Antiwar.com Blog

When I blogged and posted a copy of The Baghdad Mosquito yesterday I had no idea I was spreading classified material.

The Baghdad Mosquito is a daily newsletter produced under the auspices of the Multi-National Forces in Iraq. It is distributed via e-mail to an elite group of military officers and policy planners and is posted on the military’s classified Web server.

The March 5 edition contains a reprint of Scott Horton’s article from Antiwar.com, “Finding Ways to Stay in Iraq.” (It is reprinted without the copyright note and The Baghdad Mosquito was not given reprint permission). It was run to show that an Iraq newspaper, Al Nour, had reprinted it in full, to the surprise of the editors of The Mosquito. The Mosquito editors commented:

Summary: A US Political analyst believes that the policies of the Bush administration are being repeated in Iraq; however, the administration is trying to ‘beautify’ the policies in an attempt to fool the world. The analyst claims that Obama is ‘playing with slogans’.

[Mosquito Note: The rest of the article was taken from another website and translated into Arabic. The author at Al Nour removed the names (other than Scott Horton) from the original article. The rest of the content remained the same. The following is the text of the article written by Mr. Scott Horton that was published on Antiwar.com. It is unusual for Al Nour to publish this type of article. The article is written from a very left-wing liberal point of view. Al Nour is usually a non-biased newspaper that publishes news stories rather than extremely biased editorials.]

The staff at The Baghdad Mosquito have become aware of the fact that we obtained a copy of their publication. They have made the following “request”:

Please delete the copy of the product that you have, and I would appreciate if you would ask Mr. Horton to do the same. Additionally, please do not distribute the product further.

The email is signed: V/R, Baghdad Mosquito Staff.

Since this is only a request, and not an order from any governmental body, we have no intention of removing the post at this time (but you might want to grab a copy of the pdf, just in case…)

The Baghdad Mosquito has been published daily since late 2003. I was unable to find another copy anywhere on the web via a Google search, although copies are clearly distributed to non-military people like Daniel Pipes.

Scott Horton (of Antiwar Radio) got an unusual readership for his article, “Finding Ways to Stay in Iraq.”

Al Nour newspaper in Iraq translated and ran the article in full. This was a shock to the editors of The Baghdad Mosquito, which is published by the Multi-National Forces (occupation) in Iraq.

The March 5 issue headlines Scott’s article on the front page: “Scott Horton: New US President Plays With Slogans And Iraq Is Being Fooled.” The entire article is reprinted in The Mosquito, with the following introduction:

Summary: A US Political analyst believes that the policies of the Bush administration are being repeated in Iraq; however, the administration is trying to ‘beautify’ the policies in an attempt to fool the world. The analyst claims that Obama is ‘playing with slogans’.

[Mosquito Note: The rest of the article was taken from another website and translated into Arabic. The author at Al Nour removed the names (other than Scott Horton) from the original article. The rest of the content remained the same. The following is the text of the article written by Mr. Scott Horton that was published on Antiwar.com. It is unusual for Al Nour to publish this type of article. The article is written from a very left-wing liberal point of view. Al Nour is usually a non-biased newspaper that publishes news stories rather than extremely biased editorials.]

Ron Paul on the myth of Obama’s “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq.

Thanks to Lew Rockwell.

Since Secretary of State Clinton set out for the Middle East over the weekend, it has seemed increasingly clear to me that Dennis Ross, contrary to my earlier speculation, pretty much got the job that he and WINEP were hoping for. Not only has he claimed an office on the coveted seventh floor, but Obama’s conspicuous placement of Ross’ name between those of Mitchell and Holbrooke in his speech on Iraq at Camp Lejeune last week strongly suggested that he considers Ross to be of the same rank and importance as the other two.

More to the point is what Clinton and those around her have been saying during the trip, including, most remarkably, the report by an unnamed “senior State Department official” that she told the foreign minister of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that she was “very doubtful” that diplomacy would persuade Iran to abandon its alleged quest for nuclear weapons. This, of course, very much reflects Ross’ own view (as well that of neo-conservatives) and will no doubt bolster hard-liners in Tehran who believe that Obama’s talk of engagement is simply designed to marshal more international support for eventual military action, be it a bombing campaign or a blockade to cut gasoline imports. That Obama essentially confirmed today’s New York Times report about a proposed deal with Moscow whereby it would go along with increasing sanctions against Iran in exchange for Washington’s non-deployment of anti-missile defenses in Poland and the Czech Republic only adds to the impression that some version of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s September ‘08 report on Iran strategy (drafted by hard-line neo-cons Michael Rubin and Michael Makovsky and signed by Ross), which I wrote about here, is in the process of being implemented. (I was going to write about this later this week, but the Moon of Alabama beat me to the punch. See also Stephen Walt’s analysis of Clinton’s scepticism on his Foreign Policy blog).

Adding to my growing sense that Ross occupies a critical role in policy-making, at least in the State Department, are what Clinton has had to say so far on her trip about Gaza, Hamas, and the Palestinian Authority. As Marc Lynch reports in his truly excellent blog, also on the Foreign Policy website, “her remarks suggest that rather than seize on the possibility of Palestinian reconciliation, Clinton prefers to double-down on the shopworn ‘West Bank first, Fatah only’ policy” strongly advocated by Ross. In that respect, you should definitely read Tuesday’s extended colloquy between Lynch, Brookings’ Tamara Wittes (who is more optimistic), and Carnegie’s Nathan Brown, who shares Lynch’s “disappointment” about Clinton’s performance. As Lynch notes, it seems that Clinton is stuck “in a bit of time-warp” regarding Hamas’ power in Gaza, the Palestinian Authority’s abject failure to enhance its legitimacy, and the Arab League’s renewed efforts to both unify itself and to reconstruct a Palestinian government of national unity. This insensitivity to Palestinian and Arab public opinion bears all the hallmarks of Ross’ failed Mideast diplomacy during the 1990’s.

I also have the impression that Ross and the so-called “Israel Lobby” whose interests he represents believe that enhancing conditions on the West Bank, combined with diplomatic engagement with Syria, will somehow be sufficient for Washington to regain its credibility in the region and rally the Sunni Arab states — along with the European Union, Russia, China, etc. — behind a policy of confrontation with Iran.

The more one looks into it, the more Elliott Abrams’ rendition of how Iran allegedly smuggles weapons to Hamas in Gaza via Somalia and Eritrea just gets weirder and weirder. Remember: he was Bush’s top Middle East adviser from December, 2002, until January 20 and, as such, had access to the most sensitive information available to the U.S. intelligence community. Yet he seems to be lending himself to an extraordinarily crude Israeli disinformation campaign in which Somalia, which is some 1500 miles from Gaza, is depicted as a key trans-shipment point for the alleged supply of weapons from Iran to Hamas.

The Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) has now posted the Abrams transcript, including the relevant passage on the alleged Iranian-Gaza smuggling routes. Among other things, he says that “the bulk” of Iranian-origin weapons for Hamas travel the Gulf of Aden route to Yemen, Somalia, Eritrea or “places like that” before moving by land through Sudan and Egypt to the Sinai. By “the bulk,” I assume he means most. Yet it seems that the only sources who have spoken of such a land route are unidentified Israeli officials. Last week, I spoke with three experts on Somalia and piracy there, and all three said they had never heard of such a route and considered it fanciful, to say the least.

Here is the relevant passage in the interview:

GWERTZMAN: How — if I could just intersperse a question — how did the Iranian arms get to Gaza in the first place?

ABRAMS: Well, if you ask the Egyptians they will tell you that some of it comes by sea and that the Israelis need to do a better job at guarding the coastline.

I didn’t find any Israeli officials who accepted that view. They believe that these things actually do come in the tunnels. And the tunnels have, you know, one should not think of, sort of, tiny, dirty hole in the ground. These tunnels are industrial strength. Many of them have electricity and lights and there is a tunnel infrastructure in Gaza. There are tunnel courts where disputes are resolved. There are permits for tunnels. So this is really rather well regulated by Hamas.

GWERTZMAN: I mean, I’ve heard that these weapons go to Sudan and up and just up the Nile?

ABRAMS: Well, it appears that they come by sea, most of them, by sea from Iran and go around Gulf of Aiden [sic] and, right, and up ultimately they don’t, we don’t think they go through the canal, most of them by ship and out into the Mediterranean and then into Gaza. Rather, it seems that they hit land in places like Yemen or Somalia or, I guess, Eritrea to some extent, places like that, you could look at the map. And then cross over into Sinai and are taken across Sinai and then sneaked into Gaza. I don’t think this is, you know, accounts for 100% of the shipments but that seems to be the bulk of them.

Now, you will remember that at the end of the Gaza War there were pledges by the United States and a number of European countries that we would try to help interdict the seaborne part of this. And the Egyptians were supposed to try the Sinai part, before you get into the area right on the border. I don’t know whether there has actually been in the last month or so any significant increase in the maritime policing.

GWERTZMAN: Right. Next question.

Before Abrams spoke about it on the record, by far the best dissection of the story on which Abrams seems to have based his assertions about the land route appeared Feb 1 on the Moon of Alabama website which I strongly urge you to visit. Entitled “The ‘Iranian’ Weapon Ships,” it does a masterful job – far better and more detailed than I can do here — of tracing the convoluted story of the Cypriot-flagged Russian container ship Monchegorsk, which was boarded and searched by the U.S. Navy January 19 near the entrance to the Red Sea after passing through the Gulf of Aden. It was the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Adm. Michael Mullen, who really drew attention to the incident when, asked about it by an Israeli reporter at the Foreign Press Center here January 27, Mullen suggested that unidentified weapons carried aboard the vessel were bound for Syria but were “going to end up in Gaza.” He provided no theory, however, on how they might get from Syria to Gaza.

Read the rest of Jim’s post and comment on his blog.