"The Bush administration is pushing through a broad array of foreign weapons deals as it seeks to rearm Iraq and Afghanistan, contain North Korea and Iran, and solidify ties with onetime Russian allies," The New York Times reported. "From tanks, helicopters and fighter jets to missiles, remotely piloted aircraft and even warships, the Department of Defense has agreed so far this fiscal year to sell or transfer more than $32 billion in weapons and other military equipment to foreign governments, compared with $12 billion in 2005. "The trend, which started in 2006, is most pronounced in the Middle East, but it reaches into northern Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe and even Canada, through dozens of deals that senior Bush administration officials say they are confident will both tighten military alliances and combat terrorism." The report said that although the US has long been the leading arms supplier to the world, its share rose from 40 per cent of arms deliveries in 2000 to nearly 52 per cent in 2006. The next-largest seller was Russia, with 21 per cent of global deliveries in 2006. In recent years a greatly expanding list of nations have relied on the United States as their primary source of major weapons systems. Recent additions include Argentina, Azerbaijan, Brazil, Georgia, India, Iraq, Morocco and Pakistan. "Cumulatively, these countries signed $870 million worth of arms deals with the United States from 2001 to 2004. For the past four fiscal years, that total has been $13.8 billion." The Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported this week that the Bush administration turned down a request from the Israeli government to purchase "a relatively large number" of GBU-28 2.2 ton "bunker buster" bombs. "The security aid package the United States has refused to give Israel for the past few months out of concern that Israel would use it to attack nuclear facilities in Iran included a large number of 'bunker-buster' bombs, permission to use an air corridor to Iran, an advanced technological system and refueling planes." The paper later reported that the Pentagon announced on Friday it will provide Israel with 1,000 of the smaller 23-kilogram warhead, GBU-39 smart bombs.
Kurdish ambitions threaten to magnify Iraq's instability
"Of all the political problems facing Iraq today, perhaps none is so intractable as the fate of Kirkuk, a city of 900,000 that Kurds, Arabs and Turkmens all claim as their own," The New York Times reported in August. "The explosive quarrel over the city is one major barrier to creating stable political structures in the rest of Iraq. "Beyond that, it demonstrates that despite a recent decline in violence, Iraq's unsettled ethnic and regional discord could still upend directives emanating from Baghdad and destabilise large swaths of the country - or even set off a civil war. "This month, legislation in the national Parliament to set the groundwork for crucial provincial elections collapsed in a bitter dispute over Kirkuk, as Arabs and Turkmens demanded that the Kurds be forced to cede some of their power here. But with the Kurds having already consolidated their authority in Kirkuk, there seemed little chance - short of a military intervention - of that happening." On Saturday, The Washington Post reported: "Kurdish leaders have expanded their authority over a roughly 300-mile-long swath of territory beyond the borders of their autonomous region in northern Iraq, stationing thousands of soldiers in ethnically mixed areas in what Iraqi Arabs see as an encroachment on their homelands. "The assertion of greater Kurdish control, which has taken hold gradually since the war began and caused tens of thousands of Arabs to flee their homes, is viewed by Iraqi Arab and US officials as a provocative and potentially destabilising action. " 'Quickly moving into those areas to try and change the population and flying KRG flags in areas that are specifically not under the KRG control right now - that is counterproductive and increases tensions,' said Maj Gen Mark P Hertling, commander of US forces in northern Iraq, referring to the Kurdistan Regional Government, which administers the autonomous region." On Sunday, The New York Times said: "Eight Kurdish pesh merga soldiers were killed in a roadside bombing in a disputed part of eastern Diyala Province on Saturday, adding to tensions with the Iraqi government and local Arabs over the Kurds' presence in the area. "Among the dead in the bombing, in the town of Khanaqin, was the senior pesh merga commander for the area, according to the local police chief, Col Azad Issa. The bomb, which went off as the Kurdish force was patrolling, killed six people on the spot; the other two died after being taken to the hospital, Colonel Issa said. "The Kurdish presence in Khanaqin, and in other nearby areas, has been a growing source of tension. Kurdish forces have been moving beyond the borders of their semiautonomous region in northern Iraq, in what they say is an effort to improve security."
US presidential race turned upside down for Democrats
As "change" becomes not only the slogan but the form of the US presidential race, in Politico, David Paul Kuhn said: "Democrats have found themselves in a world turned upside down, where Republicans have the momentum from running on change - and the latest wunderkind of presidential politics." In The Sunday Times, Sarah Baxter wrote: "The high-heeled, moose-hunting governor of Alaska has sent Barack Obama's campaign into a state of panic as support for the Democratic presidential candidate haemorrhages in the battleground states he must win to reach the White House. "Sarah Palin, 44, continued to scythe through Obama's support among women by taunting the first potential black president for declining to choose Hillary Clinton as his running mate and by declaring that questions about juggling work and family were 'kind of irrelevant' in the modern age. "The mother of five, who has been called Xena, the warrior princess, said in a television interview: 'I think he's regretting not picking [Clinton] now, I do. What determination and grit and even grace through some tough shots that were fired her way - she handled those well,' Palin said." The Times reported on Obama women shifting towards Sarah Palin. "Jessica Goral had pretty much made up her mind two weeks ago: she was going to vote for Barack Obama. Then John McCain picked Sarah Palin as his running-mate. " 'She empowers a lot of women,' said Mrs Goral, a mother of two in Macomb County - a national bellwether in the battleground state of Michigan and an area rich in white, working-class swing voters who will play an important role in deciding the election in November. " 'I like that she's a brand new mother, and that she has the courage to stand behind her pregnant daughter. She relates to working women. For all of us who have children at home but have to go to work every day - she has given us a sense that we can still do it and can be an excellent mum,' she said. 'Sarah Palin is a role model. She's made me more likely to vote Republican.' " In an analysis of what it dubbed "The Sixty-Day War," New York Magazine looked at the mastermind behind the McCain campaign: Steve Schmidt. "At 37, with a 225-pound frame, a Kojak-bald head, wraparound shades, and a Bluetooth headset invariably jacked into his ear, Schmidt cuts an imposing figure. His affect, which alternates between steely, monotonal stoicism and fierce combativeness, is cultivated, designed to be intimidating. His cardinal professional virtues are relentlessness, focus, and a capacity for nearly infinite repetition. The GOP consultant Alex Castellanos says Schmidt is more purely pragmatic than [President Bush's former political adviser, Karl] Rove, less ideological, and hence even more lethal - 'the perfect political killing machine.' His former boss accordingly nicknamed him The Bullet. His current one ritually refers to him as Sergeant Schmidt. "The bond between Schmidt and McCain was formed a year ago, in the wake of the near immolation of the McCain campaign in a bonfire of chaos, indiscipline, and mismanagement. Schmidt and his family lived in California, where he'd helped engineer [Governor] Arnold Schwarzenegger's landslide reelection in 2006. Even as McCain's campaign faltered, he stuck loyally by his side. 'He earned his stripes in the foxhole,' recalls McCain's former media adviser Mark McKinnon. 'He talked to McCain when no one was returning his phone calls.' "But it wasn't until June that Schmidt assumed near-total control over McCain-land, after confronting the candidate over what he perceived as an incipient crisis similar to the one in 2007. The lack of focus. The internecine strife. The sloppy, listing message. Schmidt informed McCain bluntly that if he didn't make significant changes in his operation, he was going to lose."
pwoodward@thenational.ae
