What you won’t find at the WH website today

The White House website is utterly perverse. Normally, what it doesn’t say is much more significant than what it does. The correct way to read Pravda on Pennsylvania Ave. is to look for what is omitted.

Today, for example, there are three gaps each the size of Texas.

First, there’s the story notable by its complete absence. Dick Cheney was hospitalized with a heart condition. The Vice President’s news page and the main White House news page both pretend to be unaware of the incident.

It’s almost as if Cheney had shot somebody else in the face and is hoping to sneak back home unnoticed.

Next there’s Bush talking about the Annapolis peace conference.

I am pleased to welcome Prime Minister Olmert, President Abbas, and representatives of more than forty countries to the United States for the November 27 Annapolis Conference. The broad attendance at this conference by regional states and other key international participants demonstrates the international resolve to seize this important opportunity to advance freedom and peace in the Middle East.

Neither there, nor in his meetings with Mahmoud Abbas and Ehud Olmert, does Bush let the term “Hamas” escape across his lips.

Incidentally, in anticipation of the conference the State Department created a chronology of events related to the Palestinian peace process. It, too, excludes any mention of the Hamas government in Palestine, the elections that brought them to power, the unrest between Hamas and Fatah. The timeline even neglects to mention the Israeli bombardment of Palestine and the invasion of Lebanon last year. It does appear that the White House’s forgetfulness is catching.

A permanent presence in Iraq is what Bush and Cheney have been dead set upon from the beginning. Today the WH announced with Nouri al Maliki an agreement to keep US forces in Iraq for a long time to come.

It was all based neatly and cleanly upon a Declaration of Principles, which enunciates what the US eventually will get around to doing to help Iraq protect itself (and to prop up the Maliki government), as well as the Fine Things that will accrue to the US while it does so.

You’ll look in vain among those Principles for the specific phrase “Iraqi air force”. As I’ve commented in the past (Fictional Iraqi military branches are making "progress"), the US hasn’t provided Iraq with anything like an effective air force by means of which it might be able to protect itself.

Absent that, the permanent US presence looks for all the world like a protectorate over Iraq. And indeed you might be hard pressed to tell, at first glance, that this White House Fact Sheet on the Declaration of Principles…

Iraq's leaders have asked for an enduring relationship with America, and we seek an enduring relationship with a democratic Iraq. We are ready to build that relationship in a sustainable way that protects our mutual interests, promotes regional stability, and requires fewer Coalition forces.

In response, this Declaration is the first step in a three-step process that will normalize U.S.-Iraqi relations in a way which is consistent with Iraq's sovereignty and will help Iraq regain its rightful status in the international community – something both we and the Iraqis seek. The second step is the renewal of the Multinational Force-Iraq's Chapter VII United Nations mandate for a final year, followed by the third step, the negotiation of the detailed arrangements that will codify our bilateral relationship after the Chapter VII mandate expires.

…does not date to the post World War One era Mandate of Mesopotamia.

Recognizing that the monarchy depended on British support…Faisal maintained a moderate approach in dealing with Britain. The twenty-year treaty, which was ratified in October 1922, stated that the king would heed British advice on all matters affecting British interests and on fiscal policy as long as Iraq had a balance of payments deficit with Britain, and that British officials would be appointed to specified posts in eighteen departments to act as advisers and inspectors. A subsequent financial agreement, which significantly increased the financial burden on Iraq, required Iraq to pay half the cost of supporting British resident officials, among other expenses. British obligations under the new treaty included providing various kinds of aid, notably military assistance, and proposing Iraq for membership in the League of Nations at the earliest moment. In effect, the treaty ensured that Iraq would remain politically and economically dependent on Britain.

crossposted from unbossed.com

US Navy is stockpiling fuel in Persian Gulf

Many Middle East experts have wondered aloud what point there is to the Annapolis peace conference. It appears destined to achieve nothing significant. One of its main goals, I think, must be to demonstrate that Iranian-backed Hamas can in fact be marginalized. That PR victory would be worth enough to the Saudi regime that they'd send their Foreign Minister to a doomed conference.

Simultaneously, the US military is gearing up for some kind of very large show of force against Iran to occur during the next 90 days. Reuters reported over the weekend that large amounts of fuel are being stockpiled at US naval and air bases in the U.A.E., Qatar, and Diego Garcia (where long-range bombers are based).

In the past, these kinds of arrangements have foretold aggressive military operations or major changes in tactics in the region.

For example, we're told in passing that...

In February, oil industry sources told Reuters [Saudi Arabia] had raised the amount of jet fuel earmarked for the military from 1.5 million barrels last year to close to eight million in 2007.

In retrospect, it seems obvious that this quintupling of jet fuel was linked to plans to rely increasingly on air power in Iraq during 2007. The public was assured by the "surge's" architects that the goal was to win hearts and minds with a more carefully calibrated (yeah) counterinsurgency campaign. Had we known of the Saudi jet fuel deal, we might have surmised that the sophisticated strategy also included bombing a lot more Iraqis than before.

The current stockpiling of jet fuel and marine diesel can only be directed against Iran, however (h/t Cernig):

The U.S. Navy's Military Sealift Command (MSC) has tendered for four tankers in November to move at least one million barrels of jet and ship fuel between Gulf ports, from Asia to the Gulf and to the Diego Garcia base, tenders seen by Reuters show...

"They have been very active," said a ship industry source, familiar with the MSC tender process, who asked not to be named.

"Out of the multiple charter requirements they issue, they usually do maybe one or two (tankers) a month in the Gulf. They were quiet over the summer months," he said.

The fuel includes JA1 and JP5, the latter used by carrier-based F-18 fighters. The MSC, asked by Reuters for comment, stated that there was "nothing abnormal about current requirements in the Gulf ". But a doubling of fuel tenders is a pretty good working description of "abnormal". Why deny it?

Reuters adds that even more fuel (including JP5) has been requested from Bahrain by the Defense Energy Support Center. And in addition, there's a very unusual arrangement whereby the MSC has chartered a large oil tanker for 90 days (beginning in early December) to carry fuel, including jet fuel, in any number of trips between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman.

"What's most interesting is the time-charter in the Gulf. It's a big ship and here we have a commitment for a lot of movement of fuels, backwards and forwards down to the Strait of Hormuz and the Gulf of Oman," the Gulf source said.

"This confirms there is going to be a lot of activity, possibly a serious demonstration to Iran that the military means to protect the Hormuz Strait," he said.

Yet the US Navy has been conducting exercises and showing the flag in the Persian Gulf regularly. Last week for example there were two naval groups conducting exercises. Therefore the (more than) doubling of naval fuel supplies appears to herald something more than the ordinary level of pushback against the Iranian military presence in the Gulf.

The stockpiles don't appear to be extensive enough to prepare for an actual attack on Iran, and US public opinion hasn't been prepped adequately anyway (despite increasingly tough talk from Bush & Co. during October). My guess is that there will be some other kind of excessive display of bellicosity during December or January.

It will nearly coincide with the Annapolis peace conference. The US exclusion of Hamas from the conference is seen as a challenge to their base of support in the Arab world:

Palestinian and Israeli analysts expected a weakening of public confidence in Hamas after Arab League foreign ministers voted in Cairo on Friday to attend the summit. A decision yesterday by Syria, Hamas' staunchest Arab ally, to send its Deputy Foreign Minister, was seen as a particularly damaging blow.

But Annapolis is intended also as a blow to Iranian prestige.

Hamas, and beyond it, the specter of Iran is focusing the minds of the Arab states too. Islamist movements like Hamas threaten the hold on power of the regions' authoritarian regimes. Iran's regional aspirations, with or without nuclear weapons, make Saudi Arabia, with a large Shiite minority in its eastern oil-producing region, or Bahrain with a majority Shiite population, extremely nervous. A peace settlement in Palestine would remove one area where Iran can make trouble.

Little surprise that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad also denounced the Annapolis conference today.

It's tempting to infer, then, that the administration's bellicose planning now for the Persian Gulf may be intended to demonstrate that it can enforce its threat of "increased isolation" for Iran—to quote Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns from earlier this month.

Bellicose posturing is just the kind of plan that a nut like Dick Cheney would think is going to draw wavering countries over to your own side and increase the isolation of those you are threatening. If you can maneuver Iran into a corner by sitting around confabbing in Annapolis, then you ought to be able to do that much better with Cheney's favored means of diplomacy—military confrontation.

crossposted from unbossed.com