Urging Obama to Stop Rush to Iran War

Consortium News

Exclusive: A torrent of war propaganda against Iran is flooding the American political scene as U.S. neocons and Israeli hardliners see an opening for another war in the Middle East, a momentum that ex-CIA analysts Ray McGovern and Elizabeth Murray urge President Obama to stop.

By Ray McGovern and Elizabeth Murray

President Obama needs to put an abrupt halt to the game of Persian Roulette about to spin out of control in the Persian Gulf. If we were still on active duty at the CIA, this is what we would tell him:
This informal memorandum addresses the escalating game of chicken playing out in the waters off Iran and the more general issue of what can be done to put the exaggerated threat from Iran in some kind of perspective.

In keeping with the informality of this memo and our ethos of speaking truth to power, we may at times be rather blunt. If we bring you up short, consider it a measure of the seriousness with which we view the unfolding of yet another tragic mistake.

The stakes are quite high, and as former intelligence analysts with no axes to grind, we want to make sure you understand how fragile and volatile the situation in the Gulf has become.

We know you are briefed regularly on the play by play, and we will not attempt to replicate that. Your repeated use of the bromide that “everything is on the table,” however, gives us pause and makes us wonder whether you and your advisers fully recognize the implications, if hostilities with Iran spin out of control.

You have the power to stop the madness, and we give you some recommendations on how to lessen the likelihood of a war that would be to the advantage of no one but the arms merchants.

If your advisers have persuaded you that hostilities with Iran would bring benefit to Israel, they are badly mistaken. In our view, war with Iran is just as likely in the longer term to bring the destruction of Israel, as well as vast areas of Iran — not even to mention the disastrous consequences for the world economy, of which you must be aware.

Pakistan warns that U.S. accusations may cost Washington an ally

Islamabad denies it helped militants attack U.S. troops and officials in Afghanistan. 'You cannot afford to alienate Pakistan,' Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar says.

Reporting from Islamabad, Pakistan—

Pakistani officials warned Friday that they could jettison the United States as an ally if American officials continued to accuse Islamabad's intelligence agency of assisting a leading Afghan Taliban group in recent attacks in Afghanistan.

Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar cautioned the U.S. against airing allegations such as the blunt charge of collusion between Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency, known as ISI, and the militant Haqqani network made Thursday by Adm. Michael G. Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

"You cannot afford to alienate Pakistan; you cannot afford to alienate the Pakistani people," Khar said in New York, speaking to a Pakistani television channel. She was in the U.S. for the U.N. General Assembly session.

Pakistani army chief Gen. Ashfaq Kayani in a statement called Mullen's remarks "very unfortunate and not based on facts."

Pakistani officials continued to tersely reject the allegations and challenged the U.S. to furnish evidence of ties between the country's intelligence community and the Haqqani group.

Mullen called the Haqqani network "a veritable arm" of the ISI and said the intelligence agency helped Haqqani militants during attacks Sept. 13 on the U.S. Embassy in Kabul as well as a truck bomb blast in Wardak province three days earlier that injured 77 American troops.

U.S. military officers and former officials say ISI communicated with Afghan insurgents who attacked the U.S. Embassy and NATO headquarters nearby and appears to have provided them with equipment.

Estimated to number more than 10,000 fighters, the Haqqani network uses Pakistan's North Waziristan tribal region along the Afghan border to launch suicide bombings, commando-style assaults and other strikes on U.S., Afghan and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces in eastern Afghanistan and in the capital, Kabul.

The group has never carried out any attacks against targets in Pakistan. The country's links with the Haqqani network date to the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, when the ISI backed the group's founder, Jalaluddin Haqqani, and other resistance fighters.

Mullen's allegations probably will widen the chasm between Pakistan and the U.S., tenuous allies whose mutual mistrust deepened considerably this year. The U.S. commando raid in May that killed Osama bin Laden in the city of Abbottabad raised questions in Washington about whether elements of the Pakistan's intelligence agencies knew that the Al Qaeda leader had been hiding for five years just a few miles north of the capital, Islamabad. The January arrest of CIA contractor Raymond Davis, accused of shooting to death two Pakistani men he said were trying to rob him, sparked fear among Pakistanis that scores of CIA operatives were secretly roaming the country.

To get Pakistan to act against the Haqqani network, Washington has signaled a willingness to link future financial aid with Islamabad's cooperation against extremists, and has hinted that it could even mount some kind of unilateral, targeted strike on Haqqani strongholds in Pakistani territory.

In Karachi, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told reporters that the onus was on Washington to pull back and begin mending frayed relations between the two countries.

"They can't live with us; they can't live without us," Gilani said. "So I would say to them that if they can't live without us, they should increase contacts with us to remove misunderstandings."

Security analyst Javed Hussain, a retired Pakistani brigadier, said a U.S. strike on Haqqani would backfire, given the array of militant groups beyond the Haqqani network that also use North Waziristan as a base of operations.

"It would be a strategic blunder," Hussain said. "North Waziristan is a hornet's nest.... They would all converge and coordinate activities against the U.S. Can [Defense Secretary Leon E.] Panetta or President Obama afford to open another front under the present circumstances? If he does, good luck to him."

Experts say no measure may be enough to prod Pakistan's security establishment into severing ties with the Haqqani group. The military views the militant network as a valuable asset in a post-U.S. Afghanistan to prevent nuclear archrival India from extending its influence to Kabul. Pakistan's military and intelligence chiefs have always regarded India, and not Islamic extremists, as their primary enemy.

Pakistan's military leaders, says security analyst and former Pakistani Gen. Talat Masood, "do feel that the policy they are pursuing is, in the long term, in their interest.... There are others in Pakistan who believe this association with the Haqqani network is extremely detrimental to Pakistan's interests. But they are in the minority."

How Turkey's military upheaval will affect NATO

Christian Science Monitor

The resignations of Turkey's top military brass, along with the detention of scores of officers, have sparked fears that the capability of NATO’s second-largest army is being eroded.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan (r.) talks
with Gen. Necdet Ozel, Turkey's new Land Forces
Commander and acting Chief of Staff, at
the mausoleum of modern Turkey's founder
Kemak Ataturk, after the military's annual
meeting in Ankara, Turkey, Monday, Aug. 1.

The resignation of Turkey’s top four military officers last week has been heralded as marking the end of a near decade-long power struggle between the government and armed forces.

But the resignations, along with the ongoing detention of scores of officers in what government opponents claim are politically motivated criminal probes, have sparked fears that NATO’s second-largest army could face an operational crisis.

On July 29, Chief of General Staff Isik Kosaner, and the heads of the Army, Navy, and Air Force all requested early retirement. Kosaner said it had become "impossible for me to continue serving" due to what he called the unjust detention of 250 serving and retired military personnel, including generals and admirals.

Their departures came hours after the indictment of 22 high-ranking soldiers allegedly involved in an Internet smear campaign against the government. It also followed a confrontation with the government over an upcoming meeting of the Supreme Military Council, which makes decisions on military promotions.

12 percent of generals, admirals in prison

The resignation of Turkey’s top four military officers last week has been heralded as marking the end of a near decade-long power struggle between the government and armed forces.

Traditionally, Turkey’s politicians have merely rubber-stamped the decisions suggested by the Army, but since last year, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has demanded the final say in military appointments.

Yesterday, Mr. Erdogan joined remaining senior officers for the four-day meeting in which he could now remold the military leadership.

“The resignations alone are not a problem, but the arrests are a far bigger issue,” says Gareth Jenkins, a military analyst in Istanbul with connections to Turkey’s armed forces.

“Twelve percent of serving generals and admirals are in prison. You’re getting an erosion not of the political influence of the Turkish military – which is already gone – but of their military capability,” he adds.

Turkey is involved in NATO missions in Afghanistan and Libya. But one Turkish fleet currently operating off the coast of Libya, is lacking its commander; Vice Admiral Kadir Sagdic, head of Southern Sea Area Command, was detained last summer on suspicion of plotting a coup.

Media critical of the government have raised doubts about the experience of the man slated to replace Kosaner, Gen. Necdet Ozel. Formerly head of the military police, he was promoted to acting chief of general staff hours after the resignations.

Such media outlets point out that he has had no experience serving in NATO structures, nor has he received training in the United States.

Meanwhile, the resignations and imprisonments mean that there are now no eligible generals with the four-star ranking required to assume the role of head of the Air Force, and only a single three-star Air Force general.