On a conference call today facilitated by the conservative Israel Project on “Israel’s Diplomatic Efforts for Peace,” Israeli government spokesman Mark Regev restated Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s position that “normal life” — which is the new Israeli government word for “natural growth,” which was the previous new word for “relentlessly expanding settlements” — must be able to continue, despite Israel’s previous commitments under the road map to halt such growth.

I was not able to get a question, but if I did I probably would have asked about “normal life” in Silwan, a Palestinian neighborhood in Jerusalem where the Israeli authorities have been evicting families and demolishing homes as part of a larger plan to put areas of Jerusalem’s Old City under the control of settler groups. It seems to me that getting kicked out of your house and then having your house destroyed is not conducive to “normal life.”

CAP’s Brian Katulis recently returned from a trip to Israel and the Palestinian Territories. He published this photo essay and wrote this post about how the settlements are complicating a two-state solution.

In yet another attempt to pander to progressive soft spots, the anti-immigrant Federation For American Immigration Reform (FAIR) has released a report based on the mixed-up notion that, in order to reach U.S. greenhouse emission goals, the U.S. must curb immigration. FAIR complains that Congress is currently considering caps on energy consumption, but not on population growth. The organization recommends implementing a strict “population policy” that is tied to immigration.

The report itself is written by FAIR’s Director of Special Projects, Jack Martin, a former U.S. Consular Diplomat with no environmental, scientific, or academic credentials to speak of. In the report Martin uses anecdotes and inferences to connect rising U.S.energy consumption to immigration levels. Without a single citation other than three endnotes included in the back of the report, Martin spends nine pages arguing that energy consumption has little do with how energy is being used and everything to do with the immigrants who are using it. FAIR’s corresponding press release claims:

[The report] addresses America’s stifled immigration policy debate: it finds that America’s massive immigration-fueled population growth was the single largest contributing factor to the nation’s increased energy consumption and carbon emissions over the past 35 years. Even without a massive amnesty for illegal aliens supported by President Obama and congressional leaders, immigration will be the driving factor as U.S. population approaches the half billion mark by mid-century.

King’s argument also invokes xenophobic panic by referencing the fertility rates of Hispanic women. His whole thesis is ultimately based on the dim-witted idea that the entire energy problem would be resolved if immigrants go away, not taking into account that they will also be consuming energy in their home countries.

Aside from basing his findings on flawed logic, King has his facts wrong. When complaining about the unfairness associated with the stringent Kyoto Protocal standards, King claims that immigration is the main reason that the rate of population growth is so much higher in the U.S. compared to Europe and therefore curbing immigration is the only way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, according to the World Resources Institute, the U.S. is home to 23% fewer people than the European nations of the EU-15, yet still produces 70% more greenhouse gases.

Scapegoating immigrants is easy, actually solving our environmental problems is a lot more complicated. FAIR fails to recognize that energy consumption is driven by a host of factors totally unrelated to population size, such as societal dependence on polluting and non-renewable fossil fuels; utilization of energy-efficient technologies; and the development of mass transit systems that minimize individual automobile use. Along those lines, the McKinsey Global Institute offers a more viable solution to residential energy consumption levels: promoting policies that boost energy productivity — the level of output achieved from the energy consumed — such as building shells, compact fluorescent lighting, and high-efficiency water heating.

FAIR isn’t the only group to blame immigrants for environmental problems — they join the ranks of hate and restrictionist groups like the American Immigration Control Foundation, the Social Contract Press, and the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), which last month released a report entitled “The Environmental Argument for Reducing Immigration to the United States.”

Earlier this week, former CIA operative and torture apologist Michael Scheuer appeared on Fox News, where he told Glenn Beck (who nodded in agreement), “The only chance we have” to repair our national security apparatus “is for Osama bin Laden to deploy and detonate a major weapon in the United States.” Yesterday, on Alan Colmes’ radio show, Scheuer made similar comments about the national security stance of the U.S., saying that he doesn’t believe that President Obama wants to protect the country “if it costs him votes”:

COLMES: You don’t think the President of the United States, Barack Obama, cares about protecting this country.

SCHEUER: No, I don’t. Because I don’t think he realizes what the world is like outside the United States. [...]

COLMES: You don’t think he wants to protect the country?

SCHEUER: I don’t think he can, sir. [...]

COLMES: He doesn’t want to protect the country?

SCHEUER: Not if it costs votes.

Listen here:

A number of progressive bloggers castigated Scheuer for his remarks on Beck’s show. The Washington Independent’s Spencer Ackerman, however, expressed disappointment in Scheuer’s comments and hoped that he was “being taken out of context,” citing his respect for Scheuer’s previous national security work. Unfortunately, it appears that Scheuer meant what he said.

Yesterday, the National Security Archive released declassified FBI reports detailing both the bureau’s interrogations and “casual conversations” with former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. According to the documents, Hussein told FBI agent George Piro (one of only a few agents who spoke Arabic) that he let the world believe he had weapons of mass destruction because he feared appearing weak to what he considered his country’s real threat, Iran:

Hussein’s fear of Iran, which he said he considered a greater threat than the United States, featured prominently in the discussion about weapons of mass destruction. … Hussein said he was convinced that Iran was trying to annex southern Iraq — which is largely Shiite. [...]

“The threat from Iran was the major factor as to why he did not allow the return of UN inspectors,” Piro wrote. “Hussein stated he was more concerned about Iran discovering Iraq’s weaknesses and vulnerabilities than the repercussions of the United States for his refusal to allow UN inspectors back into Iraq.”

Saddam “felt so vulnerable to the perceived threat from ‘fanatic’ leaders in Tehran that he would have been prepared to seek a ‘security agreement with the United States to protect [Iraq] from threats in the region.’” If that could not happen, only then, he said, would Iraq reconstitute its WMD programs.

Piro revealed to CBS’s 60 Minutes last year that Saddam “didn’t want to associate” with Osama bin Laden and viewed him “as a threat to him and his regime.” The new documents expound on Saddam’s distrust of Al Qaeda and bin Laden, whom he called “a zealot”:

Hussein replied that throughout history there had been conflicts between believers of Islam and political leaders. He said that “he was a believer in God but was not a zealot…that religion and government should not mix.” Hussein said that he had never met bin Laden and that the two of them “did not have the same belief or vision.”

When Piro noted that there were reasons why Hussein and al-Qaeda should have cooperated — they had the same enemies in the United States and Saudi Arabia — Hussein replied that the United States was not Iraq’s enemy, and that he simply opposed its policies.

President Bush, Vice President Cheney and numerous members of the Bush administration repeatedly cited the (now debunked) threat from Iraq’s supposed WMD program and Saddam Hussein’s alleged links to Al-Qaeda as the main justifications for launching the invasion of Iraq more than six years ago. The U.S. could end up spending trillions of dollars in Iraq and today, 130,000 U.S. troops remain there, 4,321 have died (4,639 total from coalition forces), and more than 30,000 have been wounded. Over 100,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the invasion while millions have been displaced.