Part-Time Pundit

Leak of Israel’s Plans to Nuke Iran Smells like BS

Drudge Report is splashing the news that the Sunday Times of London plans on reporting that Israel is planning a nuclear strike against Iran to head off Iran’s nuclear ambitions. According to Drudge:

Israel has drawn up secret plans to destroy Iran’s uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons, the SUNDAY TIMES of London is planning to report, British media sources tell DRUDGE…

At first glance, the entire story smells of a fabrication. The obvious reason being that if Israel had secret plans to nuke Iran, they likely wouldn’t have been leaked. If they did get leaked, the police better start dredging the Sea of Galilee for the bodies of those involved. More importantly this leak gives huge benefits to Iran.

Israel is not stupid. A tactical nuclear weapon would likely do very little for a protected underground bunker. It is possible that either Drudge or the London Times doesn’t know precisely what a tactical nuclear weapon is. However, the fact remains in order to really do damage to the facility an ICBM (a strategic nuclear weapons) would need to be used. The momentum of a missile coming down from low earth orbit would be necessary to burrow deep enough to do the damage desired. There is indication that even then, the strike might not be successful.

One simulation indicated it would require 400 or so missiles to do the job. At best, entrances and exits from the underground facility could be collapses and that would certainly delay the program. The radiation from the strikes would need to dissipate and the tunnels would have to be rebuilt. It is possible such a strike could be times when Iran’s nuclear weapons were being brought above ground, but that would be extremely difficult to pull off.

Iran’s move to build its nuclear program underground was brilliant. They learned the lessons of Iraq in 1981. However, the key defense of the move is also its biggest weakness. Namely, any nuclear weapon developed underground could not be used until it is brought above ground at already known locations. A nuclear strike at those locations would keep the weapons out of Iranian hands underneath irradiated soil. That move, however, is only a temporary solution.

It is likely that both Israel and the US have drawn up simulations and plans but every indication is that they are a last resort. The other fact is that these plans aren’t precisely secret, at least in general. Leaking the plans now, just shortly after sanctions have been levied against Iran indicate that the plans were likely not coming from Israel.

Iran’s general tactic has been to run the clock and delay as much as possible. This indicates that they are likely very close to being finished making nuclear weapons which would change the dynamics of diplomacy greatly. They have every incentive to keep stalling until they’ve met that landmark.

This plan, being leaked now in the way it was only gives more cover to Iran. The international community and human rights groups will likely jump all over Israel and demand investigations and action. Despite basically looking the other way of actual genocide going on in Darfur, they’ll jump to action on the rumor of a hypothetical “genocide.” We’ll skip past the international community’s non-response over Iran’s very public desire to commit genocide against Israel.

This leaking has every indication that it was done by Iran, or a supporter or Iran, to give more cover and time. While international eyes are peering at Israel, Iran’s program will continue undeterred.

See others: Blogs of war, LGF, Wizbang, Ed Driscoll,

January 6th, 2007 Posted by John Bambenek | International, Iran, Military / War, Politics, Sudan, United Nations | 8 comments

Katrina and Darfur

(Crossposted from Coalition for Darfur

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When Hurricane
Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast last month, the American public was
privy to ’round-the-clock media coverage of the disaster, especially of
stories relating to the extraordinarily difficult living conditions
faced by those who had been unable to evacuate. Thousands of people
were left without food or water for days; their homes and cities
destroyed, they were left to fend for themselves, trapped in squalid
conditions and at the mercy of roving gangs of well-armed criminals.

As it turned out, many of the more horrific stories were later found to be false. Yet for the people of Darfur, the horrors that befell the people of New Orleans have become a way of life.

For
more than two years, nearly two million people have been relegated to
displacement camps across Darfur, with limited access to food, water
and medical attention. They live in makeshift tents that provide little
shelter from the elements, and in constant fear of rape, looting and
death at the hands of the Janjaweed militia.

An aid worker and blogger known only as Sleepless in Sudan,
who has been working in Darfur for six months, has been kind enough to
provide this assessment of the conditions in which the displaced are
now living (”Sleepless” has chosen to remain anonymous in order to
protect herself and the agency for which she works from the very real
threat of retribution from the Sudanese government)

People
are living inside temporary shelters, covering their branch or wooden
huts (those who have been there longer have built mud brick ones) with
plastic sheeting from the aid agencies, and even this has often already
been torn apart by the rains. Everyone sleeps on the floor, sometimes
in puddles - 10 people in a little shelter is not unusual, more is
common.

Now that the aid agencies are operating in many camps
there is regular water supply, there are latrines, there are medical
clinics and most importantly, there is a monthly food distribution of
staple grains and things like oil - but this does not mean people have
it easy. This season has brought many floods and people have lost their
belongings or even shelters, huts and latrines sometimes collapsed in
the rains, and the food is never enough (and people have to scramble
for things like fresh vegetables themselves anyway, as these are not
included in the distribution). Malnutrition inside the camps is still
high.

Overall, I would say conditions are adequate for survival
- though some camps (especially the ones further away from big cities)
are a lot worse off than others (Abu Shouk, for example, has dozens of
aid agencies, while places just a few hours outside of it have 1 or 2).
Whether they are adequate for what you would consider a normal life is
debatable - I would say absolutely not, and I have no doubts any
American would find them a lot more “unacceptable” than New Orleans.

I
suppose the worst part of living in the camps is having absolutely no
idea how much longer you will be there (many people have already been
there for 2 years) and also constantly having to worry that you will be
attacked - Aro Sarow showed us that even large scale attacks and
killings inside IDP camps are still a threat. In many camps - Kalma,
Tawila, etc. - it is part of everyday life to hear shooting at night,
and in nearly all of them it is still very dangerous to wander outside
and carry out chores like collecting firewood. Knowing that you are
constantly at risk of looting and assault is be an easy thing to live
with.

While the United States government was blamed for
a poor response to the Katrina catastrophe, the government of Sudan is
directly responsible for the catastrophe in Darfur. And whereas the
state and federal government are now in the process of cleaning up, and
will soon begin the process of rebuilding, the devastated Gulf Coast,
the people of Darfur currently have no prospects of ever being able to
leave the camps because insecurity is still rampant.

In the last few weeks, there have been a series of attacks on villages and camps that have created several thousand new IDPs. In addition,
nearly 40 African Union troops and workers were kidnapped over the
weekend and, in a separate incident, five members of the AU force were
ambushed and killed. And even if a semblance of peace does ever come to
the region, the people of Darfur have nothing to return to, as their
villages and homes have been utterly destroyed while their land and
possessions have been stolen.

The post-Hurricane nightmare faced
by the victims of Katrina has been the reality in Darfur for more than
two years - and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

October 13th, 2005 Posted by John Bambenek | Military / War, Sudan, United Nations | no comments

Coalition for Darfur: Anarchy and the UN

Another great post up on the situation in Sudan. On the 65th Birthday of the UN, it should be quite telling that in a nation where they are supposedly active, the reality is that people are still dying and the nation is descending into anarchy.

===

As Darfur descends into anarchy, the United Nations appears unable to do any more than express concerns and continue to ask the parties involved to cease their violent attacks.

After rebels attacked and took control of the town of Sheiria last week, the Sudanese army said it was prepared to retake the town, to which the rebels replied that they would “repulse anything from the Sudanese government’s army.”

The upsurge in violence forced thousands more out of the villages, swelling the ranks of the internally displaced that already numbers nearly 2 million.

As the violence was raging, even the UN’s own Special Representative Jan Pronk, a man who tends to see everything in Sudan through rose-colored glasses, was forced to admit that the violence was spiraling out of control. He was joined by the US government, which stated that the “uptick in violence … is of concern to us” and the UN’s genocide advisor, Juan Mendez, who acknowledged that Khartoum had done little to disarm militias or end the “culture of impunity” that exists in Darfur.

Pronk went on to state that the UN must give the Sudanese government and rebels an ultimatum to compel them to reach some sort of peace
agreement and even made the startling admission that, thus far, the UN has utterly failed to deal with Darfur

Pronk said that when the Darfur conflict began U.N. humanitarian officials agitated for the Security Council to take up the conflict, which it refused to do.

A “massive force” was needed [in 2003] then to guarantee security but instead several thousand African Union troops and monitors had to carry the burden. And now the council needed to plan for how to keep the peace in case a peace deal was signed.

Pronk was quoted elsewhere as saying

He said the war situation in Sudan was “everybody’s failure” and could have been avoided if the international community had acted quickly.

How could the present day situation have been avoided?

“I think there should have been intervention in 2003,” Pronk said, adding that while the occurrence of genocide in the country was debatable, “There was mass slaughter of people. It needed humanitarian intervention.”

Of course, the international community did not act quickly, nor are they acting quickly now.

In fact, while Darfur burned, the BBC reported that American and British intelligence officials, along with representatives of the UN, China and 12 African nations were in Khartoum discussing cooperation on counter-terrorism operations in the region.

Hosting the conference is part of a sustained diplomatic push by Sudan to shake off its pariah status … When the opportunity for this second regional conference on counter-terrorism came up, Sudan competed for the right to host it … The decision of the CIA to agree to come to Sudan shows the pragmatism of the intelligence community against the continuing political desire of America to punish Sudan for what has happened in Darfur.

Khartoum continues to work to “shake off its pariah status,” with Sudanese Ambassador Khidir Haroun Ahmed publishing an op-ed in the Washington Times today claiming that “After two decades of brutal civil war, Sudan is emerging as a reminder that engagement, dialogue and intensive diplomacy can resolve seemingly intractable problems and permit a country to look to the future with optimism.”

Meanwhile, the violence and anarchy Khartoum unleashed is now spilling over into neighboring Chad, a country that is already host to an estimated 200,000 refugees from Darfur

A group of unidentified armed men in military uniform crossed into Chad from Sudan early on Monday, killing 36 herders and stealing livestock, the Chadian government said.

The violence, in addition to threatening the people of Darfur, is also threatening the relief work that sustains them, as U.N. Emergency Relief Coordinator Jan Egeland noted yesterday

“If it (the violence) continues to escalate, we may not be able to sustain our operations for 2.5 million people requiring life-saving assistance,” he said, adding: “In Darfur, it (aid distribution) could all end tomorrow. It is as serious as that.”

As Eric Reeves never fails to remind us,

in December 2004, Egeland warned that 100,000 people could die a month if humanitarian organizations are forced to suspend operations in Darfur.

Despite all of this, Pronk still managed to recently declare that progress was being made on implementing the Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the North and South and on efforts to reach peace in Darfur.

Such a statement is utterly feckless and shameful.

As Gerald Caplan, author of “Rwanda: The Preventable Genocide,” wrote last week

But what we are learning from Darfur, which we never remotely imagined, is that even naming a genocide is an utterly inconsequential exercise in hot air … despite the apparent concern of many western leaders, despite the pressure from elements of civil society, the catastrophe in Darfur is explicitly allowed to continue … As always, everything takes precedence over the suffering and death of hundreds of thousands
of distant, exotic others. It won’t be the last time.”

After two years, 400,000 deaths, and an estimated 3.5 million now entirely dependent on humanitarian aid, it must be stated that the UN and every one of its member nations have failed the people of Darfur and, in all likelihood, will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

September 28th, 2005 Posted by John Bambenek | Military / War, Politics, Sudan, United Nations | one comment

Coalition for Darfur: Decent into Anarchy

Crossposted from Coalition for Darfur. More updates on the deteriotating condition there that the new and improved UN is still failing to do anything about.

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One week ago, experts and observers warned that Darfur risked “sliding into a perpetual state of lawlessness.” At a time when Khartoum and the Darfur rebels were preparing to meet in an attempt to move the essentially non-existent peace process forward, IRIN was reporting

Banditry and continuous attacks by armed groups on humanitarian workers, Arab nomads and villages in Darfur have increased significantly over the past weeks and threaten to destabilise the fragile ceasefire in the volatile western Sudanese region.

The “fragile ceasefire” has never really existed
and fears of “perpetual” lawlessness are misplaced considering that Darfur has been essentially lawless for more than two years.

Last week, the World Food Program reported that “security levels deteriorated in Darfur during the reporting week.” This week, the WFP reported that “despite precautionary security measures, attacks on commercial and humanitarian vehicles continue in Darfur.”

And as the UN was expressing
its concern “about the recurrent attacks carried out by armed men and gangs in Darfur states, which target civilians and commercial vehicles hired by relief organizations,” Norwegian Church Aid was reporting that “relief convoy has been raided at gunpoint by bandits in Darfur for the second time in a short period. The security situation in Darfur shows signs of deterioration”

A growing problem is also that aid convoys are now being ambushed with increasing regularity by bandits on horses and camels. Norwegian Church Aid vehicles have been raided at gunpoint twice in a matter of weeks … The field teams who travel most often through the western and southern parts of Darfur regularly encounter en route, and are often chased by, heavily armed men riding on horses and camels. Since the aid operation began just over a year ago, security has presented a great challenge
for the agencies. Yet whereas assault, exchanges of fire and attacks on villages were previously politically motivated, much of the violence seems now to be criminal in nature.

And the violence continues.

Just yesterday, it was reported that 40 were killed in fighting after an attack on the rebel Sudan Liberation Movement/Army by “armed nomadic tribesmen” [aka "the Janjaweed"]. This was followed by another report that 80 government soldiers had been killed by the SLM when they captured the town of Sheiria in a surprise attack in retaliation for earlier
government attacks on rebel-held territory.

The attack on Sheiria put at risk some 33,000 civilians who rely on humanitarian assistance after staff from three NGO’s were withdrawn due to the fighting. And for good measure, the UN Mission in Sudan (UNMIS) “reported that the security situation in the Kalma camp housing displaced persons has further deteriorated with a large number of security incidents, including some 60 reported
attacks on women over the last week alone.”

All of this took place while the sixth round of peace talks were being held in Nigeria.

It has now been more than a year since the United States declared the situation in Darfur a “genocide” - and the security situation on the ground is now even arguably worse. While government-orchestrated attacks on civilians have diminished, mainly because “there are not many villages left to burn down and destroy,” the rampant insecurity in all likelihood still qualifies as part of Khartoum’s genocidal campaign to “deliberately [inflict] on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

The genocide is not ending and the situation is not improving. The people of Darfur have, for all intents and purposes, been abandoned.

September 22nd, 2005 Posted by John Bambenek | Military / War, Politics, Sudan, Terrorism, United Nations | no comments

Coalition for Darfur: A Meaningless Pledge

From Coalition for Darfur.

——–

Some are hailing
the inclusion of language regarding a “responsibility to protect” in
the draft declaration on UN reform to be discussed during the three-day
summit being held in New York.

The “Responsibility to Protect” is, according to the seminal report on the topic

[T]he
idea that sovereign states have a responsibility to protect their own
citizens from avoidable catastrophe, but that when they are unwilling
or unable to do so, that responsibility must be borne by the broader
community of states.

The report, and the idea, were
generated by the international community’s ignominious failure to
intervene in situations such as the 1994 Rwandan genocide. The thinking
was that it was necessary to shift the debate away from a “right to
intervene,” which carries serious implications for the cherished idea
of national sovereignty, and toward a “responsibility to protect” those
people in danger.

After much debate, compromise and rewriting, the final text included in the draft declaration came out looking like this

The
international community, through the United Nations, also has the
responsibility to use appropriate diplomatic, humanitarian and other
peaceful means, in accordance with Chapter VI and VIII of the Charter,
to help protect populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing
and crimes against humanity. In this context, we are prepared to take
collective action, in a timely and decisive manner, through the
Security Council, in accordance with the UN Charter, including Chapter
VII, on a case by case basis and in cooperation with relevant regional
organizations as appropriate, should peaceful means be inadequate and
national authorities manifestly failing to protect their populations
from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against
humanity. We stress the need for the General Assembly to continue
consideration of the responsibility to protect populations from
genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, and crimes against humanity and
its implications, bearing in mind the principles of the Charter of the
United Nations and international law. We also intend to commit
ourselves, as necessary and appropriate, to help states build capacity
to protect their populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic
cleansing and crimes against humanity and to assist those which are
under stress before crises and conflicts break out.

Nowhere
has the Security Council or the UN member states actually pledged to do
anything. This section carries no legal obligations; rather, it merely
reiterates that the UN has a responsibility “to help protect
populations from genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes
against humanity,” which is something they already an obligation to
prevent under the Genocide Convention.

Note
also that it doesn’t say that the UN has a “responsibility to protect”
but rather a “responsibility … to help protect” those at risk. That
is a big difference.

As such, it is a little difficult to share Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin’s excitement

But
a Canadian-inspired initiative highlighting the world’s responsibility
to protect threatened people and prevent genocides is a clear move
forward, Martin said.

The doctrine “essentially says that if
Rwanda occurred today that the United Nations would act,” he said,
referring to the genocide that took an estimated 800,000 lives in the
African country in the mid-1990s.

Considering that there
is “another Rwanda” currently taking place in Darfur, why are we to
expect that suddenly the UN is going to take seriously its
“responsibility to protect”? Has the UN failed to act thus far solely
because it lacked this one resolution? The UN has resisted acting on
Darfur for two years and there is absolutely no reason to believe that
this recognition of a theoretical “responsibility to protect” will have
any impact on the legal or political concerns that have thus far
prevented action.

If the UN and its members truly believed in
the “responsibility to protect,” they would be protecting the people of
Darfur, not writing resolutions vaguely promising to act when
Darfur-like situations arise in the future.

September 14th, 2005 Posted by John Bambenek | Politics, Sudan, United Nations | 2 comments

Coalition for Darfur: What It Is All About

Here’s the weekly Darfur post.
—

Last weekend, the blog Blue Girl, Red State wrote a post about a regular blog commenter who went by the name “Shameless Hussy.”

Blue Girl reports that “Shameless Hussy” went to Darfur in June as a humanitarian volunteer and was traumatized by what she saw

What
she dealt with daily goes beyond the pale…beyond the nightmares of
most people; Children with all four limbs hacked off right above the
knee or below the elbow. Twelve year olds who died in childbirth after
being gang-raped by the Janjaweed. Women who gave birth to rape-babies
who were then cast out by their families for shaming the family name,
leaving only one avenue of survival for themselves and their children
after the camps: Prostitution.

What is f**ing her up is the
desperation, and the fact that she worked herself to death for over a
month, and she still didn’t really save anyone. Now that she’s gone,
it’s like she was never there. Even the ones she helped keep alive, she
didn’t save. You try dealing with that reality.

And women are
the preponderance of victims. Men do not leave the villages to go to
the countryside to gather firewood and other necessary items of
sustenance. Women venture out, even though every time they leave their
villages, they are at horrific risk of being beaten and raped and
disfigured. The reason they go instead of the men? The women are only
attacked, the men are killed.

This post receive a fair
amount of attention within the blogosphere (as far as posts about
Darfur go) mainly due to the fact that Kevin Drum
linked to it. And while getting bloggers to pay attention to Darfur, if
only for a minute, is a minor miracle, it is worth asking why it takes
a post about traumatized aid workers to generate any interest in
genocide.

This situation in Darfur has existed for over two
years and, if people were interested, they could find accounts of
death, disease, rape and torture occurring there on an almost daily
basis. 400,000 people have died and nearly 3 million have been
displaced and yet nobody - not politicans, not the media, not bloggers
- really seem to care.

To anyone who has been paying attention,
the atrocities witnessed by “Shameless Hussy” are, sadly, well-known.
If her story generates concern for the people of Darfur, then for that
we should be thankful. And if people who were moved by it are really
interested in Darfur, then they should start reading the analyses
produced by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, Eric Reeves and the International Crisis Group, supporting organizations like Doctors Without Borders, Save the Children, Save Darfur and STAND, reading blogs like Passion of the Present, Sudan Watch, the Coalition for Darfur, and Sleepless in Sudan and demanding that their elected leaders do something about it.

Our
thanks goes out to “Shameless Hussy” and all those who sacrifice to
help those in need. But we must keep in mind that Darfur is not about
them - it is about this

August 31st, 2005 Posted by John Bambenek | Military / War, Politics, Sudan, United Nations | 2 comments

MSM Refuses to Take Genocide in Darfur Ad

Think Progress has the news that NBC, CBS, and ABC affiliates are refusing to run Be a Witness ads covering the genocide that is going on in Darfur. They haven’t covered any of the news during the year except for token sound-bites because apparently Natalee Holloway takes precedence.

Turns out that for every 100,000 dead in Sudan, the issue gets 1 minute of press. To add insult to injury they won’t let people even pay them to cover it.

August 25th, 2005 Posted by John Bambenek | International, Sudan, The MSM | one comment