Iranian Alert -- March 23, 2004 [EST]-- IRAN LIVE THREAD -- Americans for Regime Change in Iran

The US media almost entirely ignores news regarding the Islamic Republic of Iran. As Tony Snow of the Fox News Network has put it, “this is probably the most under-reported news story of the year.” But most American’s are unaware that the Islamic Republic of Iran is NOT supported by the masses of Iranians today. Modern Iranians are among the most pro-American in the Middle East.

There is a popular revolt against the Iranian regime brewing in Iran today. I began these daily threads June 10th 2003. On that date Iranians once again began taking to the streets to express their desire for a regime change. Today in Iran, most want to replace the regime with a secular democracy.

The regime is working hard to keep the news about the protest movement in Iran from being reported. Unfortunately, the regime has successfully prohibited western news reporters from covering the demonstrations. The voices of discontent within Iran are sometime murdered, more often imprisoned. Still the people continue to take to the streets to demonstrate against the regime.

In support of this revolt, Iranians in America have been broadcasting news stories by satellite into Iran. This 21st century news link has greatly encouraged these protests. The regime has been attempting to jam the signals, and locate the satellite dishes. Still the people violate the law and listen to these broadcasts. Iranians also use the Internet and the regime attempts to block their access to news against the regime. In spite of this, many Iranians inside of Iran read these posts daily to keep informed of the events in their own country.

This daily thread contains nearly all of the English news reports on Iran. It is thorough. If you follow this thread you will witness, I believe, the transformation of a nation. This daily thread provides a central place where those interested in the events in Iran can find the best news and commentary. The news stories and commentary will from time to time include material from the regime itself. But if you read the post you will discover for yourself, the real story of what is occurring in Iran and its effects on the war on terror.

I am not of Iranian heritage. I am an American committed to supporting the efforts of those in Iran seeking to replace their government with a secular democracy. I am in contact with leaders of the Iranian community here in the United States and in Iran itself.

If you read the daily posts you will gain a better understanding of the US war on terrorism, the Middle East and why we need to support a change of regime in Iran. Feel free to ask your questions and post news stories you discover in the weeks to come.

If all goes well Iran will be free soon and I am convinced become a major ally in the war on terrorism. The regime will fall. Iran will be free. It is just a matter of time.

What to do About Pyongyang and Teheran

March 22, 2004
The Jerusalem Post
Bennett Ramberg

Once again Teheran has ducked Washington's efforts to hold it accountable for violating the nuclear nonproliferation treaty (NPT). Given the risk a nuclear armed Iran would pose to regional security, its feat – along with North Korea's continuing nuclear challenge – ought to prompt new strategies to reverse nuclear transgressors.

In a report released last month, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
concluded that Iran continued to hide enrichment and polonium – a radioactive substance which can trigger a nuclear blast – activities that could service a nuclear weapons program.

Despite the finding, the IAEA Board of Governors –over US objections – this month decided to give Teheran yet another opportunity to come clean.

In his attempt to encourage Iran's fidelity to the NPT, the Agency's director general, Mohammed ElBaradei, expressed "the hope this will be the last time any aspect of the program has not been declared to us."

However, the response of Hasan Rohani, Iran's representative, provides little confidence: "We have other research projects which we have not announced to the agency and do not think it is necessary to announce them to the agency."

Teheran's decision to delay the next round of IAEA inspections further demonstrates its defiance.

Unfortunately, despite resolutions "deploring" Iran's lack of cooperation, the IAEA is incapable of dealing with such challenges: Other than a bully pulpit, it has no enforcement mechanism. As a last resort, its Board of Governors can issue a resolution of non compliance and refer the matter to the United Nations Security Council.

Last year it did just that in the case of North Korea. The results were not reassuring. In February 2003 the agency reported its "inability to verify non-diversion of nuclear material that is subject to safeguards."

Hardly a surprise – the month before Pyongyang expelled IAEA inspectors and then announced its withdrawal from the NPT – the Security Council froze. It was unable even to come up with a resolution condemning Pyongyang. No doubt divisions over Iraq had an important impact. But Iraq's expulsion of inspectors in 1998 already demonstrated the council's impotence, a precedent that would haunt UN members attempting to bridle Washington's ardor for military action.

North Korea – a far better armed adversary located on the doorstep of its vulnerable kin to the south – posed a more difficult challenge. Frustrated by the United Nations, but bogged down in Iraq, the Bush administration took a different tact. It mobilized China, Japan, Russia and South Korea in a diplomatic offensive to woo Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear investment. To date, negotiations have generated no material progress and concern lingers that the North is using time to bolster its nuclear capacity.

THE NUCLEAR weapons ambitions of both Pyongyang and Teheran beg the question: how do we reverse nonproliferation violators?

Enforcing treaties in the anarchical world of international politics is an old problem. But in the current era it is all the more important given the risk that nuclear materials can migrate into the hands of terrorists.

The solution calls for new international standards that would promise nonproliferation treaty violators sure and swift consequences. Embodied in a new nonproliferation action template, enforcement would begin within two weeks of an IAEA declaration of noncompliance. Sanctions against the violator would become progressively more intense and mount quickly:

Weeks 1 to 2, international calls for compliance "or else."
Week 3, suspension of international commerce.
Week 5, ban on international travel.
Week 7, naval and air blockades to enforce all prohibitions.
Week 9, military action.

But there remains a practical problem: the enforcement mechanism. The Security Council would be the obvious candidate. It best represents the cross section of global interests. But as Iraq and North Korea cases demonstrate, the Council has the propensity to dither. Furthermore, the United Nations itself has no standing instrumentality for enforcement.

Another candidate would be the membership of Washington's Proliferation Security Initiative. The dozen or so nations already have assumed the mission to intercept nuclear contraband. However, the membership is not effectively organized to impose a template sanctions. Of course this could change.

NATO would be a third alternative. As a military alliance, it already maintains a comprehensive capacity to enforce the template. Finally, United States could remain the compliance guarantor of last resort.

At first blush, the template's proposed time table and sanctions may appear draconian. But this ignores the template's purpose: establishment of a credible standard of punishment that deters nations from violating their non proliferation vows.

In so doing, it promotes a practical measure that fills the nuclear nonproliferation action vacuum that exists today.

The writer served in the State Department's Bureau of Politico-Military Affairs in the first Bush administration. Dr. Ramberg is currently authoring a book entitled Booby-Trapped: Can We Prevent a Nuclear 9/11?.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1079929450835

The World of Megaterrorism

March 19, 2004
The Wall Street Journal
André Glucksmann

PARIS -- Read carefully the statement that claimed responsibility for the Madrid massacres. Al Qaeda puts everyone, from the Crusaders to the Jews, all countries who sent troops not just to Iraq but to Afghanistan as well, in their gun sights. In other words, all of Europe -- Berlin and Paris, no less than Rome, London or Warsaw. France merits special condemnation for its ban on the Islamic veil in public schools.

Mad is the European who thinks himself immune for having opposed Saddam Hussein's overthrow. No accommodation provides insurance against attack. No public building, no train platform, no sidewalk is spared by the Islamist butchers. "Death train," "death's black smoke," "the wind of death," the bleak metaphors fly over the borders in the name of al Qaeda. The bombs in Madrid, they say, are the "answers to the crimes you have committed worldwide...in Iraq and in Afghanistan."

In manipulating the Spanish election, terrorism proclaims its gospel and applies it in practice. The perfect timing of March 11 is the monstrous example. Little does it matter that the 201 dead and the 1500 wounded were working class people, most likely opposed to an intervention in Iraq -- as were some 90% of the Spanish. The "human material" has no value for the terrorists who prove the strength of their convictions and the power of their weapons with the murder of the disarmed, whoever they may be and whatever they may think, whether believers or not. It was an encore, as everyone said: On this March 11, 2004, Europe lived its own September 11, the horror of Manhattan all over again.

Except this time the assassins can proclaim they have won. It took them three days to sway popular opinion. The Popular Party of Jose María Aznar, the expected winner, got trounced. "Punished!" they said. But by whom? What's the point of political campaigns, meetings, reports, programs and debates if within a few hours, the bombing of packed train cars can reverse the result? This final landslide, that no polls had predicted, is entirely due to the Atocha station catastrophe and the terror it spread. How could the terrorists not assume that they are the decision-makers, and that terrorism is now stronger than democracy? If the Socialists brought to govern Spain keep their pledge (made before the massacre) to withdraw from Iraq, they will confirm the killers' innermost conviction: Crime pays -- and the greater the horror, the more efficiently.

"But of course not," object the wishful thinkers, Mr. Aznar lost because his alliance with George W. Bush was unpopular. Nonsense! The alliance was just as unpopular three days before the elections, but the Popular Party was still favored then, and his opponents did not hope to win back many "antiwar votes." Without the bombs, without the bloodbath, the shouts of "Aznar assassin" would have sounded ludicrous. But Madrid's ground zero panicked the minds and awoke the demagogues, ready to invert responsibility. Were there not already weak minds -- Lenin's "useful idiots" -- who eagerly claimed that Mr. Bush and the CIA had planned the fall of the Twin Towers?

With hundreds of dead, more than a thousand wounded and the threat of another imminent terrorist attack, Mr. Aznar did not see, know and understand everything within 24 hours. Should a head of government be blamed for not being God? Should he be imagined plotting a Machiavellian scheme to cheat his people without cheating himself, as some kind of extra-lucid devil pulling the strings of a conspiracy as huge as it would be absurd? Stop this delirium.

One rule, one and only one firm rule must impose itself on Europe after this tragedy. In the event of another electoral hijacking, voting must be immediately postponed. The governed and the governing must both be given the time to recover their right minds. They must be able to assess and address the horror, its antecedents and its consequences; cool down before undertaking an informed vote. Let a people abruptly thrown in the abysses of hell maintain the suspense for a fortnight or two, so that it can exercise its sovereign power with sovereignty!

Right at the moment, fearing to confront the true culprit, a virtual culprit was caught in Spain. Mr. Aznar replaced Osama bin Laden. A magic trick -- an exercise in exorcism. With no grip on the true mastermind, some voters find imaginary guilt and decide to symbolically kill through the ballots their own head of government. Illusionists arise to face the blackmailers, a consoling witchcraft dreams of itself as a worldwide antiterrorist operation. In front of the candles lighted for the victims, banners cursed the demons: In small case the Basque terrorists "ETA," then "bin Laden," in bigger letters "Bush," while the huge letters spelled "Aznar." The world is upside down.

"Not in the least," object the sincere or the false naïfs: The conservative government destroyed itself by hiding the truth and pointing to ETA instead of al Qaeda. What a miserable alibi. As soon as the news broke, every single Spaniard -- backed by 20 years of bloody memories -- including the Socialist winner Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, and even a majority of Basques, were inclined to follow the ETA trail. Within 48 hours, the police, the intelligence services, the press and the ministers rectified their initial assumptions. As they were going to the ballot, the voters had heard of everything that was known, and Spanish democracy and its institutions had worked.

But some of the protesters were still waving around the lie of a "state lie;" and numerous voters, perfectly well informed, changed their minds and chose to bow down without regrets to the blackmail of their fellow citizens' assassins. A minute of silence, followed by a night of rejoicing for the electoral winners. What a short memory. Al Qaeda -- oh sorry! "the Arab resistance," to use the words of the spokesman of Batasouna/ETA -- has waged its elections campaign with corpses, and the ballot box has granted its diktat. Whether we like it or not: "Welcome to the world of megaterrorism!"

Time has come for decisions. Either Europe unifies to resist the engineers of the apocalypse, following Tony Blair. Or it poses as an opponent of the United States, following the pseudo-"camp of peace" led by Jacques Chirac, Vladimir Putin and the hesitating Gerhard Schroeder. The "viva la muerte" chanted by the Islamist legions vindicates Tony Blair. But the terror they spread, petrifying European citizens, threatens to lead to resignation after resignation.

Rome, Paris, Athens, Warsaw, Berlin...? Don't ask who's next! "Never ask for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee." Hemingway the anti-Francoist was quoting John Donne, an 18th century poet. Bin Laden's mercenaries take their inspiration from the Spanish fascist Millán Astray: "You want life, we want death." Will Mr. Zapatero find the voice of Miguel de Unamuno, the independent thinker of Salamanca who denounced the fascist general's "cry of necrophilia," and stand up to today's nihilist killers? It is never too late to prevent a disaster.

Mr. Glucksmann is the author, most recently, of "Ouest Contre Ouest" (West Against West), published in Paris last year by Plon.

http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB107964901046859583-search,00.html?collection=autowire%2F30day&vql_string=Glucksmann%3Cin%3E%28article%2Dbody%29

Aid Agencies Scramble to Deal with Influx of Refugees from Iran

March 23, 2004
IRIN
Electronic Iraq

BAGHDAD -- Aid agencies and US administrators are scrambling to deal with the number of Iraqi refugees who have returned from Iran in the past few months. Up to 1,500 are returning on buses every week, and this could double in coming weeks, Pascal Marlinge, director of the Italian NGO Intersos in Iraq, told IRIN in Baghdad. The figures are based on registrations at a refugee transit centre set up in the southern city of Basra, Marlinge said.

According to estimates from the US-led authorities governing Iraq, up to 50,000 people may have returned over the past year, but accurate figures are hard to establish.

Since 19 November 2003, 19 convoys of Iraqi refugees, totalling 5,227 people, have returned to Iraq voluntarily with assistance from the office for the UN Commissioner on Human Rights (UNHCR), Enda Savage, the agency's regional repatriation coordinator, told IRIN from Jordan. However, the UNHCR could not assess the number of spontaneous returns, he said.

Iran hosts the largest number of Iraqi refugees in the world at around 202,000, according to the UNHCR. Iraqis have fled to Iran since the mid-1970s, escaping war and persecution, with many arriving following the 1991 Gulf war.

Many were also forced out in the past 10 years when the former regime of Saddam Hussein drained marshlands in the south, taking away the livelihoods of thousands of people. In some places, people are trying to re-flood the region, a complicated process which often displaces other people who have built homes in places once covered by water.

Refugees now want to return to reclaim their land, Marlinge said. This is coupled with pressure from within Iran itself, he added, with the government seemingly encouraging Iraqis to leave. Although recognising that it's hard for aid groups to tell exactly what's going on in Iran, since most are not allowed to work there, Marlinge said Iran was also struggling to take care of other refugees from Afghanistan.

Iran has the world's largest refugee population, with over two million Afghans living in the country.

Marlinge was optimistic that conditions had improved sufficiently in Iraq for the refugees to return. "We will see migration, so we must be ready to welcome them," he said. "We have developed a lot of infrastructure to help them."

When refugees come to the transit centre, they get food and sign up for a ration card to be eligible to receive more food in the future, as well as receiving mine awareness training, Marlinge said.

"Last year, there was chaos in Iraq. Now there is rebuilding in education and health care systems," he said. "The conditions for return are getting easier and they see there is more support for them."

However, the UNHCR is less convinced. Citing security concerns and a lack of infrastructure to cope with returnees, the organisation has appealed to governments to ban forced repatriations. Nor is it promoting voluntary returns. It is, however, facilitating - in close coordination with host governments and upon clearance by Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) - the return of individuals who want to go back to Iraq voluntarily despite current conditions.

Looking at those who have made the journey back spontaneously it is hard to know where many end up once they arrive. Many homes were destroyed by the former regime or are now occupied by other families.

Some communities are bursting at the seams with recent arrivals who appear to be staying with relatives and neighbours, said Jose Fernandez, a programme manager at International Medical Corps (IMC), a US-based NGO. Hundreds of such people seem to be coming back into the country through informal border crossing points, he said.

In one village, for example, the population has grown from an estimated 2,500 to more than 40,000, Fernandez said. In another rural area, a population of 500 people has grown to 3,000. These estimates are based on each extended family returning having up to 11 people, he said.

However, US administrators announced over the weekend that they will close 16 of 19 legal border crossing points between Iraq and Iran in an attempt to stem terrorism, which could affect the flow of returnees. Fernandez said many things are currently being smuggled across remote border crossing points, including drugs and weapons.

IRIN-Asia, Tel: +92-51-2211451, Fax: +92-51-2292918, Email: IrinAsia@irin.org.pk.

http://electroniciraq.net/news/1416.shtml

IAEA Chief Urges Dialogue to Make Mideast Free Of WMDs

March 23, 2004
Dow Jones Newswires
The Associated Press

CAIRO -- The head of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency on Tuesday called for an urgent dialogue among Middle Eastern countries - including Israel - to make their region free of weapons of mass destruction.

Mohammed ElBaradei, director of the International Atomic Energy Agency, spoke to reporters on his arrival in Cairo, where he will meet Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak on Wednesday.

"There are a lot of voices in the international community calling for creating a region free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East so that the region enjoys security and stability," ElBaradei told reporters on his arrival in Cairo.

He said he had already called for a dialogue to build regional security parallel with the peace process.

"There must be a dialogue on how to envision the region, including Israel, free of weapons of mass destruction and with limits on conventional weapons, especially as the region has seen war for more than 50 years. This strategic dialogue should start now before tomorrow," ElBaradei said.

The U.N. General Assembly has already adopted a "nuclear-free Mideast" resolution.

Israel is believed to be the only Middle Eastern country with nuclear weapons, though it has never confirmed or denied this.

Iran , which admitted it was enriching uranium but denied having a weapons program, recently agreed to surprise U.N. inspections of its atomic facilities. Libya also recently agreed to dismantle its long-secret nuclear and other terror weapons programs under international supervision.

ElBaradei said his talks Wednesday with Mubarak and Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher would include regional security issues and the nuclear dossier of both Iran and Libya.

He said he would visit Iran early next month for "deep and comprehensive" talks and to urge more cooperation with the IAEA.

ElBaradei said Iran suspended uranium enrichment processing as a confidence-building step, but, "There are a lot of needed steps to be adopted by Iran before the IAEA concludes its work there."

He didn't elaborate. He said with Iran 's continued constructive cooperation and full transparency, the IAEA will be able to reach positive conclusions concerning Iran 's nuclear program.

On Libya, ElBaradei said that after a few months the IAEA would have "fully examined" Libya's former nuclear program.

http://online.wsj.com/public/us

Osama & Friends

March 23, 2004
National Review Online
Barbara Lerner

Al Qaeda isn't the only terrorist group we're up against.

The real al Qaeda — the al Qaeda that attacked us on September 11, the al Qaeda we are hunting in Pakistan and Afghanistan right now — is a dangerous enemy, but it's not the only al Qaeda. There's another, equally dangerous al Qaeda: the mythical, ten-foot-tall al Qaeda we create when we give the group credit for every major terrorist attack, everywhere in the world, heedless of evidence that, in many cases, points elsewhere. The press does that, routinely. In the collective media mind, when it comes to terrorism, if it's international, it must be al Qaeda, and if it's al Qaeda, then the reflex assumption is that local and/or regional terrorist groups can't be involved. They're off the hook, along with the terror-sponsoring states that are currently attacking us by proxy.

The reality we face is nothing like this one-dimensional caricature. In the terror world of the 21st century, al Qaeda is not the only terrorist entity that threatens us; neither is it the only terror group with an international reach. There are at least a half dozen others in the Middle East alone, and it's a great mistake to let them all hide behind the slogan "al Qaeda did it." Al Qaeda didn't create these other terrorist groups and they won't just vanish when we wipe al Qaeda out. The Salafists and the Armed Islamic Group that slaughtered upwards of 100,000 civilians in Algeria, then spread to Morocco and on to Spain will still be here, threatening the West. The Muslim Brotherhood that arose in Egypt, assassinated Anwar Sadat, spread to Jordan, Syria, and beyond, and sprouted dozens of violent offshoots in as many lands preceded al Qaeda, and bids fair to survive it. Hezbollah, the terrorist proxy Iran and Syria control, will still be here, still welcoming foreign terrorists from all over the world into Lebanon, funneling them into Iraq, and joining with them in attacks against us and the Iraqi people. Of course we need to get al Qaeda, and we will, but we need to recognize and respond effectively to the other threats that face us too.

To do that, we need to be clear about the fact that the conventional wisdom of striped-pants style "experts" is the opposite of the truth. These "experts" have been telling us for years that Sunni terrorists will never collude with Shiite terrorists, let alone with secular terrorist groups like ETA, the IRA, and the PA. Don't believe them. In the terror world of the 21st century, all these groups not only can but routinely do cooperate with one another — with al Qaeda and its offshoots, Jamat al Islamiya and Ansar al Islam, and on occasion with terrorists from Chechnya, the Caucasus, and beyond. They find it easy to cooperate when it suits their purposes, because they all subscribe to one overriding article of faith: The enemy of my enemy is my friend, at least for the moment.

Because we don't grasp this, we make al Qaeda look mightier and more fearsome than it is, and fail to understand or take effective action against other terrorist groups and states that pose real threats to us and to our allies. There are many examples of this. Let me offer three specific ones below, then conclude by spelling out some of the more general ways in which these myths and misperceptions help our enemies, hurt us, and retard our progress in the war on terrorism.

Let's look first at the March 11 attack on Spain's morning rush-hour trains, and the way the press reported it. Evidence that Islamic terrorists from abroad were involved in the multiple, simultaneous train bombings in Madrid is persuasive, but the conclusion the press and the Spanish Socialist party instantly leapt to — that al Qaeda alone was responsible — is not. Neither is the charge that the now-defeated Spanish government lied when, in the immediate aftermath of the attack, it focused suspicion on ETA, the violent Basque separatist group that tumbles down both sides of the Pyrennees, threatening France as well as Spain. In fact, Jose Maria Aznar's government had good reason to look first to ETA, because it had evidence that ETA had been trying to attack Spanish trains in the months before March 11, and the fact that foreign terrorists were involved in that attack is no proof that ETA wasn't. Which foreign terrorists? Al Qaeda is certainly one possibility. We know there is an active al Qaeda cell in Spain, but it's not as if it has the field all to itself. As real experts like David McCormack and Colleen Gilbert of Frank Gaffney's Center for Security Policy pointed out in the Jerusalem Post on March 15, the Armed Islamic Group, the Salafist Group for Call and Combat, and members of the Syrian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood are also active on Spanish soil. These groups have cooperated with ETA in the past and with al Qaeda too, and the fact that so many of the suspects arrested thus far are from Spain's near neighbor, Morocco, makes Salafist and/or Armed Islamist Group involvement look especially likely. Surprise, surprise, there is also a chest-thumping letter, claiming all the credit for al Qaeda one more time, but another real expert, MEMRI's master translator, Yigal Carmon, says the style it is written in differs from bin Laden's style in significant ways.

Lisa Myers of NBC News provides us with our second example. In an otherwise trenchant March 16 article on the failure of the Clinton administration to go after Osama bin Laden when it could and should have, Myers was not content to credit bin Laden with the horrific second attack on the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. She asserts that he was also responsible for the first attack on the Trade Towers on February 26, 1993 — and thus contributes to the myth of an all-powerful, omnipresent al Qaeda. But this is an extremely dubious claim. The evidence here is not as clear as it should be, because the Clinton administration refused to recognize that attack for what it was — an act of war — and handled it strictly as a law enforcement matter, cutting the CIA and the DIA out of the investigation. As a result, we got a criminal conviction against the terrorist mastermind behind the attack — a man we call "Ramzi Yousef" — without coming any closer than we were before the trial to any real understanding of who this mysterious frequent flyer with multiple names and passports really is. To our official "experts," it's a mystery still. Unofficially, the available evidence — evidence meticulously assembled and expertly analyzed by Laurie Mylroie — indicates that 'Ramzi Passports' was an Iraqi intelligence agent. Recognizing this likelihood interferes with the Left's insistence that Iraq was not a terrorist threat to us until we toppled Saddam Hussein. In fact, it appears Iraq has been a terrorist threat for some time.

Example three brings us to our current troubles in Iraq. The first time I wrote about foreign terrorists invading Iraq with the help of hostile border states like Iran and Syria, State Department spokesmen were still insisting that local Baathist remnants were the only significant threat in Iraq. Subsequent developments have made it increasingly clear that many of the most devastating attacks on our forces, our allies, and the Iraqi people were and are the work of foreign terrorists — but, once again, the automatic assumption has been that if they're foreign, they must be al Qaeda. This is a non-sequitor. Al Qaeda is active in Iraq, but Hezbollah is too and is as least as dangerous because it is a proxy for Iran and Syria, the two states with the most to fear from a free Iraq. The ruling despots in both of those countries are already under threat from their own people: Students and workers have been mounting mass protests all over Iran; fed-up Kurds are fighting back in the Syrian north; and a few brave Arabs and Christians are trying to raise their voices in the rest of Syria and in occupied Lebanon too. Syria's Baathist Alawite tyrants and Iran's hated Khomeini-style mullahs all know in their quaking bones that if we succeed in creating a free Iraq on their very doorstep, their grip on their increasingly restive people will ultimately fail, and they are desperate to prevent that. The bottom line here, as I argued in October, is that we're not likely to succeed in stabilizing Iraq until we face up to the role that Iran, Syria, and Hezbollah are playing, and force them to stop training foreign terrorists and funneling them into Iraq.

In all three cases described above and others besides, al Qaeda is happy to take sole credit for attacks in which it is only one of a number of terrorist actors, as well as for those in which it had no role at all. It makes al Qaeda look supernaturally powerful, making it easier to recruit new jihadis and to intimidate weak-willed governments, and it has no downside, because al Qaeda no longer has an address. Since we successfully drove them from power in Afghanistan, they have only a warren of widely dispersed, hard-to-find holes to hide in, mostly in the wild mountains between Afghanistan and Pakistan, in a few failed African states, and in Iran. Occasional jealousies aside, other terror groups and states are generally happy to see al Qaeda get all the credit, because they do have obvious local addresses and hence greater reason to fear our retaliation. Blaming everything on al Qaeda gives them what is, in effect, a free pass, letting them operate with impunity, hiding in plain sight.

The overall bottom line here is this: Of course we need to kill or capture bin Laden — and we will, sooner or later — but to win the war on terror we need to do much more. We need to demythologize al Qaeda, and then focus clearly and realistically on each of the remaining terror groups and terror states that threaten us. We need to go on the offensive against them, too, mounting an aggressive, unrelenting campaign aimed at bringing them to their knees and empowering native freedom fighters already locked in unequal combat with them. I believe George W. Bush understands that, but there's no denying the fact that politically it's a very tough sell. It's hard enough to unify the wobbly West behind the necessity to fight together against obvious enemies like al Qaeda; it's doubly daunting to garner support, at home and abroad, for the broader war we need to fight. But it must be done. Unless and until we do garner such support, the odds of achieving stability in Iraq and a decisive victory in the overall war on terror are just not good enough.

Despite the difficulty, and the many ways in which the election campaign heightens it, President Bush is moving in the right direction. He's planning to turn up the sanctions screws on Syria this week, and that's a good thing, but it would be even better if he would speak out on Iran, too, expressing our sympathy for the Iranian people's struggle for democracy and condemning the brutal measures the mullahs are using to repress them. Is it too risky to do that, prior to the election? Maybe, if you think the election can be won on the defensive. My guess is that, like the war on terror, it can only be won on the offensive. And an offense that rallies behind people who are already fighting for freedom makes more sense than pressing for democracy in places like Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan where there is, as yet, no real constituency for it.

-- Barbara Lerner is a freelance writer in Chicago.

http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/lerner200403230838.asp

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Hey everyone - I'm back after being banned for a week.. What's the word? Good to be back - hopefully these mods won't get all trigger happy and ban those of us from ActivistChat.com again.. it's starting to get pretty annoying.. -United