Middle East

While American media has been keeping tabs on the Ukranian ship, containing Russian tanks enroute to Kenya (and allegedly ultimately destined for the Sudan), which was pirated, attracting the attention of the U.S. Navy, a South African newspaper (The Times) has an article on what’s occurring on a different pirated ship:

Somali pirates suffered skin burns, lost hair and fell gravely ill “within days” of boarding the MV Iran Deyanat. Some of them died.

Andrew Mwangura, the director of the East African Seafarers’ Assistance Programme, told the Sunday Times: “We don’t know exactly how many, but the information that I am getting is that some of them had died. There is something very wrong about that ship.”

The vessel’s declared cargo consists of “minerals” and “industrial products”. But officials involved in negotiations over the ship are convinced that it was sailing for Eritrea to deliver small arms and chemical weapons to Somalia’s Islamist rebels.[…]

The ship is owned and operated by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines, or IRISL, a state-owned company run by the Iranian military. […]

The ship set sail from Nanjing, China, at the end of July. According to its manifest, it was heading for Rotterdam where it would unload 42500 tons of iron ore and “industrial products” purchased by a German client.

What interesting cargo our friend Ahmadinejad seems to enjoy playing with…..

One of the reasons I started / I maintain this site is that I think too much.  Every so often an oddball thought pops into my head, and it’s nice to express it, either in the hopes that it’s either a good thought worthy of being shared…or that it will serve as evidence for one day when I’m committed to the funny farm.

One of the mailing lists I subscribe to is for folks who have a fascination with borders, tripoints, and the like.  A recent discussion on the de facto border between Israel and Palestinian Authority territory on that list has turned nasty, for the usual reasons.

The subject of “what to do” about the Middle East is a nasty one, as there’s plenty of blame to spread around, a lot of history behind the current situation, not to mention the conflicting claims of entitlement to the region.

It’s that “conflicting claims of entitlement” that stimulated my nutty idea of the day.

I wonder, what would happen if, by international consensus, everyone were kicked out of the country, at least temporarily, and sovereignty were transferred to a theoretically neutral party with no prior claims to the region – the Dalai Lama, for instance.

The conflicting parties could be resettled elsewhere…or even be granted readmission to the region, provided they accepted governance by the new powers-that-be.

I know, it’ll never happen, and it would only aggravate the conflicting claims of title on property in the region.  But given the ugliness of Middle Eastern politics, sometimes you wonder if the situation is messy enough that if the parties involved can’t just learn to table past conflicts and quit antagonizing the other side (the only practical solution, unfair though it may be), the next best answer is to wipe the slate clean and start from scratch.

Seen at CNN:

The Bush administration has launched a "significant escalation" of covert operations in Iran, sending U.S. commandos to spy on the country’s nuclear facilities and undermine the Islamic republic’s government, journalist Seymour Hersh said Sunday.[…]

President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney have rejected findings from U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran has halted a clandestine effort to build a nuclear bomb and "do not want to leave Iran in place with a nuclear program," Hersh said.

"They believe that their mission is to make sure that before they get out of office next year, either Iran is attacked or it stops its weapons program," Hersh said.

Surely I can’t be the only person speculating about joint American-Israeli operations against Iran being started up on Wednesday, 5 November, too late for it to impact the November elections, but before the Bush administration is removed from power.

If the Dems were truly dovish, they would start wrestling through a prohibition on the expenditure of any funds in preemptive, offensive action against Iran between 1 November and 20 January as part of each and every appropriations bill passed between now and the change in administrations.

If a legitimate need to go to war with Iran emerged, such a prohibition could be rescinded.  And, by setting those particular time limits, the administration would be obliged to weigh the political ramifications of any aggression (as opposed to the potential for a Lame Duck War).

I normally would not be comfortable suggesting that such restrictions be attempted against the Commander In Chief.  However…where are the WMD’s the invasion of Iraq was supposed to protect us from?

If we had a responsible government, you’d think that if we’re spending billions of dollars on the President’s personal War on Iraq, support could be found for other needs as well.

However, we don’t have a reasonable government. Seen at economicindicators.gov:

Due to budgetary constraints, the Economic Indicators service (http://www.economicindicators.gov) will be discontinued effective March 1, 2008.

Just before the end of the year, I observed that Bush’s pocket veto of a defense spending bill due to its exposure of the current Iraqi regime to lawsuits in the U.S. for Saddam’s actions seemed a little fishy, given that the Senate was still technically in session.

An editorial in Tuesday’s Los Angeles Times goes into a little more detail as to the weirdness, treating it also as yet another attempt of the Bush administration to expand the power of the White House:

In this case, Bush tried to have it both ways. He pocket vetoed the bill as if Congress were entirely out of session — but then he did, in fact, return it to Congress by sending it and an outline of his objections to the House clerk. He did so, according to his veto message, “to leave no doubt that the bill is being vetoed.”

If this all sounds like constitutional arcania, consider the outcome if Bush’s faux pocket veto stands unchallenged: Presidents would have absolute veto power any time Congress is not actually in session, bestowing on the chief executive the very authority the founders sought to deny the office. And why did Bush use this veto gambit now? Maybe because the bill in question passed by veto-proof margins.

Regardless of the motive, the Constitution does not allow presidents to pick the kind of veto they wish to use, and it certainly does not condone a pocket veto just because an override is likely. The existing regular veto is plenty potent, and Congress cannot be denied its constitutional right to review vetoes as long as bill return is possible. Congress should do what it did before: treat Bush’s action as a return veto because the bill was returned. And presidents should curb the impulse to play fast and loose with constitutional powers.

Hear, hear!

I still say that if Bush really believed his signing statements have meaning, this would have been one of those bills that such a tactic would be more reasonable.

Ah, if only we had the line-item veto….

Seen in the Courant:

President Bush on Friday used a “pocket veto” to reject a sweeping defense bill because he dislikes a provision that would expose the Iraqi government to expensive lawsuits seeking damages from the Saddam Hussein era.[...]

The president’s objections were focused on a provision deep within legislation that sets defense policy for the coming year and approves $696 billion in spending, including $189 billion for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Also in the legislation were improved veterans’ benefits and tighter oversight of contractors and weapons programs.

The pocket veto means that troops will get a 3 percent raise Jan. 1 instead of the 3.5 percent the bill authorized.

There are a couple of things that strike me as peculiar here.

First, Bush 43 is the president whose love of “signing statements” is infamous. Wouldn’t vacating or re-interpreting part of a law on some argument of constitutional authority be exactly the reason the White House has been making such use of signing statements? While I can appreciate taking a principled stance of refusing to sign badly-written or poorly-thought-out legislation even when there is much to be desired within it…this seems like a funny time to take that stance. If ever there were a call for a “signing statement”, it would be this bill.

Second—pocket vetoes only work when Congress isn’t in session. Congress is technically still in session, with the Senate having token meetings to block the President’s ability to make recess appointments. If these token meetings are sufficient to prevent a recess appointment, wouldn’t it also be sufficient to preclude a pocket veto?

Or, am I missing something here?

While it’s perhaps understandable that with the primary crunch time imminent, the herd of Presidential primary candidates might be focusing on the campaigns to the exclusion of awareness of other events…perhaps it’s unwise to not pay attention to at least the headlines of major newspapers.

For example, consider this bit of news, as told by the Political Tracker Blog at CNN:

At a dinner with reporters on Tuesday night, Republican presidential candidate Mike Huckabee admitted that he had neither read nor been briefed on the latest national intelligence estimate, which stated that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in 2003.[...]

That’s kind of a big oops, isn’t it? If foreign policy regarding Iran is one of the hot topics in the campaign, you’d probably want to stay on top of the issue.

(While that faux pas definitely tarnishes my impression of Huckabee, I still have to say that I dislike him least among GOP candidates.)

In fairness, I suppose that it should be pointed out that most of the hooplah surrounding the NIE doesn’t seem to note the less positive part of the disclosure. Quoting a Time article on the subject:

But while asserting that Iran may no longer have a weapons program, the new report also stresses that Iran is continuing to try to develop the technique to enrich uranium on a massive scale and that it could, theoretically, manufacture enough highly enriched uranium, or HEU, to build a bomb “during the 2010-15 time frame”. (Iran says it is enriching uranium for peaceful purposes to use in energy production and does not intend to make any HEU; the NIE says it cannot assess Iran’s ultimate intentions.)

While it would seem that folks with hawkish stances towards Iran ought to be reigned in a bit, I’d say it’s still definitely appropriate to maintain a decent amount of diplomatic pressure on Iran on the subject of its nuclear aspirations.

Seen in the Times, a summary of a recent Muslim magazine interview with +Rowan, which apparently covered several topics:

[Archbishop Rowan Williams] said the crisis was caused not just by America’s actions but also by its misguided sense of its own mission. He poured scorn on the “chosen nation myth of America, meaning that what happens in America is very much at the heart of God’s purpose for humanity”.

Williams suggested American leadership had broken down: “We have only one global hegemonic power. It is not accumulating territory: it is trying to accumulate influence and control. That’s not working.”[...]

Given the schism that seems to be almost underway within the Episcopal Church USA…and the Anglican Communion as a whole, to a certain extent… it’s interesting seeing the Archbishop not mincing words.

For any of you who were wondering, a transcript of Ahmadinejad’s comments and Q&A can be found here.

After looking through it, I’m going to stand by my earlier assertion: Ahmadinejad is the Zaphod Beeblebrox of Iran.

The New York Times has an interesting reality check to all of the current furor over Ahmadinejad’s visit to New York:

Political analysts [in Iran] say they are surprised at the degree to which the West focuses on their president, saying that it reflects a general misunderstanding of their system.

Unlike in the United States, in Iran the president is not the head of state nor the commander in chief. That status is held by Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader, whose role combines civil and religious authority. At the moment, this president’s power comes from two sources, they say: the unqualified support of the supreme leader, and the international condemnation he manages to generate when he speaks up. [...]

That is not to say that Mr. Ahmadinejad is insignificant. He controls the mechanics of civil government, much the way a prime minister does in a state like Egypt, where the real power rests with the president. He manages the budget and has put like-minded people in positions around the country, from provincial governors to prosecutors.

In other words, Ahamadinejad is the Zaphod Beeblebrox of Iran.  Quoting Zaphod’s Wikipedia entry:

He was briefly the President of the Galaxy (a role that involves no power whatsoever, and merely requires the incumbent to attract attention so no one wonders who’s really in charge, which is a role Zaphod was perfectly suited for).

 Vell, Ahmadinejad’s just this guy, you know?