In 2007, Washington’s Mid East hawks went berserk over a National Intelligence Estimate (N.I.E.) which asserted that, in the absence of any proof otherwise, Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program. The N.I.E., a consensus opinion of the U.S. intelligence community, took much of the wind out of the sails of the remaining hawks in the Bush administration and outside pundits who have long been pushing ever more aggressive actions against Iran.

In investigative reporter Seymour Hersh’s latest New Yorker piece, subtitled “How Real is the Nuclear Threat”, the only bombshell, considering the over-heated Washington discourse on Iran, seems to be that the intelligence community’s assessment has changed very little over the past four years. Congress saw the 2011 N.I.E. in February, and a public summary is unlikely to emerge, so public opinion relies on journalistic appraisals and Congressional statements to decipher what the report says. Hersh provides the best reported account yet about how 2007′s account of Iranian activity seems to have shifted very litte:

A government consultant who has read the highly classified 2011 N.I.E. update depicted the report as reinforcing the essential conclusion of the 2007 paper: Iran halted weaponization in 2003. “There’s more evidence to support that assessment,” the consultant told me.

Hersh’s piece is oddly timed, coming on the heels of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s (IAEA) revelation last week that Iran had worked toward a technical goal likely intended for an atomic warhead. But except for that one piece of evidence, the Iranian nuclear-weapon trail is surprisingly cold.

However, Hersh does shed some light on granular details of just how deep the U.S. intelligence apparatus has burrowed into Iranian territory:

The N.I.E. makes it clear that U.S. intelligence has been unable to find decisive evidence that Iran has been moving enriched uranium to an underground weapon-making center. In the past six years, soldiers from the Joint Operations Force, working with Iranian intelligence assets, put in place cutting-edge surveillance techniques, according to two former intelligence sources. Street signs were surreptitiously removed in heavily populated areas of Tehran — say, near a university supsected of conducting nuclear enrichment — and replaced with similar-looking signs implanted with radiation sensors. American operatives, working undercover, also removed bricks froma  building or two in central Tehran that they thought housed nulear-enrichment activities and replaced them with bricks embedded with radiation-monitoring devices.

High-powered sensors disguised as stones were spread randomly along roadways in a mountainous area where a suspected underground weapon site was under construction. The stones were capable of transmitting electronic data on the weight of vehicles going in and out of the site; a truck going in light and coming out heavy could be hauling dirt — a crucial sign of excavation work. There is also constant satellite coverage of major suspect areas in Iran, and some American analysts were assigned the difficult task of examining footage in the hope for finding air vents — signs perhaps, of an underground facility in lightly populated areas.

All that James-Bond-meets-Sky-Mall-hiding-things-in-fake-stones-and-bricks and still — nothing!

The Hersh piece pits most of the world’s reliable intelligence agencies and diplomatic corps against  Israel, the U.S. Congress, and sometimes the administration. Setting aside the political alarmism and of the latter set, one might be tempted to draw this very salient conclusion from Hersh’s report: the doomsday is not upon us, and Iran has not yet chosen to make a weapon. Indeed, former intelligence analyst Paul Pillar, who has himself worked on N.I.E.s, has made this point many times. Speaking last fall, he told the Arms Control Association:

[A]s to what we can or cannot expect from the intelligence community, we’re talking about Iranian decisions, I think, that have yet to be made. Or so far as we know they have yet to be made.  And in this case, the decisions, whether to proceed to a weapons capability or how close to come to it, will depend in large part, among other things, on what the United States does vis-à-vis Iran.  And again, these are all questions about which we cannot expect answers from the intelligence community, which among other things is not charged with assessing the future direction of U.S. policy.

Many analysts seem sure that Iran is bent on taking its nuclear program to the next step, but with the Iranian final decision seemingly unmade, it’s difficult to argue against a program of pressure and coercion that might usher Iran toward making the choice that the U.S. and its allies want — as opposed to a decision that could, in diplomatic speak, be considered “unhelpful”. But those who push a military strike or an explicit objective of regime change against Iran — namely Israeli and Congressional hawks and, of course, neoconservative pundits — seem to be pushing Iran precisely toward making “unhelpful” decisions, squandering what time is left before choices are made.

One of the age-old myths about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is that peace is impossible to achieve because one or both of the parties don’t actually want peace. Among the right-wing in the United States, this myth is often constructed as saying that the Arab world simply will not accept the existence of Israel and collectively wants to destroy it.

In a speech at a Jewish political function recorded for YouTube Sunday night, Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) repeated this myth. Schumer told the audience that the reason there isn’t Mideast peace is because most Palestinians and Arabs don’t even think Israel should exist:

SCHUMER: The reason there is no peace in the Middle East is very simple. It’s because the majority of Palestinians and the majority of Arabs don’t believe there should be an Israel. It’s that simple. Anyone who tries to figure out a way to solve this conflict without realizing that truth will never get anywhere.

Watch it:

Schumer’s claim is not backed up by the facts. Polling data shows that both Palestinians and the Arab world are ready for peace and recognition of Israel, given a just resolution of the conflict:

POLLING OF PALESTINIANS: Polling conducted in 2009 indicated that 74 percent of Palestinians support a two-state solution based around the contours of the international consensus. Polling conducted in 2010 found that 71 percent support peace negotiations with Israel and that a majority of Palestinians oppose rocket attacks on the country. Last month, the top Palestinian diplomat at the UN asked that the international community support a solution based on the pre-1967 borders and mutually agreed land swaps. Additionally a 2010 poll from the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah found that a plurality of Palestinians are in favor of recognizing Israel specifically as a Jewish state.

POLLING OF ARABS: Polling from the University of Maryland and the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center in 2010 found that 86 percent of Arabs were “prepared for peace if Israel is willing to return all 1967 territories including East Jerusalem.” 85 percent of respondents endorsed a two-state solution in the same poll. The official position of the Arab League as of 2007 offers Israel recognition in return for a just negotiation of the conflict based on 1967 lines.

While there are likely to be many obstacles on the way to Middle East peace, public opinion is not one of them. Both the Israeli and Arab publics are ready for a serious solution to the conflict, and it is up to politicians to side with them and exert the pressure necessary for a just resolution of the conflict, not repeat unfounded myths. (HT: gifterphotos YouTube account)

Fareed Zakaria interviewed Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal on his CNN show last weekend and wondered what Saudi Arabia, whom Zakaria referred to as “the central banker of oil,” could do about the rising price of a barrel of oil. “If you don’t have increased demand, if you don’t have reduced supply, why did the price go up 30 — 40 percent?” Zakaria asked. While bin Talal blamed rising oil prices on “fear” and “speculation,” the Saudi Prince made a surprising admission:

BIN TALAL: The stiff position of Saudi Arabia, we want the price to be between $70 and $80. Not only to help the West, but also to help ourselves. We don’t want the West to go and find alternatives, because, clearly, the higher the price oil goes, the more you have incentive to go and find alternatives. So, really, our interest coincides with American interest, to have the price for around $70, $80 which is a price good for consumers and producers.

Watch it:

New York Times columnist Tom Friedman has been talking about this concept for a while, arguing that a gasoline tax “would trigger a shift in buying and investment” in clean energy here in the U.S. — a move that would provide a foundation for a reinvigorated economy and reduce Americans’ dependence on oil, particularly from foreign sources.

But despite the fact that little is being done about it legislatively, the general consensus is that America’s dependence on oil also harms U.S. national security. “Bringing down consumption of imported oil is very much in the interest of national security,” noted retired Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton last month. And indeed, even the U.S. military is acknowledging this reality and taking action:

Even as Congress has struggled unsuccessfully to pass an energy bill and many states have put renewable energy on hold because of the recession, the military this year has pushed rapidly forward. After a decade of waging wars in remote corners of the globe where fuel is not readily available, senior commanders have come to see overdependence on fossil fuel as a big liability, and renewable technologies — which have become more reliable and less expensive over the past few years — as providing a potential answer. These new types of renewable energy now account for only a small percentage of the power used by the armed forces, but military leaders plan to rapidly expand their use over the next decade.

“There are a lot of profound reasons for doing this, but for us at the core it’s practical,” said Ray Mabus, the Navy secretary and a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

Yet the Saudis have an obvious interest in keeping America — and the West — addicted to its oil supply. And luckily for them, their mouthpiece in the U.S. gets generous air time to make that case. And seeing that bin Talal is also one of Fox News’s largest shareholders, perhaps he’s rubbing off on some of the network’s most high profile employees. “I love that smell of emissions,” Sarah Palin said this weekend.

Last week, Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX) and 44 GOP cosponsors introduced a bill offering support for an Israeli attack on Iran to “eliminate nuclear threats.” Israeli Strategic Affairs Minister Moshe Yaalon seems to have received the message, recently calling for the “civilized world” to use every tool, including a military strike, to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. “We strongly hope that the entire civilized world will come to realize what threat this regime is posing and take joint action to avert the nuclear threat posed by Iran, even if it would be necessary to conduct a pre-emptive strike,” Yaalon told Interfax.

 

Perhaps Yaalon’s extreme views line up with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but Israel’s security elite reportedly believe this line of thinking is over the top. The Forward’s J.J. Goldberg, in a column earlier this month, looked at the eighteen former heads of Israel’s main security services and found that those like Yaalon who continue to support Netanyahu’s hard-line policies are in the minority. Goldberg wrote:

There are 18 living ex-chiefs: seven Mossad, six IDF and five Shin Bet. No fewer than eight of them are actively working against Netanyahu in one way or another. Another four have made their alarm publicly clear, though they aren’t aggressively campaigning right now. That’s 12, if you’re keeping score. Two of them have openly called Netanyahu’s policies and leadership a threat to Israel’s future — just in the past few weeks.

Of the remaining six ex-chiefs, four retired years ago and keep their views to themselves. And two support Netanyahu. Both of them, ex-IDF chiefs Ehud Barak and Moshe Yaalon, are ministers in Netanyahu’s government.

Yaalon has faithfully toed the line for Israeli settlers and those who seek to promote a military conflict with Iran, firmly securing his right wing credentials in Netanyahu’s cabinet. In 2008, he told the Sydney Morning Herald, “We have to consider killing [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad].”

While Yaalon continues to support taking any and all means necessary to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, former Mossad Chief Meir Dagan has been outspoken about the dangers posed by an Israeli attack on Iran and, in remarks delivered in May, called the idea of attacking Iran’s nuclear facilities “one of the stupidest ideas I’ve ever heard.” He predicted that a military strike would have little chance of success.

Editor’s note: Welcome to the new ThinkProgress page dedicated solely to national security and foreign policy issues. We’ll start the day every morning with a round up of the day’s top news (see below) and from then on, we’ll provide breaking news and analysis on areas ranging from the Middle East, Afghanistan and Pakistan, to general foreign policy debates taking place on the Hill, in the White House or in the media. So be sure to put us your bookmarks or RSS feeds and follow us on Twitter: @TP_Security. Enjoy!

President Obama nominated Army Gen. Martin E. Dempsey as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and promoted Gen. Ray Odierno to replace him as Army chief of staff.

The torture and death of a 13-year-old Syrian boy, Hamza Ali al-Khateeb, “has rapidly emerged as the new symbol of the protest movement in Syria.”

A new International Atomic Energy Agency report on Iran’s nuclear program describes a “possible military dimension.” The report lists concerns about “past or current” nuclear activities which have gone unreported.

Al-Jazeera footage appears to show Western special forces in Libya talking with rebels in Dafniya, west of Misrata. Other reports have emerged of British SAS soldiers acting as spotters for NATO planes.

The general in charge of British soldiers in Afghanistan warned that a drawdown of troop levels in Afghanistan could reverse the gains made by last year’s US “surge.”

Two unnamed U.S. officials and a “diplomat from an allied nation” told the Washington Post that Iran has stepped up its direct involvement in suppressing a revolt in Syria.

More than a 100 military officers, including five generals, have reportedly defected from Muammar Qaddafi, saying they could not abide by Gaddafi’s decision to aggressively target Libyan civilians in the country’s civil war.

Heavy fighting resumed today in Yemen’s capital between government troops and followers of the country’s most powerful tribal leader, ending a brief cease-fire and again raising the prospect that Yemen’s political crisis could veer into civil war.

Yesterday, presidential candidate and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) praised the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold a law passed by Arizona in 2007 that allows the state to either suspend or revoke the business licenses of state employers who knowingly or intentionally employ undocumented immigrants. “I applaud the United States Supreme Court in upholding Arizona’s right to do what the Federal government has failed to do and confront the problem of illegal immigration,” Pawlenty said. Curiously, Pawlenty also decided to go after Obama for breaking a campaign promise he made to address immigration:

President Obama broke his promise to address illegal immigration, leaving states and businesses in an untenable situation. As governor, I took aggressive steps towards better enforcement of illegal immigration, but ultimately we need a President who will be serious about fixing America’s immigration system.

Yet, perhaps Pawlenty forgot the specifics of Obama’s promise. In speech before the League of United Latin American Citizens in 2008, Obama pledged to make immigration “a top priority in my first year as President – not only because we have an obligation to secure our borders and get control of who comes in and out of our country…but because we have to finally bring undocumented immigrants out of the shadows.” He told Univision anchor Jorge Ramos that he would reintroduce comprehensive immigration reform that puts undocumented immigrants on a path to legalization and creates a workable legal immigration system.

Clearly, that never happened, and a handful of Democratic lawmakers and immigration advocates are seeking to hold Obama accountable to his promises in an effort to alleviate some of the suffering in immigrant communities. Yet, for Pawlenty to start calling Obama out for failing to push through immigration reform without also holding his own party responsible comes off as pure political pandering.

Let’s revisit some of the reasons why immigration reform has failed to be introduced over the past three years. Obama always made clear that immigration reform stood in a line with health care reform, energy legislation, and financial regulatory changes and that at least a few Republicans are needed to pass a bill. Republicans responded by dragging out and attempting to block almost every single piece of legislation that Democrats put before them. After an unnecessarily long and nasty health care debate in 2009, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) — the only Republican planning on co-sponsoring an immigration bill — pulled out, saying the “well has been poisoned.” Bipartisanship on immigration fizzled, and Republicans in Congress shifted their focus to things like ramping up deportations and overturning the 14th amendment to deny the American-born children of undocumented immigrants citizenship.

It’s unclear how Pawlenty would have handled all of this differently. He has avoided articulating any firm stance on immigration, other than stating the obvious: The immigration system “we currently have is broken” and that “the system needs to be legal and reasonable and orderly and that is not what we have now.”

His party’s platform on the issue though is pretty clear. The GOP’s Pledge to America makes no mention of immigration reform. Instead, it promises to secure the border, block the DREAM Act, and endorse Arizona’s approach to illegal immigration.

In a remarkable shift, neoconservative columnist Charles Krauthammer has recognized that the Palestinians are willing to accept a Palestinian state consisting solely of lands occupied by Israel during the Six Day War in 1967 — the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and the Gaza Strip. The Palestinians’ position today, writes Krauthammer, is this: “The 1967 lines. Period. Indeed, in September the Palestinians are going to the United Nations to get the world to ratify precisely that — a Palestinian state on the ’67 lines.”

Unfortunately, Krauthammer now insists that this is simply too much for the Palestinians to expect.

“Exactly what bold steps for peace have the Palestinians taken?” Krauthammer asks. Well, for starters, how about relinquishing claims to 78 percent of Palestine? This is precisely what they did in 1993 when, in an exchange of letters between Yassir Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) formally recognized “the right of the State of Israel to exist in peace and security,” and accepted United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, which call upon Israel to withdraw from territories occupied in 1967 and an end to the state of belligerency.

This was, as Hussein Ibish noted recently, “The mother of all compromises.” And it is a compromise that is being reaffirmed by the Palestinians seeking international recognition for a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders.

It’s also very much worth remembering that, in exchange for the Palestinians’ recognition of Israel and relinquishing Palestinian claims to 78 percent of their homeland that this represented, Israel did not in return recognize “the right of the State of Palestine to exist in peace and security.” It only recognized the PLO as the legitimate representative of the Palestinian people. Almost 20 years, no state, and some 200,000 more Israeli settlers later, there is a fairly strong feeling among Palestinians of all stripes that this blatantly asymmetric bargain was a bad one.

Getting back to Krauthammer’s complaint, it’s quite revealing of his own deep-seated rejectionism that he refuses to see the Palestinian effort to gain U.N. recognition for a state along the 1967 lines for what it is: a(nother) sign of Palestinian acceptance of two states, Israel and Palestine. He thinks it is outrageous that the Palestinians should expect all of the remaining 22 percent of their homeland. And he is — prepare yourself for this — quite angry that President Obama should have had the gall to affirm the overwhelming international consensus regarding the 1967 lines as the basis for negotiations.

Krauthammer suggests that, by refusing to act as Israel’s hack lawyer, Obama “is undermining not just peace but the very possibility of negotiations” — two things for which, it should be noted, Krauthammer has never shown much enthusiasm. In other words, there’s not much to Krauthammer’s complaint beyond the familiar brute chauvinism and comically tendentious rendering of history. Except it’s maybe pitched a little higher than usual now that it seems to be dawning on Krauthammer that history is getting away from him.

Republican presidential candidate Tim Pawlenty came out of the gates swinging on foreign policy, emphasizing it as an area where he had an advantage over other candidates. He described his vision through the prism of playground antics. “[What's] always true is [when] you’re dealing with thugs and bullies they understand strength, they don’t respect weakness,” he said. Compared to Herman Cain, he might have been right. But having a better grasp than the rest of the GOP field does not exactly qualify the former Minnesota governor as one of the nation’s top foreign policy minds.

Just four days after announcing his bid for the Republican nod, Pawlenty confused Iran and Iraq on the campaign trail:

PAWLENTY: You’re talking about Iran?

REPORTER: Exactly.

PAWLENTY: Yea, well I think the situation now in Iran is such that Secretary Gates is negotiating with whether the United States Military will be there beyond the end of this year. And they’re looking to the Iranians to see if they invite the Americans to stay, invite us to stay. And if they do invite us to stay at some very reduced level I think the United States will be wise, until we make sure that they get to the next level of stability, to accept that invitation. So if Iran makes that invitation by the end of the year, leaving a residual force, a greatly reduced force, but a residual force that would be there for a temporary amount of time. Until they could establish much better air security, until they can develop their intelligence –

REPORTER: You mean Iraq not Iran, because Iran-

PAWLENTY: I’m sorry, Iraq, yes, yes. You said-, did you say Iran or Iraq?

Ben Smith highlights the video:

One might be tempted to excuse the mistake due to all the background noise, but Pawlenty clearly confirms with the questioner that U.S. policy toward Iran is in question, and the questioner confirms. Pawlenty then goes into a spiel about Iraq, noting the issue of U.S. troops remaining there.

Pawlenty focused early on foreign policy. In September 2009 at a religious right conference, he labeled Obama’s policies toward missile defense and attempted negotiations with Iran as “appeasement” — a stance conservative blogger Daniel Larison called “hawkish ignorance” at the time. Since then, he’s been making strident foreign policy attacks against the Obama administration.

Neoconservative Washington Post blogger Jennifer Rubin seems clear that Pawlenty is her top pick in terms of foreign policy, declaring him “forceful and precise on national security” and, more recently, giving him credit for “bashed the president on his Middle East speech.” Commentary Magazine recently said, “Pawlenty has a chance to step to the fore” of the establishment candidates on foreign policy.

His latest gaffe on the trail will not kill his campaign, of course. But that a candidate for a presidential nomination who is given plaudits by the right for his foreign policy confuses two very different, albeit similar sounding, countries should be a little disconcerting.

This afternoon, the House of Representatives has been debating — and voting on — a set of amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act of Fiscal Year 2012 (NDAA). One particularly important bipartisan amendment offered by Reps. Barbara Lee (D-CA) and Justin Amash (R-MI) would have struck Section 1034 from the language of the bill.

What is Section 1034? It’s a section that was inserted by Rep. Buck McKeon (R-CA) and others that would update the Authorization for the Use of Military Force (AUMF) that was passed after the 9/11 attacks. It would vastly expand the power of the President to engage in war. As the ACLU explains, the provision would go much further than the AUMF, “allowing war wherever there are terrorism suspects in any country around the world without an expiration date, geographical boundaries or connection to the 9/11 attacks or any other specific harm or threat to the United States. There have been no hearings on the provision, nor has its necessity been explained by Rep. McKeon or anyone else in Congress.” The section also strikes a blow against civil liberties by expanding detainment powers.

This provision is so expansive that even the Obama administration — the very executive branch whose power would be greatly enhanced — has issued a veto threat should it survive Congress. This afternoon, the Lee-Amash amendment was defeated. As The Nation’s George Zornick notes, the amendment was defeated along a 234-187 vote, with 20 Democrats voting against and 21 Republicans voting for it:

On a near-party line vote of 234-187, the House has voted down an amendment by Rep. Justin Amash (R-MI) and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA) that would have stripped the so-called “endless war” provision from the defense authorization bill. [...] Twenty-one Republicans broke with their party to support the Amash-Lee amendment; unfortunately, 20 Democrats also crossed over and opposed it.

Yet there was a silver lining to today’s NDAA votes. Rep. Jim McGovern (D-MA) introduced an amendment to require the President to submit a timetable for withdrawal from Afghanistan. While it failed, it only lost by 11 votes and netted the votes of even 26 Republicans. Recall, last year, when Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) introduced legislation to require an exit from Afghanistan, it failed 18-80, with most Democrats voting against it.

Today, in a 5-3 vote, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Legal Arizona Workers Act, a law passed by Arizona in 2007 that requires employers to use a controversial electronic employment verification program, E-verify, and establishes a regime of state-level sanctions for employing undocumented workers.

The case, Chamber of Commerce of the United States v. Whiting, has often been pointed to as a predictor of how the Supreme Court might rule on a challenge to the draconian immigration law Arizona infamously passed last year, SB-1070. While many critics of SB-1070 hoped that the Supreme Court would set an important legal precedent in Whiting that would boost the case against state and local immigration laws, the decision itself doesn’t expressly appear to either advance nor significantly hinder the case against Arizona’s latest sweeping immigration law.

The main issue in Whiting was whether Arizona can enact a law that allows the state to either suspend or revoke the business licenses of state employers who knowingly or intentionally employ undocumented immigrants. Under federal immigration law, states are preempted from “imposing civil or criminal sanctions (other than through licensing and similar laws) upon those who employ…unauthorized aliens [emphasis added].”

In the majority opinion issued today, Chief Justice John Roberts upheld the Arizona law, arguing that “Arizona’s licensing law falls well within the confines of the authority Congress chose to leave to the States and therefore is not expressly preempted.” “The Chamber’s reliance on IRCA’s legislative history to bolster its textual and structural arguments is unavailing given the Court’s conclusion that Arizona’s law falls within the plain text of the savings clause,” reasoned Roberts. (In simpler terms, it falls within the parameter of the bracketed exception italicized above).

Today’s opinion affirms the decision delivered by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in Whiting — the same court which upheld an injunction against SB-1070 on the basis that several of its provisions are unconstitutional. Why did the 9th Circuit rule against federal preemption in Whiting and in favor of it in U.S. v. Arizona last month?

First of all, SB-1070 is a much broader law that contains several provisions that raise far more legal issues than the one the Supreme Court addressed today. Had the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Chamber of Commerce’s arguments in Whiting, it almost certainly would have doomed Arizona’s new sweeping immigration law. But it doesn’t work the other way around. SB-1070 is significantly more aggressive in its scope and substance, touching on the role of state and local law enforcement, Fourth Amendment rights, and federal supremacy in foreign relations.
Read more

Last month, Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen said the U.S. military would stay in Iraq if the Iraqi government asked it to. (President Obama has yet to publicly weigh in on this issue.) This news naturally got the neocons excited, who have since crawled out of the woodwork to rally for a continued U.S. presence. While Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki has stated repeatedly that he opposes any plan for U.S. forces to stay past the Dec. 31, 2011 withdrawal deadline, he recently has softened his tone.

But the main question is what Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr will do. Sadr has been adamant that the U.S. leave on time, warning for months that he will unleash his Mahdi Army on American forces if they stay. But Sadr himself recently signaled he has softened his stance as well. “Luckily,” war hawk Max Boot wrote yesterday, “momentum seems to be building to keep U.S. forces in Iraq past 2011.” Yet news that tens of thousands of Sadr loyalists marched in Baghdad today to voice opposition to U.S. forces staying in Iraq appears to have halted that momentum. And Sadr’s followers don’t seem to be messing around:

– “I applied to the call of Sadr to participate against American occupiers,” said Salah Emarah, 35, who traveled from his home in Basra to march in the parade. “This is a peaceful demonstration against American occupiers. Sadr asked us to remain peaceful. At the end of the year, according to Iraq, the occupiers will leave. If they don’t, we will wait for orders.”

– “All the people in Sadr City are waiting for orders from Muqtada Sadr,” said Muhammad Fuad, a 28-year-old carpenter watching the parade. “And we have people all over Iraq — northern, southern.”

– “I came here on the orders of Moqtada al-Sadr to help kick out the occupiers from our country,” said Alaa Hussein, 21, a student taking part. “If the government keeps American troops here we will consider them an illegitimate government.”

– “We will not accept even one American soldier staying,” said Adnan al-Mussawi, one of the demonstrators. “Occupation has not benefited us at all, it is our religious duty to kick out every American soldier.”

Even though Sadr may have “hinted” that he would accept U.S. troops past 2011, he recently told BBC Arabic, “As long as they stay in Iraq, we will resist them.”

Referring to the fact that Sadr’s block in Parliament wants the U.S. to leave, this week Gates said it’s debatable “how much of that is the Sadrists and how much of that is the Iranians behind the Sadrists.” The New York Times noted that Gates “had never before cited Iran as a factor in the Obama administration’s thinking.” It’s important to point out however, that, as CAP’s Matt Duss previously noted, one shouldn’t confuse “backing” with “control” when talking about Iran’s relationship to Sadr: “A number of analysts have made the mistake of treating Sadr simply as an instrument of Iran, when in fact his movement is deeply nationalistic.”

Moreover, if countering Iranian influence is now the standard for consideration of the U.S. military staying in Iraq past 2011, then American forces would probably stay in Iraq forever. Iran’s clout in Iraq is extensive; it’s not just with Sadr’s group, and the Americans are largely responsible for it. CAP’s Larry Korb recently wrote, “Iran does not have to invade Iraq to have influence there. It was the Iranians who got Al-Sadr to support Maliki. And Maliki has repaid them by supporting their positions on Bahrain, Lebanon, and Hamas.” And as one Iraqi told Duss, “America has baked Iraq like a cake,” he said. “And given it to Iran to eat.”

Photo credit: The Washington Post

President Obama was perhaps not specific enough when he told an audience at the State Department last Thursday, as part of his big speech on the Arab Spring, “The borders of Israel and Palestine should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swaps.” With more time to focus on just what “mutually agreed swaps” meant at AIPAC’s annual summit, Obama readily offered details. But that didn’t stop legions of Israel’s right-wing supporters from launching attacks on Obama that mischaracterized his position (which incidentally lined up with his two predecessors in office).

But the latest salvo from neoconservatives on this front is perhaps the most factually challenged. At the neocon flagship magazine Commentary, writer Alana Goodman picked up on an interview given by Israeli-American businessman and high-profile Democratic Party donor Haim Saban. Saban told CNBC that he wasn’t planning on donating to Obama’s re-election campaign. Under the headline “Key Jewish Donor Breaks with Obama,” Goodman seized on the opportunity to show a potential weakness among Jewish supporters of Democrats:

There have been reports that Obama is losing Jewish support after his clash with Prime Minister Netanyahu last week, but this development is the most significant so far. If a key donor like Saban has decided to break with the president, then there are likely others who will follow suit.

The only problem with this analysis is that Saban is not breaking with Obama at all. As detailed in Connie Bruck’s 2010 profile of Saban in the New Yorker, the California-based billionaire never got on board with Obama in the first place. But the New Yorker article is long, so an easier way to fact-check the claim would have been to simply pump Saban’s name into any of the many databases that track financial donations. In the 2008 presidential cycle, Saban didn’t donate any money to Obama.

Nonetheless, Goodman went on to quote former AIPAC official and director of a neoconservative think tank Steve Rosen — who recently dodged questions about whether using 1967 lines as a basis for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations had been U.S. policy “for years” — to back up her misleading implication that Saban’s comments are “significant”.

Neocons, who are mostly though not exclusively Jewish, have long sought to explain why, unlike them, most American Jews are liberals, seeking to use Israel as a partisan wedge issue to peel off Democrats’ Jewish support. Seventy-eight percent of American Jews voted for Obama in 2008 despite a whisper campaign to paint him as anti-Israel.

The absence of any evidence to back up Goodman’s claim, however, didn’t stop other media from picking up the assertion. The right wing New York Post, with the headline “Jews may actually close their wallets to Obama”, described wide-reaching implications of the fictitious story of “Saban’s choice to cut off Obama.” And the Israeli newspaper Yediot Ahronot wrote, under the headline “Haim Saban: No More Donations To Obama”, that Saban “hinted that he will not continue to donate (to Obama) in 2012.”

The Republican Jewish Coalition’s twitter feed has also been going nuts all day, pushing the story and playing up its significance. Ron Kampeas, one of the best reporters in Washington’s Jewish journalism scene, pushed back in a reply: “I know you want to run with it, but it’s time to give it up.”

To their credit, all the outlets noted that Saban explicitly said that he expects to continue making robust donations to Democratic election committees and other Democratic candidates. But this further evidence contradicting any shift still leaves the basic question unanswered: Where is the “break” with Obama? (HT: @lrozen)

One of the most controversial national security policies of the Obama administration revolves around the case of radical Yemeni cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen living in Yemen. Awlaki is suspected of being engaged in helping inspire and organize terrorist attacks against the United States. More than a year ago, the Obama administration gave the green light to a potential targeted killing of Awlaki, effectively targeting a U.S. citizen for assassination.

As the New York Times reported at the time, “It is extremely rare, if not unprecedented, for an American to be approved for targeted killing, officials said. A former senior legal official in the administration of George W. Bush said he did not know of any American who was approved for targeted killing under the former president.”

Now, in an interview with The Atlantic, GOP Presidential contender Herman Cain was asked about this policy and whether he would also approve of assassinating Americans. Cain at first seemed unaware of the policy, but later affirmed that he believed every American has a right to due process and that we should not be assassinating U.S. citizens:

INTERVIEWER: President Obama has said that he has the authority to assassinate American citizens if he’s declared them an enemy combatant in the War on Terror. Al Awlaki is one guy who is on the official government list where he can be taken out. Do you have any thoughts on that? Is it a good policy because it allows us to take out Americans who may have joined Al Qaeda? Or is it a bad policy -

CAIN: Well first of all, this is the first that I have heard – you’re saying it’s okay to take out American citizens if he suspects they are terrorist related. Is that what you said?!

INTERVIEWER: Yes, that’s what I said.

CAIN: I’ve got to be honest with you. I have not heard that. I had not heard that’s something that he said. I don’t believe that the president of the United States should order the assassination of citizens of the United States. That’s why we have our court system, and that’s why we have our laws. Even if the person is suspected of being affiliated with terrorism, if they are a citizen of this country, they still deserve the rights of this country, which includes due process. Osama bin Laden was not a citizen of the United States of America. So I would not have changed the decision the president made in that regard. But if you’re a citizen, no, it is not right for the president to to think he has the power to have you assassinated. No. He has the power to make sure you’re locked up, but you have to go through due process.

Cain’s position puts him to the left of the Obama administration and many of his Republican colleagues. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), for example, vigorously spoke out against an American Civil Liberties Union legal challenge to the Obama administration’s kill order, saying that the lawsuit would have limited “the Commander in Chief’s options” and “do great damage to our national security.” (HT: @ggreenwald)

Last weekend, Rep. Dan Webster (R-FL) appeared on “Good Life 45,” a televangelist program based near his central-Florida district. At one point during the discussion, which was centered around ways to reduce government spending, Webster recalled that many of his constituents had asked about cutting foreign aid. Webster explained that the government cannot “get rid of all foreign aid” because that would endanger money for Israel.

Rather than making a policy-based argument to back up his firm belief in giving billions in foreign aid to Israel, Webster said the money is necessary to ensure “God’s hand” stays with America. “I love giving money to Israel,” Webster exclaimed. If we end the assistance to Israel, Webster continued, “we lose God’s hand and we’re in big trouble”:

WEBSTER: I believe God’s hand needs to be on this country.

HOST: That’s right.

WEBSTER: Some people have been talking about, every place I go, they bring up the issue foreign aid. I go, you can’t get rid of all foreign aid. Why? Because you ask them and they go, ‘yea we can’t do that.’ You take away the money from Israel? No. That’s something we can’t do. Do I like foreign aid? Sometimes, but not every time. Don’t like giving money to our enemies, but I love giving money to Israel. And so there’s a picture there that people realize that, we stop helping Israel, we lose God’s hand and we’re in big time trouble.

HOST: That’s right.

Watch it:

Currently, Israel is the top recipient of foreign aid money from the United States ($2.4 billion). It’s not clear which countries Webster was referring to when he said he doesn’t “like giving money to our enemies.”

Webster’s religious argument for assisting Israel echos the belief of Christian Zionists that Israel will play a central role in the apocalyptic end-times. One interpretation of the Bible, held by a large portion of Christian evangelicals, is that the return of Jesus requires that Jews control the “Holy Land.” Over the last two decades, both Israeli lobbyists and right-wing Christians have harnessed this growing belief to build support for Israeli government actions and for unchecked taxpayer assistance to the Israeli military.

Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio has made a name for himself as “America’s toughest Sheriff.” For the past several years, Arpaio has waged a crusade against Maricopa County’s undocumented population through immigration sweeps and dehumanizing tactics.

Yet, it turns out Arpaio’s own Sheriff’s Office is part of the problem. While Arpaio has targeted pregnant immigrant women and undocumented families, three members of his own office may have been members of an international drug and human trafficking ring. The Associated Press reports:

Three employees of America’s self-proclaimed toughest sheriff have been arrested in a drug and human trafficking case, authorities said Tuesday. Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio said a deputy and two female detention officers at the sheriff’s largest jail facility were among 12 people taken into custody and accused of being in a Phoenix-based international drug smuggling ring. [...]

As part of the investigation, officers on Tuesday seized 10 pounds of heroin, nearly $200,000 in cash, weapons, vehicles and stolen property.

The story goes on to explain that detention officer Marcella Hernandez is pregnant with the child of an alleged member of the Mexican Sinaloa cartel. Deputy Ruben Navarette — who was once assigned to the sheriff’s human smuggling unit — has been charged with human smuggling, money laundering, controlling an illegal enterprise, and conspiracy. Hernandez faces felony charges. Seven other employees of the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office are being investigated for their possible involvement.

The news come just as two of Arpaio’s top aides were forced to resign over misconduct, mismanagement and criminal behavior allegations. A financial review of Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office records recently revealed that his office misspent at least $99.5 million over the last eight years.

Arpaio flippantly responded to today’s news, stating, “Every organization, you’re going to find some people who do wrong…It’s human nature.”