The Dreyfuss Report

Yet Another Bogus 'Terror' Plot

By Robert Dreyfuss

By the now, it's maddeningly familiar. A scary terrorist plot is announced. Then it's revealed that the suspects are a hapless bunch of ne'er-do-wells or run-of-the-mill thugs without the slightest connection to any terrorists at all, never mind to Al Qaeda. Finally, the last piece of the puzzle: the entire plot is revealed to have been cooked up by a scummy government agent-provocateur.

I've seen this movie before.

In this case, the alleged perps -- Onta Williams, James Cromitie, David Williams, and Laguerre Payen -- were losers, ex-cons, drug addicts. Al Qaeda they're not. Without the assistance of the agent who entrapped them, they would never have dreamed of committing political violence, nor would they have had the slightest idea about where to acquire plastic explosives or a Stinger missile. That didn't stop prosecutors from acting as if they'd captured Osama bin Laden himself. Noted the Los Angeles Times:

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May 22, 2009

Dreyfuss Endorses Taliban Plan for Peace

By Robert Dreyfuss

For a long time now, Obama advisers and administration officials have been repeating the idea that the Taliban and its allies in Afghanistan and Pakistan won't negotiate a deal because they think they're winning.

Now, thanks to the New York Times, we know that's not true.

The Taliban is negotiating. And from the brilliant Times piece today by Dexter Filkins, we also know that what they're asking for isn't unreasonable. Here's the bottom line:

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May 21, 2009

Expert Panel Rejects Iran Missile Threat to Europe

By Robert Dreyfuss

The Post reports this morning that a team of US and Russian technical experts want to put the kibosh on US plans for putting a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic:

A planned U.S. missile shield to protect Europe from a possible Iranian attack would be ineffective against the kinds of missiles Iran is likely to deploy, according to a joint analysis by top U.S. and Russian scientists.

The U.S.-Russian team also judged that it would be more than five years before Iran is capable of building both a nuclear warhead and a missile capable of carrying it over long distances. And if Iran attempted such an attack, the experts say, it would ensure its own destruction.

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May 19, 2009

Americans' Views of Israel

By Robert Dreyfuss

While Prime Minister Netanyahu was meeting President Obama at the White House Monday morning, the Zogbys -- John Zogby, president/CEO of Zogby International, a polling firm, and Jim Zogby, his brother, president of the Arab American Institute -- were a few blocks away at the New America Foundation to discuss the surprising results of an interactive poll about US attitudes toward the conflict in the Middle East.

The results suggest that Obama would have strong support for a hands-on US diplomatic effort to forge an Israel-Palestine deal, even if it means pressure on Israel.

According to the poll, when asked if the United States should "get tough" with Israel in order to back up its call for an end to settlement construction in the occupied West Bank, fully 50 percent of Americans said yes, with just 19 percent saying "do nothing," and 32 percent not sure.

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May 18, 2009

'There is no deadline for talks, okay?'

By Robert Dreyfuss

Those who follow this space know that I've been harping on the idea of avoiding a deadline for talks with Iran.

There's no question that Israel, its allies, and various hawkish groups have given up on any idea of derailing or opposing President Obama's opening to Iran. Not because they like it, since they're doing everything they can to isolate, contain, and sanction Tehran -- but becasue there's not much they can do to stop it. So, it's clear to everyone now their tactic is to say, "OK, let's have the talks. And we'll give Iran a couple of months to cave in. Or else."

Problem is, what else? Sanctions are not, repeat not, going to work, mostly because it's not conceivable that the the United States can enlist the world in an onerous sanctions regime. (The current one is bad enough.) So once the talks are ended, and the sanctions route fails, the calls for war will escalate.

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May 14, 2009

Saberi's Release A Good Omen for US-Iran Talks

By Robert Dreyfuss

Here's what I wonder: If an Iranian journalist came to the United States, deliberately let his reporter's credentials expire, took a job working for an important US agency that handles confidential or classified material, and then secretly copied one of those documents out of "curiosity," do you think he would have been released by an appeals court? Or do you think that he might have received, say, eight years in prison for espionage?

Roxana Saberi is a very lucky woman. As the Independent reported, not only did she copy a secret Iranian document about the war in Iraq, but she also visited Israel:

A joyful Roxana Saberi yesterday thanked those who helped win her release as her lawyer revealed his client had been convicted of spying in part because she had a copy of a confidential Iranian report on the war in Iraq.

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May 13, 2009

New US General Vs. Taliban, Pashtuns

By Robert Dreyfuss

The war in Afghanistan has been overshadowed in recent weeks by the crisis next door in Pakistan, but no more. Secretary of Defense Gates has fired the US commander there, General David McKiernan, and replaced him with a counterinsurgency specialist with a spotty track record, General Stanley McChrystal. It's the first time a wartime commander was fired since Harry Truman got rid of General Douglas MacArthur in the Korean War.

Don't expect any quick improvement on the battlefront.

A smart commentary on the dual crises in Afghanistan and Pakistan came from Selig Harrison, a longtime expert on Asia at the Center for International Policy, in yesterday's Washington Post. He raises the critical issue of ethnic Pashtun support for the Taliban. Pashtuns make up about half of Afghanistan's population and dominate the Northwest Frontier Province (NWFP) and the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in Pakistan. Even though most Pashtuns don't support the Taliban or their extremist ideas, the Taliban are nearly entirely Pashtun in both countries. The US war effort, including air strikes in Afghanistan and drone attacks in Pakistan that kill civilians, are inflaming Pashtun sentiments, and driving Pashtuns and Taliban together.

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May 12, 2009

US General Builds A Palestinian Army

By Robert Dreyfuss

Last Thursday, in what was billed as his very first on-the-record address, Lt. Gen. Keith Dayton, U.S. security coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority, spoke to the 2009 Soref Symposium organized by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. WINEP, of course, is the chief thinktank for the Washington-based Israel lobby.

And in his talk, Gen. Dayton delivered an important warning.

First, the background. For the past three and a half years, Dayton has lived and worked in Jerusalem and across the West Bank, overseeing the creation of three Palestinian battalions of troops, hand-picked in the West Bank, trained at an academy in Jordan, and then deployed in the occupied territory.

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May 10, 2009

Nick Burns Wants Iran Talks on Two-Month Fuse

By Robert Dreyfuss

The following news item was written for TehranBureau.com.

At a hearing today at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, chaired by Senator John Kerry, former top State Department official Nicholas Burns delivered testimony that can only be described as a back-handed endorsement of President Obama's outreach to Iran.

During President Bush's second term, Burns was undersecretary of state for political affairs, and he handled the Iran file. A career diplomat and a noted realist, who would have been one of those opposed to Vice President Cheney's war-mongering on Iran at the time, Burns is on record supporting diplomacy vis-à-vis Iran. In his testimony, he said: "It could actually work." But he didn't sound convinced.

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May 6, 2009

Punctuating Obama's Trilateral Af-Pak Meeting

By Robert Dreyfuss

Against the backdrop of all-day meetings on Pakistan and Afghanistan, US air attacks have killed dozens more civilians in Afghanistan.

Here's the schedule for today:

9:15 Hillary Clinton meets Hamid Karzai

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May 6, 2009