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Saudi Arabia and Iran in Iraq fix
By Ehsan Ahrari

With Iran enhancing its influence in Iraq - even by creating a "mini-Iran" in the southern section of the country - Saudi Arabia is left playing diplomatic catch-up in trying to influence events.

This underscores the power differential between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Iran is a real power in Iraq, while Saudi Arabia remains a "wanna-be power". It also illustrates that Iran's strategy in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq was well crafted to take into account the possibility of the US faltering there.

The Iranians figured that the US administration was more concerned about toppling Saddam than establishing a stable order in Iraq and that it lacked a cohesive post-conflict plan. Iran thus concluded that chaos would follow. What it could not have anticipated was the magnitude of that chaos, a train of events set in motion by the US deciding to abolish the Iraqi army and de-Ba'athify the country.
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Sunday, December 17, 2006

Open-Source Spying

By CLIVE THOMPSON
Published: December 3, 2006

When Matthew Burton arrived at the Defense Intelligence Agency in January 2003, he was excited about getting to his computer. Burton, who was then 22, had long been interested in international relations: he had studied Russian politics and interned at the U.S. consulate in Ukraine, helping to speed refugee applications of politically persecuted Ukrainians. But he was also a big high-tech geek fluent in Web-page engineering, and he spent hours every day chatting online with friends and updating his own blog. When he was hired by the D.I.A., he told me recently, his mind boggled at the futuristic, secret spy technology he would get to play with: search engines that can read minds, he figured. Desktop video conferencing with colleagues around the world. If the everyday Internet was so awesome, just imagine how much better the spy tools would be.

But when he got to his cubicle, his high-tech dreams collapsed. “The reality,” he later wrote ruefully, 'was a colossal letdown.'
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Thursday, December 14, 2006

Dr. Dahlia Wasfi is a nationally known speaker and activist. Born in the United States to an American Jewish mother and an Iraqi Muslim father, she lived in Iraq as a child, returning to the U.S. at age 5. She graduated from Swarthmore College with a B.A. in Biology in 1993 and earned her medical degree from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997. Dr. Wasfi has made two trips to Iraq since the 2003 "Shock and Awe" invasion to visit her extended family. She returned from a three month stay in Basrah in March 2006. On April 27th of this year, she testified at a Congressional Forum to provide her eyewitness account of life in Iraq. Based on her experiences, Dr. Wasfi is speaking out against the negative impact of the U.S. invasion and the need to end the occupation.

Watch Congressional Testimony

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Jennings Enlists Extremists in Desperate Attempt to Overturn Lawful Election

Saturday, December 02, 2006
Sally Tibbetts

Sarasota, Florida – The Buchanan campaign released the following statement today regarding the radical “revote rally” to be held Sunday in Sarasota.

“With her lawsuit against the people now in shambles, Christine Jennings has enlisted the most extreme elements of the Democrat party in her desperate attempt overturn Congressman-elect Vern Buchanan’s lawful election,” said spokeswoman Sally Tibbetts. “In a veiled effort to advance their partisan agenda, liberal special interest groups are busing in hundreds of outsiders to invade Sarasota and deny the will of the people of this district by calling for a new election.”

“It is shameful that these fringe groups would use the pretense of concern for democracy to undermine voter confidence,” continued Tibbetts. “The voters of this District can take comfort that state testing this week on voting machines programmed for and used during the election confirmed that the machines accurately recorded each and every vote. There is no evidence to support their radical call for a revote and to hold one would disenfranchise the 238,000 people who cast votes in this election.”

Tibbetts also noted that the Herald Tribune today exposed Jennings’ ties to out-of-state radical groups and individuals – some from as far away as Hawaii and their funding of her effort to undermine democracy

Among the groups involved in Sunday’s rally are:

The American Civil Liberties Union, whose efforts to defend civil liberties have gone to the extreme of protecting child molesters, working to remove all references to God from society, and opposing post September 11 initiatives to enhance homeland security;
The People for the American Way, which gained notoriety by running commercials against the confirmation of Judge Robert Bork to the U.S. Supreme Court, coined the phrase “Let’s Move On” during the impeachment of President Clinton leading to the fringe group MoveOn.org, and said both the 2000 and 2004 elections were illegitimate because of issues of disenfranchisement

Published reports have also indicated that political extremist Lyndon LaRouche is expected to participate in the rally. LaRouche is a former member of the Socialist Workers Party and is a former leader of a reportedly violent and disruptive cult-like group entitled the National Caucus of Labor Committees. He was imprisoned for 15 years for conspiracy and mail fraud related to fundraising and tax code violations and for conspiring to hide his personal income.