Gates Says NATO Alliance Faces 'Dim' Future 10JUN11

IT is wrong for America to pay most of the cost for NATO, European members need to accept the cost and responsibility for their defense and the campaigns of the alliance and be fair partners. BUT, it is also true that the misguided policies of the bush administration in the operation of the Afghan war, unfortunately being continued by the Obama administration, have contributed to NATO members being reluctant and even refusing to participate in NATO campaigns because of the lack of a clear goal in the campaigns and mismanagement of the campaigns. The disarray of the alliance, the lack of participation in military actions, may also be a growing realization that war is not the answer, and more can be done to prevent and resolve conflict through humanitarian aid. A lot of members of NATO routinely budget a much higher percentage of their national budgets for humanitarian and economic aid instead of military aid around the world than the U.S. government does. A lesson is to be learned from all of this, and a nation can win more friends in a country, and do more to promote stability and human rights with non-lethal rather than military aid.

by The Associated Press

Enlarge John Thys/AFP/Getty Images U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates criticized NATO during a speech to the Security and Defense agenda think-tank Friday in Brussels, Belgium.

America's military alliance with Europe — the cornerstone of U.S. security policy for six decades — faces a "dim if not dismal future," U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Friday in a blunt valedictory address.
In his final policy speech as Pentagon chief, Gates questioned the viability of NATO, saying its members' penny-pinching and lack of political will could hasten the end of U.S. support. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization was formed in 1949 as a U.S.-led bulwark against Soviet aggression, but in the post-Cold War era it has struggled to find a purpose.
"Future U.S. political leaders — those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me — may not consider the return on America's investment in NATO worth the cost," he told a European think tank in Brussels, Belgium, on the final day of an 11-day overseas journey.

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Gates has made no secret of his frustration with NATO bureaucracy and the huge restrictions many European governments placed on their military participation in the Afghanistan war. He ruffled NATO feathers early in his tenure with a direct challenge to contribute more front-line troops that yielded few contributions.
Even so, Gates' assessment Friday that NATO is falling down on its obligations and foisting too much of the hard work on the U.S. was unusually harsh and unvarnished. He said both of NATO's main military operations now — Afghanistan and Libya — point up weaknesses and failures within the alliance.

Future U.S. political leaders — those for whom the Cold War was not the formative experience that it was for me — may not consider the return on America's investment in NATO worth the cost.

- U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates

"The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress and in the American body politic writ large to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense," he said.
Without naming names, he blasted allies who are "willing and eager for American taxpayers to assume the growing security burden left by reductions in European defense budgets."
The U.S. has tens of thousands of troops based in Europe, not to stand guard against invasion but to train with European forces and promote what for decades has been lacking: the ability of the Europeans to go to war alongside the U.S. in a coherent way.
The war in Afghanistan, which is being conducted under NATO auspices, is a prime example of U.S. frustration at European inability to provide the required resources.
"Despite more than 2 million troops in uniform, not counting the U.S. military, NATO has struggled, at times desperately, to sustain a deployment of 25,000 to 45,000 troops, not just in boots on the ground, but in crucial support assets such as helicopters, transport aircraft, maintenance, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, and much more," Gates said.
Gates, a career CIA officer who rose to become the spy agency's director from 1991 to 1993, is retiring on June 30 after 4½ years as Pentagon chief. His designated successor, Leon Panetta, is expected to take over July 1.
For many Americans, NATO is a vague concept tied to a bygone era, a time when the world feared a Soviet land invasion of Europe that could have escalated to nuclear war. But with the demise of the Soviet Union in 1991, NATO's reason for being came into question. It has remained intact and even expanded from 16 members at the conclusion of the Cold War to 28 today.
But reluctance of some European nations to expand defense budgets and take on direct combat has created what amounts to a two-tier alliance: the U.S. military at one level and the rest of NATO on a lower, almost irrelevant plane.
Gates said this could spell the demise of NATO.
"What I've sketched out is the real possibility for a dim, if not dismal future for the trans-Atlantic alliance," he said. "Such a future is possible, but not inevitable. The good news is that the members of NATO - individually and collectively - have it well within their means to halt and reverse these trends and instead produce a very different future."
Gates has said he believes NATO will endure despite its flaws and failings. But his remarks Friday point to a degree of American impatience with traditional and newer European allies that in coming years could lead to a reordering of U.S. defense priorities in favor of Asia and the Pacific, where the rise of China is becoming a predominant concern.
To illustrate his concerns about Europe's lack of appetite for defense, Gates noted the difficulty NATO has encountered in carrying out an air campaign in Libya.
"The mightiest military alliance in history is only 11 weeks into an operation against a poorly armed regime in a sparsely populated country, yet many allies are beginning to run short of munitions, requiring the U.S., once more, to make up the difference," he said.
His comment reflected U.S. frustration with the allies' limited defense budgets.
"To avoid the very real possibility of collective military irrelevance, member nations must examine new approaches to boosting combat capabilities," he said.
He applauded Norway and Denmark for providing a disproportionate share of the combat power in the Libya operation, given the size of their militaries. And he credited Belgium and Canada for making "major contributions" to the effort to degrade the military strength of Libya's Moammar Gadhafi.
"These countries have, with their constrained resources, found ways to do the training, buy the equipment and field the platforms necessary to make a credible military contribution," he said.
But they are exceptions, in Gates' view.
A NATO air operations center designed to handle more than 300 flights a day is struggling to launch about 150 a day against Libya, Gates said.
On a political level, the problem of alliance purpose in Libya is even more troubling, he said.
"While every alliance member voted for the Libya mission, less than half have participated, and fewer than a third have been willing to participate in the strike mission," he said. "Frankly, many of those allies sitting on the sidelines do so not because they do not want to participate, but simply because they can't. The military capabilities simply aren't there."
Afghanistan is another example of NATO falling short despite a determined effort, Gates said.
He recalled the history of NATO's involvement in the Afghan war — and the mistaken impression some allied governments held of what it would require of them.
"I suspect many allies assumed that the mission would be primarily peacekeeping, reconstruction and development assistance - more akin to the Balkans," he said, referring to NATO peacekeeping efforts there since the late 1990s. "Instead, NATO found itself in a tough fight against a determined and resurgent Taliban returning in force from its sanctuaries in Pakistan."
He also offered praise and sympathy, noting that more than 850 troops from non-U.S. NATO members have died in Afghanistan. For many allied nations these were their first military casualties since World War II.
He seemed to rehearse his position in the coming debate within the Obama administration on how many troops to withdraw from Afghanistan this year.
"Far too much has been accomplished, at far too great a cost, to let the momentum slip away just as the enemy is on his back foot," he said.
He said the "vast majority" of the 30,000 extra troops Obama sent to Afghanistan last year will remain through the summer fighting season. He was not more specific.
In a question-and-answer session with his audience after the speech, Gates, 67, said his generation's "emotional and historical attachment" to NATO is "aging out."
He said he is not sure what this means in practical terms. But if Europeans want to keep a security link to the U.S. in the future, he said, "the drift of the past 20 years can't continue."

Afghan nation-building programs not sustainable, report says 7JUN11

THAT billions are being wasted in Afghanistan and Iraq is no surprise given the corruption of the military-industrial complex and the American politicians and pentagon and military officers they own through their campaign contributions and/or promises of lucrative jobs when these politicians leave office. If you have had enough of the waste of American lives and tax dollars on the illegal and immoral war in Iraq, and the immoral war in Afghanistan, if you support the troops and know it is time to bring them home NOW, go to http://rethinkafghanistan.com/ 
and get involved in the campaign to end the war. This from the Washington Post...

By Karen DeYoung

The hugely expensive U.S. attempt at nation-building in Afghanistan has had only limited success and may not survive an American withdrawal, according to the findings of a two-year congressional investigation to be released Wednesday.
The report calls on the administration to rethink urgently its assistance programs as President Obama prepares to begin drawing down the number of U.S. troops in Afghanistan this summer.
The report, prepared by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Democratic majority staff, comes as Congress and the American public have grown increasingly restive about the human and economic cost of the decade-long war and reflects growing concerns about Obama’s war strategy even among supporters within his party.
The report describes the use of aid money to stabilize areas the military has cleared of Taliban fighters — a key component of the administration’s counterinsurgency strategy — as a short-term fix that provides politically pleasing results. But it says that the enormous cash flows can overwhelm and distort local culture and economies, and that there is little evidence the positive results are sustainable.
One example cited in the report is the Performance-Based Governors Fund, which is authorized to distribute up to $100,000 a month in U.S. funds to individual provincial leaders for use on local expenses and development projects. In some provinces, it says, “this amount represents a tidal wave of funding” that local officials are incapable of “spending wisely.”
Because oversight is scanty, the report says, the fund encourages corruption. Although the U.S. plan is for the Afghan government to eventually take over this and other programs, it has neither the management capacity nor the funds to do so.
The report also warns that the Afghan economy could slide into a depression with the inevitable decline of the foreign military and development spending that now provides 97 percent of the country’s gross domestic product.
The “single most important step” the Obama administration could take, the report says, is to stop paying Afghans “inflated salaries” — often 10 or more times as much as the going rate — to work for foreign governments and contractors. Such practices, it says, have “drawn otherwise qualified civil servants away from the Afghan government and created a culture of aid dependency.”
Even when U.S. development experts determine that a proposed project “lacks achievable goals and needs to be scaled back,” the U.S. military often takes it over and funds it anyway, the report says.
It also cites excessive use and poor oversight of contractors. Although the report provides some examples of successful projects, it is critical overall of what one senior committee aide called the U.S. focus on a rapid “burn rate” of available funding as a key metric for success. The aide spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the report before its release.
Debate has begun within the White House and in Congress over how quickly to begin withdrawing the 100,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, with senior Defense Department figures cautioning against a precipitous drawdown this summer. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has called for a “modest” decrease that would avoid jeopardizing recent combat gains.
Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, told reporters Tuesday that he would like to see a minimum of 15,000 U.S. troops withdrawn by the end of the year. Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the committee’s ranking Republican, was quoted in the Financial Times as saying that he thought the number should be no more than 3,000.
But an increasing number of lawmakers on both sides have called for a more wholesale reconsideration of Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan, saying that the war’s cost cannot be sustained at a time of domestic economic hardship. They point as well to changing realities on the ground, including signs of growing extremist violence in Pakistan and the killing last month of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
“I’m personally for changing the military strategy to some degree,” Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), chairman of the committee, said in an interview. Because the military and civilian components are tightly intertwined in Afghanistan, Kerry said, both have to be considered at the same time.
“We’ve created a . . . wartime economy” that is a “huge distortion” of Afghanistan’s revenue production, he said. “It’s very dangerous, and we have to get a handle on it rapidly.”
Kerry said that the committee’s report was not “a gotcha” but that it was intended to help the administration “think through and analyze” how to proceed. The report was distributed Tuesday to Democratic committee members and to Sen. Richard G. Lugar (Ind.), the ranking Republican.
The administration has requested $3.2 billion for Afghanistan reconstruction projects in the coming fiscal year. The report argued that the foreign aid program must continue because “the goal should be to reduce some of the political pressure to spend money quickly, especially when the conditions are not right.”
All U.S. development projects in Afghanistan should be reexamined, it adds, to determine whether they are “necessary, achievable, and sustainable.”
The report recommends multi-year congressional funding for the aid program that would plan ahead for the increased civilian responsibilities as the number of troops decreases and calls for “a simple rule: donors should not implement projects if Afghans cannot sustain them.”
Last week, the bipartisan Commission on Wartime Contracting in Iraq and Afghanistan said in a separate report that billions of dollars in U.S.-funded reconstruction projects in both countries could fall into disrepair over the next few years because of inadequate planning to pay for their ongoing operations and maintenance. That report warned that “the United States faces new waves of waste in Iraq and Afghanistan.”
Foreign aid expenditures by the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development in Afghanistan, about $320 million a month, pale beside the overall $10 billion monthly price tag for U.S. military operations. But Afghanistan is the biggest recipient of U.S. aid, with nearly $19 billion spent from 2002 to 2010. Much of that money has been expended in the past two years, most of it in war zones in the south and east of the country as part of the counterinsurgency strategy adopted by Obama just months after he took office.
The strategy, devised by Gen. David H. Petraeus, the commander of U.S. and coalition forces in Afghanistan, calls for pouring U.S. development aid into areas that the military has cleared of Taliban fighters to persuade the population to support the Afghan government.
But evidence of successful aid programs based on “counterinsurgency theories” is limited, the Senate committee report says. “Some research suggests the opposite, and development best practices question the efficacy of using aid as a stabilization tool over the long run.”
“The administration is understandably anxious for immediate results to demonstrate to Afghans and Americans alike that we are making progress,” the report says. “However, insecurity, abject poverty, weak indigenous capacity, and widespread corruption create challenges for spending money.”
High turnover among U.S. civilians working in Afghanistan, estimated at 85 percent a year, along with “pressure from the military, imbalances between military and civilian resources, unpredictable funding levels from Congress, and changing political timelines, have further complicated efforts,” it says.
The report is gently but unmistakably critical of the “whole of government” approach implemented by Richard C. Holbrooke, who served as Obama’s special representative for the region until his death in December. Control of all civilian operations on the ground were shifted to the State Department from the USAID, the traditional manager of development assistance.
“This new approach,” the report says, “created new levels of bureaucracy, diminished USAID’s voice at the table, and put decision-making on development issues in the hands of diplomats instead of development experts.”

Afghanistan Weekly Digest: Quran Burning. Troop Drawdown. War Tax Calculator. from SOJO 7APR11

THE latest Afghanistan Weekly Digest from SOJO, be sure to check out the war tax calculator......

[Editors' note: As part of Sojourners' campaign to end the war in Afghanistan, we will run a weekly Afghanistan news digest to educate our readers about the latest news and developments related to the war, the U.S. military's strategy, and the people impacted by our decisions. Read more about our campaign at www.sojo.net/afghanistan.]

• Durbin wants troop drawdown in Afghanistan: “Second-ranking democrat in the Senate supports summer drawdown of troops in Afghanistan.”

• What Would You Do With an Extra $70 Billion?: “Defense Secretary Robert Gates has vowed that the days of profligacy are over and that the Pentagon will reform its bloated and often corrupt acquisition process.”

• Taliban has strengthened along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, report finds: “The Taliban insurgency has gained strength in Pakistan’s border regions with Afghanistan in recent months despite a sustained government offensive against it, the Obama administration said in a stark new assessment of the war effort.”

• Afghans continue to denounce Quran burning: “Hundreds of people have taken to Afghanistan’s streets in fresh protests against a Quran burning in the United States, as the UN vowed a deadly attack on its staff would not derail its work.”

• Have you done your taxes yet? In honor of the upcoming tax day, check out this war tax calculator. See how much of your taxes this year will go to the war efforts.

Hannah Lythe is policy and outreach associate at Sojourners.

Don't "No-Fly" Libya 4MAR11

FROM the Washington Peace Center

What would a no-fly zone in Libya mean? A bit of history may provide some perspective.
Libyan demonstrators flying the Kingdom of Libya flag, in the main square of Benghazi on 28 February 2011.

Today in Libya, civilians are being killed by a besieged and isolated dictator. Libyan warplanes have been used to attack civilians, although the vast majority of the violence has come from ground attacks. The Libyan opposition’s provisional national council, meeting in Benghazi, is debating whether they should request military support from the international community, maybe the UN or NATO, starting with a no-fly zone. The Arab League announced that it was also considering establishing a no-fly zone, perhaps with the African Union.

It is unclear what casualties the airstrikes may have caused. The anti-regime forces have some access to anti-aircraft weapons, and Qaddafi has already lost planes and pilots alike to the opposition — but it is far from clear where the military balance lies.

Powerful U.S. voices — including neo-conservative warmongers and liberal interventionists in and out of the administration, as well as important anti-war forces in and out of Congress — are calling on the Obama administration to establish a no-fly zone in Libya to protect civilians.

A Libyan activist writes in The Guardian, “we welcome a no-fly zone, but the blood of Libya's dead will be wasted if the west curses our uprising with failed intervention.” He says that his hopes for a happy ending are “marred by a fear shared by all Libyans; that of a possible western military intervention to end the crisis.” He seems to believe that a U.S. or NATO no-fly zone would mean something other than a Western military intervention.

Ironically it was Secretary of Defense Robert Gates who warned that establishing a no-fly zone “begins with an attack on Libya.” It would be an act of war. And the Middle East doesn’t need another U.S. war.

What would a no-fly zone in Libya mean? A bit of history may provide some perspective.
Bombing Tripoli

The year was 1986. People had been killed, this time in a terrorist attack in Europe. The Libyan government, led by Muammar Qaddafi, was deemed responsible. The U.S. announced air strikes directed at “key military sites” in Tripoli and Benghazi. Exactly the kind of targeted air strikes that would precede a no-fly zone. But according to the BBC, the missiles hit a densely populated Tripoli suburb, Bin Ashur. At least 100 people were killed, including Qaddafi’s three-year-old daughter. Qaddafi himself was fine.

Libyans remember.

Fast-forward half a decade. The 1991 Gulf War in Iraq was over. A besieged and defeated Arab dictator was posturing, threatening force, and the victorious U.S. decided to intervene again, officially for humanitarian reasons. The U.S. and Britain established unilateral “no-fly zones” in northern and southern Iraq. (U.S. and British officials consistently lied, claiming they were enforcing “United Nations no-fly zones,” but in fact no UN resolution ever even mentioned one.) During the twelve years of the no-fly zone, hundreds were killed by U.S. and British bombs.

Iraqis remember. So do Libyans.

Assume the “attack on Libya” preceding a no-fly zone succeeds in its very specific purpose: to eliminate the anti-aircraft weapons that could threaten U.S. planes enforcing the zone. But does that mean it also eliminates all anti-aircraft weapons in the hands of the opposition, the defectors from Qaddafi’s air force? What would the consequences be of that?

And then there are the “what if” factors.  What if they made a mistake? The 1986 U.S. airstrikes in Libya were supposed to be aimed at military targets — yet more than 100 people, many of them civilians, were killed; why do we assume it will be any different this time? What if a U.S. warplane was shot down and pilots or bombers were captured by Qaddafi’s military? Wouldn’t U.S. Special Forces immediately be deployed to rescue them? Then what?

And that’s just the military part. That’s just the beginning.
Consequences

No-fly zones, like any other act of war, have consequences. In Libya, though it is impossible to precisely gauge public opinion, a significant majority of people appears opposed to the regime and prepared to mobilize and fight to bring it down. That is not surprising. While the Libyan revolt is playing out in vastly different ways, and with far greater bloodshed, it is part and parcel of the democratic revolutionary process rising across the Arab world and beyond. And just as in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Bahrain, and elsewhere, there is no evidence that the Libyan population supports foreign military involvement.

To the contrary, although at least part of the anti-Qaddafi leadership is indeed calling for some kind of military intervention, there appears to be widespread public opposition to such a call. Certainly there is fear that such foreign involvement will give credibility to Qaddafi’s currently false claims that foreigners are responsible for the uprising. But beyond that, there is a powerful appeal in the recognition that the democracy movements sweeping the Middle East and North Africa are indigenous, authentic, independent mobilizations against decades-long U.S.- and Western-backed dictatorship and oppression.

There have been broadly popular calls for international assistance to the anti-Qaddafi forces, including support for a UN-imposed assets freeze and referral to the International Criminal Court for top regime officials. And despite the breathtaking hypocrisy of the U.S., which embraces the ICC as a tool against Washington’s current opponents but rejects it for war criminals among its Israeli and other allies and refuses its jurisdiction for itself, the use of the Court for this purpose is very appropriate.

But there is no popular call for military intervention. Human rights lawyer and opposition spokesman Abdel-Hafidh Ghoga was crystal clear: “We are against any foreign intervention... This revolution will be completed by our people.” And Libyan General Ahmad Gatroni, who defected to lead the opposition forces, urged the U.S. to “take care of its own people, we can look after ourselves.”

Indeed, if the U.S. is so worried about the bombing raids against civilians, perhaps the Obama administration should take another look at Afghanistan, where nine Afghan children, ages seven to fourteen, were killed by U.S. attack helicopters in Kunar province on March 1st. If the Congress is so eager to follow the wishes of Libya’s opposition, perhaps General Gatroni’s call for the U.S. to “take care of its own people” could mean challenging another stark reality: the people of Wisconsin, facing a $1.8 billion budget deficit, will pay $1.7 billion in taxes this year just for their share of an already-existing war, the one in Afghanistan.
Global Opposition

Internationally, there is widespread public and governmental opposition in influential countries, such as India, to establishing a no-fly zone. In the United Nations, many governments are reluctant to order an act of war that would significantly escalate the military conflict underway in Libya. The Security Council resolution that passed unanimously on February 27 condemned the violence and imposed a set of targeted sanctions on the Qaddafi regime, but did not reference Article 42 of the UN Charter, the prerequisite for endorsing the use of force.

Instead, the Council relied on Article 41, which authorizes only “measures not involving the use of armed force.” Passage, let alone unanimity, would have been impossible otherwise. Russia’s ambassador specifically opposed what he called “counterproductive interventions,” and other key Council members, including veto-wielding China as well as rising powers India, South Africa, and Brazil, have all expressed various levels of caution and outright opposition to further militarizing the situation in Libya.

So far, the Obama administration and the Pentagon appear to be vacillating on support for a no-fly zone. An anonymous administration official told the New York Times“there’s a great temptation to stand up and say, ‘We’ll help you rid the country of a dictator’… But the president has been clear that what’s sweeping across the Middle East is organic to the region, and as soon as we become a military player, we’re at risk of falling into the old trap that Americans are stage-managing events for their own benefit.”

In fact that “old trap,” seizing control of international events for Washington’s own benefit, remains central to U.S. foreign policy. It’s becoming harder these days, as U.S. influence wanes. But key U.S. political forces are upping the pressure on Obama to send the troops — at least the Air Force. Those rooting for war include right-wing Republican warmongers eager to attack Obama as war-averse (despite all evidence to the contrary), as well, unfortunately, as some of the strongest anti-war voices in Congress (including Jim McDermott, Mike Honda, Keith Ellison, and others), who presumably believe that the humanitarian necessity of a no-fly zone still outweighs the dangers.

It doesn’t. Humanitarian crises simply do not shape U.S. policy. If they did, we might have heard a bit more last week when the Baghdad government   — armed, financed, trained, and supported by the United States — killed 29 Iraqi civilians demonstrating against corruption. We might have seen humanitarian involvement in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where millions of civilians have been killed in Africa’s longest and perhaps most brutal war. And we might have seen, if not direct U.S. intervention, at least an end to the U.S. enabling of the Israeli assault on Gaza that killed more than 900 civilians, 313 of them children.

Rather, “humanitarian” concerns become a tool of powerful circles to build popular support for what would otherwise bring massive public outrage — “really, while the costs of existing wars have already brought the U.S. economy to its knees, you want to launch another U.S. war in the Middle East??”
Whose Humanitarianism?

It’s not that there are no real humanitarian concerns; Libyan civilians are paying a huge price in challenging their dictator. But powerful U.S. interests are at stake, and few of them have anything to do with protecting Libyan civilians. Certainly oil is key; not so much about access to Libyan oil (the international oil market is pretty fungible), but about which oil companies will gain privileged positions? Will it be BP and Chevron who win the lucrative contracts to develop Libya’s enormous oil fields, or will Chinese and Russian oil companies take their place? What pipelines will a new government in Libya choose, and which countries and corporations will benefit?

And it’s not only about oil. The Libyan uprising is one of many potentially revolutionary transformations across the Arab world and in parts of Africa, where long-standing U.S.-backed dictatorships are collapsing — what kind of credibility can the U.S. expect in post-Qaddafi Libya? Washington may be betting that it can win credibility with the opposition by jumping out in front with an aggressive anti-Qaddafi “military assistance” campaign, perhaps starting with a no-fly zone. But in fact Washington risks antagonizing those opposition supporters, apparently the vast majority, determined to protect the independence of their democratic revolution.

The future of Libya and much of the success of the democratic revolutions now underway across the region, stand in the balance. If the Obama administration, the Pentagon, war profiteers and the rest of the U.S. policymaking establishment continue to define U.S. “national interests” as continuing U.S. domination of oil-rich and strategically-located countries and regions, Washington faces a likely future of isolation, antagonism, rising terrorism and hatred.

The democratic revolutionary processes sweeping North Africa and the Middle East have already transformed that long-stalemated region. The peoples of the region are looking for less, not greater militarization of their countries. It is time for U.S. policy to recognize that reality. Saying no to a no-fly zone in Libya will be the best thing the Obama administration can do to begin the process of crafting a new, demilitarized 21st century policy for the U.S. in the newly democratizing Middle East.

From: IPS (Institue for Policy Studies)
March 4, 2011
By  Phyllis Bennis

On Libya, Obama willing to let allies take the lead 10MAR11

There are two actions the Arab League can take to prove they are serious about their support for the opposition in Libya. First would be to immediately stop all all and gas exports to any nation that fails to freeze all assets of the Libyan government and all of Gaddafi's family, government officials and business community. Oil and gas exports should also be halted to any country preventing the establishment of a Libyan no fly zone, be it through a threatened veto at the U.N. or by "diplomatic" and economic pressure. The second action the Arab League should do is declare a Libyan no fly zone and use their Air Forces to enforce it. The best countries to provide the aircraft for enforcement would be from Egypt, Morocco, and Saudi Arabia. The Saudis and wealthy Gulf states (the U.A.E., Kuwait, Qatar) should foot the bill. Israel's security concerns during such an operation would have to be addressed. Moving the U.S. aircraft carrier with it's fleet of support boats now in the Red Sea to the Mediterranean to patrol off the Israeli coast, with clear instructions to intercept and destroy any rogue aircraft should address their fears.
Failure by the Arab League to take action and accept responsibility for the slaughter in Libya will leave them having to explain to their people how they were able to stand by and let fellow Muslims be cut down by Gaddafi's brutal regime. From the Washington Post..... By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, March 10, 2011; 12:21 AM


President Obama is content to let other nations publicly lead the search for solutions to the Libyan conflict, his advisers say, a stance that reflects the more humble tone he has sought to bring to U.S. foreign policy but one that also opens him to criticism that he is a weak leader.
The tactic is anathema to many conservatives and worries some liberal interventionists, who believe that only overt American authority can assemble an effective opposition to brutal authoritarian governments such as that of Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi.
Although Obama sees advantages in keeping Washington in the background, especially in a region where the United States is held in such low regard, he has exposed himself to Republican charges that he is absent at a time of crisis. Conservatives say his one-of-the-team approach could also signal a decline in American fortitude after nearly a decade of war.
Since the uprising began, Obama has devoted just one set of public remarks solely to the situation in Libya, where fighting has reached a harsh stalemate. European nations have taken the lead in drafting a no-fly zone resolution, and Obama has yet to say whether he favors one. He followed France in calling for Gaddafi's ouster.
At a Wednesday meeting of Obama's senior national security officials, little support emerged for the immediate imposition of a no-fly zone, according to an administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations.
Jamming Libyan government communications and deploying U.S. naval assets to help deliver humanitarian aid were among the most favored near-term options, the official said, adding that "at any time facts on the ground could change, but the intelligence assessment now dispels the idea that a no-fly zone is the key here."
Obama's caution has been dictated in part by the challenge in dealing with one of the world's most hermetic countries and the fluid situation on the ground. The administration knows little about Libya's well-armed rebels, cannot predict the political system that might replace Gaddafi's bizarre rule, and faces an array of military options to stop the fighting.
Obama's advisers say his low public profile masks the administration's active private diplomacy, which has helped produce strong financial sanctions against Gaddafi's inner circle, and the central U.S. role in military planning underway at NATO, whose defense ministers meet Thursday to consider next steps.
"This is the Obama conception of the U.S. role in the world - to work through multilateral organizations and bilateral relationships to make sure that the steps we are taking are amplified," said Ben Rhodes, the deputy national security adviser for strategic communications. "Maybe this is a different conception of U.S. leadership. But we believe leadership should galvanize an international response, not rely on a unilateral U.S. response."
For decades, U.S. presidents have been pressed to choose between intervening in foreign crises or ignoring them. Both paths have led to political risks for recent presidents, whose records are influencing Obama's response to the violence in Libya.
Anthony H. Cordesman, who holds the Arleigh A. Burke Chair in Strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that "there's always going to be a demand for the United States to take immediate action, but it is not always the right thing to do."
"Unfortunately, as president, ultimately your reasons don't matter," he said. "It's whether you succeed or fail that does."
Bill Clinton was criticized for standing by during the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and waiting for years to use force in the Balkans. He finally did so in Kosovo without a U.N. Security Council resolution, a case that is being examined by European countries and the Obama administration as they decide how to proceed in Libya.
George W. Bush took that unilateral approach even further following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The Bush administration failed to secure a Security Council resolution before the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and generally found international institutions more confining than useful in addressing America's post-Sept. 11 problems.
Obama, by contrast, is closely consulting his European counterparts and at times following their lead. French President Nicolas Sarkozy was the first leader of a major country to call for Gaddafi's ouster. Obama did so the next day in a phone call with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and spoke his position publicly five days later, clearly aligning the United States with Libya's opposition.
"Having called on Gaddafi to leave, I think it would be hard for the administration to back away from the crisis if that goal remains unmet," said Tom Malinowski, the Washington director of Human Rights Watch, who said doing so would risk sending a message to other autocrats that they can use violence to maintain power.
How Obama intends to use American power to achieve that goal has yet to be determined.
Britain and France are drafting the no-fly zone resolution for possible consideration by the Security Council. But it remains unclear where Obama stands on the issue, which has only mixed support on Capitol Hill.
Sen. John F. Kerry (D-Mass.), the Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman whose public statements often reflect administration policy,called Sunday for a no-fly zone, but White House Chief of Staff William Daley criticized advocates of the idea for referring to a no-fly zone as if it were a "video game." Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has also stressed the difficulties in carrying out such an operation.
"That seems to me to indicate an administration that has not yet made up its mind on what to do in Libya," said Elliott Abrams, who was a National Security Council director under Bush. He called Daley's comments "derisive."
Obama inherited a pair of wars in Muslim countries, and his advisers argue that direct U.S. involvement in a third would do more harm than good to Libya's popular uprising.
Abrams, who participated in the White House working group on Egypt assembled last year, said he "understands the point."
"But I think they overdo it," he said. "I think they are being too timid here. And they are running the risk that there will be a bloodbath tomorrow and, by then, it will be too late for them to help the opposition."
Senior administration officials say that regardless of whether the U.S. role is characterized as leading or following, it has been part of a swift international response to the Libyan crisis.
The Security Council has imposed sanctions on Gaddafi's regime and referred Libya's case to the International Criminal Court. The Arab League and African Union, traditionally hesitant to rebuke a member, have done so in the case of Libya.
"Remaining in the background and letting the Europeans take the lead can help build consensus with such countries as Russia and China," Cordesman said, referring to two veto-wielding Security Council members often suspicious of U.S. motives."If we'd presented a sudden initiative, you might have seen it be far more difficult for others to act in support of it."
Given the United States' troubled history with Libya's erratic leader, a senior administration official said, the White House decided early that "what would be more persuasive to Gaddafi is not just the United States saying something, but having the United States, the European Union, the Arab League, the African Union, the United Nations all saying the same things that essentially left him nowhere to turn for legitimacy or support."
"That's been done, essentially," the official said, adding, "It's not as if we're not on the side of change."

Vodka Butt-Shot Contractor STILL Guarding the Kabul Embassy 17FEB11

REMEMBER THESE FREAKS? WHY DO THEY STILL HAVE A CONTRACT WITH THE U.S. GOVERNMENT? WHERE IS THE OVERSIGHT AT THE PENTAGON? THE MILITARY-INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX DOES A GREAT JOB OF PROTECTING THEIR OWN, DON'T THEY? WELL DONE SEC OF STATE CLINTON AND SEC OF DEFENSE GATES, YOU SHOULD BE SO PROUD!

ArmorGroup caused an international scandal and lost its State Department contract. Why's the company still protecting one of America's most dangerous diplomatic outposts?

— By Daniel Schulman

More than a year has passed since the State Department decided to drop its contract with the security firm protecting the US embassy in Kabul, following an international scandal featuring drunken debauchery fit for a Van Wilder flick. But the company that introduced the world to vodka butt-shots is still on the job—and it doesn't seem to have plans to stand down anytime soon. Long after the expiration of its initial contract, in fact, ArmorGroup North America is currently hiring more guards to protect the Kabul embassy.
The firm sparked controversy in September 2009, when a Washington-based watchdog group sent a letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton highlighting a list of violations by the company, from a chronic guard shortage to the hiring of personnel who couldn't speak English and would be unable to communicate with their colleagues in an emergency. But the most shocking charges concerned what the Project on Government Oversight called a "Lord of the Flies environment"—hazing and wild partying depicted in a series of graphic photographs showing members of the Kabul embassy security force drunk, half-naked, and engaged in an array of NSFW behavior.

Embassygate tainted not just ArmorGroup North America (AGNA) and its parent company, the security conglomerate G4S, but the State Department, too, leading to investigations by Congress and State's inspector general. In the years leading up to the scandal, it turned out, the State Department had repeatedly found fault with the company's performance—at one point stating in an internal memo that "the security of the US Embassy in Kabul is in jeopardy" as a result—but failed to fire AGNA. A former high-level AGNA employee also came forward to say that he'd warned the State Department about "lewd, aberrant, and sexually deviant behavior" by the company's recruits more than two years before this conduct made global headlines. Again, no action was taken.
In December 2009, deeply embarrassed by the controversy, the State Department said it planned to axe AGNA once its contract came up for renewal that summer. But when that time came, the agency ended up extending the firm's contract for another six months while it brought in another security provider. "Because the current KESF [Kabul Embassy Security Force] contract can only be extended through December 30th, we must have the company on the ground and operating by then," a spokesman for the State Department's Bureau of Diplomatic Security told Mother Jones last summer.
In late September, the agency selected the Tennessee-based firm EOD Technology to take over the contract. But December 30 came and went with no changing of the guards. And AGNA apparently believed it was staying put, at least for a while. In mid-January, the company posted a job ad on Careerbuilder noting that it was "recruiting Protective Security Specialists to provide security to the U.S. Embassy in, Kabul, Afghanistan."
A spokeswoman for AGNA, Susan Pitcher, confirmed that the firm is still protecting the embassy, but declined to comment further, citing a State Department policy about contractors speaking to reporters. EODT also declined to comment. But a Diplomatic Security spokesman told Mother Jones that the transition has been delayed. Now, he said, the handover won't happen until May. "In order to provide EODT with adequate time to make an orderly transition, it has been given 120 days from the end of AGNA's contract," the spokesman said.

"If there's a better argument for making this mission an inherently governmental function, this situation is it."

Sources familiar with the security force contract questioned whether the delay has anything to do with the transition process; one suggested that the State Department may merely be stalling after unwittingly selecting a replacement for AGNA that also has a controversial background.
In October, a week after the agency chose EODT for the job, the Senate Armed Services Committee, which has conducted a years-long investigation into private security firms in Afghanistan, released a report leveling serious allegations at both EODT and AGNA. It accused the companies of relying on local warlords to staff their guard forces—strongmen with unclear allegiances and possible Taliban ties. In one case, according to the report, EODT hired a group of Afghans who had recently been fired by ArmorGroup for "providing sensitive security information to…a Taliban-affiliated warlord." (In response, EODT claimed that "all leaders which EODT utilized were made known to the US military at every stage of mobilization." AGNA countered that it only relied on Afghans who had been recommended by special operations troops.)
Making matters worse for EODT, federal agents raided its offices in early December in connection with an investigation into potential export violations involving the transit of weapons or other military-grade materials. The company has said it is cooperating with the investigation and has denied any wrongdoing. "We obviously would not have been selected for some of the sensitive and important projects we handle for our country around the world had we not been thoroughly investigated before and found to be trustworthy," the firm said in a statement. A State Department official said the agency was unaware the company was the subject of a federal investigation until stories about the raid appeared in the press, and insisted the probe "has not held up the transition."
For Danielle Brian, the executive director of the Project on Government Oversight, the fact that the State Department handed the embassy job to a company saddled with its own serious baggage illustrates the flawed logic of placing contractors in roles that she believes should be performed by US government personnel. "If there's a better argument for making this mission an inherently governmental function, this situation is it," she says. "We've got one discredited company to be replaced by another discredited company."

Daniel Schulman is Mother Jones' Washington-based news editor. For more of his stories, click here. To follow him on Twitter, click here. Email him at dschulman (at) motherjones.com. Get Daniel Schulman's RSS feed.

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Obama administration aligns itself with protests in Egypt with call for 'orderly transition' 30JAN11

THE latest positions of U.S. government officials on Egypt......
By Karen DeYoung
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 30, 2011; 8:53 PM


The Obama administration firmly aligned itself on Sunday with the protest movement that has overtaken Egypt, calling for an "orderly transition" to a more representative government amid rising U.S. concern that the demonstrations are turning violent and that unrest could spread across the Arab world.
In telephone calls to Egyptian and regional leaders, President Obama and his top national security advisers tried to reassure them that their countries remain vital U.S. strategic partners, while warning that the political status quo is not sustainable.
Senior administration officials said that the "transition" wording, used by both the White House and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, was carefully chosen to indicate a desire for a representative, interim government to run Egypt until scheduled presidential elections are held in September.
Clinton, who appeared on five morning television shows to convey the message, resisted invitations to call explicitly for President Hosni Mubarak, in power for three decades, to stand down. "Both existing and any new members of any government" need to take "concrete steps toward democratic and economic reform," Clinton said on CNN's "State of the Union."
"We are not advocating any specific outcome," she added. But "it needs to be done immediately, with a process that brings people to the table, and that the Egyptian people can see."
Saying that "no one is satisfied" with the steps Mubarak has taken since the protests for political and economic freedom began, Clinton said a transition process was needed "so that no one fills a void . . . what we don't want is chaos." The reference was to fears that radicals will move to take over what thus far have been largely secular protests.
As the administration struggled to move ahead of the situation, its efforts seemed still to leave it one step behind. The shift in message had no visible effect in Cairo and other Egyptian cities, where massive anti-government protests continued for a sixth straight day and demonstrators were still reacting to Obama's earlier call for Mubarak to adopt reforms.
That advice, pro-democracy activist and Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei said, had landed "like lead" in the Egyptian capital.
"To ask a dictator to implement democratic measures after 30 years in power is an oxymoron," ElBaradei said Sunday on ABC's "This Week." "It will not end until Mubarak leaves."
The administration "has been way behind the curve," said former Jordanian foreign minister Marwan Muasher, a vice president at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "So far, they're just reacting. They're looking at it from two prisms - the need for stability . . . and the peace process in Israel.
"This is not about Israel," Muasher said. "I wish for once the United States would just leave Israel out of this and look at it for what it is. People are fed up with corruption, and they want a better government." Egypt and Jordan, the only two Arab governments to have made peace with Israel, are central players in the faltering U.S.-backed Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
The Egyptian military, which deployed into cities last week as uniformed police inexplicably disappeared, continued to deal gently with the demonstrators Sunday and to assist self-appointed citizen patrols in chasing down marauding bands of looters and knife-wielding thugs. The military's ultimate role remained unclear, however, as F-16 fighter jets streaked through the skies in an apparent show of force, and uniformed military leaders appeared alongside Mubarak on state-run television.
The State Department announced Sunday that it would evacuate diplomatic families and nonessential U.S. Embassy personnel aboard charter flights. It also said that the flights, to begin Monday, would be available to any U.S. citizen who wanted to leave Egypt. Americans flooded State Department switchboards with appeals from relatives and friends in Egypt who said that overworked telephone lines and a government shutdown of the Internet had prevented them from getting in touch with the U.S. Embassy in Cairo.
Pentagon spokesmen said that Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had telephoned their Egyptian counterparts. In his conversation with Lt. Gen. Sami Enan, Mullen "expressed his appreciation for the continued professionalism of the Egyptian military," according to Capt. John Kirby, a spokesman for Mullen. "Both men reaffirmed their desire to see the partnership between our two militaries continue."
Gates also spoke with Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak.
The White House said that Obama on Saturday spoke to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. On Sunday, he spoke with British Prime Minister David Cameron.
In each of his calls, the White House said, Obama "reiterated his focus on opposing violence and calling for restraint; supporting universal rights, including the right to peaceful assembly, association and speech; and supporting an orderly transition to a government that is responsive to the aspirations of the Egyptian people."
Cameron, in a joint statement with French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, called on Mubarak "to avoid at all costs the use of violence against unarmed civilians."
The statement also urged Mubarak to begin political reforms, including the formation of a "broadly-based government and free and fair elections."
Several senior administration officials, none of whom would describe internal deliberations on events in Egypt and the region on the record, declined to discuss whether the United States was involved in any efforts to seek a haven for Mubarak outside of Egypt, and spoke of the dual imperatives for U.S. policy.
"We do think there are trends in the region that, frankly, have long pointed to the need for political reforms to make governments more responsive," one official said. "A lot of countries have very large youth populations and longstanding calls for political, economic and social reform."
"We are also aware that Egypt is a country historically at the heart of the Arab world, and incredibly important in terms of the example that emanates from there," he said. The administration's imperative, this official and others said, is to recognize that a process needs to unfold in Egypt to handle change before chaos envelopes its streets and potentially spills over into other countries.
At the same time, the United States has to act in a way that recognizes long and important strategic partnerships in the region, officials said.
In its efforts to stay abreast of the chaotic situation in Egypt, the administration appealed to officials across the U.S. government to use any contacts they have there. "If you have relationships," they were told, "now is the time to be pulsing them to get their read" on what is happening there, the official said.
But even as they tried to respond quickly, officials acknowledged that their influence was limited. "There's only so much we can do to affect the situation on the ground," a second official said. "What I have found amusing is that civil society contacts and friends have called me with outrage and complaints," saying that administration statements weren't responsive enough to their legitimate demands.
At the same time, this official said, "government people and Arabs on the ground" were calling to say "you're trying to push Mubarak out."
"We're getting complaints from both sides," he said. "But the bottom line to keep in mind is that we have big strategic interests there." Egypt, he said, "is not Tunisia," where similar protests earlier this month drove the president from power.

What's Long, Hard, and Wrapped in a "Wal-Mart Tarp"? 28SEP10 from MOTHER JONES

THIS is pathetic...I was just in Europe and heard complaints about lack of funding at U.S. military facilities in Germany for the wounded soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan as well as the troops stationed in Europe.....there is even a huge international market held at least twice a year at a big U.S. airbase in central Germany allowing different units raise funds for some of their programs, and the Pentagon continues to piss away billions on contractors like Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics' Electric Boat Co, rewarding them for shoddy work and not delivering the product contracted for. WELL DONE DEFENSE SEC GATES AND YOUR NAVY PUKES WHO ARE SUPPOSED TO PREVENT THIS FROM HAPPENING...TOO BAD YOU ALL DIDN'T PUT AS MUCH EFFORT INTO MAKING SURE THE WORK WAS DONE RIGHT AS YOU HAVE IN COVERING UP THIS PROBLEM. Read this article from Mother Jones and be sure to click the links for the additional articles and pictures and then take the time to e mail your Representatives and Senators about this.

— US Navy photo of USS Texas

The Navy's new $2 billion nuclear subs, whose super-stealth coating falls apart underwater.

— By Adam Weinstein

Of all the complicated gadgets in the Pentagon's arsenal, a nuclear submarine is one that probably shouldn't be built on the cheap. Yet according to military analysts, that's precisely what the Navy and two defense contractors did with a series of $2 billion attack subs, and now they're literally dropping chunks of their protective skins into the briny deep.
The problem afflicts the Navy's growing fleet of Virginia-class subs, high-tech boats longer than a football field and armed with a dozen Tomahawk cruise missles. The subs are coated with a "special hull treatment," urethane tiles that are supposed to make them super-stealthy, reducing their noise underwater and absorbing sonar impulses. As these photographs show, and as the Pentagon's top weapons inspector has reported, the tiles have been peeling off of the subs while they're at sea, often in large sections. So far, missing tiles have been documented on four of the Navy's seven Virginia-class subs, the first of which launched in 2003.
The disappearing tiles won't sink the subs, but they could seriously impede their primary mission—to run silent and run deep without being detected. "When pieces of the hull coating fall off, the sub gets noisier because it interrupts the water flow over the hull," Norman Polmar, a defense analyst who literally wrote the book on Navy subs, explained to the Newport News, Virginia, Daily Press. "When you put more noise in the water, you're easier to detect." A blogger at Halibut Hangar, which discusses submarine systems, puts it more bluntly: "The submarine platform may purr like a kitten when delivered and roar like a lion after a subsystem failure."

How could one of the world's most advanced pieces of military machinery be laid low by something so basic? Officers and contractors may have been cutting corners when the subs were built, says Craig Hooper, a San Francisco-based security strategist who's been tracking the Virginia-class woes on his blog Next Navy. "The demand to build this submarine in a fast, cost-effective way led them to skip some steps that should have been in the process," he says. "They've got this beautiful, fantastic vessel, and they just covered it in a Wal-Mart tarp."
In 2004, the Navy estimated that it needed 55 nuclear subs to keep up with the rest of the world's navies (never mind that the costly and top-secret Cold War battle for underseas supremacy was well over). To meet that ambitious goal, it kicked up production and broke with its long-standing practice of using one contractor per boat by splitting the work on its new Virginia-class subs between two shipbuilders, Northrop Grumman's yard in Newport News and General Dynamics' Electric Boat Co. in Groton, Connecticut. It also put a premium on building quickly and inexpensively, pressing for a goal of "two for four in twelve": putting two subs into service every year, for $4 billion a year, every year until 2012.
Members of Congress and Navy brass have touted the Virginia program as a paragon of cost-effectiveness. But according to a Congressional Research Service report (PDF) on the program, the time and financial pressure put on the shipbuilders may have had unintended consequences, such as "production inefficiencies and higher costs." And in a recent memo (PDF), J. Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon's director of operational test and evaluation, has criticized the Virginia-class subs for "multiple 'fail to sail' issues." Gilmore, the nation's top weapons inspector, cited the program as an example of widespread shoddy weapons manufacturing, warning that unreliable equipment "can essentially render weapons useless."
The Navy has been slow to say much about the problem. When it has, it's contradicted itself. Sailors who work in the office of the Virginia program initially told media that the hull-splitting issue came to light in 2006; they later claimed that it first popped up in 2007, immediately after a brand-new sub was delivered with its skin peeling. The Navy also asserts that only three subs—the USS Virginia, Texas, and North Carolina—have succumbed to hull decay. But Hooper brought the service's attention to its own public affairs photos, which show damage on the USS Hawaii as well. In response, the Navy said that the peeling tiles were part of normal wear and tear. Hooper says the photos of the Hawaii, which was peeling after a routine 10-day voyage, prove otherwise. "The program office is saying this happens over years. It doesn't."
Asked for comment, Northrop and General Dynamics—two of the military's largest vendors—both referred questions to the Navy.
Military analyst Hooper doubts the Navy can be trusted to face up to the seriousness of the problem. "If the Virginia-class program office cannot muster the cojones to even recognize a problem that is staring 'em in the face, how in the heck is the rest of Big Navy going to muster the will to get the problem solved?" he asks. "This lack of intestinal fortitude will, in a shooting war, get our sailors killed."

Adam Weinstein is Mother Jones' copy editor. For more of his stories, click here or follow him on Twitter.

Florida pastor says he's reconsidering plan to burn Korans 9SEP10

By Krissah Thompson and Tara Bahrampour
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, September 9, 2010; 9:36 PM


The pastor of a small Florida church who had planned to burn copies of the Koran on the ninth anniversary of the Sept. 11 said Thursday he would cancel the event - at least for now - hours after President Obama condemned it as a "recruitment bonanza for al-Qaeda" and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates phoned the minister as a worldwide fury grew.
At a chaotic news conference in Gainesville, the Rev. Terry Jones said he gave up his plans after reaching a deal to stop the construction of an Islamic center near Ground Zero.
But Jones appeared to have misunderstood or mischaracterized discussions, if there were any, about the center. Later, he said he was misled by an imam in Florida who "clearly, clearly lied to us" and he would "rethink our decision."
Muhammad Musri, a Florida imam who has been trying to get Jones to call off the event, said at the news conference that he had brokered a meeting with the project developers in New York, not an agreement to terminate their plans. A short time later, New York Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf and his partner in the project, Manhattan real estate developer Sharif el-Gamal, said in a statement that they had made no deal to stop their plans and had not, in fact, spoken to Jones or Musri.
"I am surprised by their announcement," Rauf's statement said. "We are not going to toy with our religion or any other. Nor are we going to barter. We are here to extend our hands to build peace and harmony."
The parties did, however, agree to meet Saturday in New York.
The disjointed exchanges are part of an odd saga that has vaulted an unknown pastor to an international stage.
Few outside Gainesville had heard of Jones or his Dove World Outreach Center in late July when he announced "International Burn the Koran Day" - and it largely remained that way until this week. As anger grew among Muslims worldwide and as U.S. leaders began to fear that images of Koran-burning in the United States would be a recruitment tool for Islamic extremists, Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan, warned in a statement that the move could endanger American troops abroad. Condemnations from across the political and religious spectrums poured in, including from the Vatican, conservative talk-show host Glenn Beck, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin and Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton. By the time Jones held his news conference, Obama had weighed in, the State Department had warned traveling Americans that they could be in danger and Gates had felt compelled to ask the pastor to cancel the event.
The president made his plea during an interview on ABC.
"If he's listening, I just hope he understands that what he's proposing to do is completely contrary to our values as Americans; that this country has been built on the notions of religious freedom and religious tolerance," Obama said of Jones in an interview Thursday on "Good Morning America." "We're already seeing protests against Americans just by the mere threat that he's making."
Demonstrations erupted in Afghanistan on Thursday as hundreds of enraged youths burned effigies, threw rocks and chanted, "Death to America."


Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari said in a statement on Thursday that the Koran burning would "inflame sentiments among Muslims throughout the world and cause irreparable damage to interfaith harmony and also to world peace."
After the event was called off, Husain Haqqani, Pakistan's ambassador to the United States said, "Pastor Jones's decision to cancel the event he had scheduled to burn copies of the Koran helps avoid an unnecessary inflammation of passions. . . . This is definitely a positive moment in showing America's tolerance and pluralism and should not go unappreciated in the Muslim world."
Senior Obama administration officials had hedged on how much attention to give Jones but thought they had to respond, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said. "The potential ripple effect here is very real," he said.
According to Jones, it was not the call from the Pentagon chief that convinced him but his perception of a deal with Rauf, the New York imam.
Jones had rebuffed appeals to cancel his event for days. But on Thursday, he said that he asked God for a sign and that he considered the movement of the New York Islamic center as a message from on high.
Jones and his small church have drawn controversy before. He attracted a little attention earlier this year when he posted a sign reading "No homo mayor" in front of the church protesting the openly gay man running for mayor, and last year Jones he put up a sign declaring "Islam is the Devil" and sent children from his church to their public schools wearing T-shirts with the same message. The children were sent home, the Gainesville Sun reported.
Jones looked bewildered when he was told that no agreement had been made about the mosque and he repeated what he thought he had been told.
"The American people do not as a whole want this mosque, and if they were willing to either cancel the mosque at the Ground Zero location or if they were willing to move it away from that location, we would consider that a sign from God," the pastor said.
The confusion seemed to stem from a meeting Jones had with Musri, head of the Islamic Society of Central Florida. Musri, who stood beside Jones as he emotionally agreed to call off the Koran burning, said he had promised Jones only a meeting with Rauf to discuss moving the planned community center and mosque in Lower Manhattan.
"There are no written agreements," Musri said. "I feel that the imam [Rauf] is a very wise imam, and I think that now knowing that over 70 percent of the American people do not want it there, I think he is reconsidering it."
Musri said in interviews that he had not spoken to Rauf but that he had set up a meeting with him through Rauf's wife, Daisy Khan.
In a CNN interview Wednesday night, Rauf indicated that he was open to moving the proposed Islamic center from its current location two blocks from Ground Zero.
"Nothing is off the table," he said. "But we are consulting. We are talking to various people about how to do this so that we negotiate the best and the safest option."
Rauf said that if he had known the proposed site would cause so much controversy, "we certainly never would have done this."
But he warned that moving the center could be construed as giving in to radicalism and could foment anti-American feelings abroad.
"If we move from that location, the story will be that the radicals have taken over the discourse," he said. "The headlines in the Muslim world will be that Islam is under attack."
Additional calls for Rauf and his partners to move the mosque came from developer Donald Trump, who made a splashy offer to buy the building for 25 percent more than its value. It was batted down as a publicity-seeking stunt given that Rauf's partners in the development have turned down larger offers, according to reports in New York newspapers.
In Gainesville, there was a sigh of relief that the Koran burning was called off. Safety officials had been bracing for the event and volunteers at the church had said they were expecting "several hundred people" there on Saturday, including national and international media.
Regardless, Ismail ibn Ali, president of Islam on Campus, a student group at the University of Florida at Gainesville, said he hoped Rauf would not strike a deal with Jones.
"If the deal is that they move the mosque in order to stop the Koran-burning, I'll be very disappointed," he said. "It ultimately ends up being a win for the Islamophobes in America."