FPI Overnight Brief: September 2, 2010

Iraq

Iraq is preparing to buy as much as $13 billion in American arms and military equipment, a huge order of tanks, ships and hardware that U.S. officials say shows Iraqi-U.S. military ties will be tight for years to come. – USA Today

Iraq is close to forming a new government, the US vice-president, Joe Biden, said [yesterday]. - Guardian

The prevailing sentiment in the Arabic press as the U.S. combat presence in Iraq formally comes to an end seems to be that the combat troops may have left Iraq, but the damage is done. – Babylon and Beyond

Doug Feith writes: Barack Obama spoke about Iraq with gross irresponsibility before he was president. He has acted on Iraq as president, however, with far greater responsibility. He needs popular support for his Iraq policy, but he’s is not going to be able to sustain it for long if he can’t bring himself to speak about U.S. interests there truthfully, specifically, and lucidly. – The Corner

Colin Kahl writes:  Now, with dramatic improvements in Iraq's security situation, continued economic development, determined Iraqi efforts to consolidate hard-fought gains through the political process, and continued U.S. engagement, Iraq has a real opportunity to chart a new path -- one in which a fully sovereign Iraq contributes to regional peace and prosperity in partnership with the United States and the wider international community. – Mideast Channel

Vice President Joe Biden and top U.S. military officials gathered Wednesday in a former palace of Saddam Hussein to usher in a new era in Iraq—one marked by a lower profile for American troops and a heightened scrutiny on the fragile state of the country's security and democracy. – Wall Street Journal

On the day of a formal military ceremony marking the end of United States combat operations in Iraq, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said that history had still to judge whether America’s involvement in the seven-year-old war was worth the cost – New York Times

As the United States ends it combat mission in Iraq, Tony Blair, the former British prime minister who deployed troops alongside American forces in the 2003 invasion, said Wednesday that, while there had been many tears over the loss of life, he could not regard the war as a mistake – New York Times

Europe/Russia

Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski urged European Union governments Wednesday to preserve large EU funds for poor regions when the bloc overhauls its 130 billion euros ($164.3 billion) annual budget - Reuters

Baroness Ashton has been accused of presiding over a "Western European old boys club" diplomatic service and warned to redress an imbalance against women and the Eastern bloc. - Telegraph

Germany and Finland will argue forcefully that the European Union should in future quickly impose sanctions on member states that breach the bloc's budgetary rules, Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Wednesday. - Reuters

Kuwait

Kuwait plans to buy Patriot missiles from the U.S. but will not allow its territory to be a launch pad for attacks, the defense minister said in statements published on Sept. 1. - AFP

Defense

Northrop Grumman has begun work on the very first MQ-4 Broad Area Maritime Surveillance drone at the company's Moss Point, Miss., facility, company officials announced Sept. 1. – Defense News

The Swedish authorities announced Wednesday that they were reopening an investigation of rape allegations against Julian Assange, the founder of the WikiLeaks Web site, saying there was “reason to believe that a crime has been committed.” – New York Times

The sergeant who supervised Bradley E. Manning, the Army private accused of leaking classified material to the online site WikiLeaks, was so concerned about the soldier's mental health that he disabled Manning's weapon late last year, the private's attorney said Wednesday. – Washington Post

Israel

On the eve of the first direct Middle East peace negotiations since he took office, President Obama urged Israeli and Palestinian leaders Wednesday to seize "this moment of opportunity" and to end their decades-long conflict, pledging to throw his administration's "full weight" behind their effort to do so. – Washington Post

President Barack Obama warned militant groups that the U.S. and its allies were undeterred in pushing forward with Middle East peace talks, despite Tuesday's attack on Israeli settlers by the Palestinian group Hamas. – Wall Street Journal

The chairman of Israel's largest settler organization in the disputed territory of the West Bank on Wednesday predicted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's government will collapse if he renews a moratorium on construction inside the settlements as part of the first direct Arab-Israeli peace talks since 2008 – Washington Times

Simon Wiesenthal, a Holocaust survivor who gained worldwide fame for decades as a one-man Nazi-hunting operation, was in fact frequently on the payroll of the Mossad, Israel’s spy agency, a new biography asserts – New York Times

Palestinian security forces in the West Bank detained dozens of Hamas activists on Wednesday in response to a lethal attack on Jewish settlers in the occupied territory, a senior security source said. - Reuters

Hussein Agha and Robert Malley write: Abbas will return to a fractured, fractious society. If he reaches a deal, many will ask in whose name he was bartering away Palestinian rights. If negotiations fail, most will accuse him of once more having been duped. If Netanyahu comes back with an accord, he will be hailed as a historic leader. His constituency will largely fall in line; the left will have no choice but to salute. If the talks collapse, his followers will thank him for standing firm, while his critics are likely in due course to blame the Palestinians. Abbas will be damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. Netanyahu will thrive if he does and survive if he doesn't. One loses even if he wins; the other wins even if he loses. There is no greater asymmetry than that. – Washington Post

Jonathan Schanzer writes: By pushing new peace talks between Israel and the West Bank-based Palestinian National Authority, Obama has officially excised the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip from the equation. Indeed, he has effectively put a halt to a Palestinian “peace process” that has been sputtering since the summer of 2007. - Politico

President Obama began his foray into Middle East peace-making on Wednesday, as the Israeli and Palestinian leaders committed to work on a comprehensive Middle East peace treaty in the next year intended to end a conflict that has endured for six decades. – New York Times

China

Michael Auslin writes: Visiting America’s Pacific-based military forces, one gets the clear impression that they feel their countrymen are finally catching up with their views on the growing Chinese threat to Asian stability. Yet they worry that smaller budgets will make their job harder, and they know that the Asia-Pacific region will be watching to see whether Washington follows through on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s newly declared intention to oppose Beijing’s attempts to pressure smaller Asian nations over territorial issues – National Review Online

China is ramping-up its military presence facing Taiwan despite the easing of hostilities across the Strait, a defense ministry report cited by local media warned Sept. 1. - AFP

Earlier this month, two Chinese satellites met up in orbit. Depending on who you believe, it’s either a sign of China’s increasingly-sophisticated space program — or a sign of its increasingly-sophisticated space warfare program. – Danger Room

Somalia

The streets of Mogadishu, Somalia’s besieged capital, were finally quiet on Wednesday, after 10 days of heavy fighting that has claimed more than 100 lives – New York Times

For years, Somalia’s heavily armed pirate gangs seemed content to rob and hijack on the high seas and not get sucked into the messy civil war on land. Now, that may be changing, and the pirates are taking sides — both sides. – New York Times

Afghanistan

With Afghans clamoring to pull their cash from their nation's biggest bank, the United States risks a politically perilous decision: whether to step in to help shore up a wobbly bank critical not only to Afghanistan's economy but also to the battle against the Taliban – Washington Post

The tempo of operations throughout the districts surrounding Kandahar has been steadily increasing in recent weeks, but nowhere more suddenly than in this town and surrounding Dand District…While American commanders said the operation pointed the way to the future in Afghanistan, the outcome — a town filled with bombs and booby traps but devoid of most residents or Taliban fighters — showed just how difficult it will be to secure the wider area and win over local people. – New York Times

Bill Gertz reports:  The commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan said on Wednesday that the covert phase of the major military operation to retake the Taliban stronghold of Kandahar has been under way for weeks and has inflicted heavy casualties on the Taliban. It involves the use of intelligence and special operations forces in a covert war against the Islamist militia. – Inside The Ring

The War

Dutch prosecutors Wednesday afternoon released without charge two Yemeni men arrested Monday on suspicion of planning a possible terrorist attack. – Wall Street Journal

Radical U.S. Muslim discussion groups are growing in influence much as similar forums did in 1990s Britain, a hardline British preacher said on Wednesday, referring to a period when London was Europe's Islamist hub - Reuters

Japan

Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan, on the job for just 85 days, could soon be knocked from power by his chief rival, Ichiro Ozawa, who is seeking to regain political prestige that Kan had helped to undermine. – Washington Post

Southeast Asia

Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court was assessing yesterday a bill that would amend the island’s constitution to allow the president, Mahinda Rajapaksa, to seek an unprecedented third term – and possibly more. – The National

Relatives of 57 people killed in the Philippines' worst political massacre expressed outrage on Wednesday after a court delayed the trial of the main suspect and his alleged police accomplices. – The National

Sub-Saharan Africa

For a decade, West Africa's main connection to the Internet has been a single fiber-optic cable in the Atlantic, a tenuous and expensive link for one of the poorest areas of the planet. But this summer, a second cable snaked along the West African coastline, ending at Nigeria's commercial capital, Lagos. – Associated Press

Southern Africa

The number of reported victims of a recent mass rape in the Democratic Republic of Congo has grown by nearly a hundred over the last week, the United Nations said on Wednesday. - Reuters

Congolese rebels attacked a group of aid workers at a remote airstrip in restive eastern Congo Monday, forcing six of them to flee into bush before being rescued, a spokesman for the aid group said Wednesday. - Reuters

Striking South African state workers plan a protest march on Thursday and their leaders will meet government negotiators a day after rejecting a revised wage offer aimed at ending their three-week strike - Reuters

Pakistan

The U.S. government designated the Pakistani Taliban a terrorist group Wednesday and accused its leader, Hakimullah Mehsud, of involvement in a December suicide bombing that killed seven Americans at a forward CIA post in eastern Afghanistan. – Washington Post

Triple bomb blasts targeting a Shiite religious procession in Lahore killed at least 25 people and left scores of others fighting for their lives as Pakistan militants renewed a campaign of violence against a country recovering from devastating floods. – Wall Street Journal

Police intensified their patrols and street markets remained closed on Thursday in a section of the city where three suicide bombers killed dozens of people the day before in attacks on Shiite Muslim worshippers. – New York Times

Pakistan's military canceled a trip by officers to an annual meeting at U.S. Central Command after they were taken off a plane and subjected to "unwarranted security checks" at Dulles International Airport in Washington, a spokesman said Wednesday. – Los Angeles Times

Pakistan’s government is considering a “flood tax” to help pay the billions of dollars it faces in reconstruction costs, a senior finance ministry official has told the Financial Times. The tax would probably “increase an individual’s income tax bill by up to 10 per cent”, said the official, adding: “It will apply to those in the high-income bracket, prob­ably with annual incomes of over Rps300,000 [$3,500] a year.” – Financial Times

Russia

President Dmitry Medvedev has warned regional leaders that he is closely watching their approval ratings and hinted that they won't last long in the job if they cannot keep people happy - Reuters

U.S. prosecutors said the founder of the U.S. branch of an Islamic charity accused of trying to smuggle $150,000 to Islamist militants in Chechnya took extreme steps to leave no paper trail. – Associated Press

FPI Policy Advisor John Noonan writes:  First, Putin seems uninterested in pretending that Russia is still a democracy -- a farce that had, admittedly, gone on long enough. Second, he unapologetically mocks Western diplomatic engagement, which is bold even by shoe-thumping Russian standards. – Weekly Standard Blog

Iran

The wife of Iranian opposition leader Mehdi Karrubi has written an open letter to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei condemning the harassment of her family by the Basij militia and Revolutionary Guards, RFE/RL's Radio Farda reports. – Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty

Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, said yesterday that the international community must be prepared to take military action against Iran if it develops nuclear weapons. – The National

Analysis:  Iran's ambitions, which have cast a long shadow over the greater Middle East, may serve as a common bond keeping a frail peace process intact despite threats that have arisen even before the negotiations open Thursday at the State Department. – Washington Post

Josh Rogin reports:  Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback is calling on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to publicly denounce the impending trial of a journalist and blogger facing execution at the hands of the Iranian regime. – The Cable

Mexico

The influx of illegal immigrants plunged to an estimated 300,000 annually between March 2007 and 2009, from 850,000 a year between March 2000 and March 2005, according to new study released Wednesday by the Pew Hispanic Center, a nonpartisan research group. – Wall Street Journal

Mexican authorities have confirmed that a second migrant survived a massacre of 72 Central and South Americans near the border with the US. - Guardian

Germany

Ulf Gartzke writes:  If Germany can lead the way in terms of adopting politically controversial yet ultimately indispensable military reforms – thus generating more bang for fewer bucks – there is indeed at least some hope that European/NATO members in general can create much-needed synergies in defense procurement and force restructuring based on the notion that not all allies require the full spectrum of defense (industrial) capabilities. – The Weekly Standard Blog

Yemen

The U.S. military's Central Command has proposed pumping as much as $1.2 billion over five years into building up Yemen's security forces, a major investment in a shaky government, in a sign of Washington's fears of al Qaeda's growing foothold on the Arabian Peninsula. – Wall Street Journal

Australia

Australian independent lawmaker Andrew Wilkie on Thursday said he will back the center-left Labor Party, a move that delivers some momentum to Prime Minister Julia Gillard's bid to form a minority government after an inconclusive national election in late August. – Wall Street Journal

Mining giant Rio Tinto will spend $1bn (£646m) on a new iron-ore mine in Australia, despite the political uncertainty over the country's proposed mining tax. - Telegraph

Turkey

The United States will not take part in upcoming air drills in Turkey, a U.S. embassy official said Sept. 1, as media reports said Washington had conditioned its presence on Israeli attendance. - AFP