signature — to collect and analyze such data, current and former intelligence officials said. If that data provided “reasonable suspicion” that a person, whether foreign or from the U.S., was linked to al Qaeda, intelligence officers could eavesdrop under the NSA’s Terrorist Surveillance Program.

The White House wants to give companies that assist government surveillance immunity from lawsuits alleging an invasion of privacy, but Democrats in Congress have been blocking it. The Terrorist Surveillance Program has spurred 38 lawsuits against companies. Current and former intelligence officials say telecom companies’ concern comes chiefly because they are giving the government unlimited access to a copy of the flow of communications, through a network of switches at U.S. telecommunications hubs that duplicate all the data running through it. It isn’t clear whether the government or telecom companies control the switches, but companies process some of the data for the NSA, the current and former officials say.

On Friday, the House Energy and Commerce Committee released a letter warning colleagues to look more deeply into how telecommunications data are being accessed, citing an allegation by the head of a New York-based computer security firm that a wireless carrier that hired him was giving unfettered access to data to an entity called “Quantico Circuit.” Quantico is a Marine base that houses the FBI Academy; senior FBI official Anthony DiClemente said the bureau “does not have ‘unfettered access’ to any communication provider’s network.”

The political debate over the telecom information comes as intelligence agencies seek to change traditional definitions of how to balance privacy rights against investigative needs. Donald Kerr, the deputy director of national intelligence, told a conference of intelligence officials in October that the government needs new rules. Since many people routinely post details of their lives on social-networking sites such as MySpace, he said, their identity shouldn’t need the same protection as in the past. Instead, only their “essential privacy,” or “what they would wish to protect about their lives and affairs,” should be veiled, he said, without providing examples.

Social-Network Analysis

The NSA uses its own high-powered version of social-network analysis to search for possible new patterns and links to terrorism. The Pentagon’s experimental Total Information Awareness program, later renamed Terrorism Information Awareness, was an early research effort on the same concept, designed to bring together and analyze as much and as many varied kinds of data as possible. Congress eliminated funding for the program in 2003 before it began operating. But it permitted some of the research to continue and TIA technology to be used for foreign surveillance.

Some of it was shifted to the NSA — which also is funded by the Pentagon — and put in the so-called black budget, where it would receive less scrutiny and bolster other data-sifting efforts, current and former intelligence officials said. “When it got taken apart, it didn’t get thrown away,” says a former top government official familiar with the TIA program.

Two current officials also said the NSA’s current combination of programs now largely mirrors the former TIA project. But the NSA offers less privacy protection. TIA developers researched ways to limit the use of the system for broad searches of individuals’ data, such as requiring intelligence officers to get leads from other sources first. The NSA effort lacks those controls, as well as controls that it developed in the 1990s for an earlier data-sweeping attempt.

Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and member of the Senate Intelligence Committee who led the charge to kill TIA, says “the administration is trying to bring as much of the philosophy of operation Total Information Awareness as it can into the programs they’re using today.” The issue has been overshadowed by the fight over telecoms’ immunity, he said. “There’s not been as much discussion in the Congress as there ought to be.”

Opportunity for Debate

But Sen. Kit Bond of Missouri, the ranking Republican on the committee, said by email his committee colleagues have had “ample opportunity for debate” behind closed doors and that each intelligence program has specific legal authorization and oversight. He cautioned against seeing a group of intelligence programs as “a mythical ‘big brother’ program,” adding, “that’s not what is happening today.”

READ THE RULING

While the Fourth Amendment guarantees “[t]he right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures,” the legality of data-sweeping relies on the government’s interpretation of a 1979 Supreme Court ruling allowing records of phone calls — but not actual conversations — to be collected without a warrant. Read the ruling.¹

The legality of data-sweeping relies largely on the government’s interpretation of a 1979 Supreme Court ruling allowing records of phone calls — but not actual conversations — to be collected without a judge issuing a warrant. Multiple laws require a court order for so-called “transactional’” records of electronic communications, but the 2001 Patriot Act lowered the standard for such an order in some cases, and in others made records accessible using FBI administrative subpoenas called “national security letters.” (Read the ruling.²)

A debate is brewing among legal and technology scholars over whether there should be privacy protections when a wide variety of transactional data are brought together to paint what is essentially a profile of an individual’s behavior. “You know everything I’m doing, you know what happened, and you haven’t listened to any of the contents” of the communications, said Susan Landau, co-author of a book on electronic privacy and a senior engineer at Sun Microsystems Laboratories. “Transactional information is remarkably revelatory.”

Ms. Spaulding, the national-security lawyer, said it’s “extremely questionable” to assume Americans don’t have a reasonable expectation of privacy for data such as the subject-header of an email or a Web address from an Internet search, because those are more like the content of a communication than a phone number. “These are questions that require discussion and debate,” she said. “This is one of the problems with doing it all in secret.”

Gen. Hayden, the former NSA chief and now Central Intelligence Agency director, in January 2006 publicly defended the activities of the Terrorist Surveillance Program after it was disclosed by the New York Times. He said it was “not a driftnet over Lackawanna or Fremont or Dearborn, grabbing all communications and then sifting them out.” Rather, he said, it was carefully targeted at terrorists. However, some intelligence officials now say the broader NSA effort amounts to a driftnet. A portion of the activity, the NSA’s access to domestic phone records, was disclosed by a USA Today article in 2006.

The NSA, which President Truman created in 1952 through a classified presidential order to be America’s ears abroad, has for decades been the country’s largest and most secretive intelligence agency. The order confined NSA spying to “foreign governments,” and during the Cold War the NSA developed a reputation as the world’s premier code-breaking operation. But in the 1970s, the NSA and other intelligence agencies were found to be using their spy tools to monitor Americans for political purposes. That led to the original FISA legislation in 1978, which included an explicit ban on the NSA eavesdropping in the U.S. without a warrant.

Big advances in telecommunications and database technology led to unprecedented data-collection efforts in the 1990s. One was the FBI’s Carnivore program, which raised fears when it was in disclosed in 2000 that it might collect telecommunications information about law-abiding individuals. But the ground shifted after 9/11. Requests for analysis of any data that might hint at terrorist activity flooded from the White House and other agencies into NSA’s Fort Meade, Md., headquarters outside Washington, D.C., one former NSA official recalls. At the time, “We’re scrambling, trying to find any piece of data we can to find the answers,” the official said.

The 2002 congressional inquiry into the 9/11 attacks criticized the NSA for holding back information, which NSA officials said they were doing to protect the privacy of U.S. citizens. “NSA did not want to be perceived as targeting individuals in the United States” and considered such surveillance the FBI’s job, the inquiry concluded.

FBI-NSA Projects

The NSA quietly redefined its role. Joint FBI-NSA projects “expanded exponentially,” said Jack Cloonan, a longtime FBI veteran who investigated al Qaeda. He pointed to national-security letter requests: They rose from 8,500 in 2000 to 47,000 in 2005, according to a Justice Department inspector general’s report last year. It also said the letters permitted the potentially illegal collection of thousands of records of people in the U.S. from 2003-05. Last Wednesday, FBI Director Robert Mueller said the bureau had found additional instances in 2006.

It isn’t known how many Americans’ data have been swept into the NSA’s systems. The Treasury, for instance, built its database “to look at all the world’s financial transactions” and gave the NSA access to it about 15 years ago, said a former NSA official. The data include domestic and international money flows between bank accounts and credit-card information, according to current and former intelligence officials.

The NSA receives from Treasury weekly batches of this data and adds it to a database at its headquarters. Prior to 9/11, the database was used to pursue specific leads, but afterward, the effort was expanded to hunt for suspicious patterns.

Through the Treasury, the NSA also can access the database of the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication, or Swift, the Belgium-based clearinghouse for records of international transactions between financial institutions, current and former officials said. The U.S. acknowledged in 2006 that the CIA and Treasury had access to Swift’s database, but said the NSA’s Terrorism Surveillance Program was separate and that the NSA provided only “technical assistance.” A Treasury spokesman said the agency had no comment.

Through the Department of Homeland Security, airline passenger data also are accessed and analyzed for suspicious patterns, such as five unrelated people who repeatedly fly together, current and former intelligence officials said. Homeland Security shares information with other agencies only “on a limited basis,” spokesman Russ Knocke said.

NSA gets access to the flow of data from telecommunications switches through the FBI, according to current and former officials. It also has a partnership with FBI’s Digital Collection system, providing access to Internet providers and other companies. The existence of a shadow hub to copy information about AT&T Corp. telecommunications in San Francisco is alleged in a lawsuit against AT&T filed by the civil-liberties group Electronic Frontier Foundation, based on documents provided by a former AT&T official. In that lawsuit, a former technology adviser to the Federal Communications Commission says in a sworn declaration that there could be 15 to 20 such operations around the country. Current and former intelligence officials confirmed a domestic network of hubs, but didn’t know the number. “As a matter of policy and law, we can not discuss matters that are classified,” said FBI spokesman John Miller.

The budget for the NSA’s data-sifting effort is classified, but one official estimated it surpasses $1 billion. The FBI is requesting to nearly double the budget for the Digital Collection System in 2009, compared with last year, requesting $42 million. “Not only do demands for information continue to increase, but also the requirement to facilitate information sharing does,” says a budget justification document, noting an “expansion of electronic surveillance activity in frequency, sophistication, and linguistic needs.”

Not far from the Kenyan border Zoom in | Zoom out

The U.S. military launched what it called “a deliberate, precise strike against a known terrorist and his associates” in Somalia on Monday. The attack destroyed at least one building in the remote southern town of Dobley, just a few miles from the Kenyan border.

The town had reportedly fallen into the hands of Islamic extremists–allies of the Islamic militias who seized much of southern Somalia in 2006, only to be driven back by Somali and Ethiopian forces.

That still-simmering conflict has helped bring Somalia to the brink of “the worst humanitarian crisis in the world,” according to the UN’s refugee agency–worse even than the crisis in Darfur. How has it come to this? Let’s review Somalia’s sad story, from the nation’s ancient origins to the start of the ongoing chaos nearly two decades ago.

Somalia is located on the Horn of Africa, just across the Gulf of Aden from the Arabian Peninsula. People have occupied its beachfront property for ages. Ancient Egyptians traded along the Horn’s shores. So did Greeks and medieval Arabs. In the 10th century, Chinese merchants arrived and reportedly took home exotic animals for the emperor’s menagerie.

Today’s Somalis claim descent from Arab immigrants who settled along the coast more than 1,000 years ago. Scholars debate when and how they actually arrived and moved inland, but there’s no question that Somali clans were well established in much of modern Somalia by the 16th century.

The clans are still central to Somali society. Each traces its ancestry to a single father figure, and each is divided into sub-clans that don’t always get along. Still, all the clans share a common language (Somali), religion (Islam), and culture. In fact, Somali culture extends beyond Somalia’s borders, which were largely drawn by Europeans.

The Scramble for Somalia

Europeans began arriving in force after the opening of the Suez Canal in Egypt in 1869. Suddenly, the Somali coast lay along a strategically important shipping route, and the British, Italians, and French arrived to promote their interests.

The French set up shop around the Somali port of Djibouti, in an area that later became the independent nation of that name. The British established “British Somaliland” in the northwest, while the Italians moved into the south. Not to be outdone, Ethiopia–then a regional power–assumed control in the Somali-inhabited Ogaden region in the west. Disputes followed, and borders were drawn without asking the locals.

Around the turn of the 20th century, Mohammed Abdullah Hassan–whom the British called the “Mad Mullah”–launched a rebellion against the colonizers. He and his followers, called “dervishes,” survived attacks by the British, the Italians, and the Ethiopians before finally falling to the Brits in 1920. Even then, pockets of Somali resistance continued.

Unscrambling Somalia

During World War II, the Italians briefly took British Somaliland, only to see the British return to retake “their” Somaliland, plus Italian Somaliland and Ogaden, too. In 1949, the Italians returned to administer Italian Somaliland as a UN trust territory, but not before many Somalis had begun longing for their own independent, pan-Somali state.

In 1960, the British and Italians left, and British Somaliland and Italian Somaliland joined to form the United Republic of Somalia. Almost immediately, the new nation became embroiled in border conflicts over Somali-inhabited lands in northern Kenya and eastern Ethiopia. A military buildup followed, even as internal tensions mounted between the former British and Italian regions.

In 1969, a bodyguard from a rival clan assassinated Somalia’s president, and the military assumed power. The commander of the army, Mohamed Siad Barre, became president–and, before long, dictator. The coup was restyled a “revolution,” as “Comrade Siad” announced his pursuit of an Islam-friendly version of “scientific socialism.” Yet socialism never really took root in Somalia, and rival clans and Islamic leaders soon resented the Comrade’s rule.

Somalia Rescrambled

In 1974, Ethiopia’s Emperor Haile Selassie fell. Three years later, Siad Barre retook the Somali-inhabited Ogaden region. At first, the Soviets tried to mediate the dispute. Then they shifted their support to Ethiopia (which has 77 million people to Somalia’s 9 million). Somalia’s Soviet arms shipments stopped, while Ethiopia got military advisors and Cuban troops. The United States shifted its support from Ethiopia to Somalia, but not before Ogaden was back in Ethiopian hands.

After the defeat in Ogaden, officers from a rival clan tried to topple Siad Barre. They failed, but the threat they posed prompted the dictator to start making government appointments based on perceived clan loyalty. The government and military became less competent, clan rivalries increased, and guerrilla attacks began. As the 1980s wore on, opposition groups became more powerful, and Siad Barre responded with increasingly repressive measures.

By the end of the decade, clan militias had seized much of the country. Last-ditch efforts at political reform failed to appease them, and in January 1991, a united opposition front captured the capital, Mogadishu. Siad Barre fled, and the militias turned on each other. In the next two years, 50,000 people died in factional fighting, and some 300,000 Somalis starved. Meanwhile, the former British Somaliland effectively seceded, calling itself, simply, “Somaliland.” Somalia hasn’t had a functional central government since.

“What’s the status of that ceasefire?”

Iraqi Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr will announce on Friday whether the Mahdi Army will continue to observe the unilateral ceasefire he declared last summer. Since then, violence in Iraq has decreased, even as al-Sadr has reportedly worked to improve the Mahdi Army’s image among everyday Iraqis and to assert more control over the group.

Despite those efforts, and despite his obvious influence over the recent ceasefire, al-Sadr has always insisted that the Mahdi Army isn’t simply his to command. Instead, he says, it “belongs to the Mahdi.” The Mahdi? Who’s the Mahdi?

Islam’s Redeemer

The Mahdi–Arabic for “divinely guided one”–is the redeemer who’s supposed to straighten things out at the end of time. Along with the prophet Isa, Islam’s version of Jesus, the Mahdi is supposed to usher in a golden age here on Earth, just after the defeat of the Antichrist and just before the Final Judgment. (Yes, many Muslims believe that Jesus will one day return–though their view of the Second Coming is pretty different from the Christian one.)

Belief in the messianic Mahdi is common among both Sunnis and Shi’ites. But they disagree about the particulars of his story. And that disagreement ties in with the history of the Sunni-Shi’ite split, which basically began as an argument over who should lead all Muslims after Muhammad’s death in 632.

Infallible Imams

Shi’ites believe Muhammad clearly made Ali, his cousin and son-in-law, successor. But a group of Muslim elders gathered and selected Muhammad’s father-in-law instead. For a time, Ali stayed out of the public eye, but a small community of shi’a (Arabic for “followers”) soon surrounded him and deferred to him as their imam, or guide. These shi’a eventually became the “Shi’ites,” and they developed unique ideas about the nature of Imams–and about the Mahdi, too.

In Sunni usage, an “imam” is generally just the person who leads each mosque in prayer. But for Shi’ites, the Imam is a sort of sinless saint, specially connected to God and set apart from the rest of humanity as an infallible guide. Every such Imam is directly descended from Muhammad, through Ali and his wife Fatima. According to Twelver Shi’ism (the dominant Shi’ite branch), a succession of twelve infallible Imams ended in the 9th century, when the final one, Muhammad al-Mahdi al-Hujjah, disappeared.

But he didn’t die. Rather, they say, he was concealed, or “occulted,” by God and will reappear as the Mahdi when the End Time comes. Other Shi’ite sects recognize fewer legitimate Imams, and so say different things about the Mahdi. Sunni tradition doesn’t recognize any infallible Imams, and tends to put less emphasis on the Mahdi.

Apocalypse Now?

But don’t tell any of that to Muqtada al-Sadr. The young Shi’ite cleric says the Madhi is back and America knows it. In fact, al-Sadr has repeatedly suggested that the real goal of the Iraq invasion was to capture and kill the Mahdi, on whom U.S. forces supposedly keep a detailed file. The Mahdi Army says it has to fight–to help bring Allah’s kingdom to Earth.

Not surprisingly, al-Sadr isn’t the first Muslim leader to call upon the Mahdi in a time of crisis. In fact, Mahdi-centered movements have cropped up throughout Muslim history, from the Spanish reconquest of Spain in the Middle Ages to the British invasion of Sudan in the late 19th century. But the world hasn’t ended yet.

–Steve Sampson

Hezbollah’s base is where Lebanon meets Israel

One of the FBI’s most wanted terrorists, Imad Mughniyeh, was killed by a car bomb in Damascus, Syria, on Tuesday. An early leader of the Islamic militant group Hezbollah, Mughniyeh stood accused of directing a long list of terrorist attacks–including the devastating attack on the U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1983.

Hezbollah blamed its old enemy, Israel, for Mughniyeh’s death. Israel denied any involvement. The U.S. State Department responded unequivocally, saying “the world is a better place without this man in it.”

So, if Mughniyeh was a terrorist, then just what is the group he helped lead? We’ll tell you. Hezbollah–Arabic for “Party of God”–was born out of the Arab-Israeli conflict, in Lebanon, with help from Iran. Today, some of its members officially serve in Lebanon’s government, while others charitably serve the fractured country’s Shi’ite community. But its military wing has never laid down its arms.

Hezbollah’s Roots

In the early 1970s, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) established bases in southern Lebanon–a region bordering Israel that is occupied by large numbers of Palestinian refugees. From there, it launched operations against targets within Israel. So, in 1978 and again in 1982, Israeli forces invaded Lebanon, intending to root out the PLO.

Israel succeeded in driving the PLO out–but at a cost. In 1979, the Islamic revolution in Iran brought Ayatollah Khomeini to power. In 1982, he sent Iranian military advisors to Lebanon to help organize its Shi’ite people. As the Israeli occupation dragged on, the opposition gained strength. Ultimately, Hezbollah–a Shi’ite paramilitary organization–was founded to fight Israel and promote the goal of turning Lebanon into an Islamic republic like Iran.

Israel occupied parts of Lebanon for another 18 years, during which Hezbollah waged a violent campaign against the Israelis and their allies–a campaign that included kidnappings, hijackings, and car bombings. In 1983, Hezbollah sponsored a suicide bombing on the American embassy in Beirut that killed 63 people. That same year, a truck bomb devastated a U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut, killing 241.

Not all of Hezbollah’s attacks were in Lebanon. The group sponsored two attacks, in 1992 and 1994, on Jewish targets in Argentina–bombing the Israeli embassy and killing 29, and bombing a Jewish community center and killing 85. And in July 2006, Hezbollah militants seized two Israeli soldiers in northern Israel, sparking a month-long “Lebanon War.”

Hezbollah’s Branches

Israel, the United States, Canada, and the Netherlands all call Hezbollah a terrorist organization. The United Kingdom and Australia classify Hezbollah’s “external security organization” as “terrorist.” In the Arab world, though, polls show that Hezbollah is widely viewed as a legitimate resistance group.

Its civilian wing provides a variety of social services for Lebanese Shi’ites. It publishes a newspaper and monthly magazine, operates radio and TV stations, and runs hospitals, schools, and orphanages. And since 1992, the group’s political arm has put up candidates in parliamentary elections. In 2005, the “Party of God” hit an all-time political high, winning 14 of the Lebanese parliament’s 128 seats

In front of a half-tough crowd

President Bush will deliver his final State of the Union address tonight. Well, maybe not his final one. After all, nothing in the Constitution says the State of the Union has to be an annual affair. Article II, Section 3 just says the president “shall from time to time give to the Congress information of the state of the union, and recommend to their consideration such measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient.”

Nothing in there about doing it once a year. Nothing in there about making a speech, either. In fact, presidents from Thomas Jefferson to Woodrow Wilson put their statements in writing. So, how did the State of the Union address get to be the way it is? It all started with George Washington.

Precedents for Presidents

In 1790, President Washington delivered the first State of the Union speech to a joint session of Congress convened in New York City (then the nation’s capital). At 1,085 words, Washington’s address is among the shortest ever. After hearing the president’s proposals, Congress debated, drafted, and delivered a courteous reply promising its cooperation.

So such speeches went until 1801, when Thomas Jefferson became president. Jefferson thought Washington’s approach reeked of royalty. (In fact, the idea for the State of the Union address did derive from a British tradition in which the king opened Parliament with a “Speech from the Throne.”) What’s more, Jefferson thought the Congress had better things to do than debate replies to presidential speeches.

Rather than speaking, Jefferson submitted his message in writing–saving Congress from “the bloody conflict which the making an answer would have committed them.” The next 24 presidents followed Jefferson’s lead rather than Washington’s, delivering written “information” instead of speeches.

Memorable Moments

In 1823, James Monroe used his written message to Congress to lay out the Monroe Doctrine, which declared that “the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers.”

In the midst of the Civil War, in 1862, Abraham Lincoln used his message to propose emancipation of the slaves. “The fiery trial through which we pass,” he wrote, “will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation. In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the free–honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve.”

Finally, in 1913, Woodrow Wilson decided to follow Washington’s lead and not Jefferson’s. He gave a speech to both houses of Congress–reestablishing, as he put it, that “the President of the United States is a person, not a mere department of the government hailing Congress from some isolated island of jealous power.”

Media Darlings

Ten years after Wilson’s speech, Calvin Coolidge delivered the first State of the Union address to be broadcast by radio. But most agree that the master of the radio address was Franklin Roosevelt, who in 1941 famously looked forward to a future founded on four freedoms: “The first is freedom of speech and expression. . . . The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way. . . . The third is freedom from want. . . . The fourth is freedom from fear.”

President Harry Truman delivered the first televised State of the Union speech in 1947, but he didn’t do it in prime time. The first president to take full advantage of the power of prime-time TV was Lyndon Johnson, in 1965. The following year saw the first televised opposition response immediately following the address. So much for carefully debated replies.

Like President Bush, we’ve been touring Arabian states all week, from Kuwait to the UAE. While we’re in the neighborhood, we figured it made sense to go back to the biggest state on the Arabian Peninsula’s block: Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia has been a U.S. ally and a key Middle East trading partner for decades, but it’s not exactly the sort of country Uncle Sam would bring home to meet the founders. It’s an absolute monarchy where mosque and state are thoroughly interwoven. And, along with lots of oil, it keeps producing terrorists, including Osama bin Laden and 15 of the 9/11 hijackers. Here’s a look at Saudi Arabia, by the numbers.

Size Matters

830,000 – Saudi Arabia’s total area, in square miles (2,150,000 sq km). That’s a little larger than Mexico, a little smaller than Greenland, and roughly one-fifth the size of the United States. Saudi Arabia covers about four-fifths of the Arabian Peninsula, which it shares with Oman, Yemen, Qatar, Kuwait, and the United Arab Emirates. (Another small nation, Bahrain, is an island near Qatar.)

27,600,000 – Saudi Arabia’s total population, including some 5.6 million non-nationals who call the kingdom home. That’s more people than live in Texas, but not nearly as many as live in California. Take away the non-nationals, and Saudi Arabia would have just a few more people than Australia. Add in the more than 2 million Muslim pilgrims who visit each year, and it would have almost as many people as Canada.

4,700,000 – Population of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital and largest city. Riyadh gets more rain than many parts of Saudi Arabia, but it still relies on hundreds of miles of pipes to carry water from desalination plants on the Persian Gulf.

Religious Matters

100 – Percentage of Saudis who are Muslim. Sound impossible? Well, Saudi Arabia is Islam’s birthplace and home to its two holiest cities, Mecca and Medina. Its constitution is the Qur’an and Sunnah (the “trodden path” of the prophet), its legal system is based on Sharia (Islamic law), and its religious “police” enforce traditional values. Blasphemy is punishable by beheading. So is conversion from Islam to other religions, whose public practice is banned. Oh, and the government requires that citizens be Muslims.

0 – Number of drivers licenses issued to women. Despite a handful of recent reforms, it’s still illegal for women to drive a car in Saudi Arabia. Human rights groups also regularly condemn the Saudi government for its treatment of political and religious minorities (including Islamic ones). The government generally brushes such claims aside.

Money Matters

264 billion – Barrels of oil in Saudi Arabia’s proven reserves, according to the leading oil industry survey. That’s around 22 percent of all of the world’s proven crude. (For more on what “proven reserves” actually means, click here.)

90 – Percentage of Saudi Arabia’s export earnings that come from oil. Much of that money flows from the United States. And much of it goes to fund generous social welfare programs. But times aren’t as good as they once were. In 1980, oil exports raked in $22,589 for every man, woman, and child in the kingdom. Thanks to a population boom and a changing market, the number these days is around $5,000.

7,000 – Estimated number of members of the Saudi royal family. Some 200 of those are direct descendents of Abd al Aziz al Saud, the king who founded the country in 1932. The nation’s current king, Abdullah, officially assumed the throne in 2005, but he’s no newcomer to power. Abdullah has effectively run Saudi Arabia since 1995, when the previous king–his half-brother Fahd–suffered a stroke.

Events in Pakistan matter to the world.
In this special reference issue, we’ll show you why.

A Peek at Pakistan

Pakistan makes world news headlines all the time. You know that the nuclear-armed nation is both a key U.S. ally in the fight against al-Qaeda and a major base for al-Qaeda. But what else do you know about it?

Find out what you should know now
Get the PDF

Pakistan, By the Numbers

With nearly 165 million people, Pakistan is the world’s sixth most populous country. Only China, India, the United States, Indonesia, and Brazil have more people. Among mainly Muslim countries, Pakistan is the second largest (after Indonesia), and the only one with nuclear weapons.

Put Pakistan squarely on your mental map–
with our summary of its key stats

Pakistan, On the Map

The news often talks ominously of “instability in Pakistan.” With our Pakistan slideshow, you’ll understand why. We’ll show you–using seven different maps–how the nation emerged from British India just 60 years ago and why it faces challenges from practically every side now.

Learn visually about Pakistan–
with our slideshow of detailed maps

Why Kashmir Gives People the Sweats

For 60 years, India and Pakistan have been on the brink of war in Kashmir. Why have both nuclear nations been willing to risk the ultimate conflict? The territorial tiff goes back to Britain’s imperial shrinkage after World War II. Yet the conflict’s cultural roots go far deeper.

Learn why India and Pakistan fight
Get the PDF

Where in the World Is Osama bin Laden?

Who knows! But lots of experts think he’s holed up somewhere in the arid, punishing, mountainous terrain along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border–hiding in a tiny crack in colonial history. Here’s how that crack came to be.

Learn why Pakistan has “tribal areas”
Get the PDF

Americana

Yesterday, while snooping around America’s Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), we noticed something important. Though the CIA gets more press, the National Security Agency (NSA) actually “employs more people and consumes more cash.” Several readers wrote in to ask if that could possibly be true. It is.

So why does the CIA get all the attention? Because that’s exactly the way the NSA likes it. For decades, the U.S. government didn’t even admit that the NSA existed. It did its work secretly, governed only by executive order. The joke for those in the know was that NSA stood for “No Such Agency.” Today, let’s snoop around this cryptic intelligence group.

Civilian vs. Military Intelligence

The NSA got its start in 1952, when President Harry Truman created it with a secret stroke of his executive pen. Congress had already created the CIA five years earlier, with the National Security Act of 1947. But the civilian CIA didn’t eliminate the various military intelligence services, nor did it focus on doing what the military services did best: intercepting and reading an enemy’s mail, overhearing its private conversations, and cracking its secret codes.

To consolidate the military’s intelligence gathering for the Cold War, the NSA put all the military’s eavesdroppers and codebreakers under one general or admiral, who reported directly to the Secretary of Defense. It’s been that way ever since. While the NSA employs tens of thousands of civilians–including more math PhDs than anyone else–it remains inside the Defense Department. It even has its own troops, in a special branch called the Central Security Service.

HUMINT vs. SIGINT

To avoid superfluous spying, the civilian CIA sticks to what spymasters call HUMINT, or human intelligence. When James Bond makes contact with a double agent inside enemy territory, or gives a bad guy the back of his hand, that’s HUMINT. The NSA’s bailiwick is SIGINT, or signals intelligence, and while it doesn’t sound nearly as glamorous, many think it’s far more powerful.

The NSA uses a worldwide web of state-of-the-art satellites, listening posts, and intercept stations to capture and record huge volumes of the world’s communications. It then runs these communications through some of the world’s most powerful computers, scanning for keywords or patterns that require an analyst’s attention. An unofficial agency motto: “In God we trust. All others we monitor.”

Domestic vs. Foreign SIGINT

Officially, the NSA performs its SIGINT sweeps only “against foreign powers or agents of foreign powers.” But that doesn’t mean the communications of U.S. citizens aren’t sucked into NSA computers. NSA officials point out that, in today’s world, there is no clear and easy distinction between domestic and foreign communications.

“The networks have collapsed into one another,” said one official, “and many of our targets are on the same network that we use. It is now just ‘the network’–the global telecommunications infrastructure.” So, when U.S. citizens do appear in NSA data, analysts withhold their names from intelligence reports. But the information remains in the files, and there are exceptions that allow for its release.

–Michael Himick

CNN’s Anderson Cooper is in Iraq, reporting live from there this week as the Iraq debate here at home intensifies. I want to highlight this exchange from yesterday’s show:

COOPER: Michael Ware, Petraeus said that as many as 30,000 troops could leave by the beginning of next summer. It was sort of presented as though that was an operational decision.

In truth, it is really an operational necessity. The U.S. can’t maintain these current troop levels, without putting even more strain on the — on our already strained troops. Is that correct?

WARE: Yes, that is correct, Anderson. In fact, I’m struck by the way people are regarding General Petraeus’ discussion of — of those troop levels until July of next year. People are acting like he has just announced some sort of phased withdrawal. Well, no, not at all. That was the timeline for the so-called surge in the beginning.

Indeed, it wasn’t a surge. It was a one-year escalation of U.S. forces. And the clock was due to run out on that escalation in the summer of next year anyway. So, that is not a revelation at all.

While the “withdrawal” of a few thousand troops is being heralded in the media as a sign of progress in Iraq, the suggested drawdown of U.S. forces is nothing more than a necessity and a consequence of a strained military.

At his August 1st confirmation hearing, President Bush’s nominee for Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Michael G. Mullen, confirmed the necessary scaling back of the surge:

Adm. Michael G. Mullen, President Bush’s nominee to head the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told a Senate panel yesterday that the war in Iraq is taking a heavy toll on the U.S. military, warning that American forces are “not unbreakable” and stressing the need to “plan for an eventual drawdown” of troops. [...]

Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), noting Mullen’s commitment to capping tours of duty in Iraq at no more than 15 months, asked if the Pentagon faces a de facto timetable for ending the buildup by April “because we simply will not be able to put manpower on the ground unless we extend rotations.”

Mullen replied, “Yes, sir, that’s fair.”

The “surge” was time-limited from the very beginning. The clock was running from day one for the President, who promised us that the surge would provide the security necessary to create “breathing space” for the Iraqi government.

Yet as Ambassador Crocker testified today, the Iraqi government is “dysfunctional.” Where the surge sought to create “breathing space,” the Iraqi government continues to be suffocated by sectarian tensions, corruption, incompetence and mismanagement.

In short, the clock has run out on the surge, and by any measure, the surge has failed.

Supporters of the Iraq war — rather than waiting for testimony by Gen. David Petraeus and U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker on the effect of President Bush’s troop increase in Iraq — have engaged in a campaign to convince the media and public that progress is being made in Iraq and that the “surge” is “working.” Media Matters has compiled some of the most pervasive myths and falsehoods advanced by opponents of withdrawal in service of the “surge is working” message, which many in the media have been complicit in perpetuating.

The week of September 10, Gen. David Petraeus, commander of Multi-National Force-Iraq, and U.S. ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker are expected to testify before Congress on the effect of President Bush’s troop increase in Iraq, to be followed by a written report submitted by the White House. Bush announced on January 10 that he was sending “more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq.” Since then, the Bush administration and the congressional Republican leadership have thwarted efforts by Democrats and other proponents of legislating a timeline for withdrawal to enact legislation to begin withdrawing U.S. troops, arguing that no action should be taken until Congress hears from Petraeus and Crocker.

But supporters of the war have not simply bided their time awaiting Petraeus’ and Crocker’s appearances before Congress. Rather, they have engaged in a campaign starting midsummer to convince the media and public that progress is being made in Iraq. President Bush, members of the administration, Republicans, and other advocates of the president’s escalation policy have been laying the groundwork for the case that the “surge” is “working” and it is premature to commence withdrawal. Many in the media have been complicit in the administration’s PR offensive: ignoring that a crucial criterion for the success of the administration’s strategy — political progress in Iraq — has in the assessment of people inside and outside the administration not occurred; repeating administration claims of military progress while ignoring evidence to the contrary; repeating distortions of comments by Democrats to claim that they acknowledge the surge is working; characterizing proponents of a withdrawal timeline as calling for a “precipitous” withdrawal; and uncritically repeating the widely dismissed claim by Bush and administration supporters that the terrorists will follow us home if the U.S. withdraws from Iraq.

Some of the most pervasive myths and falsehoods that many in the media have been complicit in perpetuating are set out below:

Myth: “The surge is working”

In recent weeks, the media have essentially allowed advocates of the president’s “surge” policy to redefine the criteria on which the strategy’s success would be evaluated, ignoring the Bush administration’s own acknowledgment of the importance of national political progress to the overall success of its strategy. Bush specifically cited the need for political progress back in January, and the U.S. Troop Readiness, Veterans’ Care, Katrina Recovery, and Iraq Accountability Appropriations Act of 2007 passed in May provides the benchmarks with which progress is to be measured.

On the August 20 edition of Fox News’ Special Report, host Brit Hume said that “evidence mounts that the troop surge is working as planned.” An August 16 editorial in Investor’s Business Daily was headlined, “A Surge of Success.” And on the August 21 edition of MSNBC’s Tucker, U.S. News & World Report editor-in-chief Mortimer B. Zuckerman asserted: “[T]he fact is that, by far, the consensus is that the surge is working.” However, by the administration’s own standards, the national political reconciliation that the Bush administration identified as essential for the success of its escalation strategy has not occurred.

As Media Matters has noted, when announcing his so-called surge strategy in January, Bush specifically stated that success had to be measured in terms of military progress and political progress by the Iraqi government on the benchmarks established by the United States. Bush declared that “[a] successful strategy for Iraq goes beyond military operations” and will include a political component: “hold[ing] the Iraqi government to the benchmarks [America] has announced.” Furthermore, when appearing on the August 5 edition of NBC’s Meet the Press, Defense Secretary Robert Gates told host Tim Russert that “a successful outcome in Iraq requires political reconciliation. There’s no question about that,” and that “[a]t some point there has to be reconciliation at the national level.” On the February 25 edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.’s Fox News Sunday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice argued, “The president’s been clear with [the Iraqi leaders] that these political reconciliation measures are at the core of success for Iraq.” Navy Adm. Michael Mullen, while testifying before a July 31 hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on his nomination to be chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, stated, “I still maintain that if we aren’t making progress in [the Iraqi political] realm the prospects for movement in a positive direction are not very good.”

However, on August 21, Crocker said reconciliation is not occurring. As an August 21 McClatchy Newspapers article reported, Crocker said: “The progress on the national level issues has been extremely disappointing and frustrating to all concerned — to us, to Iraqis, to the Iraqi leadership itself.” During his August 5 appearance on Meet the Press, Gates said the political aspect is “a disappointing picture for the central government right now, but there are some positive things happening at the local level.” After returning from a trip to Iraq in mid-August, Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) noted that “[t]he purpose of the surge, by its own terms, was to have the — give the opportunity to the Iraqi leaders to reach some political settlements. They have failed to do that. They have totally and utterly failed.” In addition, the latest National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) stated that national political reconciliation has not occurred. The NIE, portions of which were released on August 23, stated that “to date, Iraqi political leaders remain unable to govern effectively” and concluded that “the Iraqi Government will become more precarious over the next six to 12 months.” According to the NIE: “Broadly accepted political compromises required for sustained security, long-term political progress, and economic development are unlikely to emerge unless there is a fundamental shift in the factors driving Iraqi political and security developments.”

Further, a report released by the Governmental Accountability Office (GAO) on September 4 found that the national Iraqi government was making little political progress. The GAO concluded that the Iraqi government had met only one of eight legislative benchmarks and partially met one other. GAO noted that six of the legislative benchmarks had not been met: “a review committee has not completed work on important revisions to Iraq’s constitution” and “the government has not enacted legislation on de-Ba’athification, oil revenue sharing, provincial elections, amnesty, or militia disarmament.”

• O’Hanlon and Pollack — critics of administration handling of the war — agree the surge is working

On July 30, Brookings Institution scholars Michael O’Hanlon and Kenneth Pollack published an op-ed in The New York Times in which they described themselves as “analysts who have harshly criticized the Bush administration’s miserable handling of Iraq” and argued that “significant changes were taking place,” which justified continuing the Bush administration’s surge strategy “at least into 2008.” The op-ed received widespread media attention, and supporters of the administration’s policy in Iraq touted the op-ed, saying that Pollack’s and O’Hanlon’s findings of progress were particularly credible, given their purported criticism of the war. Indeed, the weblog Think Progress noted that O’Hanlon and Pollack “appeared on at least nine major mainstream media outlets in” the 24 hours after their op-ed appeared.

In fact, O’Hanlon and Pollack are not “critics of the war”; as Media Matters has noted, both O’Hanlon and Pollack were influential proponents of the Iraq war before the invasion. Pollack wrote a book in 2002 titled The Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq (Random House). Furthermore, O’Hanlon publicly supported the surge policy and wrote a January 2007