Antiwar.com Blog

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/charles/aw2007-11-08craigmurray.mp3]

Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan and author of Dirty Diplomacy: The Rough-and-Tumble Adventures of a Scotch-Drinking, Skirt-Chasing, Dictator-Busting and Thoroughly Unrepentant Ambassador Stuck on the Frontline of the War Against Terror, discusses the tyranny in Uzbekistan, the similarity between the views of Michael Mukasey and those of Uzbek dictator Islam Karimov, the ties between the American government and the Karimov, the knowlege and complicity of the American government and some good times drinking and chasing skirts.

MP3 here. (23:14)

In 1984 Craig Murray joined the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office. As a member of the Diplomatic Service his responsibilities included the following:

1986-9 Second Secretary, Commercial, British High Commission, Lagos Responsible for promoting British exports to, and business interests in, Nigeria.

1989-92 Head of Maritime Section, FCO, London Responsible for negotiation of the UK and Dependent Territory continental shelf and fisheries boundaries, for implementation of the Channel Tunnel treaty and for negotiations on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. From August 1990 to August 1991 he was also head of the FCO Section of the Embargo Surveillance Centre, responsible for intelligence analysis on Iraqi attempts at evading sanctions, particularly in the field of weapons procurement, and with providing information to UK military forces and to other governments to effect physical enforcement of the embargo.

1992-4 Head of Cyprus Section, FCO London Responsible for UN negotiations on the Cyprus dispute, relations with the government of Cyprus and for the mandate and requirements of the British contingent of the UN force in Cyprus,

1994-7 First Secretary (Political and Economic), British Embassy, Warsaw Head of the Political and Economic sections of our Embassy in Poland. Responsible for relations with Poland, and assisting Poland’s post-communist transition process with reference to preparation for EU membership.

1997-8 Deputy Head, Africa Department (Equatorial), Foreign and Commonwealth Office Responsible for British political and commercial relationships with West Africa, including development issues.

1998-2002 Deputy High Commissioner, British High Commission, West Africa Branch Responsible for British economic, political, commercial and aid relationships with Ghana and Togo. In Autumn 1998 Craig Murray was the UK Representative at the Sierra Leone Peace talks held in Togo, Liberia and Sierra Leone, including direct negotiation with the RUF terrorist leadership.

2002-2004 British Ambassador, Uzbekistan Responsible for our relationship with Uzbekistan. He found Western support for the dictatorial Karimov regime unconscionable, as detailed in the rest of this website.

At the 2005 UK General Election, Craig Murray takes on Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in Blackburn as an Independent candidate, winning 2,082 votes.

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/charles/aw2007-11-08 nathentoff.mp3]

Civil libertarian Nat Hentoff discusses the U.S. Senate’s confirmation of Michael Mukasey as Attorney General, the Military Commissions Act’s immunity provisions, the unitary executive theory, Mukasey’s view that the Constitutional system is “inadequate” for dealing with the terrorist menace, Mukasey’s former job as adviser on the Constitution to Rudy Giuliani, the U.S. Supreme Court’s refusal to hear Kahled el-Masri’s and Maher Arar’s torture cases in the name of the State’s secrets privilege, his belief that Bush has more contempt for the law since any president since Woodrow Wilson and his belief in the unique threat of “Islamo-fascism.”

MP3 here. (14:47)

In addition to his weekly Village Voice column, Nat Hentoff writes on music for the Wall Street Journal. Among other publications in which his work has appeared are the New York Times, the New Republic, Commonweal, the Atlantic and the New Yorker, where he was a staff writer for more than 25 years. Hentoff’s views on journalistic responsibility and the rights of Americans to write, think and speak freely are expressed in his weekly column, and he has come to be acknowledged as a foremost authority in the area of First Amendment defense. He is also an expert on the Bill of Rights, the Supreme Court, student rights and education.

[audio:http://wiredispatch.com/charles/aw2007-11-12reeseerlich.mp3]

Reese Erlich, author of The Iran Agenda: The Real Story of U.S. Policy and the Middle East Crisis, discusses the fight between the realists and crazies in the administration over Iran, his belief that the realists have the upper hand for now, the dictatorship in Pakistan and his view that the power of the administration is waning.

MP3 here. (18:34)

Reese Erlich reports regularly for National Public Radio, Marketplace Radio, Latino USA, Radio Deutche Welle, Australian Broadcasting Corp. Radio, and Canadian Broadcasting Corp. Radio. (Don’t forget that he also writes for San Francisco Chronicle, St. Petersburg Times, and Christian Science Monitor.)

Erlich has been a media critic for San Francisco’s KQED-FM (NPR affiliate) since 1988.

His “Perspectives on Jazz” series airs on sixteen public radio stations in the United States and Canada. These three- to four-minute profiles of jazz artists also appear online through the San Jose Mercury News.

Visit Lobelog.com for the latest news analysis and commentary from Inter Press News Service’s Washington bureau chief Jim Lobe.

In my last post, I argued that the release by the U.S. military of nine Iranians, including two of the five officials seized in Irbil last January, suggested that Pentagon chief Robert Gates and the administration’s “realist” wing was making progress in wresting control of Iran policy from resurgent hawks led by Vice President Dick Cheney. In addition to the release, I cited as evidence the public assessments by Gates and senior military officers that the alleged flow of EFP’s (explosively formed projectiles) and other weapons from Iran to Shi’ite militias in Iraq had declined in recent months. Now comes the estimable Financial Times with a front-page article and a thorough back-page analysis that strengthens the case, quoting, among others, Centcom commander Adm. William Fallon at length as to why war with Iran is not an attractive option. It even quotes Patrick Clawson of the hawkish Washington Institute on Near East Policy (WINEP) — the same group that last month provided the forum for Cheney’s strongest war hoop against Iran — who is close to Cheney’s national security adviser, John Hannah, as saying: “The national intelligence director is saying we have time before the Iranians get the bomb, the secretary of state is saying diplomacy still has a chance, the secretary of defence is saying the military is at breaking point and the [White House] political advisers are saying another war would probably not be a good idea.”

I would add that the last week’s events in Pakistan — not to mention the continuing rise in oil prices and rapid decline in the U.S. dollar — have also probably set back the hawks’ hopes of confrontation with Iran. Not only is the crisis necessarily displacing Iran in the media spotlight, but it is also diverting the time and energy of key policymakers within the administration, including the vice president’s staff and deputy national security adviser Elliott Abrams, who is also in charge of the White House’s badly tattered “Global Democracy Strategy.” And it gives Iran another card to play in the high-stakes regional poker game that is being played out. I personally don’t know whether long-standing reports of covert U.S. support for Iranian Baluch nationalists in Iran are true or not, but impoverished Pakistani Baluchistan (whose capital, Quetta, serves as the headquarters of the Afghanistan’s Taliban under the protection of Pakistan’s military) has long been restive. Indeed, riots broke out 15 months ago after the death of an important Baluch leader, Nawab Mohammed Akbar Khan Bugti, in a battle with federal forces. If Tehran wishes to add to Washington’s regional headaches in Afghanistan and Iraq, Baluchistan offers it a new opportunity (although one that could easily blow back across the border, too). In any event, nuclear-armed Pakistan’s suddenly apparent fragility once again underlines the importance of Iran as both a relatively tranquil island in an expanding sea of turbulence and as a potentially critical player in determining whether the region stabilizes or explodes further.

A letter from Eric, a reader, who elaborates on the theme of my column today on “Dynasties and Democracy“:

I wish to point out that there have been other American observers who noted the rise of dynastic politics in the United States . To be specific: Kevin Phillips, in his book American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush, published in 2004. The key point the book makes is that four generations of the Bush family have been involved with the rise of the national security state. There have been other prominent political families throughout America history, but stronger parties and strong public sentiment kept it under control. The Republican Party in the 14 elections between 1952 and 2004, has nominated either Richard Nixon or a Bush family member on the presidential/vice presidential ticket in 11 of those elections. This streak is unprecedented in American history. Here are the details:
 
Richard Nixon – 1952 VP, 1956 VP, 1960 Pres, 1968 Pres, 1972 Pres
George Herbert Walker Bush – 1980 VP, 1984 VP, 1988 Pres, 1992 Pres
George Walker Bush – 2000 Pres, 2004 Pres
 
The three exceptions during the period: 1964, 1976, 1996
 
The Democratic Party only has one streak that even approaches this in length:
 
Franklin Delano Roosevelt – 1920 VP, 1932 Pres, 1936 Pres, 1940, Pres, 1944 Pres

This fits in neatly with the premise of my piece: that the rise of political  dynasties is linked to our interventionist foreign policy. Since the War Party took up residence in the GOP, the dynastic factor has weighed heavily in their internal politics. And of course the reign of “Dr. Win-the-War” fits the same pattern.

It has been so obvious this week that it seemed a bit like piling on to observe that Saakashvili’s declaration of a state of emergency (like a certain other allied dictatorial ruler we know) and violent repression of civilian protesters are just the latest expression of the one-man despotism that Saakashvili created in Georgia in the wake of the so-called “Rose Revolution.” Like its successors in Ukraine, Lebanon and Kyrgyzstan, the Rose Revolution narrative has come to its predictable, unhappy conclusion where the revolution is supposedly “betrayed” (The New York Times took up this line Saturday) or fails to “fulfill its promise” or is “thwarted” by malevolent forces, when the entire thing was a sham from the beginning. The Guardian offers a typical lament (though, to their credit, they do not engage in the easy Russia-bashing that commentary on Georgia often becomes). Even now, Ralph Peters is offering up one version of this disappointment with how the “revolution” turned out:

The Saakashvili regime shone from afar – but grew rotten within.

But there was never anything that “shone” about the “Rose Revolution,” except perhaps the glaring hypocrisy of the “revolutionaries.”

Continue reading “Our Man In Tbilisi”