The Daily Mid-East Mess

Since the war in Iraq turned into a disaster, one common argument has been that President Bush's misadventure bears many similarities with US imperialism in South Vietnam in the 1960s and 1970s.

As the North Vietnamese army closed in on Saigon, Ford arranged for 130,000 South Vietnamese, afraid of Communist retribution and retaliation, to be resettled in the United States.

The current president, unfortunately, has shown no such character in the United States' latest failed war.

Of all the depravity associated with the Bush administration's war in Iraq, nothing has shown this administration's moral bankruptcy and callousness more than its treatment of those ordinary Iraqis fleeing anarchy for any pocket of civility they can find. Almost three million Iraqis find themselves internally displaced, many of them women and children. The UN estimates that another 500,000 Iraqis have fled to Jordan, while 1.2 million Iraqis have crossed over Syria's border for protection.

In March 2007, Bush did acknowledge this crisis indirectly by promising to resettle 12,000 Iraqi refugees inside the United States in fiscal year 2008. The result: only 2,627 Iraqis have found new homes in the US since the end of March. This leaves five months in the fiscal year for the administration to admit 9,373 more Iraqis to achieve its already stingy goal. At the present rate, the administration won't even reach half its target by the end of the year.

Gary Ackerman has a theory: "The only answer I can come up with is that President Bush simply doesn't care about the refugees."

US expenditures on humanitarian aid support such an accusation. Since 2003, according to the US state department, the US has given $500m in humanitarian aid to Iraq - a pittance compared to the more than $500bn spent overall on the Iraq war since 2003. As Human Rights First notes: "That means that the US spends more on the war in two days than we've contributed to humanitarian assistance for refugees and [internally displaced persons] in five years."

ZURICH: US victims of attacks in Israel and their families are suing Swiss bank UBS for 500 million dollars, alleging it financed terrorism by doing business with Iran, their lawyer told AFP Tuesday.

A UBS spokesman told AFP that the accusations were “without foundation” and that the bank would defend itself in the courts. The bank, which cut its links with Iran in 2006, was fined 100 million dollars in 2004 for having made currency transfers to Iran, Cuba, Libya and Yugoslavia. UBS is also one of around 50 multinationals accused of having helped the South African government during the apartheid era, between 1948 and 1994.

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - An emotional President George W. Bush pledged that America would remain "Israel's best friend in the world" on Wednesday during a celebratory visit to Jerusalem to mark the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state.

His host, Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, appeared to bring a tear to the president's eye when he called him "a great leader, a great friend". Olmert also held out hope of reaching a peace with the Palestinians before Bush steps down in January.

Bush condemned "terrorists", including the Iranian allies Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza. He said Washington would support those Palestinians "who don't share" Hamas's vision.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas will meet Bush in Egypt on Saturday. Though Abbas, who lost control of Gaza last year to Hamas, would not echo an Islamist leader who condemned Bush as a "hypocrite", unwelcome in the Holy Land, he and his allies have indicated discomfort with Bush's trip to Israel.

For Olmert, Bush's visit has provided a distraction from an investigation into his finances that has threatened his survival in office -- and, with it, Bush's hopes for a deal this year.

Clashes between Hezbollah supporters and loyalists of the governing coalition in Beirut and other cities erupted after the government acted to remove Hezbollah's communications network.

The Lebanese government of Prime Minister Fouad Seniora should be helped in strengthening its capacity 'to respond with a military that is effective,' Bush said.

Olmert's people are leaning, said the sources, toward presenting the visiting president with a list of weapon systems that Israel wants to purchase or otherwise gain access to. Next month Olmert is scheduled to visit Washington D.C. for 48 hours, expecting to receive Bush's answer on the possibility of supplying the items on the list.

"We attribute a lot of importance to this visit, because strategic issues of great significance will be discussed," sources from the Prime Minister's Bureau told Haaretz yesterday.

Officials in the Prime Minister's Office said the possibility was discussed in closed talks between Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and U.S. President George Bush, during the latter's visit to Israel this week.

The officials said that Bush wants to deal with Iran on a root level, to weed out the negative influence aiding militant groups like Hezbollah and Hamas, the radio said.
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Meanwhile, senior officials in Jerusalem said Thursday that Israel is fully satisfied with the results of Bush's visit, including policy on Iran's nuclear program.

"America stands with you in breaking up terrorist networks and denying the extremists sanctuary. And America stands with you in firmly opposing Iran's nuclear weapons ambitions. Permitting the world's leading sponsor of terror to possess the world's deadliest weapon would be an unforgivable betrayal of future generations. For the sake of peace, the world must not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon," the president said.

Bush accused Ahmadinejad of seeking to return the Middle East to the Middle Ages by calling for the destruction of Israel.

Lebanese Information Minister Ghazi al-Aridi said in a press statement on Wednesday that the US-backed cabinet has cancelled two measures it took against Hizbullah, which triggered the worst internal fighting in the country since the 1975-90 civil war.

The two measures in question were the army's decision to overturn a government act to reassign the head of Beirut airport security, and the decision to probe a communications network set up by Hizbullah.

Lebanese media reported that the decision to repeal the acts was instated despite Saudi Arabia's request that the government refrain from ceding to Hizbullah.

U.S. President George Bush said during a closed working meeting between the American and Israeli teams that there is no difference between Hamas, Hezbollah and Al-Qaida.

Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni and her U.S. counterpart Condoleezza Rice also took part in the meeting, held at the President's Residence in Jerusalem, which focused on the latest developments in Syria, Lebanon, Iran and the Gaza Strip.

Bush vowed continued American support for Israel: "The objective of the United States must be, on the one hand, to support our strongest ally and friend in the Middle East, against the forces of terror you've just described, while at the same time to talk about a hopeful future."

Eyewitness reports said there were minor skirmishes in the area Thursday morning but noted many gunmen could be seen dismantling bombs scattered in the district. Other reports indicated most of the armed militias vanished from the streets as the terms of the cease-fire brokered between Sadr loyalists and the Iraqi government during the weekend took hold.

Atta told a news conference that Iraqi authorities established checkpoints where militants could turn in their guns in exchange for government-backed rewards.

The death toll from yesterday's suicide bombing at a funeral in Abu Minasir rose by three dead and eight wounded to 25 killed and 48 wounded. One witness described the bomber as a crying teenager and noted that the boy's suicide vest appeared to have detonated by remote control, suggesting he was an unwilling accomplice.
2 Baghdad Attacks Attributed to Teenagers Kill 11 Others

Clashes in Sadr City left seven dead and 19 wounded. Women and children were among the injured. U.S. forces said they killed two gunmen.

In Jalawla, a roadside bomb killed two policemen and wounded four others.

A blast killed two people in Balad Ruz.

Six policemen were injured during a blast in Khaneqeen.

In Mosul, the Iraqi army arrested the manager of the Ninevah governor's office and the head of the facilities protection services.

Two suspects were detained and a weapons cache was confiscated in Makhmour.

Three doctors were kidnapped near al-Hamra village.

Iran bombarded the Qalaat Daza district, but no casualties were reported. In the past, Iran has targeted PJAK (Partiya Jiyana Azada Kurdistanê) rebel bases there. They believe the rebels use the bases to stage attacks in Iranian territory.

Two dumped bodies were found near Lake TharThar.

An Interior Ministry report said unidentified gunmen in northern Baghdad fired on two SUVs carrying the five employees and driver, who were transported to an Iraqi hospital.

The Baghdad Operations Command, however, reported that an Iraqi army patrol was shot at and returned fire at the SUVs -- injuring the embassy workers and their driver, according to the official.

Iran's state-run Islamic Republic News Agency was blaming the United States for the attack.

"U.S. agents carried out terror attacks on Iranian Embassy staff in Baghdad," a bulletin on IRNA's Web site said.

Another message posted eight minutes later read, "Iran holds the U.S. government responsible for terror attacks on Iranian Embassy staff in Baghdad."

"The North Koreans have been offered guarantees against any attacks from outside, the Iranians have not been offered this as far as we know, nor have they been offered diplomatic relations which the North Koreans have been," said the former IAEA chief.

"When you see talks now with the North Korean and the Iranian, they sit there and are told by the US and other, who retain all these weapons, you should not have all these nuclear weapons, that it is a danger for you, it is not a danger for us, it is for the safety of the world that is very hypocritical," Blix affirmed.

The United States should construct a combination of incentives and pressure to engage Iran, and may have missed earlier opportunities to begin a useful dialogue with Tehran, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said yesterday.

"We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage . . . and then sit down and talk with them," Gates said. "If there is going to be a discussion, then they need something, too. We can't go to a discussion and be completely the demander, with them not feeling that they need anything from us."

The Bush administration has said it will talk with Iran, and consider lifting economic and other sanctions, only if Iran ends a uranium enrichment program the administration maintains is intended to produce nuclear weapons, a charge Iran denies. Although the U.S. and Iranian ambassadors to Baghdad met three times last year for discussions on Iraq, Iran has refused to continue that dialogue.

Gates said yesterday that the U.S. military remained "stretched" by deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan, although he said that all service branches had met their recruitment and retention goals last month. "There is no doubt that . . . we would be very hard-pressed to fight another major conventional war right now," he said. "But where would we sensibly do that, anyway?"

The government of Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki refused to endorse US charges of Iranian involvement in arms smuggling to the Mahdi Army, and a plan to show off a huge collection of Iranian arms captured in and around Karbala had to be called off after it was discovered that none of the arms were of Iranian origin.

US officials also planned to display Iranian weapons captured in both Basra and Karbala to reporters. That sequence of media events would fill the airwaves with spectacular news framing Iran as the culprit in Iraq for several days, aimed at breaking down Congressional and public resistance to the idea that Iranian bases supporting the meddling would have to be attacked.

But events in Iraq diverged from the plan. On May 4, after an Iraqi delegation had returned from meetings in Iran, al-Maliki's spokesman, Ali al-Dabbagh, said in a news conference that al-Maliki was forming his own Cabinet committee to investigate the US claims. "We want to find tangible information and not information based on speculation," he said.

Senior US military officials were clearly furious with al-Maliki for backtracking on the issue. "We were blindsided by this," one of them told Zavis.

The government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki refused to endorse US charges of Iranian involvement in arms smuggling to Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army, and a plan to show off a huge collection of Iranian arms captured in and around the central city of Karbala had to be called off after it was discovered that none of the arms was of Iranian origin.

Another adviser to Maliki, Haider Abadi, told the Los Angeles Times' Alexandra Zavis that Iranian officials had given the delegation evidence disproving the charges. "For us to be impartial, we have to investigate," Abadi said.

Dabbagh made it clear the government considered the US evidence of Iranian government arms smuggling to be insufficient. "The proof we want is weapons which are shown to have been made in Iran," Dabbagh said in a separate interview with Reuters. "We want to trace back how they reached [Iraq], who is using them, where are they getting it."

Eighteen people including foreign militants were killed when two missiles hit a house in the village of Damadola in the Bajaur tribal region, where Islamist militants have been known to operate, on Wednesday evening, a security official said.

A senior government official said the strike had apparently targeted a mid-level, Arab al Qaeda member, who had been killed.

Neither U.S. nor Pakistani authorities officially confirm U.S. missile attacks on Pakistani territory, which would be an infringement of Pakistani sovereignty and are unpopular with many Pakistanis who oppose the U.S.-led campaign against terrorism.

Pakistan's Western allies say previous peace pacts merely gave the militants a free hand to regroup and plot violence in Afghanistan and beyond.

The Washington Post reported in March that the United States had escalated air strikes against al Qaeda fighters operating in Pakistan's tribal areas fearing that support from Islamabad may slip away as Musharraf's power ebbed.

Bin Laden is believed to be hiding somewhere along the border.