Antiwar.com Blog

Amid all the hysteria emanating from the British tabloid press (or do I repeat myself?) over l’affaire Litvinenko, the facts are not fitting the original narrative of a KGB hit against a heroic “human rights” crusader. UPI reports the latest in this developing story:

“Russia’s nuclear agency said the country is no longer producing radioactive polonium-210, the substance that killed a former KGB spy in Britain. An unidentified spokesman for the Federal Agency for Nuclear Power in Moscow said Monday that the only facility capable of producing the isotope was closed two years ago, the Novosti news agency reported.

“The spokesman said just 8 grams of polonium-210 have been created from reserve stocks of uranium.

“‘We have supplied it (polonium-210) to U.S. companies, and there were deliveries to British firms. The 8 grams we have produced cannot have disappeared in Russia, but we do not keep track of the material after selling it,’ the source said.”

This should be relatively easy to verify, given that Russia adheres to the Nonproliferation Treaty and its nuclear facilities are routinely inspected by the IAEA. If the Russians are telling the truth, then the polonium couldn’t have been procured in their country: if they are caught in a lie, then the cloud of suspicion hanging over the Kremlin will start emitting lightning bolts.

As Antiwar.com columnist Gordon Prather points out, polonium-210 is proscribed by the NPT. There are, however, nuclear-armed states that refuse to sign the Nonproliferation Treaty — and, in one case, won’t even acknowledge its longstanding membership in the nuclear club. Investigators hunting down the assassin’s polonium source might want to start here, and then go here.

Robert M. Gates, the man slated to fill the “stuff happens” combat boots of Donald Rumsfeld at the Pentagon, offered his first cautious pass at the lessons of the Iraq War this week. In a questionnaire he filled out for the Senate Armed Services Committee in preparation for his upcoming confirmation hearings, he responded to a query about what he would have done differently with the following, according to the Associated Press:

“‘War planning should be done with the understanding that post-major combat phase of operations can be crucial,’ Gates said in a 65-page written response submitted to the committee Tuesday. ‘If confirmed, I intend to improve the department’s capabilities in this area…With the advantage of hindsight, I might have done some things differently.'”

With the advantage of “hindsight”… hmmm.

So, let’s see if we can get this straight: With hindsight, his lesson would be that, in the next Iraq-style invasion and occupation, we should focus more on that “post-major combat phase” – a nice phrase that resonates with our President’s famed “mission accomplished” moment on May 1, 2003 aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, when he announced that “major combat operations in Iraq have ended.”

Of course, by then, a lot of “stuff” had already happened and Baghdad, as well as much of the rest of Iraq had been thoroughly looted. But assumedly the new Secretary of Defense has learned his lesson: More troops for the occupation, more well-trained US MPs for the streets, a few people who actually speak the language of whatever invaded countries we might end up in, and maybe a good strongman in our pocket, not to speak of an undisbanded army of well-trained locals to keep him and us company.

It’s so early in the “withdrawal” game and yet Gates’ sad answer sums up the sad state of what passes for debate right now in the mainstream, including among the members of James Baker’s Iraq Study Group.

Of course, there’s only one lesson of the Iraq War to start with, the sort of lesson that parents tell kids every day: Don’t do it!

Wouldn’t it be nice if we had a Secretary of Defense who, having absorbed the lessons of this war, would begin planning to do no planning for future invasions of Iraq-like countries, not to speak of the post-major combat phases of such invasions. But we might as well wish for the confirmation of Tinkerbell.

Cross-posted from The Nation blog. Visit TomDispatch for more Tom Engelhardt.

I thought it amusing that Fiji’s military chief, Frank Bainimarama, gave the prime minister a deadline to conform to the military’s demands before he would set a coup in motion. “I think I’ll schedule the coup for Friday…mmm…sometime after lunch.”

The demands include the nixing of new laws, one of which would forgive participants in the last coup. Bainimarama has even produced a new demand: that Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase sack his entire government. It seems the PM has agreed to all the military’s demands, in order to stave off a coup. But isn’t giving in to all demands a de facto coup, whether or not the leader changes?

Wednesday, December 6, 2006, the Independent Institute will be hosting the Thomas Szasz Awards and “Liberty and Leviathan: An Evening with Robert Higgs.”

Gala reception and book signing at 6:30 p.m., program at 7:00 p.m.

Originator of the term, “ratchet effect,” to describe increases in State power, Higgs is the author of Crisis and Leviathan, Against Leviathan, Resurgence of the Warfare State and the brand new Depression, War, and Cold War.

Thomas S. Szasz will present Robert Higgs and Robert Spillane with the 2006 Szasz Awards for Outstanding Contributions to the Cause of Liberty, and then Dr. Higgs will address some of the most important questions of America’s past crises:

• What accounted for the extraordinary duration of the Great Depression?
• What about “wartime prosperity” and whether World War II “got the economy out of the depression”?
• How does war alter relations between government and the leaders of business and labor?
• How do military economies alter the business cycle, as during World War II and the Cold War?
• What is Congress’s role in the military-industrial-congressional complex?

Thomas S. Szasz, Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry State University Medical Center Syracuse, is the author of numerous books defending liberty against psychiatric coercion. The renowned author of such seminal works as The Myth of Mental Illness, Pharmacracy, and Ceremonial Chemistry, Dr. Szasz has distinguished himself as the preeminent defender of individual rights for nearly five decades.

The Independent Institute Conference Center
100 Swan Way
Oakland, CA 94621-1428
For a map and directions, click here.

Tickets are $15 per person ($10 for Independent Institute Members)
Reserve tickets by calling (510) 632-1366 or ordering online here.

“If named the Liberal Party’s leader this weekend, Michael Ignatieff would be a candidate to become [Canada’s] next prime minister.” Read all about it over at the Christian Science Monitor, if you like. Why should you care? Well, this is the same Michael Ignatieff who wrote, in 2004:

To defeat evil, we may have to traffic in evils: indefinite detention of suspects, coercive interrogations, targeted assassinations, even pre-emptive war.

Mind you, this is the prospective Liberal leader.

Another Russian “dissident” gets sick, and guess who is blamed. As I said in my column the other day, Russia is getting the same treatment these days as Syria, a bona fide member of the “axis of evil.” A Lebanese taxi driver put it this way:

“‘It’s very clear,’ said the Beirut taxi driver, a Sunni Muslim. ‘They blame everything on Syria. If a man divorces his wife, they blame it on Syria.'”