New Questions About Abu Ghraib

"The recent detentions of Iranian American dual nationals are only a small part of a campaign that includes arrests, interrogations, intimidation and harassment of thousands of Iranians as well as purges of academics and new censorship codes for the media. Hundreds of Iranians have been detained and interrogated, including a top Iranian official, according to Iranian and international human rights groups."

In her final paragraph, Wright cites a possible reason for this crisis: "The Bush administration's $75 million fund to promote democracy in Iran is the key reason for the recent arrest of several dual U.S.-Iranian citizens in Iran, including D.C. area scholar Haleh Esfandiari. Iranian analysts contend that the U.S. funds have also made civil society movements targets because of government suspicions that they are conspiring to foster a 'velvet revolution' against the regime."

Najmeh Bozorgmehr and Guy Dinmore put it more strongly in the Financial Times: "The survival of Iran's fragile pro-democracy movement is being threatened by the US administration's continuing attempts to fund the country's civil society, leading activists have warned.

"Prominent NGOs say the US funding for opposition groups, and Iranian suspicions that the money is designed to create the conditions for a 'soft revolution', have helped President Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad justify a crackdown on their activities.

"The recent arrests of four Iranian-American dual citizens -- two on charges of espionage -- have sharpened what was already a fierce debate in Tehran and Washington on whether the lack of transparency in identifying the recipients of US funding makes local activists vulnerable to action by the regime. . . .

"One insider in Washington said some officials had even welcomed the backlash from Tehran, arguing that it would clarify the divisions between the Iranian government and 'opposition'. He said that Nicholas Burns, the undersecretary leading Iran policy, was a keen proponent of the funding programme, seen as another lever to use against Tehran."

And Karen J. Greenberg writes for TomDispatch.com that in the case of the four Iranian-Americans being detained, Bush's "frantic, fear-filled, information-impoverished, but stubbornly defended policy" on detainees held by the United States "has finally blown back on America's own citizens. . . .

"President Bush is correct. These detentions represent a travesty of justice and a violation of the rules of conduct among nations. It is horrifying that these Americans, who are engaged in foreign affairs at non-governmental and scholarly levels, are held, seemingly without recourse to law and certainly without respect for international rights.

"But there is another disturbing reality here which must be faced. In numerous ways, the U.S. has robbed itself of the right to proclaim the very principles by which these prisoners should be defended. Though President Bush and his spokespersons may not see it, their past policies have set a trap for the government -- and for Americans generally. More than five years after setting up Guantanamo, and then implementing national security strategies based upon torture, secret prisons, and illegal detentions, the Bush administration has managed to obliterate the moral high ground they now seek to claim in relation to Iran."

Iraq Watch

Karen DeYoung writes in The Washington Post: "Conditions in Iraq will not improve sufficiently by September to justify a drawdown of U.S. military forces, the top commander in Iraq said yesterday.

"Gen. David H. Petraeus . . . and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker, his diplomatic counterpart in Baghdad, said a key report they will deliver to Washington in September will include what Crocker called 'an assessment of what the consequences might be if we pursue other directions.'"

So instead of an objective report describing progress that we were promised, we'll get a fear campaign? Talk about moving the goalposts.

Steven Simon and Ray Takeyh write in a Washington Post opinion piece: "The war in Iraq is lost. The only question that remains -- for our gallant troops and our blinkered policymakers -- is how to manage the inevitable. What the United States needs now is a guide to how to lose -- how to start thinking about minimizing the damage done to American interests, saving lives and ultimately wresting some good from this fiasco.

"No longer can we avoid this bitter conclusion. Iraq's winner-take-all politics are increasingly vicious; there will be no open, pluralistic Iraqi state to take over from the United States. Iraq has no credible central government that U.S. forces can assist and no national army for them to fight alongside. U.S. troops can't beat the insurgency on their own; our forces are too few and too isolated to compete with the insurgents for the public's support. Meanwhile, the country's militias have become a law unto themselves, and ethnic cleansing gallops forward. . . .

"The same policymakers who assumed that Iraq would be a cakewalk now assume that the hard-to-predict consequences of leaving will be vastly worse than the demonstrated costs of hanging on."

Maliki and Bush

Larry Kaplow and Christopher Dickey write in Newsweek about the mutually sycophantic and dependent relationship between Bush and Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki. "[T]he dour-faced Shiite politician's aides say he often brightens up after talking to the U.S. president one-on-one, whether by phone, in person or in a videoconference. 'You can see how happy he is,' says Sami Al-Askari, a close adviser, speaking of past encounters. 'Mr. Bush encourages him.' . . .

"Perhaps it's not surprising that a stubborn president of the United States and this equally stubborn prime minister of Iraq find solace in each other's company. They're both increasingly isolated from the people they are supposed to lead. They are contemporaries (Bush is 60, Maliki is 57), and both spent most of their lives as relatively unworldly men, albeit worlds apart. Both have had to learn on the job while in the top job. Both are surrounded by small circles of confidants who have given them demonstrably bad advice where the future of Iraq is concerned. Both are at odds with fractious legislatures. Both are deeply religious and have important fundamentalist constituencies. Each of them very much needs the other to succeed, and neither has any real alternative.

"But while Bush reassures Maliki, the American public's patience is running out."

From Kaplow's interview with Maliki:

Kaplow: "Some say both of you need to be more flexible -- him in recognizing more of Iraq's realities and you reaching out to your government's opponents."

Maliki: "Destiny wanted to bring together two people who strongly stick to their principles."

Personnel Watch

Michael Duffy writes in Time: "Over the past month, President George W. Bush has removed many of the last traces of the team that conceived and then executed the Iraq war. It is probably a good sign that many of the new replacements are Navy admirals, who tend to think more creatively than their counterparts in the hidebound Army. At the White House, meanwhile, day-to-day responsibility for coordinating policy on Iraq and Afghanistan has been taken from long-standing National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and handed to a three-star general, Doug Lute, who opposed the surge from the start. The political team is molting too: longtime GOP operative Ed Gillespie is set to replace Bush senior adviser Dan Bartlett. . . .

"All these moves suggest -- but hardly guarantee -- a course correction on Iraq by September, when the patience of even GOP lawmakers will probably run out. Talk of a partial U.S. drawdown or a new acceleration of Iraqi-troop training increases with each day. A senior Administration official who participates in foreign policy meetings chose his words carefully last week: 'It will be easier to execute a change in direction if the people who have to decide on it do not feel bound by things they have said and done in the past.'"

Scooter Libby Watch

Mike Allen writes for the Politico: "White House loyalists have begun arguing that clemency for I. Lewis 'Scooter' Libby -- either a pardon or a commuted sentence -- would be a way for an embattled President Bush to reassert himself, particularly among conservatives.

"The White House has not ruled out a pardon for Libby, sources say. But several Republicans, who sense a movement in Libby's favor, said a more likely possibility might be a presidential commutation -- a reduction or elimination of Libby's 2½-year federal prison sentence. Such a move, they said, would be less divisive for the country. . . .

"The lobbying is subtle, according to participants. They say that making the case directly to the president or his top aides would be insulting and could backfire. Instead, friends of Bush and Libby have been quietly working cocktail parties and other venues, laying out their logic for a pardon."

So does that mean they're lobbying people like Allen himself, rather than Bush? Writes Allen: "In an effort to get their messages to the top echelons of the White House, Libby's friends cooperated with recent articles by Jim Rutenberg of The New York Times and John Dickerson of Slate, whose piece bore the subhead: 'No way Scooter Libby is going to prison.'"

Tabloid Watch

Bob Roberts and Ryan Parry write in Britain's Daily Mirror: "Tony Blair feared George Bush would 'nuke the s**t' out of Afghanistan in revenge for 9/11, a sensational documentary will claim this week.

"Giving the inside story on the war, former British ambassador to the US Chris Meyer reveals: 'Blair's real concern was that there would be quote unquote 'a kneejerk reaction' by the Americans. . . . they would go thundering off and nuke the s**t out of the place without thinking straight.' . . .

"In Channel 4's candid two-part documentary The Rise and Fall of Tony Blair, Mr Meyer claims the threat explains why the Prime Minister vowed to stand 'shoulder-to-shoulder' with Bush over the invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan -- to thwart his allguns blazing battle plan."

Cartoon Watch

Nick Anderson and Jared Novack bring you an interactive Bush missile defense game.