Tonight in my capacity as head of foreign policy programs at the New America Foundation, I am hosting a dinner salon gathering to discuss the growing conflagration in the Middle East with Saudi Ambassador to the United States Prince Turki Al-Faisal.

His comments will be on the record -- and I will post them as soon as possible.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

An Israeli air strike has killed 54 civilians -- including 37 children. This after the strike against a UN observation facility where UN staff were killed -- and also after hundreds and hundreds of other innocent Lebanese have been killed in the exchanges between Hezbollah and Israeli military forces.

Tension is heating up -- finally -- between American negotiators and Israeli, but this is long overdue.

But back to John Bolton, who was part of a UN Security Council statement today expressing "extreme shock and distress" over the killings.

At his Thursday Senate confirmation hearings, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee majority staff passed out Ambassador Bolton's "official statement". In that opening statement, there appeared a controversial and provocative sentence that asserted that Israelis and Lebanese who become innocent casualties in this war are not morally equivalent. His argument is that Israeli innoncents are more important than Lebanese innocent casualties because the Israelis were attacked by Hezbollah.

It was a shocking sentence, and the moment I saw it, I blogged about it directly from the Senate Hearing Room.

The sentence read:

But it is a mistake to ascribe a moral equivalence to civilians who die as the direct resulte of malicious terrorist acts, the very purpose of which are to kill civilians, and the tragic and unfortunate consequence of civilian deaths as a result of military action taken in self-defense.

Now, some have misunderstood what happened next. My surprise did not come when John Bolton read a script that was different than the one in hand. What happened was that just as John Bolton was beginning to read his statement, a new statement was distributed -- with only this line of text removed.

That is important as it highlights something that the Department of State was not ready to clear -- and shows something about John Bolton's views and personality that State was not ready to sign off on.

After this huge tragedy today -- 37 innocent children -- in a crude aerial assault, does John Bolton stand by the statement he wanted to give?

Someone in the press ask him.

-- Steve Clemons

Senator Hagel's speech today -- posted below -- was quite superb in articulating a smart stragegy for American engagement in the Middle East.

I asked the Senator about his views regarding John Bolton's confirmation as the Senator was not able to attend the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearings yesterday.

Senator Hagel has stated unambiguously that he is now "undecided" on John Bolton.

Here is the exchange:

Steven Clemons: Senator Hagel. Thanks for a very inspiring and unfortunately very sober (given these times we are in) speech.

Yesterday you were unable to attend the foreign relations committee hearings on John Bolton. And it occurs to me that Ambassador Bolton probably does not share the same level of concern you do that the "world's trust and confidence in America's purpose is eroding." And I'm interested -- while I agree with virtually every word that you said in your speech -- I'm interested in how you maintain support for Ambassador Bolton's confirmation when he seems to be so at odds with the spirit of what you talked about today?

Senator Chuck Hagel: From now on no smart people can ask questions. It's a rule senators usually follow.

Let's take first the question on Ambassador Bolton. I was not there. And I think your analysis of where he would be in regard to my observations and thoughts presented in the speech I suspect are about right.

I've never engaged Ambassador Bolton on some of the specifics that I have presented here this morning.

But get to the heart of your question, which is a good question, I would answer this way: I have not decided, if Mr. Bolton comes up for a vote, how I will vote.

I have supported his nomination in committee prior which as you know was reported out and never got a vote on the floor because the votes weren't there. And I have generally taken a position. I've done this in the 10 years I've been in the senate where it's a democratic president like when I first came to the senate president Clinton was in office or a republican president, that presidents deserve their people and if the president has confidence in that person and that person is qualified and not under indictment or detox or any other considerations, then generally I would have supported the president's nominee.

And I think there's only maybe one or two times in ten years I've not done that.

In this case I want to revisit Mr. Bolton's performance. I think, just as you have noticed, if I actually believe what I have said, and I do, then there appears to be at least in your mind some disconnect in how I could support Mr. Bolton. And I think that’s a fair question.

And I think the United Nations is a very important institution. I think it's as important today as maybe it's ever been. And I think America needs to have a standing there, needs to have relationships there, and needs to be seen not just as the biggest donor nation, but we need to do more than that.

I recognize that there are differences of opinion just as I have stated here just as Franklin Roosevelt spoke about that sixty years ago. And I don't think we’ve done a very good job of factoring those differences into our policies and our relationships. That's partly why I think were in trouble in the world.

So, bottom line answer to your question is, I haven't decided yet how I'll vote on Mr. Bolton.

The debate about John Bolton is now back in play.

-- Steve Clemons

Chuck Hagel is giving an important, brave speech today.

Here is his full prepared speech:

"A Defining Time for 21st Century American Leadership"

July 28, 2006

I am honored to be invited to speak here today as a part of the Brookings Institution’s 90th Anniversary Leadership Forum. Brookings has been at the center of every important policy debate in this country for 90 years. Thank you to Strobe Talbot, Carlos Pascual and all the men and women of Brookings for your continued contributions to our national debate. I see Martin Indyk and Ken Pollack in the audience. Thank you for the fine work you do with the Saban Center for Middle East Policy.

Senator Chuck Hagel (R-NE) has a speech ready to go today at the Brookings Institution (11 a.m.) that is very significant -- and is focused on the Middle East crisis and on the question of American engagement in the world.

I have had the opportunity to read his prepared remarks, but my comments are embargoed until 11 a.m.

All I can and will say is that the speech formally titled "A Defining Time for 21st Century American Leadership" could just as easily be called Hagel's clarion call to "ENGAGE, ENGAGE, ENGAGE".

It's masterful in its implied criticism of the foreign policy floundering taking place now, but it is still hopeful.

I will be there and will report back. I'll also post the speech on TWN at 11 a.m.

-- Steve Clemons

OK -- Something interesting is going on with Lincoln Chafee. He just shoved John Bolton all over the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Hearing Room floor.

Must have had spinach and Wheaties this morning. Chafee was dogged in questioning John Bolton on his views about Israel-Palestine, about the root causes of the crisis in the Middle East, about Bolton's simple-minded use of the term "terrorism", and about Bolton's views of "shaping the Middle East" as one of the greatest challenges America faces.

Senator Chafee started off reading a Bolton statement that he made in the past where Bolton essentially blamed terrorism as the fundamental problem in the Middle East. Chafee said to Bolton: "You are a brilliant man. Terrorism is a device. Your statement makes no sense. Explain it."

Bolton gave a long and convoluted response but also stated: "There is no basis for peace in the Middle East now." He suggested that one of the reasons why the U.S. has resisted calls for immediate cease fire in the region is that it wants to generate a "comprehensive solution". He said "we need to use current circumstances as a fulcrum to move towards a more stable, longer term solution."

Chafee jumped back: "Can't you go any deeper? This isn't just terrorism. What about the history of terrorism in the region? What are the root causes?"

Bolton continued to duck the question. And jumped back to focus his answer on Hezbollah -- which he said has one foot in as political party, one foot in as military movement and that it would have to abandon its military part for peace to move forward.

Bolton sounded reasonable but still ducked Chafee's question.

So Chafee charged AGAIN.

Chafee said, "We have serious problems now. This is a conflagration. You are not answering my question. What are the root problems? What do we have to get to -- to get to a permanent peace? Is there anything deeper than just terrorism that you can identify as the root cause of the conflagration?

Bolton finally began to yield to Chafee's impressive pressure and focus.

Bolton said that the problem in the region is mostly that some nations continue to question "the right of israel to exist." Bolton stated that "the peace process is incomplete." He continued, "Israel is not able to complete full peace agreeements with its neighbors," and the leadership of Iran has threatened to wipe Israel off the map.

Chafee then told Bolton that the American Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad had recently testified before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and made the statement: "Shaping the Middle East is the defining challenge of our time."

Chafee asked Bolton if he agreed with Ambassador Khalilzad.

Bolton stated that he thought "shaping the Middle East" was 'one' of the significant challenges of our time, but intimated that WMD proliferation was another definining challenge that he worried about as much. He then turned his response into more criticism of Iran.

Then Chafee came out with a whopper on Palestine/Israel.

He asked Bolton if "he believed in a viable, contiguous Palestinian state existing side-by-side Israel."

Bolton repied that he does believe in a Palestinian state, but then obscured his answer with more about Hezbollah and its destabilization of the current situation.

Chafee then came back, again: "What has the US done about a contiguous Palestinian state?"

Chafee asked John Bolton if he thought that one of the root causes of our problems in the Middle East is our failure to make progress on a viable, contiguous Palestinian state existing peacefully, side-by-side next to Israel.

This is a remarkable and brave statement and query for Chafee to offer in these times.

Bolton responded somewhat constructively suggesting that "This is the time to look at "broader solutions" that could very well make progress on the Palestinian front as well." Bolton stated that discussions at the UN regarding Lebanon often include as well the Occupied Territories (Bolton's term).

While I happen to think that these issues ought not to be lumped together -- the fact that Chafee compelled Bolton to agree that a comprehensive solution was needed that resulted in a viable, contiguous Palestinian state was a very important exchange.

I would have been thrilled with Chafee's performance just as it was -- but THEN HE WENT ONE BETTER.

Lincoln Chafee said to Bolton that "he disagrees" with Bolton and does not see the administration putting "the effort put behind the rhetoric" that Bolton provided today.

Lincoln Chafee seems back in play to me. It may not be enough for him to reverse his vote -- but Chafee has certainly done more to open new territory in this battle than anyone else this morning.

-- Steve Clemons

On "The Young Turks" Radio Show, Senator Dick Durbin says the Bolton bilibuster needs only one more vote to succeed.

Frankly, this is better than I thought we had, and we have until mid-September to wrangle that vote.

The temperature around the Bolton vote is different than last March when the fight had a different kind of political significance.

But remember -- preempting the confirmation of John Bolton as US Ambassador to the United Nations was the first kick-back in a foreign policy matter that the Bush administration had handed to it.

And behind the high stakes drama in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and then in the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (on the controversial NSA intercepts) and then on the floor of the Senate when Bolton lost two cloture votes in a row were a great number of senior Republicans who opposed Bolton and kept fueling the stories that led to the gridlock.

We should be able to muster some of the same through August and early September -- and the Dems do not want to concede to a President who needs to be finally shown he is indeed a lame duck. For Dems to step back now will only confirm in the minds of many Americans a spinelessness and lack of resolve about principled and enlightened American engagement in global affairs.

For those interested, I will be speaking about the John Bolton hearings today on "The Young Turks" at 6:30 pm Eastern tonight.

-- Steve Clemons

Senator Norm Coleman just asked John Bolton that now after he has been inside the UN whether his views of the institution and its role have changed at all.

John Bolton's response: "Not really."

On that basis alone, Senator George Voinovich should flip his vote again. If Bolton himself has not reconstructed his views of and approach to the UN as an institution -- which was essential for Voinovich -- why would he support him now. Makes zero sense.

-- Steve Clemons

I've just heard -- and read -- the http://lugar.senate.gov/pressapp/record.cfm?id=259746">official opening statement of Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar.

Perhaps its just Lugar's genteel and judicious manner, but there is NO endorsement of John Bolton in his statement.

I have no doubt that Lugar will vote on Bolton's side in the Committee, but I know from other sources that Lugar finds Bolton disagreeable, a bad example of diplomacy, and wishes he did not have to go through this process.

But there is no automotic embrace of the still uncomfirmed Ambassador Bolton by Senator Lugar.

-- Steve Clemons

Something weird just happened.

I received the first formal "opening statement" of John Bolton just before the hearings began and quickly read it.

I highlighted in my last post what I saw as the most shocking part of his statement and reported it. This section dealt with Bolton's comments about the "moral equivalence" or not of deaths on the Israeli side vs. the Lebanese side of the current conflict.

After John Bolton began reading his formal statement, we received an "updated" Bolton statement.

The section I highlighted was excised.

Here is what John Bolton was going to say originally -- and which disappeared from his script:

But it is a mistake to ascribe a moral equivalence to civilians who die as the direct resulte of malicious terrorist acts, the very purpose of which are to kill civilians, and the tragic and unfortunate consequence of civilian deaths as a result of military action taken in self-defense."

So, which is it?

Does John Bolton believe this or not?

-- Steve Clemons

I am covering the John Bolton hearings from 216 Hart Senate Office Building.

Senator Lugar has just called the hearing to order and opened proceedings. So far, the Senators in attendance are Barbara Boxer, Richard Lugar, John Warner, George Allen, Chris Dodd, George Voinovich and Norm Coleman.

Joe Biden will be here shortly but is at the White House at a signing ceremony for the Voting Rights Act.

The most heartening item I have read this morning is a stunning reversal by the Washington Post that has essentially withdrawn its support from Bolton -- and takes serious exception to George Voinovich's reversal, which he declared in his own Washington Post op-ed.

My hunch is that neither Fred Hiatt nor Jackson Diehl wrote that Post editorial -- and that it was written by Sebastian Mallaby, who has brought real balance and objectivity to his mostly conservative commentary.

I just received John Bolton's prepared statement.

One paragraph that instantly jumped out at me dealt with the killing of innocents in Lebanon by Israeli forces.

Bolton states:

. . .These are all important questions currently under discussion by the Secretary (Rice) in Rome and the Security Council. The question of Israel's response has come up as well. Of course it is a matter of great concern to us, as President Bush has stressed, that civilian deaths are occurring. It is a tragedy, and I would not attempt to describe it any other way.

We have urged the government of Israel to exercise the greatest possible care in its use of force. But it is a mistake to ascribe a moral equivalence to civilians who die as the direct result of malicious terrorist attacks, the very purpose of which are to kill civilians, and the tragic and unfortunate consequence of civilian deaths as a result of military action taken in self-defense.

It is somewhat staggering to see this in print -- not a misstatement. If John Bolton's daughter was killed accidentally in Southern Lebanon like so many other innocents have, I wonder if his calloused view of this tragedy would remain as firm.

The killing of innocents on the scale we have seen in Southern Lebanon is not only tragic, it's outrageous and sends a signal to the Muslim world that their lives "are worth less".

Hezbollah committed a criminal, terrible act that had to be responded to -- but Israel has now assured that it has many other families and peoples who fear it and have more desire for revenge than for peace.

Israel had choices in its options to defend itself -- and had Israel acted more judiciously -- I would be more sympathetic to Bolton's views. But the present flamboyant display of power by Israel and the harm done to innocent people, including UN observers, is something that Israel and John Bolton should be far more contrite about.

Chris Dodd has led the charge for Democrats and just called John Bolton a bully. A bully that was effective would be something that Dodd could support -- but he is outlining why and how John Bolton is an entirely ineffective bully. Very good statement overall.

Lincoln Chafee -- whose support of John Bolton remains inexplicable -- has just arrived.

-- Steve Clemons

Here are some very useful resources regarding the John Bolton confirmation hearing in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee tomorrow at 9:30 a.m.

First of all, The Washington Note will be there.

Second, for others who want to be there -- the hearing will be taking place in 216 Hart Senate Office Building (a big room).

I have been able to get copies of the talking points that the White House has distributed to both Jewish political advocacy groups as well as to other groups in favor of John Bolton's record:

1. Positive Press Clips on John Bolton (pdf file)

2. A Roster of Bolton Accomplishments (pdf file)

Those who are concerned about John Bolton's confirmation are amassing their own dossier on John Bolton -- and of course, there is an absolutely voluminous roster of material on TWN that can be easily searched to acquaint one with Bolton's full record, which extends way, way back.

Some golden oldies on Bolton include his close, and ultimately illegal relationship providing uncompensated legal counsel to Senator Jesse Helms, his presidency of the National Policy Forum -- a 501(c)3 non-profit institution founded by Haley Barbour that lost its non-profit status because of illegal partisanship in its programming objectives, his non-transparent relationship with Taiwan funding sources while providing testimony to Congress on Taiwan issues, his role in helping to promulgate the Niger Uranium story inside the State Department after it had been internally set aside by INR analysts, his efforts to beat and massage intelligence to fit preconceived political objectives in the build-up of the war against Iraq, his insubordination under Colin Powell and Richard Armitage and sabotage of America's North Korea diplomacy in 2001, and the list goes on and on.

Familiarize yourself with the record. Search the TWN site. It's all there.

But on Bolton's UN performance -- ONE SIMPLE QUESTION NEEDS TO BE ASKED.

Why are we to believe that John Bolton, who has now had a lot of time on the clock, is any good at all at getting what America wants done at the UN? He has had no successes.

He has failed to get America what it wanted on a new Human Rights Council. He failed to be a full and successful strategist and negotiator on other UN reform issues. He has failed to secure the support needed for more effective resolutions dealing with Iran and North Korea. He's known for being more of a tempest than a stabilizer. To many, he is seen as a brilliant architect of American failure at the UN. And remember, essentially, John Bolton seems for the most part to want to set up failure.

He has been extraordinarly successful at making himself look like a gladiator taking on the stifling and incompetent bureaucrats at the UN -- but I am aware of very few times when John Bolton invested his time and "political capital" in achieving a real success for America at the UN.

Some of the materials of those opposed to John Bolton's confirmation include:

1. A Report Card on John Bolton

2. Key Quotes from John Bolton

3. A Chronology of John Bolton's First Year at the United Nations and His Activities and Objectives

4. A "White Paper" on Why John Bolton is the Wrong Person to Serve as America's Ambassador to the UN

5. A Citizens for Global Solutions document on John Bolton Undermining U.S. Foreign Policy Interests

6. A new StopBolton.org website

7. Visit the "Bolton Watch" website at TPM Cafe

There is a lot to digest here -- but this is an important battle. This is a cynical move by the White House to appeal to those "domestically" who are emotionally and politically involved in Israel's crisis and also an effort to throw "red meat" to those Jesse Helms acolytes around the nation who detest all international institutions, particularly the United Nations, and are essentially pugnacious isolationists.

The first round in Bolton Battle 2.0 is tomorrow. There will be a minor scuffle trying to get a vote next Tuesday at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's next business meeting -- but the Democrats will give more time and Senator Lugar has indicated privately to various groups and donors that the Bolton vote in Committee will probably take place in mid-September.

Much to do.

Read the material in favor that the White House is sending out -- and then READ THE REST OF THE STORY.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

On Thursday, 20 July (last week), former National Security Advisor and one of America's top strategic thinkers, Zbigniew Brzezinksi, spoke at a public policy dinner salon that my colleagues and I at the New Amerca Foundation organized.

Brzezinski's presentation and responses to questions were riveting. He framed the stakes of what was evolving in the Middle East as well as the basic motivations of all the players in ways that many policy intellectuals and senior foreign policy writers had not considered.

I am posting Zbigniew Brzezinski's comments here. The Q&A was not fully on the record, so I will be working to digest the best material from the Q&A to protect the identities of those posing questions or making comments -- and will post that material at a later time. But I wanted to get Zbigniew Brzezinski's opening remarks on line now.

Some of the notable points made by Brzezinski were:

1. America's "policy in the Middle East is the basic test of America's capacity to exercise global leadership." This is similar to "what transpired during the Cold War when the ultimate test of America's capacity to act as a defender of the free world was its ability to conduct a meaningful policy in Europe."

If America does not do well in its Middle East challenge, the U.S. will lose its capacity to lead.

2. Neither the United States nor Israel "has the capacity to impose a unilateral solution" to Israel's problems in the Middle East. "There may be people who deceive themselves of that. We call them neo-cons in this country and there are other equivalents in Israel as well."

3. Israel and its neighbors alone "can never resolve their conflict peacefully, no matter how much they try, now matter how sincere they may be." When one party is sincere, the other's intentions are not synchronous.

4. Brzezinski stated: "I hate to say this but I will say it. I think what the Israelis are doing today for example in Lebanon is in effect, in effect -- maybe not in intent -- the killing of hostages. The killing of hostages."

"Because when you kill 300 people, 400 people, who have nothing to do with the provocations Hezbollah staged, but you do it in effect deliberately by being indifferent to the scale of collateral damage, you're killing hostages in the hope of intimidating those that you want to intimidate. And more likely than not you will not intimidate them. You'll simply outrage them and make them into permanent enemies with the number of such enemies increasing."

5. "The solution can only come if there is a serious international involvement that supports the moderates from both sides, however numerous or non-numerous they are, but also creates the situation in which it becomes of greater interest to both parties to accommodate than to resist because both of the incentives and the capacity of the external intervention to impose costs. That means a deliberate peace effort led by the United States, which then doubtless would be supported by the international community, which defines openly in a semi-binding fashion how the United States and the international community envisages the outlines of the accommodation."

6. It's becoming increasingly difficult to separate the Israeli-Palestinian, problem, the Iraq problem and Iran from each other.

7. "The Iraq problem, look what Prime Minister al-Maliki said today -- it's an indication of things to come. The notion that we're going to get a pliant, democratic, stable, pro-American, Israel-loving Iraq is a myth which is rapidly eroding and which is now being contradicted by political realities."

8. "And that leads me then to the proposition beforehand, namely that we have now, we're not only committed to what I said earlier, regarding the Israeli-Palestinian process, but more deliberately by terminating our involvement in Iraq. And I have put forth a four-point program which [I am sure] I have discussed in one of the rare occasions within the last year administration has talked to me, some top level people in the administration. They listened to this:

That we start talking to the Iraqis of the day of our disengagement., We say to them we want to set it jointly, but in the process, indicate to them that we will not leave precipitously. I asked Khalilzad what would be his definition of precipitous and he said four months and I said I agree. Are you saying to the Iraqis, we intend to disengage by some period? We need to."

9. "As far as Iran is concerned--and with this I'll end--thanks to Iraq, I think we have made an offer to the Iranians that is reasonable. I do not know that Iranians have the smarts to respond favorably or at least not negatively. I sort of lean to the idea that they'll probably respond not negatively but not positively and try to stall out the process. But that is not so bad provided they do not reject it.

Because while the Iranian nuclear problem is serious, and while the Iranians are marginally involved in Lebanon and to a greater extent in Syria, the fact of the matter is that the challenge they pose to us, while serious, is not imminent. And because it isn't imminent, it gives us time to deal with it. And sometimes in international politics, the better part of wisdom is to defer dangers rather than try to eliminate them altogether instantly, because the later produces intense counter-reactions that are destructive. We have time to deal with Iran, provided the process is launched, dealing with the nuclear energy problem, which can then be extended to involve also security talks about the region.

In the final analysis, Iran is a serious country, it's not Iraq. It's going to be there. It's going to be a player. And in the longer historical term, it has all of the preconditions for a constructive internal evolution if you measure it by rates of literacy, access to higher education, the role of women in society, a sense of tradition and status which is real.

I'm convinced that the mullahs are part of the past in Iran, not its future. But that process can change in Iran, not in a confrontation but through engagement. I think if we pursue these policies, we can perhaps avert the dangers that we face but if we do not, I fear that the region will explode, and for that matter, Israel will be in the long run in great jeopardy."

Again, the transcript of Zbigniew Brzezinski's opening comments is available by clicking here.

There was an amazing small group assembled to participate in this discussion.

Those who attended the dinner included (not complete list):

ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI, his wife the artist EMILIE BRZEZINSKI Hauser Foundation President and International Peace Academy Chair RITA HAUSER, Financial Times Diplomatic Correspondent GUY DINMORE, American Prospect Editor in Chief MICHAEL TOMASKY, Middle East blogger and University of Michigan professor JUAN COLE;

AP Diplomatic Corresponent ANNE GEARAN, Correspondent for The Nation ARI BERMAN, New America Foundation Whitehouse Senior Fellow MICHAEL LIND, Inter-Press News Service correspondent JIM LOBE, New York Times Diplomatic Correspondent HELENE COOPER, Juniper Financial CEO RICHARD VAGUE, Open Society Institute Founder and Chairman GEORGE SOROS, New America Foundation Geopolitics of Energy Initiative Director FLYNT LEVERETT;

McGuire Woods attorney MARK BRZEZINSKI, journalist and NYU Center on Law & Security Senior Fellow SIDNEY BLUMENTHAL, Los Angeles Times Diplomatic Correspondent PAUL RICHTER, Washington Post columnist DAVID IGNATIUS, Georgetown professor and Council on Foreign Relations Fellow CHARLES KUPCHAN, CNN Washington, DC Bureau Chief DAVID BOHRMAN, former Hill & Knowlton Chairman FRANK MANKIEWICZ, "The Week" Washington Editor MARGARET CARLSON;

Dallas Morning News DC Bureau Chief CARL LEUBSDORF, Slate Chief Political Correspondent JOHN DICKERSON, Trammell & Co. CEO JEFFREY TRAMMELL, Washington Post intelligence correspondent DANA PRIEST, New Yorker correspondent JANE MAYER, Department of State analyst HILLARY MANN, Johns Hopkins University/SAIS professor FRANCIS FUKUYAMA;

New America Foundation/Century Foundation Fellow DANIEL LEVY, Washington College professor ANDREW OROS, Wall Street Journal political correspondent NEIL KING JR., Time Magazine diplomatic correspondent ELAINE SHANNON, New York Times investigative correspondent and "State of War" author JAMES RISEN, Financial Times Correspondent HOLLY YEAGER, EDS Executive BILL SWEENEY, and others.

-- Steve Clemons

There have been several thousand UN observers stationed in Lebanon for 28 years. Their role was not peacekeeping -- but they have been at least an institutional "toe in the door" in Lebanon and the neighborhood around Israel.

Today, at least two UN observers were killed in a strike by Israel. Kofi Annan called the Israeli strike "apparently deliberate" -- and Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Daniel Ayalon called Annan's comments "outrageous."

Tensions are high in every corner of this conflict, and the deaths of innocent people in this conflict assure future waves of blowback.

And besides, what nations want to contribute to an "International Stabilization Force" now? It will be hard enough to convince UN member nations to contribute troops to such a force -- but also tough to get them to continue to disarm and incapacitate Hezbollah militants. Add Israeli air strikes to the mix, and the incentives to get such a force together are nearly impossible to imagine.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

For those of you in the Washington area, I am chairing a book event and public policy discussion with two-time Pulitzer winner and Washington Post Pentagon correspondent Tom Ricks, whose new book, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq is hitting the book stores today.

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, long-time aide to Colin Powell and former Chief of Staff at the Department of State, will offer comments on Rick's presentation.

The meeting is open to the public -- as long as you RSVP in advance. It will take place Friday, 28 July, 1:00 pm until 2:30 pm. Books will be available. It's a brownbag meeting, so feel free to bring your lunch -- but also note that the meeting will be packed.

RSVP to Elizabeth Wu at wu@newamerica.net -- and say that TWN sent you. The site of the meeting will be the conference room of the New America Foundation at 1630 Connecticut Avenue, NW, 7th Floor, Washington D.C.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

The most interesting item I came across tonight on the Middle East crisis came by way of an email from former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia and former Asst. Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Chas Freeman.

Freeman provides a fascinating look at the "game behind the game" -- and rather than committing the error that so many analysts do of mirror-imaging decision-making, he starts with a lucid articulation of the view of things from Israeli shoes -- and then from Arab shoes.

(This note is printed with permission from Ambassador Freeman).

Chas Freeman writes:

The assumption in Israel and here is that Iran and Syria put Hezbollah up to its provocative gesture of solidarity with the beleaguered Palestians in Gaza. The assumption in the Arab world is that the U.S. put Israel up to what it is doing in Gaza and Lebanon. Both assertions remain politically convenient assertions that are almost certainly wrong. There is no evidence for either.

The relationship between Hezbollah, Syria, and Iran is analogous to that between Israel and the United States. Syria is the quartermaster and Iran the external financier and munitions supplier to Hezbollah; we play all three roles in support of Israel.

There is no reason to believe that Hezbollah, which is an authentic expression of Lebanese Sh'ia nationalism birthed by the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon in 1982, is any less unilateralist or prone to consult its patrons before it does things it sees as in its interest than Israel, which is an authentic expression of Jewish nationalism birthed by European racism, is in relation to us.

Remember the assertions that Vietnamese expansionism was controlled and directed by the Chinese? similar stuff. Chinese backing for the Viet Minh and the Hanoi regime did not equate to Chinese control or direction of North Vietnam, its armed forces, or its agents in South Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. Consider the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese war.

The irony now is that the most likely candidate to back Hezbollah in the long term is no longer Iran but the Arab Shiite tyranny of the majority we have installed in Baghdad. But that will not mean that the successors of Nouri Al-Maliki control Sheikh Nasrullah. Sometimes clients direct the policies of their patrons, not the other way around. This is a point exemplified by the dynamic of Israeli-American relations but far from unique to them.

This short statement is insightful and nuanced and reflects the thinking of someone with comprehensive undestanding of regional dynamics.

I agree with Freeman that there exist "authentic nationalisms" competing with each other for status and identity in virtually the same spot on the globe. Despite Israel's remarkable show of force and incursion into Lebanon -- a well-planned operation that was apparently waiting for any small crisis to launch it -- these competing "nationalisms" won't disappear.

Ultimately, a political bargain is going to have to be struck. At least in the not too old days when the Israel crisis was mostly defined by its interaction with Palestinians, a majority of Israelis and Palestinians preferred a "negotiated" final status arrangement.

Matters are messier now, but radical instabilities -- and the kind of missteps that Hezbollah, the militant wing of Hamas, and Israel have made -- could prompt some new global "adult supervision" in the region that could very well lead to a new, pragmatic grand bargain.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Like many Americans I guess, I received an email from George W. Bush this morning asking for my contribution to the Republican National Committee.

Bush's appeal starts out:

Republicans have a record of dealing with some serious economic times during my presidency. We have had a recession, a stock market collapse, terrorist attacks, corporate scandals and major natural disasters.

Because Republicans acted and had an economic recovery plan, we have created strong economic growth and nearly 5.3 million new jobs in the last two and half years; the national unemployment rate has dropped to 4.6% -- that is lower than the average rate of the 1960s, 1970s, the 1980s and the 1990s; productivity is up and household net worth is at an all-time high.

Republicans understand that by cutting taxes people will have more of their own money to save, spend and invest as they see fit, not as the government wants. So our Party and GOP members of the U.S. Congress stood squarely for tax relief for everybody who pays taxes.

We have a lot of work to do to make sure America remains a prosperous country, so that every single citizen can realize the great promise of America.

America is at war -- a few wars if you add up the so-called Global War on Terror, the fight against Iraq's insurgency, a brewing conflict with Afghan warlords and emerging Taliban forces, and perhaps next Iran, and that's leaving out challenges with North Korea and Israel's mess in the Middle East -- but yet George Bush mentions "nothing" about the need to sacrifice to manage these challenges.

On top of this, the Doha global trade talks collapsed today -- yet another indication of a long list that America's role and status in the world are rapidly deteriorating. We seem unable to achieve our objectives -- and these failures are not registering with the political class in Washington yet.

Gambling away America's moral credibility in Iraq is one crime -- but the bigger one that the Bush administration has committed is overtly showing the LIMITS of American power in the world. America's mystique has been shattered. Our military and financial limits put on open display. Friends are not counting on America as much as the case before. Foes are maximizing agendas Americans oppose.

These are dangerous times because those who are fundamentally and substantively weakening often lash out in a desperate attempt to demonstrate resolve and strength.

These are toxic matters. Bush is asking nothing of Americans. We will go on with our wars and commitments abroad without regard to domestic impact or cost -- and Americans can continue to enjoy their Wal-Mart subsidized high quality lives.

But the Doha Round failing is a big deal. It's a foreshock.

-- Steve Clemons

Last Thursday night, my colleagues and I at the American Strategy Program of the New America Foundation hosted an extraordinary dinner at which Zbigniew Brzezinski spoke about America's stakes in the worsening Middle East crisis.

I am working this weekend to review the transcript of Dr. Brzezinski's opening remarks -- and may post this and his riveting response to some questions shortly.

But as a teaser, Paul Richter of the Los Angeles Times has this comment from the Brzezinski dinner in his latest on Condi Rice's diplomatic effort:

Rice said that Hezbollah, because of its attacks on Israel, had disqualified itself from any future role in the Lebanese government. However, they would have to find a way to give Shiite Muslims, Lebanon's largest group, a voice in government.

Rice is not planning to meet leaders of Syria or Hezbollah on this trip. The Syrians, who have strong influence over Hezbollah, have been contacted by many European and Arab countries and do not need a direct dialogue with the Americans, she said.

Others disagree strongly. Zbigniew Brzezinski, national security advisor to President Carter, said last week at a dinner sponsored by the New America Foundation that if Rice doesn't meet with leaders the administration does not approve of, her trip would amount to "sitting in front of a mirror, talking to herself."

"That's not diplomacy," Brzezinski said.

Rice also might face difficulties talking to U.S. allies in the region. Three major Arab countries -- Egypt, Jordan and Saudi Arabia -- are important participants in the new effort to make peace.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

It's hard to imagine something more cynical than the White House exploiting Middle East convulsions -- in which many innocents on all sides are dying in real time -- to divide Americans at home in order to try and squeeze through the Senate confirmation of the pugnacious radicalizer and international de-stabilizer, John Bolton.

Today, several reports have come to The Washington Note that Jay Zeidman, the influential 24-year old White House liaison to the Jewish community, is putting out the call to prominent American Jewish organizations to support John Bolton -- with the arm-twisting innuendo that in this time of crisis in the Middle East, American Jews need to line up behind the guy Jesse Helms said "is the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon, if it should be my lot to be on hand for what is forecast to be the final battle between good and evil in this world."

That's exactly the kind of unstable world that Bolton seems constantly trying to stir up.

Zeidman has sent the word out to numerous Jewish organizations asking "What can the White House expect in terms of supporting John Bolton?"

Why would Israelis here or abroad want someone whose best skill seems to be antagonism and fiery, flamboyant stridency that rarely achieves a positive outcome. One would think that Israel and members of the American Jewish community would want someone helping to steward their concerns in the UN who was actually good at achieving stabilizing results that can stand the test of time.

Bolton blows things up. And we've had enough of that in the Middle East.

Zeidman is the son of prominent Greenberg Traurig attorney Fred S. Zeidman who is actively involved in leading Republican Jewish activities in Texas and is Vice Chairman of the Republican Jewish Coalition.

A bio of Fred Zeidman reports these affiliations:

Mr. Zeidman is very active in community and political affairs in Texas and nationwide. He holds leadership positions in the Anti-Defamation League (Southwest Region), the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA), the Republican Jewish Coalition, the Texas Inter-Faith Housing Corp., and the Houston Jewish Community Foundation. He is also Texas Chairman of the State of Israel Bonds and a member of the Board of Development Corporation of Israel.

He formerly served as co-chairman of the finance committee of the Republican Party of Harris County, Texas, and formerly served on the finance committee of the Republican Party of Texas, and is a Ranger for the Bush Campaign. Mr. Zeidman previously served as Vice Chairman, Board of Regents at Texas Southern University. In addition, Mr. Zeidman was vice-chairman of the Dole/Kemp presidential campaign in Harris County and has been a key Jewish advisor to Republican congressional and senatorial delegations nationwide. Fred Zeidman graduated Washington University and received an MBA from New York University.

The Bolton battle will be messy. It is clear that the dynamics of a new Bolton battle are different than March-September 2005, but still -- it will be messy. It is outrageous that the White House would yet again exploit RELIGIOUS IDENTITY and the worsening Middle East crisis just before Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has gone to the Middle East to hopefully broker a diplomatic effort.

Shame on the White House -- again.

-- Steve Clemons

Senator Lugar is now considering options on how to manage action on John Bolton's renomination to serve as Ambassador to the United Nations -- requiring confirmation by the United States Senate.

Technically, Bolton was renominated last September when his recess appointment went into affect. What is different now is that the White House seems ready to push again for confirmation.

As Tony Snow said today, Bolton's "renomination" is now pending. Little birds have informed me that there is a hearing already planned for next Thursday morning, 9:30 a.m., in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

John Bolton will be the witness.

Snow's remarks today:

Q Do we have any kind of a time frame when the President will make a permanent appointment, if he'll make a permanent appointment of Ambassador Bolton?

MR. SNOW: Well, he's already -- the nomination of Ambassador Bolton is still before the United States Senate. He was renominated right after the recess appointment. So that is a nomination that is pending before the United States Senate, and the question now is whether you move through the committee and have another set of hearings, or you go to the floor. So it's a technical question. So he's already done that.

I have now been informed by Senate-savvy lawyers that Bolton's "renomination" is in the Committee.

It CANNOT go to the Floor of the Senate unless it is "discharged" from the Committee or voted out. It is unlikely to be discharged from the Committee without action as that would require a unanimous consent agreement.

That means that the fireworks begin again in the Committee -- and attention comes back to the players and how they voted last round.

Senator George Voinovich has now flipped his vote. The question is who may flip the other way.

My answer is this.

IF SENATOR LINCOLN CHAFEE WANTS TO WIN in Rhode Island, he better reconsider his qualified support of John Bolton last round. The BOLTON VOTE will be blaringly large in the eyes of Rhode Islanders -- all of the other votes on judges and Supreme Court appointments are a blur now -- but Bolton is NOW and Bolton is news.

Lincoln Chafee better get ahead of this one. Last time he was dragged through and became a victim of his indecision -- caught in a vice between Vice President Cheney and the many who were trying to speak to the more enlightened sides of him.

TWN will have much more on Chafee, his statements on Bolton, and why this matters to Rhode Island soon.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

This is unofficial, but word is that Senator Richard Lugar has called a hearing about John Bolton's confirmation status for next Thursday.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Both sides in favor and opposed to John Bolton being confirmed by the U.S. Senate in this Congressional Session are drawing their battle plans.

TWN and Bolton Watch are big parts of the picture. I have much more to write -- and much to recount from a major set of interviews I have done with insiders on John Bolton.

But George Voinovich's op-ed today blasts the door open -- and we are ready. Congrats to Richard Grenell, Bolton's communications manager -- as Rick is the best in the business -- for this great theatre today. Someone much better and enlightened about the world needs to hire Rick back to the side of light.

I am hosting and chairing a dinner with former National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski tonight -- and need to get through that before posting pieces of our next major assaults on the lacking performance of the unconfirmed Ambassador.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

NEW YORK--I've just seen two reports about absolutely looney Bush administration steps in Iraq and Lebanon that have more to do with public relations management than they do, in either case, with "on the ground realities."

First, check out this snippet from The American Prospect's Garance Franke-Ruta regarding "Why It's Taking So Long" to evacuate Americans from Lebanon:

A reliable source tells me that the reason the United States has been so slow in evacuating its citizens from Lebanon is that the public diplomacy (i.e., P.R.) issues raised by evacuating under Israeli assault are so complicated.

Individuals within the State Department, I am told, have been reluctant to create an impression that the Israeli assault on Lebanon is as bad as it is or that civilian U.S. citizens are being threatened by U.S. ally Israel. If a conflict this severe had broken out in, say, Indonesia, the American embassy would have been shut down the next day and its personnel and families rapidly brought to safety. That's how things normally work. (See Laura Rozen on the evacuation from Albania here.)

In this case, however, the diplomatic message sent by shutting down the U.S. embassy in the face of Israeli bombing would have contradicted the U.S. government message of support for the Israeli mission against Hezbollah terrorists, which, when added to the general concern within lower-level diplomatic circles about ever creating a Fall of Saigon-style visual for the news media, have led the Americans to be slower than they could have been about getting U.S. citizens out of harm's way.

CNN's Nic Robertson has been doing a very good job of field reporting on the tension inside Lebanon -- and reporting the dramatic impact on the lives of innocent victims inside Lebanon from Israeli bombing campaigns. However, Robertson on more than one occasion has had to really scramble and duck for cover at times that they were warned of incoming attacks.

Innocent Lebanese -- as well as innocent Israelis -- are dying in this mess. And they all should be mourned for -- but knock out someone like Nic Robertson in one of these flamboyant assaults and the dynamics of support for Israel's actions in the power corridors of Washington will be turned immediately upside down. (Note to Nic: Keep ducking and running those bombs.)

But THEN, get this latest report from the Republican National Committee on bringing a "market economy" to Iraq after decades of state planning. As a friend of mine wrote, "you just can't make this stuff up!"

Here is the pdf of the RNC's new report -- Iraq Facts.

The first press accomplishment on the fact sheet is:

"Iraq And The United States Signed A Commercial Cooperation Agreement Monday To Move The Country Toward A Market Economy After Decades Of State Planning." (Ryan Lenz, "Nations Sign Commercial Cooperation Deal," The Associated Press, 7/17/06)

I can't quite believe that anyone thinks that there are conditions in Iraq where a "market economy" is ready to displace a planned one -- particularly when most Iraqis continue to live in darkness and inconsistent electric power provision and when the daily kill rate in Iraq is on average more than 100 people a day.

Figuring that Iraq has a little less than 10% of the U.S. population, the proportional death rate of something like 9/11 is ocurring ON AVERAGE every three days in Iraq.

Shame on the RNC for this report.

The only ones who benefit from the kinds of gushing free market and privatization schemes during times of such obvious calamity and systemic breakdowns are corrupt thugs, well-organized gangs, and robber barons among the elite power circles in that country.

If we turn over Iraq to these kinds of Chalabi-like self-dealers, then we will have even more to be ashamed of than we do now.

-- Steve Clemons

Today, TWN is heading to New York after a successful planning retreat in Pittsburgh.

Planning to hear George Soros this evening speak about his new book, The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror at a meeting hosted by Eric Alterman and The Century Foundation.

I have read the book and strongly recommend it. This is really a sequel to Soros's last book, The Bubble of American Supremacy: The Costs of Bush's War in Iraq, which I found prescient. Soros is contemplating what happens with his great projects once he departs this world and provides a human and revealing assessment of what his vision and resources have helped accomplish, particularly in Eastern Europe.

But the most important take-away from the book is that American democracy is in serious trouble. While the terminology I prefer to use is that George Bush and a long list of winners have benefited from taking America into a "high-fear" environment, Soros writes that the "Global War on Terror" is a false, cynically contrived metaphor that Bush and his team have used to exploit the fear and insecurity of Americans to justify anything they want to do -- without serious challenge or oversight.

Soros also says that two arenas of work that he and his foundation have not invested in but which matter significantly to the future of mankind are the world's energy challenges and how these balance with environmental pressures, particularly climate change -- and the other is nuclear non-proliferation. Soros thinks that the business of non-proliferation is overcrowded with well-meaning but largely ineffective practitioners who have to rethink their approach as the non-proliferation regime is failing dramatically.

Should be an interesting dinner discussion tonight -- and thanks to Eric Alterman and Richard Leone of The Century Foundation in advance for including me.

Tomorrow I am back to Washington, and Thursday evening I have the privilege of chairing a small dinner salon discussion of the New America Foundation's American Strategy Program with CSIS Trustree and former National Security Advisor to the President Zbigniew Brzezinski who will be addressing American Stakes in the Middle East.

I will be reporting about the content of the Brzezinski discussion on Friday.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will head to Israel end of this week.

Let's just hope that she's not going to ask to lead a tank brigade herself and that she actually is going to finally push Israel, Hezbollah, and Hamas to stand down.

On other fronts, Kofi Annan and Tony Blair have called for quick deployment of a stabilization force in Southern Lebanon. Makes sense to me -- but of course, both Israel and the U.S. are blocking the initiative. Need to kill some more people before we get to any of that darned diplomacy.

-- Steve Clemons

The costs of America's invasion and occupation of Iraq have tied up a staggering amount of resources that could have otherwise been deployed to great and necessary purposes elsewhere -- at home and abroad.

I am not going to include in this brief comment the tragic human costs of those killed and injured on all sides of this debacle -- but I'm just going to outline the Congressional Budget Office cost estimates of costs related to Iraq and the "war on terror" released today.

The figure -- according to the CBO -- is a whopping $432 billion.

To put that in perspective, this is $18,000 per person in Iraq. If computing just working age Iraqis, the per capita amount of these costs is $30,857.

The CIA fact book lists the purchasing power parity per capita GDP in Iraq as $3400. However, anyone with any genuine experience on the ground experience knows that the real income of families is much lower with individuals fortunate to earn something between $1500 and $2000 a year.

Bribery -- or alternatively, enormous national investment and a complete intrasture facelift many times over -- would have been more inspirational, less expensive, and tens of thousands if not hundreds would not be war casualties today.

Bush did not do this alone. Lots of Republicans and Democrats helped. Joe Lieberman gave a major assist. So did the Washington Post editorial page. And the neocons.

Accountability. Accountability. Accountability.

-- Steve Clemons

(This is a guest post by Daniel Levy, policy director of the Geneva Initiative; Tel Aviv, Israel and as of Thursday this week the new Fellow and Director of the Middle East Initiative at the New America Foundation and Century Foundation)

10 Comments on the Current Crisis in the Middle East
by Daniel Levy

Comments on why the G8 declaration is some kind of step in the right direction but lacks implementation muscle; what next on the Lebanese and Palestinian fronts; how Israeli diplomacy was characteristically asleep on the job in failing to promote a new deal for southern Lebanon since the Hariri assassination and Syrian withdrawal; how the US is failing not only to intervene in preventing further civilian losses and wider escalation but has also avoided any peace initiatives for 5 1/2 years and after 5 1/2 years of not visiting me in Israel I am beginning to wonder if President Bush is really my friend; why unilateralism must be buried and any ceasefire or de-escalation can only hold water if it is immediately followed-up by kick-starting a political process of negotiations in the region, that must address the core issue of the unresolved Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It's a long post, but hey, it's a messy situation.

1. G8 -- Imperial grandeur, diplomatic modesty

The coincidence (or not) of the world's 8 most powerful industrial nations convening just as the Middle East went off the deep end did not produce a 'must act now' urgency to end the crisis, it did though produce a fairly thoughtful and useful statement on the way forward, that is the very transparent upshot of a compromise between 'you know who' and everyone else. The grand trappings of Russia's former imperial capital of St. Petersburg were not matched by any grand diplomacy.

Israelis have been informed by their ever-reliable media that the G8 statement is an unequivocal and ringing endorsement of all Israeli positions ("the world; 'we are right!'" screamed one newspaper headline, "the statement might have been written by Olmert" suggested a TV news commentator), which is a shame, as the statement itself (how many of them actually read it?) is far more nuance.

The gaping chasm is its failure to demand an immediate, unconditional cessation of hostilities -- the agreed language being "create the conditions" for this to happen, but it does begin by stating that "the root cause of the problem is the absence of a comprehensive peace", it distinguishes between different elements in Hamas (a first), rejects unilateralism and understands the need for political engagement and negotiations. It's a starting point – but where's the muscle?

Oh, and anyone surprised at the absence of muscle to end the bloodshed might ask a Darfurian just how bad things can get before the world, well actually, still fails to act decisively. And if anyone is still short on reasons to end the conflict in the Middle East, how about this one -- rather than discussing follow-up to the last "Make Poverty History" G8 -- programs to combat HIV AIDS, infectious diseases and invest in education -- what were they, and we, talking about. . .you guessed it.

2. Lebanon -- what next?

Israel apparently has several more days to inflict pain on the Hizbollah and its military capacity (while at the same time terrorizing and sometimes worse Lebanon's civilian population and taking out a fair chunk of that countries infrastructure). Hizbollah's raid into Northern Israel was indeed unprovoked, Israel certainly has the right to defend itself, and the situation in Southern Lebanon, namely the absence of the sovereign Lebanese state and army giving free reign to the Hizbollah militia is both in contravention of UNSCR 1559 and untenable over time.

Israel does have a goal in this mission and it is not primarily the release of captured soldiers -- Eldad Regev and Ehud Goldwasser -- (all admit that will not be achieved by this operation), it is to change that Southern Lebanese status quo, but few see this as an exclusively militarily attainable objective. When we eventually arrive at the morning after this crisis (how? belated international pressure and even deployment, a missile horribly off-trajectory, a face-saving formula of sovereign Lebanese very partial deployment in the South, you pick, but mission accomplished is not on the list), then we will be faced with many of the same problems and diplomacy might have its day.

When there was a serious border bust-up in 1996 it ended with a 'Ceasefire Understanding' that was externally guaranteed and monitored. This time there may be a need and possibility to replace the beleaguered and discredited UN UNIFIL forces with a more robust international presence (as called for by Annan and Blair ) and the expending of greater diplomatic energy and creativity on solutions for Lebanon that move towards meeting the terms of UNSCR 1559, but Lebanese internal politics will remain devilishly complicated.

Oh, and then there's the minor irritation of the Iranian and Syrian roles. The absence of a serious and comprehensive international dialogue with Iran and Syria, to which the US would be a party, will continue to perhaps fatally handicap the prospects for real positive results in Lebanon. Akiva Eldar in Haaretz has called for a Grand Bargain in this op-ed piece, which includes a realization of the broad Israeli-Arab normalization envisaged in the Saudi Initiative.

3. The curious similarity between the Israeli Foreign Ministry and the Italian world cup soccer team, and one crucial difference

Defense, defense, defense, that's the similarity, but while it served Italy's footballers, Israel's diplomats (or to be fair, their elected bosses) deserve a red card for failing to devise a diplomatic offensive that could have encouraged a new reality in Southern Lebanon. Israeli diplomacy has been desperately bereft of initiative for too many years, that always seem to be the exclusive redoubt of the military, with foreign policy relegated to a preventive holding position -- avoid the international community taking any initiative, dissuade and accuse of ulterior motives, convince everyone there is no partner or not to talk to an elected Government, and cede no inch on the route of the separation barrier.

The last years, since the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon in May 2000 and especially after the Hariri killing and Syrian withdrawal -- have been a gargantuan missed opportunity for Israeli diplomacy. Why did Israel not initiate a public overture -- offering Lebanese prisoners in return for certain steps in the South for instance, or make this a priority talking point with the US or international community? Because we were too busy discrediting the Palestinians and legitimizing unilateralism. Ultimately the Hizbullah presence will require a political solution, the military campaign is at best a partial palliative, at worst a fillip to extremists throughout the region.

4. The Risk and Costs of Inaction

The lack of urgency on the part of the US and international community to push an immediate de-escalation and ceasefire looks inhumane in the face of the civilian casualties, appalling destruction (and resultant reconstruction price tag) and pervasive communal anxiety on both sides of the border. But it also contains an element of political risk.

A wider regional conflagration is not the game plan of any of the protagonists right now, messages have even been exchanged between Jerusalem and Damascus to that effect, but when a high tech and intensity shooting match is in progress, unpredicted and unintended things may happen -- and that is a real danger in letting this continue. Will the relatively limited theatre of operations be maintained if, perish the thought, a high casualty or high value target is struck in Israel, or an IDF missile goes astray in a Syrian direction?

Some appear sufficiently concerned to have disturbed their summer holiday plans -- EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana is in the region as is the UN Under-Secretary General Nambiar and his mission on behalf of Annan, other will surely follow. Secretary of State Rice is belatedly reported to have been spotted checking flight schedules. And President Bush? Well in 5 1/2 years in office he has not once visited Israel -- when my so-called best friends don't pay a call in 5 1/2 years I begin to get suspicious.

5. Failing to stop war, failing to make peace

The diplomatic and in particular US aversion to preventing military escalation has been preceded by a spectacular absence from the peace-seeking arena . This is most troubling when one considers that in the region the principal actors have perhaps never been closer -- Israel set the precedent of evacuating settlements and openly recognizes that more in the West Bank will follow, President Abbas has consistently expressed his belief in a negotiated compromise, the Hamas leadership have laid heavy hints of their acceptance of a 2 state solution and the publics on both sides overwhelmingly support realistic negotiating positions.

The US Administration has at no stage tried to forge these ingredients in to a working peace initiative. At this juncture the people of the region may be unable to do it alone, but peace may be attainable with external engagement -- can the Administration finally pick up the gauntlet?

Any eventual ceasefire and de-escalation must be seized as an opportunity to move towards the renewal of a political peace process. By linking any ceasefire to a political track both may be given the necessary oxygen to succeed. The vacuum created by no political horizon or international engagement are two of the key factors that led to the latest political crisis. The best commentary on all this has come from Nicholas Kristof in the New York Times.

6. Root Causes

. . .And this brings us to the core of it all. . . many in the neo-con camp are talking about root causes right now, the evil and unshakable hostility of the Iranian and Syrian regimes to Israel, the product of bad systems and regimes populated by bad people with bad ideologies. That may be so, but why the (accurate) assumption on their part that turning the vitriol against Israel may win widespread sympathy and admiration in the Muslim world and beyond and be difficult for others in that region to staunchly oppose? Why the resentment, anger and ease of mass mobilization?

Yes, for some the answer is Israel's Jewish character, but for many many others, none fanatics, it's a one word answer -- Palestine. The Palestinian cause, the injustice and hypocrisy of the US and West is a genuine grievance for millions worldwide, for whom a particular policy not a nation or a religion are the problem. Others abuse and use that – and will continue to do so, with effect, until the conflict is resolved. If post-crisis there is no return to dealing with the core issues on the Israeli-Palestinian front and moves towards negotiations aimed at resolving the conflict, then everyone should recognize that we are simply beginning the countdown to the next escalation.

Two articles that really hit the nail on this are David Clark, former UK Labor party special policy advisor in the Guardian and Henry Siegman from the Council of Foreign Relations in the Observer. This realization and policies that address it need to be built in to any ceasefire and morning after scenarios.

7. Israel-Palestine, what next?

The necessity of linking any ceasefire package to an effort to kick-start an Israeli-Palestinian political process has already been explained.

The ingredients of the package are well known, the exact chronology and details are difficult to calibrate, these include; the release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, an end to Qassam rocket shellings and suspension of all hostile acts against Israel from PA territories, end the Gaza incursion and IDF military initiatives against Palestinians, including assassinations, release of the PA Cabinet and PLC members and a prisoner release (women, children, pre-Oslo prisoners) as previously committed too.

Such a package would create an opportunity to launch a political process, including encouraging the Palestinians to conclude the National Understanding (i.e. prisoners document) whereby President Abbas could lead negotiations with Israel in the name of a broader Palestinian coalition and whereby a ceasefire could be used to test the intentions of Hamas. Initial talks should be open-ended and exploratory in nature with official Israeli and Palestinian representatives discussing parameters for renewing political negotiations, supported and preferably overseen by the Quartet.

8. Bury Unilateralism

Israel withdrew from the Sinai in the context of a negotiated peace agreement with Egypt and from parts of the Arava in a negotiated peace treaty with Jordan, results: quiet borders, no military exchanges since, solid if cool peace. Israel withdrew from South Lebanon and Gaza unilaterally without agreements. . . enough said.

After the latest events avoidance of negotiations with the Palestinians and pursuit of a unilateral convergence on the West Bank, or re-alignment, or disengagement or whatever new name is found is a joke in poor taste.

The unilateral paradigm has ill-served the US and Israel, bury it.

9. An Historical note on Prisoner Releases

On the 9th of November 2003 the then Israeli Cabinet voted on the arrangements for a prisoner swap between Israel and the Hizbollah, which included the return of one civilian and the bodies of 3 murdered soldiers to Israel in exchange for over 450 Lebanese and Palestinian prisoners, including senior Hizbollah clerics. In addition to then PM Sharon, the list of Ministers who voted in favor of the prisoner exchange with Hizbollah includes; Ehud Olmert, Benjamin Netanyahu, Shaul Mofaz and Meir Shetreet. No comment.

10. And finally. . . Get her on the next plane over

Now that the Secretary of State has plans to visit the region it might encourage a ratcheting up of hostilities in the interval until she arrives, so no time to waste, log on to expedia.com or travelocity.com, or be patriotic and make it elal.co.il and book a ticket to the region in the name of one Ms. Condoleeza Rice, next departure. Secretary Rice successfully brokered a mini-deal on local economic, border crossing and Palestinian movement arrangements on November 15, 2005, post-Gaza withdrawal, but there was no follow-up and nothing happened. The task today is far more demanding and urgent.

The agenda for the visit might be: no return flight home until ceasefire achieved; do not flinch at talking directly or if needed via envoys to the Syrians; if an interim robust international military deployment is necessary and there are trusted nations willing to deploy then use this option and be sure to have monitors overseeing the ceasefire provisions; post-ceasefire encourage via reliable 3rd parties an urgent process for negotiating the terms of the release of the Israeli soldiers (unfortunately at this stage this is the only option); do not depart until you have agreement on all sides for renewing a political dialogue and process, especially on the Israeli-Palestinian front and continue to personally manage that process.

Awaiting your arrival.

-- Daniel Levy

Kenichi Ohmae, one of Japan's better known elder futurists, once wrote a best-seller, Borderless World -- which thought through what eventually became known as globalization and the integration that has come to some corners of the world with the information age. His primary thesis was that states, as we once knew them, would erode in favor of much larger regional blocs and systems of international management and institutions.

States seem to have struck back, particularly since 9/11, with bigger police and intelligence operations, larger fortress systems for deterring bad guys and screening normal humans from evil-doers, more responsibilities for home security and national defense, and so on. But it is essentially the state vs. the non-state Islamic movement that has long been a feature of the Middle East, and as Robert Dreyfuss has written in his intriguing history of American engagement in the Middle East, Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, the United States and Britain have long been on the side of fueling illiberal Islamist movements as a counter-current to nationalist governments in the Middle East, many of which chose to affiliate their interests with the former Soviet Union.

Now, the transnational movements that the West helped fund have matured and are wreaking havoc in a cycle of historic blowback. Nick Kristoff gets at this tension between states and non-state movements like Hezbollah in an interesting article in the New York Times today titled "Feeding the Enemy".

At the conclusion of his piece, Kristoff writes:

Plenty of experience shows that Israel can't deter private terror networks, but that it can deter states. Syria, for example, despises Israel but doesn't launch rockets or kidnap soldiers. So Israel might benefit from firmer states in Lebanon and Gaza that actually control their territories. Instead, the latest Israeli offensives foster anarchy to both the north and the south, potentially nurturing militant groups that are not subject to classical deterrence.

If Israel is ever to achieve real security, we have a pretty good idea how it will be achieved: the kind of two-state solution reached in the private Geneva accord of 2003 between Arab and Israeli peaceniks. The fighting in Lebanon pushes that possibility even farther away -- and in that sense, each bombing mission harms Israel's future as well as Lebanon's.

Kristoff is, in part, wrong -- in my view -- about Israel's ability to deter terror networks. (although my new colleague at the New America Foundation and Century Foundation Daniel Levy disagrees with me on this point).

When I was in Jerusalem in March of this year and meeting with intelligence and other leading national political figures in Israel, a close advisor to Ariel Sharon and subsequently Ehud Olmert said the following:

We know from listening in to conversations between Hamas members that they have given up firing up Qassam rockets. They finally get it. If they fire one off, they usually hit nothing at all -- and one of their guys gets his head blown off. We know they don't do it now. It's Islamic Jihad that continues to be a problem, but they are disorganized and Hamas one of these days will deal with them. But we know that these guys in Hamas are ultimately rational and aren't all out to martyr themselves."

Israel seems to have developed a system of deterrence with Hamas that worked -- and leading Israelis recognized Hamas's calculation of interests.

Israel is now running the risk of failing to find effective and "scaled" strategies of response and deterrence to deal with Hezbollah and is instead running the risk of outraging states -- states that thus far have demonstrated profound restraint in reaction to what Israel has been unleashing in the region.

As it stands now, Israel is legitimating and helping Hezbollah's profile and stature to grow -- in a potential state context -- rather than working to isolate and delegitimate Hezbollah as a failed movement that Lebanese should definitively reject.

Kristoff also mentions that with regard to a final deal between the Israelis and Palestinians, nearly everyone agrees that a final deal will look something like the well-known Geneva Initiative, which only gets 35% support from israelis when the words "Geneva" are attached to the poll, but which secures 65% of Israeli support when just the key principles of Geneva are tested for support.

I agree with Kristoff that this path is probably the right direction, and the U.S., Europe, Egypt, the Saudis, the Russians, and the UN for the most part know the same. It's about time to get back on a constructive path and put it to Israel to develop strategies that both secure its national safety while at the same time understanding that there is no safety and stability without resolving the launch of a credible Palestinian state.

I am in Pittsburgh today and New York tomorrow, doing some work and planning with Daniel Levy, who actually wrote under the wing of former Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin the Israeli part of the "Geneva Initiative" mentioned in the Kristoff article. On Thursday of this week, Daniel Levy will be formally announced as a joint fellow of the New America Foundation and Century Foundation and director of a joint Middle East Initiative.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

General Wesley Clark, who I have no doubt would be managing matters in the Middle East with far greater skill and attention than our incumbent President, made a blunt nudge at Senator Joe Lieberman on Friday.

Clark was blogging about the 2006 Elections on DailyKos. In response to a question about Senator Lieberman's run, he wrote:

I am a proud member of the Democratic Party, and I believe it is our party's responsibility to support the will of the Democratic primary voters in Connecticut. I personally look forward to supporting the candidate CT voters elect as the Democratic nominee.

Though, as an aside, I must say I find it ironic that Senator Lieberman is now planning a potential run as an independent after he continually questioned my loyalty to the Democratic Party during the 2004 presidential primary.

Ouch!

It seems like Joe Lieberman was all for 'loyalty oaths' until he had to swear one himself.

On other Lieberman fronts, here is an interesting piece on Senator Lieberman's "organizing problems" in Connecticut.

-- Steve Clemons

George Will has sent to his client list a most amazing article -- appearing in tomorrow's Washington Post -- that is a full-throttle attack on The Weekly Standard.

Will blasts The Weekly Standard five times in his short, 770-word piece.

He starts with a powerful critique and rebuke of Condi Rice's interview with George Stephanopoulos on This Week that aired yesterday morning. He wraps up with a lashing of William Kristol and his cohorts rivalling the intensity of Israel's latest air raids over Beirut.

TWN published this morning about the strong assaults by Juan Williams and George Will on Kristol and The Weekly Standard, but I did not know at that time that the conservative scribe would be launching such a serious second strike today.

Just so all of those who think that they sent me this article exclusively, four different people sent it to me. I will not run the entire article but will provide some of the zinger parts. As soon as the link is up on the Washington Post's site, I will provide that link. (Here is the link to "Transformation's Toll" by George Will.)

George Will swats Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice first:

"Grotesque" was Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's characterization of the charge that the U.S. invasion of Iraq was responsible for the current Middle East conflagration. She is correct, up to a point. This point: Hezbollah and Hamas were alive and toxic long before March 2003. Still, it is not perverse to wonder whether the spectacle of America, currently learning a lesson -- one that conservatives should not have to learn on the job -- about the limits of power to subdue an unruly world, has emboldened many enemies.

Speaking on ABC's "This Week," Rice called it "short-sighted" to judge the success of the administration's transformational ambitions by a "snapshot" of progress "some couple of years" into the transformation. She seems to consider today's turmoil preferable to the Middle East's "false stability" of the last 60 years, during which U.S. policy "turned a blind eye to the absence of democratic forces."

There is, however, a sense in which that argument creates a blind eye: It makes instability, no matter how pandemic or lethal, necessarily a sign of progress. Violence is vindication: Hamas and Hezbollah have, Rice says, "determined that it is time now to try and arrest the move toward moderate democratic forces in the Middle East."

You will have to see the Washington Post for Will's powerful prose about an ill-thought out democratic plan serving as the vehicle that has delivered and empowered extremism in the current Middle East make-up, but then in the next section of his startling essay, George Will unleashes full fury on the neoconservative agenda and The Weekly Standard:

The administration, justly criticized for its Iraq premises and their execution, is suddenly receiving some criticism so untethered from reality as to defy caricature. The national, ethnic and religious dynamics of the Middle East are opaque to most people, but to The Weekly Standard -- voice of a spectacularly misnamed radicalism, "neoconservativism" -- everything is crystal clear: Iran is the key to everything.

"No Islamic Republic of Iran, no Hezbollah. No Islamic Republic of Iran, no one to prop up the Assad regime in Syria. No Iranian support for Syria. . ." You get the drift.

So, The Weekly Standard says. . .

"We might consider countering this act of Iranian aggression with a military strike against Iranian nuclear facilities. Why wait? Does anyone think a nuclear Iran can be contained? That the current regime will negotiate in good faith? It would be easier to act sooner rather than later. Yes, there would be repercussions -- and they would be healthy ones, showing a strong America that has rejected further appeasement."

"Why wait?" Perhaps because the U.S. military has enough on its plate, in the deteriorating wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, which both border Iran. And perhaps because containment, although of uncertain success, did work against Stalin and his successors, and might be preferable to a war against a nation much larger and more formidable than Iraq. And if Assad's regime does not fall after The Weekly Standard's hoped-for third war, with Iran, does the magazine hope for a fourth?

As for the "healthy" repercussions that The Weekly Standard is so eager to experience from yet another war: One envies that publication's powers of prophecy, but wishes it had exercised them on the nation's behalf before all of the surprises -- all of them unpleasant -- that Iraq has inflicted. And regarding the "appeasement" that The Weekly Standard decries: Does the magazine really wish the administration had heeded its earlier (Dec. 20, 2004) editorial advocating war with yet another nation -- the bombing of Syria?

George Will gets the "Conservatives with a Conscience Award" today from The Washington Note.

His five-whack, scathing assault on Kristol and The Weekly Standard rises from a frustration and raw honesty rarely seen (but increasingly moreso) among those who count themselves friends of conservative presidents like G.W. Bush.

At least this time around -- no matter what happens further in our encounter with Iran and the nations in Israel's neighborhood -- U.S. policy will be debated and fought over.

No more steam-rolling and no more "trust us" duplicity from the White House.

Applause to George Will for this brave and important piece.

-- Steve Clemons

Bill Kristol is not the only one who wants America dragged into a worsening conflagration in the Middle East.

Militants who want to test American resolve and further bolster their legitimacy in the eyes of a frightened, frustrated, and weary public may want to trigger the military involvement of the United States on another front in the Middle East.

Now comes the news that the U.S. is going to evacuate Americans caught in the crossfire in Lebanon by cruise ship on Tuesday.

I don't believe that the neocons would ever try to sabotage our rescue of Americans via a cruise liner. That would be too cynical of me -- and they are ideas people, not military practitioners.

But there are players on all sides of this conflict that may find a floating, slow, and poorly defended elephant of a ship too tempting of a target. Real or contrived, any potential attack would look like a Hezbollah attack.

The U.S. is sending a navy destroyer escort -- but I think that's too little.

I sincerely hope that my paranoia about this proves to be entirely wrong, but serious planners have to be worried about sending a cruise ship, a slow moving huge target, into a war zone.

-- Steve Clemons

(U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez and Ahmed Chalabi)

There are some interesting strategic advisory firms out there -- Kissinger McLarty Associates, The Albright Group LLC, The Scowcroft Group, The Ashcroft Group LLC, Wesley K. Clark & Associates -- and others that as part of their portfolio of services offer "risk analyses" of foreign market and investment conditions.

Well, here's a call for any of these firms to outsource to TWN an assessment of Iraq: BAD DEAL under current conditions.

This just in from AP:

Dozens of heavily armed attackers raided an open air market Monday in a tense town south of Baghdad, killing at least 41 people and wounding 42, police and hospital officials said.

The article goes on to note that U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez was in Baghdad at the time:

The attack occurred as U.S. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez arrived in the Iraqi capital for meetings aimed at jump-starting Iraq's economy. Gutierrez signed an agreement with the Iraqis to encourage foreign investment, acknowledging that the country's deteriorating security made that goal a challenge.

As my friend and colleague Jim Pinkerton noted in an email to TWN this morning, this belongs on something like "UNDERSTATEMENT WATCH."

-- Steve Clemons

For Sunday morning politics show followers, yesterday's critiques of Israel's actions and of the neoconservatives in America were heartening.

On both This Week with George Stephanopoulos and Fox News Sunday, two important pundits -- one a stalwart conservative and the other a confirmed liberal -- attacked Bill Kristol and the neoconservatives for their bleating for an American war against Iran, as response to what is unfolding around Israel.

The Juan Williams episode has been posted by Think Progress.

You can watch the segment by clicking here, but here is the Fox News Sunday transcript:

KRISTOL: Look, our coddling of Iran -- if I can use the neutral term like that -- over the last six to nine months has emboldened them. I mean, is Iran behaving like a timid regime that's very worried about the U.S.? Or is Iran behaving recklessly and in a foolhardy way?

WALLACE: But isn't that the result of what's happened in Iraq?

KRISTOL: No, it's a result of our deducing from the situation in Iraq that we can't stand up to Iran. I mean, when we stand up over and over and say Iran is shipping Improvised Explosive Devices into Iraq and killing U.S. soldiers, and Syria's providing a line for terrorists to come into Iraq and kill U.S. soldiers, and that's unacceptable. That's not helpful. And then we do nothing about it. When Ahmadinejad says provocative things, continues to ship arms to Hezbollah, and we say, okay, maybe now we'll give you direct talks.

That, unfortunately, that weakness has been provocative. Ahmadinejad feels emboldened. Now we need to show him, and I think the administration has done a good job the last couple of days of showing him, that he miscalculated. And indeed, this is a great opportunity. I think our weakness, unfortunately, invited this aggression, but this aggression is a great opportunity to begin resuming the offensive against the terrorist groups. Israel is fighting four of our five enemies in the Middle East, in a sense. Iran, Syria, sponsors of terror; Hezbollah and Hamas.

Al Qaeda doesn't seem to be involved. We have to take care of them in Iraq. This is an opportunity to begin to reverse the unfortunate direction of the last six to nine months and get the terrorists and the jihadists back on the defensive.

WILLIAMS: Well, it just seems to me that you want. . you just want war, war, war, and you want us in more war. You wanted us in Iraq. Now you want us in Iran. Now you want us to get into the Middle East, where I think there's a real interesting dynamic at play. I think it's psychological on the part of Israel and many of its supporters, and I'll throw you in here. Somehow you see Israel as weak, and you see Ehud Olmert as weak --

WALLACE: He's the new prime minister --

WILLIAMS: The new prime minister of Israel. And the defense minister as weak. Everybody is weak in the aftermath of Sharon, and so everybody has to prove what a man they are in the Middle East, including -- you're saying, why doesn't the United States take this hard, unforgiving line? Well, the hard and unforgiving line has been, we don't talk to anybody. We don't talk to Hamas. We don't talk to Hezbollah. We're not going to talk to Iran. Where has it gotten us, Bill?

George Will let loose on Kristol in a similar way during a discussion between George Stephanopoulos, Cokie Roberts, Sam Donaldson, and Fareed Zakaria on This Week. (Podcast audio of the show available here).

In reaction to the editorial that William Kristol penned this week in the Weekly Standard titled "It's Our War" which advocates initiation of war against Iran, George Will remarked about Kristol and the neocons: "The most magnificently misnamed neoconservatives are the most radical people in this town."

George Will goes on to comment that America has its hands full with Iraq and that Iraq may, in fact, get worse because of the flare-up around Israel.

George Will and Juan Williams together on something. The White House should take note.

Bill Kristol is dead wrong that what is unfolding around Israel is "our war". It could be called "our challenge", and it has been for a very long time -- but the U.S. has been missing in action and has invested little in working to broker arrangements that would isolate militant extremists and promote legitimacy among moderates. American absence from the region has left an environment in which the extremist elements on all sides are vying to control the temperature of the region.

America has no choice but to be involved -- and that means if Israel responds disproportionately to a threat, crisis, and even an incursion -- then America can't just shrug off the situation. Kristol wants this to be "our war"; well long ago, it should have been "our peace". We are now paying a price for half-way involvement and the impression among many in the region that the U.S. does not have a balanced hand in the region.

America has no choice but to engage soon because a regional, full-scale war runs the risk of escalating in ways that will substantially undermine key American interests in the region. The problem is that our involvement and even the fuller attention of Europe and the G-8 do not assure that this conflict can be easily bottled. Bad forces are out -- and it's going to be very hard for whatever reasonable-tilting moderates in Fatah and even Hamas to contain their radicals.

And Hezbollah, a 1.4 million person movement, got a gift from Israel with the broad-based, innocents-killing bombing campaign that was unleashed.

Hezbollah, like Fareed Zakaria has aptly stated, needs to be dealt with politically and delegitmated in the eyes of Lebanese. Israel has just bolstered Hezbollah's legitimacy to levels that will now take a long time and significant effort to erode.

-- Steve Clemons

When I visited Israel in March, one of the more interesting dinner discussions I had was with former Mossad Director Danny Yatom, now a Labor Party member of the Knesset.

As head of the Mossad, Yatom gave orders to have the head of Hamas, Khaled Meshal, assassinated by poison. The effort was botched, and the failed attempt became globally embarrassing news for Yatom and then Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

But the fact remains despite this one failed case that Israel has been extremely skillful at knocking off serious enemies in covert, lethal, under the radar screen ways.

Why is Israel pounding most of Lebanon rather than just the South and rather than pinpointing its attack against Hezbollah assets? Why the dramatic bombing of explosive fuel centers? The attacks both in Gaza and in Beirut seem made for Fox News, CNN and the next Schwarzenegger movie.

I think that there is little doubt that a significant part of the explanation can be attributed to the fact that Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and his more liberal partner in this effort, Amir Peretz -- now Defense Minister -- are not former field command generals and want to demonstrate that they can be responsible stewards of Israel's national security -- and that they won't be timid in using Israel's military capabilities.

But that doesn't explain it all. The Israeli response to the Hezbollah incursion is exactly what Hezbollah wanted. Adversaries rarely give each other the behaviors the other actually desires unless there are other objectives involved.

My view is that three broad threats were evolving for Israel from the American side of the equation. One one front, the U.S. will be attempting to settle some kind of new equilibrium in Iraq with fewer U.S. forces and some face-saving partial withdrawal. To accomplish this and maintain any legitimacy in the eyes of important nations in the region -- particularly among close U.S. partners among the Gulf Cooperation Council states -- America "might have" tried to do some things that constituted a broad new bargain with the Arab Middle East. The U.S. had even previously flirted, along with the Brits, in trying to get Syria on a Libya like track and out of the international dog house.

There was also pressure building to push Hamas -- or at least the "governing wing" of it -- towards a posture that would move dramatically closer to a recognition of Israel. Abbas was becoming increasingly entrepreneurial in creating opportunities for the constructive players in Hamas to squirm towards eventual negotiations with Israel that could possibly be packaged in terms of "final status negotiations" on the borders and terms of a new Palestinian state. George W. Bush is the first President to actually call the Palestine territories "Palestine" and may have eventually come around on trying to pump up Abbas's legitimacy as the father of a new and different state. I am doubtful of this scenario -- but some in Israel had serious concerns about this unfolding.

Lastly, despite lots of tit-for-tat tensions and enormous mistrust, Iran and the U.S. were tilting towards a deal to negotiate about Iran's nuclear pretensions and other goals.

Some in Israel viewed all three of these potential policy courses for the U.S. -- a broad deal with the Arab Middle East, a new push on final status negotiations with the Palestinians, and a deal to actually negotiate directly with Iran -- as negative for Israel.

The flamboyant, over the top reactions to attacks on Israel's military check points and the abduction of soldiers -- which I agree Israel must respond to -- seems to be part establishing "bona fides" by Olmert, but far more important, REMOVING from the table important policy options that the U.S. might have pursued.

Israel is constraining American foreign policy in amazing and troubling ways by its actions. And a former senior CIA official and another senior Marine who are well-versed in both Israeli and broad Middle East affairs, agreed that serious strategists in Israel are more concerned about America tilting towards new bargains in the region than they are either about the challenge from Hamas or Hezbollah or showing that Olmert knows how to pull the trigger.

Another well respected and very serious national security public intellectual in the nation wrote this when I shared this thesis that Israeli actions were ultimately aimed at clipping American wings in the region. His response:

the thesis of your paper is right-on.

whether intentional or coincidental, that is what is being done right now.

I share these other views only to establish the fact that there is not a consensus either in support of or opposed to Israeli action -- but some are beginning to scrutinize what Israel is seeking to achieve with such flamboyant displays of power that are antagonizing whole societies on their borders.

Keeping America from cutting new deals in the region -- which many in the national security establishment thinks are vital -- may actually be what is going on, and the smarter-than-average analysts are beginning to see that.

To take one moment though and argue a counter-point to this, one serious analyst I spoke to this morning who stopped by to talk after attending synagogue raised a good point. He said that he thought that Olmert's insecurity about military management was driving the over-reaction.

But he also said that the QUALITY of the attacks against Israel were freaking out the Israeli military and intelligence leaders. Complex incursions that included abductions along with a successful attack on an Israeli gunship show that the enemy is no longer an unimpressive, rag-tag lot. Training and armaments have been improved, and Israel is scrambling to figure out how this happened.

Interesting thesis -- and it should be on the table too.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

(Sam Seder and Janeane Garofalo of Air America's "Majority Report")

Tonight, 8:30 p.m. -- Juan Cole and I will both be on with Sam and Janeane talking about the big mess in the Middle East up til 9:00 p.m.

-- Steve Clemons

This evening on "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer", my new colleague at the New America Foundation and former staff member of the CIA, State Department and White House National Security Council, Flynt Leverett, will be sharing his knowledge base about Hezbollah.

Flynt Leverett, Juan Cole, and I just had a discussion about the brewing mess in the Middle East before he went to the studio.

Juan Cole and I are now off to meet the French Ambassador at a Bastille Day celebration -- in part to get a European take on the two-front war Israel is now facing.

More soon.

-- Steve Clemons

ABC News is reporting that Palestinian Gunmen have blown a hole through an Egypt border wall and a flood of people crossed into Gaza. One can only speculate why anyone would rush into Gaza unless preparing to fight the Israeli incursion. My own speculation is that this may be a bunch of Muslim Brotherhood empathizers. Not good.

Yesterday, Israel Ambassador to the U.S. Daniel Ayalon said that the "masterminds" behind the Hezbollah attacks from Lebanon are in Damascus and Tehran, but refused to provide details of potential Iranian or Syrian involvement. But the mention of these two capital cities may reflect posturing for a serious broadening of Israel's engagement against states in the region. Not good.

Israel today has stated that the rockets that Hezbollah fired from Lebanon were made in Iran.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Headlines throughout the American media read:

MAJOR ESCALATION

as Israel has intensified its bombing campaign of the Beirut Airport and highways.

45 Lebanese civilians are reported dead.

Although I do not have independent confirmation, I heard the rumor from a well-placed source that Secretary of State Rice attempted to increase pressure on Israel to stand down and to demonstrate "restraint". The rumor is that she was told flatly by the Prime Minister's office to "back off".

Rice is not one to be told to back off without the other party paying a price. Israel's outrageous, over-the-top military escalations were exactly what the most militarist fanatics of Hamas wanted and exactly what Hezbollah wanted to prompt. Those in the middle of the extremists on all sides are getting crushed.

And it may take this kind of out of control danger that FINALLY wakes up some tough-minded strategists in the White House, Defense Department, and State Department to compel Israel to back off and all other parties to wind down their militant elements.

Note to George W. Bush, please call your father, James Baker and Brent Scowcroft for some advice. Also, get Elliott Abrams to recuse himself NOW from any further counsel on these matters as his perspective is too close to Israel -- and dispassionate counsel is needed.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

(Air America Radio "Majority Report" hosts Janeane Garafalo and Sam Seder)

I'll be on with comedian, author, and 'pundit with a conscience' Sam Seder on Air America's Majority Report this evening. 8:30 p.m.

I think we will be discussing the way to get to peace in the Middle East by Labor Day. You can listen in live via the internet.

-- Steve Clemons

PS: And while there is absolutely no connection between my appearing on Sam's show and a plug for his new book -- you should check out FUBAR: America's Right-Wing Nightmare by Sam Seder and Stephen Sherrill.

If you have loose change around, here is something to consider.

You choose whom you want to support:

Valerie Plame Wilson & Joe Wilson

or

Scooter Libby

With the Washington establishment heavyweights propping up Libby. . .well, you know which side I think needs to be supported.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

It ain't anywhere near over folks. Legal depositions under oath -- public ones -- can be so interesting.

Valerie Plame Wilson, Ambassador Joseph Wilson and Their Counsel to Hold News Conference Announcing Lawsuit against I. Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby, Vice-President Cheney and Karl Rove

Thursday July 13, 2:22 pm ET

WASHINGTON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--July 13, 2006--Valerie Plame Wilson, Ambassador Joseph Wilson and their counsel, Christopher Wolf of Proskauer Rose LLP, will hold a news conference at 10 AM EDT on Friday, July 14 at 10:00 AM at the National Press Club, 529 14th St. NW, 13th Floor, Washington, DC 20045, to announce the filing of a civil lawsuit against I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice-President Richard Cheney and Karl Rove.

WHO:
Valerie Plame Wilson
Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV
Christopher Wolf, Esq.

WHAT:
News conference to announce filing of civil lawsuit

WHEN:
Friday, July 14, 2006
10:00 AM

WHERE:
National Press Club
529 14th St. NW, 13th Floor
Washington, DC 20045

ADDITIONAL CONTACT FOR INTERVIEW FOLLOWING PRESS CONFERENCE:
Constitutional law scholar Erwin Chemerinsky, who is Of Counsel in the Wilson lawsuit, will be available for interviews following the news conference at (323) 931-8612 or by leaving a message at (919) 613-7173.

The Washington Note will be there.

-- Steve Clemons

Here is a direct transcription from Shepard Smith's commentary today on the escalating mess in the Middle East and Israel Ambassador to the U.S. Daniel Ayalon's statement at the National Press Club today that "Israel is at war."

Shepard Smith on FOX NEWS CHANNEL 3:45 p.m.

We'll get the specifics of this

In what the pare

The uh. . .

Company owned by the

That our parent company (News Corp) owns

Seems like we own everything

That they are working on at this moment

And we'll keep you updated on fast-breaking developments overseas

A crisis in the Middle East

The Israeli ambassador to the United States says Israel is now at war.

[cut to iShares commercial for Barclay's bank, followed by ad for Fiber Choice]

I stumble -- ever so occasionally -- on radio and tv, but this does seem excessive.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

(Remember when. . .?)

The price of a barrel of oil just hit $76.70.

The price of the average gallon of gas in the U.S. is now $3.10 and rising.

This doesn't even figure in the cost to taxpayers of huge financial aid packages to Israel, Egypt and the Palestinians.

Maturity better take over soon in the Middle East.

-- Steve Clemons

Hezbollah's entry into the already tense situation between the Palestinians and Israel is a major escalation of an already bad situation.

While I think that Israel has responded disproportionately in its incursion into Gaza, I think that the firing of rockets from inside Lebanon into Israel changes Israel's moral position to a degree. Israel has withdrawn from Lebanon -- and Lebanon should do everything it is able to do to secure its borders and to preempt this kind of attack on Israel.

The "politics of occupation and resistance" simply do not apply at this point to Hezbollah, and Israel should do what needs to be done to secure itself there. I would argue that it makes little tactical sense to create a full frontal assault against the people and territory of Lebanon -- and were I in Olmert's shoes I would have worked to try and coordinate with the Lebanese government and military to contain this incident. Israel seems not to have done that and seems to have proceeded unilaterally when collaboration should have been attempted.

But the regional picture is bleak, and sane strategists, advisors, and political leaders need to know that they are on the brink potentially of a full scale war. No one wins in such a case.

What Israel needs to try and stomach -- and then outmaneuver -- is that the Hezbollah elements who abducted two soldiers wanted exactly the reaction from Israel that they got. They wanted "massive retaliation". Why? Because it galvanizes the public -- the innocent public -- that sustains the punishment and helps terrorist thugs appear to be legitimate in the eyes of that country's citizens.

Israel is smarter than this. It has long preferred surgical strikes, covert activities and even assassinations coordinated by the Mossad, and responses proportionate to the incident triggered by terrorists.

One has to wonder whether Israel's reaction -- so dramatically different than in the past -- is designed to REMOVE from the table certain options America might prefer to have with the Palestinians, with the broader Arab region, and even -- eventually -- with Iran.

Israel's actions may be less directed towards recovering their soldiers than they are designed to dramatically alter America's options in the Middle East. Some inside the Bush administration are already grumbling privately about the character of Israel's responses to its recent security breaches.

The word "disproportionate" is not only coming from Arab Gulf nations and the Europeans, it is also a word being whispered in the halls of the Old Executive Office Building and the White House -- as long as Elliott Abrams is not in listening distance.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Joe Wilson has just sent TWN and other journalists interested in the Fitzgerald investigation of the White House outing of Valerie Plame Wilson's covert CIA role a statement regarding Robert Novak's effort to "justify the unjustifiable":

Robert Novak, some other commentators and the Administration continue to try to completely distort the role that Valerie Wilson played with respect to Ambassador Wilson's trip to Niger.

The facts are beyond dispute. The Office of the Vice President requested that the CIA investigate reports of alleged uranium purchases by Iraq from Niger. The CIA setup a meeting to respond to the Vice President's inquiry. Another CIA official, not Valerie Wilson, suggested to Valerie Wilson's supervisor that the Ambassador attend that meeting.

That other CIA official made the recommendation because that official was familiar with the Ambassador's vast experience in Niger and knew of a previous trip to Africa concerning uranium matters that had been undertaken by the Ambassador on behalf of the CIA in 1999.

Valerie Wilson's supervisor subsequently asked her to relay a request from him to the Ambassador that he would like the Ambassador to attend the meeting at the CIA. Valerie Wilson did not participate in the meeting.

As the CIA itself has officially confirmed, Valerie Wilson did not send Ambassador Wilson to Niger and she neither suggested him nor recommended him for the trip. Furthermore, the Ambassador agreed to travel to Niger pro bono with only his travel expenses being paid.

These are the facts -- not just because Joe Wilson has stated them but as they are represented elsewhere in the public record -- and shame on those who continue to insist on blurring the picture for political advantage.

-- Steve Clemons

Update: Here is some interesting analysis and follow-up material from Firedoglake.

Kevin Phillips, author of American Theocracy: The Perils and Politics of Radical Religion, Oil and Borrowed Money in the 21st Century, recently spoke at a New America Foundation program I chaired.

Phillips has a fascinating and important article, "American Petocracy," that has just appeared as the cover story of The American Conservative and revisits the "war for oil" debate. And Phillips article really gets sizzling when he breaks out the biblical drivers that influenced core White House players -- particularly Bush and Cheney themselves.

Here are some key excerpts:

the White House had to consider the huge religious and biblical element of the coalition that elected Bush in 2000. Newsweek polling back in 1999 found that 45 percent of American Christians believed in Armageddon and the end times, and almost as many thought that the Antichrist was already alive and on the earth. Because such beliefs concentrate among very pro-Bush evangelicals, fundamentalists, and Pentecostals, my estimate is that some 55 percent of the people who voted for Bush in 2000 would have told pollsters about believing in the end times and Armageddon.

This will strike many as an exaggeration, but the phenomenon is an important one. Richard Cizik of the National Association of Evangelicals noted in 2003 that since the break-up of the USSR, "evangelicals have substituted Islam for the Soviet Union. The Muslims have become the modern-day equivalent of the Evil Empire." According to University of Wisconsin historian Paul Boyer, by the 1990s many prophecy believers saw Saddam as the Antichrist or his forerunner, partly because Saddam was rebuilding the ancient evil city of Babylon. The Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye fictionalized the Rapture-Tribulation-Armageddon sequence so successfully that it sold a whopping 60 million copies in book and tape form. Most of the readers were Bush backers.

Politically, this confronted the White House with both a strategic dilemma and a parallel opportunity. On the plus side, the huge chunk of Bush voters would want to view the U.S. attempt to topple Saddam Hussein in terms of the war of good versus evil. Weapons of mass destruction were a prop but collateral to the larger biblical context. Invading Iraq would evoke that context because Saddam was one of the evil ones -- maybe the Evil One, given his Babylon tie-in. Toppling him could aspire to biblical interpretation. Aiding Israel was also biblically vital. Bush had already carved out a related, overarching "good versus evil" posture with his heavily religious post-9/11 rhetoric.

On the enormous costs -- both short term and long term -- of the Iraq War:

occupied Iraq turned into a quicksand of guerrilla and sectarian rivalry. Insurgents attacked and disrupted pipelines and refineries, and truck drivers refused to transport oil from the north. During the winter of 2005-2006, Iraqi production dropped as low as 1.1 million barrels a day, and covering this production gap took almost all of OPEC's spare capacity and forced prices higher. Dalton Garis, an economist at the Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi, told the Associated Press in April 2006, "Iraq could be making a tremendous difference." Instead, its shortfall is "a significant contributing factor to the high price of oil."

American economists Joseph Stiglitz and Linda Bilmes, in a draft paper entitled "The Economic Costs of the Iraq War: An Appraisal Three Years After the Beginning of the Conflict," reached a similar but much more detailed and buttressed conclusion. Publicly, Stiglitz and Bilmes attribute $5-10 of the increased per barrel cost of oil to the mess in Iraq, but their private view seems to be that a very large portion of the now $45-per-barrel oil-price increase is attributable to Iraq.

That makes sense if one considers the hostile reactions of many of the world's oil-producing nations to the behavior the Bush administration was exhibiting in Iraq and elsewhere. For several years prior to the 2003 invasion of Iraq, that nation had been insisting -- contrary to global policies in effect since the 1970s -- that it would price its oil sales in euros, not dollars. Other major OPEC producers -- Venezuela and Iran -- also began talking about kindred moves and so did elements of the European community. Just after the U.S. invasion, Newsweek's Howard Fineman wrote that the real clash was not over weapons of mass destruction but over the dollar versus the euro -- "who gets to sell -- and buy -- Iraqi oil, and what form of currency will be used to denominate the value of the sales ... yet another skirmish in a growing economic conflict." Few others had the courage to raise the issue.

Had a U.S. triumph in Iraq enabled Washington to control and open the oil spigots in Iraq, OPEC would have been obliged to desist from talking about dropping the dollar to price oil in euros or a so-called basket of currencies. But as the various dimensions of U.S. failure became clear in 2003 and 2004, other nations -- Indonesia, Malaysia, and Russia (not an OPEC member) -- began to show their currency claws. Six months after the U.S. invasion, as Iraqi oil output shrank in the face of relentless sabotage of pipelines and other facilities by insurgents, even Saudi Arabia displayed its disdain, not by currency actions but by giving a big gas-development contract to French Total instead of ExxonMobil.

As of 2006, the U.S. dollar has been dropping again, with the ever more conspicuous failure of Bush administration energy policy -- this year the U.S. will spend $300-350 billion on imported oil -- a significant backdrop. Should these trends intensify and OPEC cease to price oil in dollars, the added burden on Americans will register in everything from home heating oil in northern winters to the prohibitive cost of long-distance driving in the remote exurbs of metropolitan commuter belts. The effects of the great bungle in Iraq may only be beginning.

And Phillips argues that the military is being used more and more as a "global oil-protection" service:

Still another oil cost-burden that the Iraqi failure imposes on the American people involves the huge and finally starting to be noticed portion of U.S. defense outlays that are undertaken to protect foreign oil supplies from disruption. Michael Klare, a leading U.S. scholar on resource wars and oil geopolitics, has tabulated oil-related tasks being assumed by the military from South America and West Africa to the Persian Gulf, Central Asia, and the Straits of Malacca.

His conclusion: the military "is being used more and more for the protection of overseas oil fields and the supply routes that connect them.

. . .Such endeavors, once largely confined to the Gulf area, are now being extended to unstable oil regions in other parts of the world. Slowly but surely, the U.S. military is being converted into a global oil-protection service." How much do these tax-financed costs effectively add to the price of a gallon of gas or heating oil sold in the U.S. -- 25 cents, 40, 85?

In sum, the energy-related price of the administration's dishonesty and massive miscalculation in Iraq ought to be a central discussion point in this election year and again in 2008. The citizenry has to comprehend just how much is at stake and how the nation's future has been jeopardized.

Oil is a vital resource that -- despite all of the energy independence and energy security efforts (and fiascos) being discussed -- America cannot easily step away from.

What is disconcerting is not only the dishonesty that Kevin Phillips highlights but the fact that despite spending enormous sums of money and enduring high human mortality costs on all sides of the current conflict in the Middle East -- America's military operations seem further away from producing stability and certainty in the oil production and supply regions of the world.

Americans are spending enormous sums and not getting the "deliverables" that such expenditures should generate. While Phillips may be right that America is in the oil supply protection racket, we are doing a horrible job even at that.

-- Steve Clemons

Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served General Colin Powell in various capacities as a close aide for 16 years -- most recently as Powell's Chief of Staff at the Department of States, has written a short, matter of fact assessment of the torture proclivities during the Bush administration and the Vice President's central role in promoting a "pro-torture" national security/military environment.

Wilkerson writes in "Dogging the Torture Story":

Ask Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld

Q. Define torture.

Q. Do we do torture?

Q. There have been dozens of homicides and more than a hundred deaths in U.S. custody. Is killing someone not the ultimate torture?

Q. If those cases were just the work of bad apples, why were the investigations dragged out so long? Why, for instance, did it take the Army two years before filing charges related to the homicides at Bagram Air Force Base in December 2002?

Q. Why are the sentences for the "bad apples" so light? Isn't it the case that in these military courts martial, their military peers recognize they were following orders?

Documents and memos that have already made their way into the public domain make it clear that the Office of the Vice President bears responsibility for creating an environment conducive to the acts of torture and murder committed by U.S. forces in the war on terror.

There is, in my view, insufficient evidence to walk into an American courtroom and win a legal case (though an international courtroom for war crimes might feel differently). But there is enough evidence for a soldier of long service -- someone like me with 31 years in the Army -- to know that what started with John Yoo, David Addington, Alberto Gonzales, William Haynes at the Pentagon, and several others, all under the watchful and willing eye of the Vice President, went down through the Secretary of Defense to the commanders in the field, and created two separate pressures that resulted in the violation of longstanding practice and law.

These two pressures were, on the one hand, the understandable pressure to produce intelligence as rapidly as possible, and on the other hand, the creation of an environment best described as "the gloves coming off" -- or better, the gloves ARE off. The Bybee memorandum's description of torture as organ failure or beyond gave officials an out when answering questions about "Did we do torture?"

When an official said "no", he or she meant that we did not do organ failure. Of course, with 136 deaths in detention and counting--and with 25 or more now confirmed as homicides--even that admission by that standard is now false.

The administration has now been forced by the Supreme Court to recognize the "rights" of detained enemy combatants and to manage these detainees in terms consistent with the Geneva Convention.

However, what Wilkerson describes is unbelievably important.

After 9/11/2001, President Bush and his senior staff allowed a combination of outrage and emotion about the attacks, suspicions about Islam, old scores to settle with Saddam Hussein, and a lot of Texas swagger to justify the suspension of traditional norms and routenized processes that were part of America's system of checks and balances.

The President and his staff decided that they would adopt a "war paradigm" in which each key part of the nation's national security bureaucracy would identify rules of process and procedure and not only suspend notifications to the legislative and judicial branches but also assert massive expansion of executive authority in these arenas beyond the norm.

What is interesting is that Cheney, Libby, Addington, Rumsfeld, Feith, Wolfowitz, and others decided to shed the "rules of war" as well and to substitute this so-called "war paradigm" in America's military and intelligence programs.

This was a systemic change and explains why we see the absence of legal gravity in everything from the manner in which prisoners were handled in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo to the establishment of enormous and extra-legal domestic spying operations as in the warrantless wiretap case to the White House simply lying to or failing to inform the Congress of its activities -- as Peter Hoekstra, a Republican House member, has been telling the press.

Cheney promoted a monarchy that spat at constraints and the other branches of government. He promoted a pugnacious, fear-mongering nationalism whose clarion call to other nations was that they would either assimilate with the U.S. or be annihilated. He shed rules of engagement with and capture of enemies that have been part of the most sacredly held military ethic. And many were indeed tortured and died because of Cheney upending not only a legal environment in which accused and detained individuals had rights but a system of norms that had always served as ethical benchmarks for the bulk of our military forces.

Cheney and his team argued that the horror ot 9/11 terrorism and the uniqueness of America's place in the world allowed America to strip itself out of legal norms and routines that had been fashioned for centuries and which were part of America's sense of self.

Wilkerson has the goods on Cheney. He has the memos, emails, files, and other briefs that show that the environment Cheney & Co. created produced horrible behaviors that popped up in many different parts of the military mission. This was a systemic problem -- not a bunch of coincidental, isolated incidents.

TWN again applauds the honesty and candor of Col. Wilkerson who is making sure that the history of what happened inside the Bush administration is told relatively squarely and that when the political pendulum swings that accountability can be fixed on those that crippled America's position in the world.

-- Steve Clemons

(Nicholas Schmidle on trip to India.)

A good friend and collaborator in organizing last September's mega-conference on reframing the terrorism challenge, "Terrorism, Security and America's Purpose" -- Nicholas Schmidle is a smart, ultra-blonde, Lawrence of Arabia type combined with the tough travel-journalistic instincts of a Robert Kaplan. He has spent a great deal of time in Iran and is now in some of the most dangerous parts of Pakistan, traveling and writing in the region on a two-year fellowship with the Institute of Current World Affairs.

"Migration Season: The Taliban and their Expanding Influence in Pakistan" is Schmidle's latest dispatch, which is well worth reading in full (be sure to check out the reference to "Brokeback Mountain").

Here is the first bit of his commentary on the Talibanization of Pakistan:

In early February, the Taliban distributed a DVD showing a public execution in North Waziristan. The Taliban, whose name in Arabic means "students" or "seekers," hang five alleged criminals from a metal tower that looks like an oil derrick. After the five men's bodies go limp, they are lowered, decapitated, and then re-strung, upside-down and headless, from the scaffold.

The picture and sound quality of the video is grainy, and at times, images and words are difficult to discern. But the message is clear. In the Islamic State of Waziristan, the Taliban are in charge.

Waziristan, which is divided into North Waziristan and South Waziristan, belongs to the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA), a region of Pakistan roughly the size of Connecticut running alongside the border with Afghanistan. Since the Taliban were chased out of power in Afghanistan during the U.S.-led invasion in the winter of 2001, they have gained strength and support throughout all of FATA -- and particularly in Waziristan.

Many Pakistanis tell me they are concerned that "Talibanization" will soon engulf the whole country, starting with Waziristan and ending in the capital, Islamabad. They described the phenomenon using medical references, comparing the expansion of the Taliban's influence to a cancer. But a visit this May to a sensitive part of Pakistan where the Taliban are gaining support convinced me that the spread of the Taliban owed more to political and military decisions taken in Islamabad than to any Islamist ideology.

Waziristan's recent history explains much about why it's at the center of attention today.

During the Soviet-Afghan War in the 1980s, American, Saudi and Pakistani intelligence agencies worked together to provide the mujahideen with ideological and military training in camps set up throughout the tribal areas. The CIA typically supplied high-tech weaponry, such as the lethal surface-to-air Stinger missiles, while the Saudis built thousands of madrassas where fighters could be educated in the finer points of jihad.

The majority of those fighting the jihad were Pashtuns, the ethnic group dominating western Pakistan and southeastern Afghanistan. The Pashtuns follow a strict code of tribal law, the Pukhtunwali; the first two laws are badal, which means taking revenge, and melmastia, which means showing hospitality without any expectation of return or favor.

Today, U.S. officials allege that local tribesmen are sheltering members of al-Qaeda and Taliban, and giving them areas to train. In the tribal areas, after all, the state, officially, doesn't function. In FATA, tribal law supersedes everything else.

The Pakistani penal code is irrelevant, its judges and courts don't exist, and the police aren't allowed in. Technically, neither are foreigners. As you approach any checkpoint bordering the tribal agencies, white, interstate-highway-sized signs, say, in English, No Foreigners Allowed Beyond This Point.

Without proper clearance and escorts from the Pakistani government, entering FATA is illegal -- and life threatening.

But for someone like Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar, the tribal areas are ideal: rugged terrain that is almost impossible for outsiders to navigate, a hospitable -- and fiercely loyal -- culture, and tons of weapons. "[The tribal areas] are probably the best place in the world to hide," said Yusuf, a balding contractor and tribesman from a town just outside of the tribal agency of North Waziristan. "You can escape the law there."

It seems clear from reports such as this that the crucial "hearts and minds" battle is not going well in the region and that while America flounders in Iraq, and gets ready to square off with Iran, dangerous trends are clearly underway in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Seriously, new game plan needed.

-- Steve Clemons

(Oakley the Amazing Weimaraner Not Thrilled with Clunky Blogs that Don't Load)

Last night, good friends of TWN managed the move of files and DNS of this blog to a new internet service host.

TWN will now have significantly more bandwidth and more stability of access for all readers. It's been disconcerting for many of you -- and especially me -- to log in and see just a white page, or partial page, or a page asking me to call the "billing department". These were mostly bandwidth-triggered problems we think, caused by the growth and popularity of TWN.

I want to thank Larry Glenn who has been selfless and vital in supporting the development of this blog -- and to thank my colleagues and friends Andrew Stinson and David Meyer for making the transition so apparently smooth.

The financial contributions, moral support, and political tidbits that many of you have sent me have also been exceptionally helpful in keeping this blog going. Thanks very much to all of you, from the smallest to the big. It helps.

OK -- back to work. Hopefully, we will be adding new functionality and features to the site in the near future, but most importantly -- no more white screens.

-- Steve Clemons

I think Asst. Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific and our chief envoy on North Korea negotiations Christopher Hill is one of the finest and most capable diplomats in America's foreign service -- but he not only has Kim Jong Il to outmaneuver but also has to outfox Vice President Cheney and his team who are always threatening to knife Hill from behind.

Hill has been close to some serious breakthrough deals with North Korea over the last 18 months, but each time Cheney and his team have unceremoniously and quietly strangled Hill's initiatives. Cheney's fervent opposition to negotiated outcomes with North Korea was more flamboyantly on display when his then State Department puppet John Bolton attacked and blew up the North Korea related initiatives of then Secretary of State Colin Powell and then chief North Korea negotiations envoy Jack Pritchard in 2001.

But Cheney has been at war with the Six Party Negotiations process throughout the entire Bush tenure.

The tug-of-war over North Korea INSIDE the Bush administration has created a climate of uncertainty and inconsistency in the Six Party Talks. The absence of coherent U.S. strategy combined with astute North Korean exploitation of tensions and divisions among the U.S., Japan, South Korea, China, and to some degree Russia has produced a dangerous climate where rather than deploying a sensible and compelling strategic framework and judging progress or setbacks against that -- we have moved into a far more fragile situation where micro-moments of Bush or Kim's twist this way or that have been substituted for considerations of strategy.

In other words, Bush rather than shrugging off the North Korean missile tests might just as well have announced a limited military strike against North Korean launch sites or other military assets, or might have announced a naval buildup of U.S. and allied ships off of the Korean peninsula, or could have initiated with Japan and South Korea strident and threatening joint military exercises.

But the problem with any of Bush's actions is that they are not measured against a coherent strategic game plan.

On the one hand, one might want to applaud Bush for not "over-reacting" to North Korea's launch of its seven missiles. One might argue that Bush is working hard to "show restraint" in his response -- but the overall climate of failed results and missed opportunities needs be fixed on the Bush administration as well.

Chris Hill needs room to run, and he should be given a platform to articulate the carrots and sticks of the Bush administration's approach to North Korea within the Six Party framework. Bush should go public and either wholeheartedly endorse what Hill is doing -- or roll back the parts he doesn't support and suggest an alternative.

But given the absence of such robust articulation, Cheney and his team focus on the parts of the North Korean agenda which strangle the economic inputs into North Korea while at the same time undercutting and sabotaging the diplomatic exchanges and opportunities -- the incentives part of the package -- that Hill has helped to develop.

In the absence of American leadership, Japan is now flirting with harsher security options to preserve its own security. In other words, Japan is calculating that America may be so weakened or internally consistent that it can't be the guarantor of Japan's security. Counting on America less, Japan may consider adding to its security tool kit preemptive strike options of its own. Fascinating and disturbing.

Japan is far away from actually instituting such doctrine, but the fact that Japan's likely next Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is speaking out loud about such a policy is stunning. While Japan has a serious domestic allergy to home-based nukes, if America looks even less dependable in the future, Japan may flirt with nuclear weapons acquisition as well.

It's a slippery slope.

That is the cost of the failed North Korea diplomacy of George W. Bush, Vice President Cheney, Scooter Libby, John Hannah, Robert Joseph, David Addington, Stephen Rademaker, John Bolton and others.

They have failed.

Hopefully, our envoy Chris Hill will be protected by Condi Rice and may -- given the desperation of the situation -- be given the opportunity to potentially succeed where the VP and others have produced such miserably poor results.

-- Steve Clemons

The Los Angeles Times ran a lead editorial yesterday:

PURGING ANTIWAR DEMOCRATS

even though the substance of the piece was about progressive Dems supporting Connecticut Senate challenger Ned Lamont against Joe Lieberman.

First of all, editorialists should stop referring to everyone who OPPOSES THE IRAQ WAR as "anti-war".

This is not a battle between pacifists and hawks within progressive circles.

This is a battle between the appropriate times to deploy force and go to war and when not. Going after bin Laden and toppling the al Qaeda-harboring Taliban made sense and could have furthered American interests. Expanding this legitimate fight into the invasion of Iraq and a broader crusade in the Middle East has punctured the mystique of American power in the world and harmed America's security.

Joe Lieberman is unapologetic in his support for the Iraq War -- which I agree with former National Security Agency Director William Odom may be "America's greatest strategic blunder of all time".

While I have respected Lieberman's work and advocacy for a serious national technology policy and for progressive work on gay rights and civil rights, his support for the expansion of a significant challenge from Osama bin Laden into a crusade in the Middle East and war against Iraq calls for serious electoral consequences.

Lieberman has helped empower the course that we took and has not stepped back from his support of Bush on the Iraq War -- which has threatened America's global standing as well as moral and military credibility. Our security has now become more complex and our options in the future more limited.

Opposing Lieberman has nothing to do with being "anti-war", it has everything to do with being "anti-Iraq War" and trying to prevent the same kind of dangerous calculus from being followed in the future. If Lieberman helps empower thinking so potentially dangerous to American national security interests, he should be purged from the party.

The Los Angeles Times needs to rework its headline.

-- Steve Clemons

Ed Note: I will be on Air America's "Al Franken Show" with guest host Sam Seder at 1:30 p.m. today. I see from the link that Ned Lamont will be on during the show as well -- as well as the super-cool and super-smart Joe Conason.

-- Steve Clemons

Despite the worsening morass in Israel-Palestine circumstances in which kidnapped IDF soldier Gilad Shalit still has not been recovered and Israel is wading deeper into its former role occupying and controlling Gaza, there are still some who see a possibility of restoring progress in place of constant deterioration.

Gareth Evans and Robert Malley of the International Crisis Group have an important piece in the Financial Times. Here is an excerpt:

There is a desperate need for all parties to reassess pragmatically their positions.

The first step is to understand what the crisis is and isnotabout. Israeli and western analysts swiftly concluded that Hamas's decision to resume armed attacks reflected a deep internal split, that it was dictated by a harder-line Islamist leadership in exile bent on confrontation in order to embarrass a more pragmatic Islamist government obsessed with self-preservation. If tensions within Hamas prompted the violence, then the way to end it was surely to isolate its more radical external wing while pressuring local leaders to make a more decisive break.

This analysis, and the policies to which it has given rise, display unhappy ignorance of how Hamas functions and what its current leadership is about. Differences of opinion do exist, but they are far more complex than any tidy inside/outside split could possibly suggest.

The International Crisis Group, as a conflict prevention organisation, meets very regularly with its leaders, in the occupied territories and elsewhere. We have little patience for Hamas's ideology and nothing but revulsion for its terror tactics. But we listen. Over the past several weeks, we have heard divergent tonalities, distinct priorities - and one overriding message: let Hamas govern or watch it fight.

Governing is what Hamas has not been permitted to do. From Fatah, its rival secular movement, to Israel, the Arab world and the west, the strategy since the January 25 Palestinian elections has been roughly similar and wholly transparent: to pressure and isolate the government, squeeze it of funds and count on popular discontent with its non- performance to ensure the Hamas experience in power comes to a rapid end. In this context, the recent attack on the Keren Shalom military base came neither out of nowhere nor out of intra-Hamas divisions. It came, chiefly, from the Islamists' calculation that they should show they had options other than electoral politics - and that the consequences of their governmental failure would be borne by all.

It is understandable, in this fraught environment, that Israel may believe that punishing the Palestinian people in violation of international law is all it can do to preserve its deterrent credibility and discourage future abductions. But lead to the soldier's release unharmed? Strengthen Palestinian pragmatists? Restore the ceasefire? By now, through trial and serial errors, one would hope Israeli leaders know better. In the current confrontation, Hamas's support is growing, its ranks are becoming more unified and its detractors are being reduced to silence.

None of this paints a pretty picture but it may suggest a way out. If a deal is to be reached, its rough outlines are predictable: Israel wants quiet, and Hamas wants the ability to govern. Hamas must release the soldier, reinstate the truce and stop all militias firing rockets. Israel must end its Gaza incursion, cease disproportionate military action in the occupied territories and release recently jailed ministers and parliamentarians as well as Palestinian prisoners who have not been charged with an offence. Getting any such agreement will require far more active and assertive third party mediation than has been the case so far.

When both sides have their hackles up and are determined to make sure that the other has lost face, it's hard to see a sensible path out of conflict.

But Ariel Sharon once said that his views changed when he sat behind the Prime Minister's desk and considered Israel's future.

It seems to me that serious strategists and visionaries -- particularly those who staff Israel's Prime Minister and Defense Minister as well as those who surround the Palestinian Prime Minister and President -- who want to lead Israel and Palestine in the years ahead find their way out of the conflict box they are in.

Evans and Malley have some of the pieces for such an approach.

-- Steve Clemons

Until recently, former Wall Street Journal editorial page editor, now senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and neoconservative fellow traveler was predicting easy victory in Iraq.

He's now writing "In Our Enemies Aren't Drinking Lattes" that the Pentagon's concern with logistics is overwhelming its ability to fight and win:

'Amateurs talk strategy. Professionals talk logistics." That well-worn saying, sometimes attributed to Gen. Omar Bradley, contains an obvious element of wisdom. Modern militaries cannot fight without a lengthy supply chain, and the success or failure of major operations can turn on the work of anonymous logisticians.

Yet there is a danger of professional soldiers becoming so focused on supply lines that they lose sight of larger strategic imperatives. In Afghanistan and Iraq, we may already have crossed that threshold.

In the past few months, I have traveled across U.S. Central Command's area of operations -- a vast domain stretching from the deserts of Arabia to the mountains of the Hindu Kush. Everywhere, I have found massive bases fortified with endless rows of concrete barriers and stocked with every convenience known to 21st century Americans.

Some front-line units continue to operate out of spartan outposts where a hot meal is a luxury and flush toilets unknown. But growing numbers of troops live on giant installations complete with Wal-Mart-style post exchanges, movie theaters, swimming pools, gyms, fast-food eateries (Subway, Burger King, Cinnabon) and vast chow halls offering fresh-baked pies and multiple flavors of ice cream. Troops increasingly live in dorm-style quarters (called "chews," for "containerized housing units") complete with TVs, mini-refrigerators, air conditioning/heating units and other luxuries unimaginable to previous generations of GIs.

Boot is in as indirect a way as possible admitting he was wrong. He was one of many neocons who egged on the war in Iraq and who failed to question whether our post-Cold War military machine was ready to handle the challgenge of an occupied Iraq -- and who saw no downside to America running off into what some perceived to be a crusade with no specified engame.

Now, he's blaming the logisticians -- not those who failed to consider the reality of America's force structure today. Nothing in Boot's analysis was not obvious several years ago.

Perhaps he is just on the verge of waking up. Then again. . .

-- Steve Clemons

The editors of The New Republic have just pilloried Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) for his close deal-making with the White House and Republicans on various tax and finance related bills. Maybe he does deserve some knocking around, but the Montana rancher is only following in the footsteps of other centrist type Dems like John Breaux and Bill Bradley -- and comes nowhere close to being "as dangerous" as Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson have been to the Democrats.

Max Baucus wasn't smooched by President Bush at a State of the Union speech after all.

Breaux and Bradley were more subtle in my view, but Max has never hidden his penchant for deal-making.

I sat next to him once on the Senate floor when I was occupying a chair wedged next to that of my then boss, Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM). Baucus was enjoying watching a staffer of his scurry around the Senate chambers offering this trade for that in a major tax bill on the floor. Baucus leaned over to me with a gleeful look and said, "I've got so many deals buried in Roth's bill they have no idea."

On one level, I thought Baucus's approach was not very senatorial and a bit amateurish. But since then, I've seen him get a lot done -- particularly in the trade and tax arena, and usually good for Dems.

In any case, I don't want to argue much with TNR about Max -- but it seems to me that they could apply the same logic they are applying to Baucus to Joe Lieberman (D-for a few more months-CT) and Ben Nelson (D-NE).

Nelson and Lieberman love to cavort with Republicans and be endorsed by them. Max Baucus may not be the swiftest bulb in the Senate and he's an every guy's kind of guy (though he's a millionaire rancher underneath) -- but in truth, he sees the White House and Republicans not as his allies but rather as rivals to be tricked and seduced.

The possibility is that he may be the one getting seduced, but there is a difference between Baucus on the one hand and Ben Nelson or Joe Lieberman on the other. But TNR adores Lieberman and probably won't apply the same calculus to him.

-- Steve Clemons

Steven D. Green, 21, has been charged with rape and murder in a tragic, horrible case involving five U.S. soldiers in Mahmoudiya, Iraq.

This news only came out because of the guilt that some in the detachment felt after two of their military buddies were recently kidnapped, tortured and beheaded -- perhaps as retribution for what Green and his collaborators did.

As we think about the state of our democracy on July 4th and think what it took to achieve not only independence but a rules based system of checks and balances as well as for the first time in human history, as Lafayette reported, a fundamental commitment to "the inalienable rights of man."

Steven Green, if convicted of this heinous crime, has only adds to the roster of horrors that we have already seen in GITMO, Abu Ghraib, and Haditha. There will be more sadly, but Rumsfeld remarkably still has his Pentagon key card.

So much for feeling proud this weekend. Green, Pace, Rumsfeld, Cheney and others have robbed Americans of any right to feel proud at this moment in our history. We were challenged by terrorists -- and America needed to respond, but we undermined our morals and principles in the way we have gone about occupying and settling old scores in Iraq.

There are noble people out on the front lines -- and they should not be held accountable for what Steven Green and others have allegedly done. But what he has done demonstrates how out of control the emotional climate is in the military services -- and what we are seeing are cover-ups, hostility to the press, and slowness from the Pentagon in doing what needs to be done inside the military services to instill more humane and noble norms than Green and his detachment demonstrated.

It's a good lesson to think if your family members had been raped and shot like this. Or your close friends. Think of the rage. What gets instilled in a community when something like this happens -- what seeds that sit and slowly grow until they have a chance to blossom into some form of violent revenge?

This engagement in Iraq will not be over when bugles, politicians, and pundits say that it is over. There will be "blowback" for years and years ahead.

There will be because if your or my sister was raped and shot in the head, along with a five year old child and parents, we would probably behave exactly the same way.

It is essential to keep the thought of the brutally slain and innocent woman and her family in mind as we celebrate our nation's big birthday tomorrow.

-- Steve Clemons

Finally got news that my suitcase that did not arrive with me in New York from Dubai has been found sitting in the Oman Airways section of the Dubai Airport.

I just have to comment that Emirates is a fantastic airline, and their staff went way out of the way to help me when the chain of investigation should have started with American Airlines. On the other hand, I had few worse experiences flying that with American Airlines -- just trying to get from New York to DC and to have them help me in a lost bag search. AA was unbelievably brittle and rude at every stage of my trying to locate my luggage through them. Anyway, enough bitching. I needed that bag -- and its on its way.

But on the better front, I HIGHLY recommend that folks living in or near Washington, D.C., or visiting in the near future, go see the just re-opened National Portrait Gallery. It was a great place before renovations began two years ago -- and it's three times as good now. I think it just became my new favorite spot to take visiting TWN readers and family.

While there checking out the serious portraits, be sure to see the new Smithsonian American Art Center, housed in the same place. There is a great William Wegman exhibit featuring a lot of Oakley the Amazing Weimaraner's cousins.

I will get to more somber and serious matters later. Happy 4th in advance.

-- Steve Clemons

Israel knows that Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniya is in the more compromising wing of Hamas.

Khaled Meshal, now in Syria and the figure who allegedly authorized the recent incursion inside Israel that led to the kidnapping of an Israeli soldier, seems to be more of an ideological hard-liner. He is the reason that Israeli jets buzzed Syrian President Bashar Assad's palace.

But Israel didn't attack Meshal today.

While Israel did kill one Hamas militant in an airstrike earlier -- the major news is that Israel reportedly fired two missiles into the symbol of the Palestinian people's recent democratic efforts: the Prime Minister's Office.

When is Bush going to say enough is enough? His father would have been working this situation hard. But his son is singing tunes with Junichiro Koizumi in Graceland. Maybe we'll learn later that Bush was making calls from Air Force One -- but thus far, there is scant evidence that America has done much to get all sides to stand down and pause.

The British burned the U.S. Capitol in the War of 1812 and it only strengthened America's resolve. This attack is likely to do the same with the Palestinians.

What does the Israeli government expect from the Palestinian people after firing on the PM's office? Complacency? An outreached hand of understanding and empathy?

Israel seems determined to undermine Abbas and to further legitimate Palestinian militant extremists in the eyes of the Palestinian public. I hope that I'm wrong and that somehow Olmert and Peretz have some sort of track two negotiations going on that will somehow miraculously stabilize matters and reshuffle the best Hamas players from the worst -- but I just don't see or sense anything that brilliant underway.

I support Israel's rights to pursue its soldier in a reasoned and calibrated campaign -- but those who are staunch defenders of Israel's recent over-the-top actions -- rather than attacking me for my perspective -- share with me the point that you think is too far.

Or is there simply no line that Israel can't cross? Are all actions -- no matter how high up the escalation ladder -- acceptable because Hamas was elected to leadership in a free and fair election? To be fair to Israel, Hamas has not imposed a monopoly on the use of force and it has not moved far in either recognition of Israel or abandoning terror tactics -- but those watching this carefully saw serious progress that Israel failed to cultivate.

Israel is a superpower in the region -- and has enormous assets to shape the course of events in the Palestinian-Israeli relationship, but it is electing to crush the Hamas-led government, assuring that a major branch of militant Islam is taught once again not to even attempt to engage in democratic political process.

Let's discuss this civilly. But if this report from MSNBC is true, I don't see how Israel manages to stabilize matters.

I think this kind of assault is insuring long term strife and stress -- at high cost to themselves and Palestinians, and also high costs for the United States that could really use some progress in Israel-Palestine relations to use constructively in America's broader efforts in the Middle East.

-- Steve Clemons

Ryutaro Hashimoto, aged 68, was one of Japan's political titans who grew up under the tutelage of Japan's master kingpin politician, Kakuei Tanaka. I knew Hashimoto and met him first in January 1985 at a time when other of the key lieutenants of the Tanaka faction were running Japan.

On one of the other occasions I spent time with Hashimoto in 1993, he and Ichiro Ozawa -- who later broke apart from the governing Liberal Democratic Party -- were squaring off regarding who would be the flag-bearer for a new and different Japan and for power of the largest political faction of the LDP. Ozawa became the renegade -- breaking up his faction and helping to launch a more viable opposition to LDP power. Hashimoto remained loyal to his bosses and ultimately became Prime Minister.

One of the greatest controversies Hashimoto had to deal with was the rape of a 12-year old girl by three American servicemen in Okinawa, Japan. The rape incident triggered the largest public protests of U.S. military bases in Japan since 1960 and highlighted the heavy burden of the bases hosted in Okinawa, the poorest of Japan's prefectures which hosted more than 80% of America's Japan-based forces on the island.

I thought of Hashimoto last night when I reviewed the guest list for the White House State Dinner last night for Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. One of the guests at that dinner was the well-known Yoichi Funabashi, former DC Bureau Chief and now senior editorial writer for the Asahi Shimbun.

Funabashi once recounted that he sat in a room next to Hashimoto as the then Prime Minister took a phone call from then Ambassador to Japan Walter Mondale. Mondale and Hashimoto had decided to jump-start the realignment of U.S. bases and activities in Japan that would shrink the footprint of the U.S. military presence on Okinawa.

The first step was going to be the consolidation of Futenma Marine Corps Air Station into the larger Kadena Air Base.

Though this deal was outlined and agreed to in 1996, nothing happened for years. More than a decade of inaction by the U.S. government on Futenma, the Department of Defense finally announced that the base, which lies in the middle of a phenomenally congested urban area, would be moved. But even now, the controversy still rages.

Hashimoto was one of Japan's more colorful prime ministers and represented the last of a line of "shadow shoguns" (even though Hashimoto loved operating in the limelight) who ran Japan's government through back room deals and boss driven machines.

Some of that old order still exists -- but as Koizumi vacates his role in September, it's clear that the Japanese political system today has finally moved beyond the easy manipulation of a Kakuei Tanaka, Shin Kanemaru, Nikaido, Gotoda, Takeshita, Ozawa, or Hashimoto -- all products of the once titanic Tanaka political faction.

Condolences to his family.

-- Steve Clemons

Not too long ago, i reported some aspects of a terrorism conference I attended as the guest of the NYU Center on Law & Security.

One of the points that my friend and colleague Nir Rosen made was that the U.S. military had just become one militia among many in the eyes of many Iraqis.

This news that a group of U.S. military personnel may have sought out, raped a woman, and then killed her and several members of her family, including a child, to cover up the crime can't do much for America's "hearts and minds" effort.

And given the fear that many in Iraq have of the increasingly sectarian militias, this crime does just seem to make American troops somewhat like the rest.

We lost the moral high ground long ago, and serious people need to develop a strategy to recover our position. After my discussions in Oman last these last few days with various government officials, scholars, and strategists from the Middle East, I have some thoughts on how the U.S. might do this -- but will share at a later time.

I know that there are many troops on the front lines trying to do good and noble things -- as impossible a task as I think that is under the conditions -- but they should be respected.

But the crimes at Abu Ghraib, Haditha, and in this rape and murder case demean the whole machine -- especially the generals and civilian leadership in command who have set the tone for soldiers in this war.

-- Steve Clemons

I've had quite a number of emails about the "steely exchange" between Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and Condi Rice. Since the words exchanged were tense, some have wrongly jumped to the conclusion that this was another "undiplomatic" moment to file away with the Bush administration's foreign policy files.

However, I think Secretary Rice and Lavrov were doing exactly what serious people debating serious matters should be doing -- arguing over substance and debating the framing of issues that do matter.

Here is part of a report on the exchange, which I believe is more impressive than controversial:

Over the clink of glassware, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov challenged U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice about proposed language in a statement on behalf of the foreign ministers from the Group of Eight industrial democracies. "I don't believe security is fine in Iraq, and I don't believe in particular that security at foreign missions is OK," Lavrov said, referring to the killing of five Russian diplomats in Iraq.

"Sergei, there is a need for improvement of security in Iraq, period," Rice replied in a steely tone. "The problem isn't diplomatic missions," she said. "The problem is journalists and civilian contractors and, yes, diplomats as well. The problem is you have a terrorist insurgent population that is wreaking havoc on a hapless Iraqi civilian population that is trying to fight back and on a coalition force that is trying to fight back, and the implication that by somehow declaring that diplomats need to be protected . . . I think is simply not right."

The two dominated a discussion of a proposed international compact on Iraq aid and political development, an idea supported by the U.S. Rice wanted the G8 statement to endorse the compact, but Lavrov held her off.

"Look, Condi, Condi . . . when we consider assistance programs, IMF and the World Bank, you do not automatically endorse something that a government endorses," Lavrov told her. "It's an important part of the exercise to consider specific features of an assistance program."

In the end, the G8 statement refers to the proposed compact but does not endorse it.

I think we would all be better off if we had fewer photo-ops and more examples of debates of this kind. I respect Rice and Lavrov each more for hitting hard on matters they feel significant.

More later.

-- Steve Clemons

Ed Note: Thanks to VS for sending the Mosnews link.