As the Siniora government today officially rescinds the two incriminating decisions about Hezbollah’s telecommunications network and the head of security of Beirut’s airport that sparked this month’s clashes, this Briefing on Beirut seminar at the New America Foundation takes stock of recent events.

Audio

See also video of the event below/ over the fold

Rami Khouri (pictured) is always worth listening to; he asks whether Beirut will follow Baghdad or Belfast and is optimistic that the Lebanese will move past the internal strife at this “historical moment of reckoning” to form a pluralistic society that can integrate Western and Arab ideals. Hisham Melhem represents the March 14-Hariri Inc view on Hezbollah’s intentions and is less optimistic, overstating Iran’s influence on Hezbollah. Nir Rosen (over)draws comparisons to Iraq on the Sunni-Shi’a conflict. Read the rest of this entry »

Ditching the ‘Victor’ of Nahr el Bared for “Dr Death”?

Franklin Lamb,
Beirut

Barack v. Hillary isn’t the only Presidential election game in Washington these days. There is also the Samir v. Walid v. Michel (as in Geagea, Jumblatt and Suleiman) campaign underway as each seek through direct contact and surrogates, the US imprimatur in their quests to lead Lebanon.

This week it appears that Walid’s support is dropping faster than Hillary’s and Suleiman may end up like Fred Thompson (”failed to live up to expectations and not enough fire in the belly for the job”) and Geagea is skyrocketing faster than Barack did in February.

How so?

Despite months of heaping praises on Head of the Lebanese Army General Michel Suleiman, the Bush Administration has pretty much decided to dump the General, for reasons noted below by US Congressional sources. Read the rest of this entry »

Back in the press and making news again is speculation about the possible US airbase in northern Lebanon, renewed by the Lebanese daily As-Safir (Arabic). Only this time, there’s more. In English, the idea was best enunciated by Franklin Lamb in Its The Airbase, Stupid (see also ‘Does “Loving” Lebanon Mean the Bush Administration Never Has To Say Its Sorry?’), and he is cited again in the article from Al-Manar below.

The Daily Star also carries an article on the issue, and how this week’s visit to Lebanon by US Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Eric Edelman has renewed speculation that Prime Minister Fouad Siniora’s government has plans to turn the country into a forward base from which the Pentagon can counter what it sees as resurgent Russian influence in Syria, as claimed in Y-Net. Is the Cold War making a comeback?

All this would involve a string of bases in Lebanon: one in the Christian region of Bsharri; one in the Bekaa; and one in the plains of Damour south of Beirut. This would be in addition to the airstrip at Kleiaat being used as an airbase, two naval bases near Tripoli, and a wish-list for radar stations in Qornet Sawda, Barouk and Dahr al-Baidar. This is denied by US Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffrey Feltman. What we can be more sure of is that what is being pushed for is a less neutral stance towards the resistance (namely, Hezbollah) and Syria — and a reassessment of Lebanese relations towards Israel—that’s right, let’s forget the willful invasion and nefarious destruction of the country by Israel’s hafrada regime last year ever happened.

See also Iran’s Press TV; Israel’s Ha’aretz carries AP’s Hezbollah slams U.S. call for ‘partnership’ with Lebanon army and the International Herald Tribune also carries the AP piece: US to build “strategic partnership” with Lebanese army, says Pentagon official. In the blogosphere have a look at Zentor’s In the Middle of the East blog with The Mother of all Sparks and Mustapha’s Beirut Spring blog with A US Military Base in Lebanon? On a different but related topic, see Robert Fisk’s Secret armies pose sinister new threat to Lebanon.

Lebanon US base to counter Qaeda, Hezbollah or Russia?

Mohamad Shmaysani

18 Oct 2007 Al Manar

The issue of building a US airbase in northern Lebanon has resurfaced. Senior US political and military officials have been flocking into Lebanon since the Israeli war against Lebanon in 2006, the last of whom is Eric Edelman, the US Undersecretary of Defense for policy, heading a Pentagon delegation. The Lebanese daily Assafir raised speculations of a likelihood to build US military bases in Lebanon and alter the Lebanese army’s creed. “It is perceived that the US is focusing on the army’s directive which includes the fundamental national policy adopted by the army, particularly article five which stresses on the brotherly and special ties between Lebanon and Syria and article eight which underscores supporting the resistance,” Assafir said.In the report which the daily said is based on “reliable sources”, the Eric Edelman delegation met with the head of the unconstitutional government Fouad Saniora, Defense Minister Elias el-Murr and Army General Michel Suleiman and tackled four issues: the military situation in Lebanon, security and intelligence, the situation of the Lebanese Army and Lebanese state policy.

US Ambassador to Lebanon Jeffery Feltman, who reportedly attended the Pentagon delegation meeting dismissed Assafir daily report as insulting to the Lebanese army. Sources closed to Saniora’s unconstitutional government brushed aside as fabricated reports that the US had proposed building military bases.

Earlier reports revealed that a US airbase in the north of Lebanon would be built in the model of El-Udeid base in Qatar, for covert operations against the Syrian regime and to safeguard the oil pipelines of Baku-Tiflis-Ceyhan and Mosul-Kirkuk-Ceyhan. Read the rest of this entry »

More refreshing plain-speaking from Paul Craig Roberts (excerpted):

… Bush’s private Waffen SS known as Blackwater has taken to gunning Iraqi civilians down in the streets. How do Blackwater and Custer Battles killers escape the “unlawful combatant” designation?

One can only marvel at the insouciance of the US Congress to the current Iraqi Genocide while condemning Turkey for one that happened 90 years ago.

People seldom see the beam in their own eye, only the mote in the eyes of others. Every member of the Bush Regime is busily at work denouncing Iran for causing instability in the Middle East. Meanwhile, the US has invaded two countries, throwing them into total chaos, while beating the drums for war with Iran and conspiring with Israel to invade Lebanon and to attack Syria.

The indisputable facts are that the US and Israel have attacked four Middle East countries and are determined to attack a fifth. Yet, it is peaceful Iran, at war with no one, that Bush and Israel blame for causing instability in the Middle East.

Not content with its many wars in the Middle East, the Bush Regime is sponsoring wars in Africa and is setting up an African Command. The US government has been bombing and attacking other countries ever since the cold war ended. Instead of peace, the gang in Washington DC chose war.

Other than the Israel Lobby, the greatest supporters of Bush’s wars are Christian evangelicals, specifically the “rapture evangelicals” and the “Christian Zionists.”

I remember when Christianity was about saving one’s soul. Today it is about bringing on Armageddon. While the various evangelical Christians preach war in the Middle East, they condemn Islam for being a “warlike religion.” Read the rest of this entry »

I was very moved by this profoundly affecting piece from Franklin Lamb. He not only offers an excellent reflective analysis of the terrible massacre of Palestinians at Sabra-Shatilla in Lebanon at this timely 25th anniversary marker, but generously and courageously shares his personal experience. For him, this was a political massacre compounded by the very personal loss of his beloved. Our thoughts and condolences go out to him, and to all the families affected by this dark chapter in Lebanon’s history, which involved active Phalange involvement in a heinous Israeli-enabled crime. We share in the profound sorrow.

Warning: Depicts the horror of a massacre

The 25th Anniversary of the Massacre at Sabra-Shatilla

Will anyone remember? Does anyone really care anymore?

Franklin Lamb

Martyrs Square
Sabra-Shatilla Palestinian Refugee Camp
Beirut

A Letter to Janet

Dearest Janet,

It’s a very beautiful fall day here in Beirut today. Twenty-five years ago this week since the September 15-18, 1982 Massacre at the Palestinian refugee camps at Sabra-Shatilla. Bright blue sky and a fall breeze. It actually rained last night. Enough to clean out some of the humidity and dust. Fortunately not enough to make the usual rain-created swamp of sewage and filth on Rue Sabra, or flood the grassless burial ground of the mass grave (the camp residents named it Martyrs Square—one of several so named memorials now in Lebanon) where you once told me you that on Sunday September 19, 1982, you watched, sickened, as families and Red Crescent workers created a subterranean mountain of butchered and bullet-riddled victims from those 48 hours of slaughter. Some of the bodies had limbs and heads chopped off, some boys castrated, Christian crosses carved into some of the bodies.

As you later wrote to me in your perfect cursive:

“I saw dead women in their houses with their skirts up to their waists and their legs spread apart; dozens of young men shot after being lined up against an ally wall; children with their throats slit, a pregnant woman with her stomach chopped open, her eyes still wide open, her blackened face silently screaming in horror; countless babies and toddlers who had been stabbed or ripped apart and who had been thrown into garbage piles”.

Today Martyrs Square is not much of a Memorial to the upwards of 1,700 mainly women and children, who were murdered between Sept. 15-18. You would not be pleased. A couple of faded posters and a misspelled banner that reads: “1982: Saba Massacer”, hang near the center of the 20 by 40 yard area which for years following the mass burial was a garbage dump. Today, roaming around the grassless plot of ground is a large old yellow dog that ignores a couple of chicken hens and six peeps scratching and pecking around.

Since you went away, the main facts of the Massacre remain the same as your research uncovered in the months that followed. At that time your findings were the most detailed and accurate as to what occurred and who was responsible.

The old 7 storey Kuwaiti Embassy from where Sharon, Eytan, Yaron, Elie Hobeika, Fradi Frem and others maintained radio contact and monitored the 48 hours of carnage with a clear view into the camps was torn down years ago. A new one has been built and they are still constructing a Mosque on its grounds. Read the rest of this entry »

Franklin Lamb’s latest thoughts on Lebanese politics and hegemonic designs on the Middle East through the lens of Lebanon’s upcoming Presidential election and its internal politics.

Bio: Franklin Lamb is Director of Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace, Wash. DC-Beirut and Senior Fellow, The Institute for Middle East Policy Dialogue, USA. Lamb’s just released book, The Price We Pay: A Quarter Century of Israel’s Use of American Weapons in Lebanon (1978-2006) is available at Amazon.co.uk. In the USA, the title is also available at www.LebaneseBooks.com. His forthcoming volume, Hezbollah: A Brief Guide for Beginners is due out this year in Arabic and English.

In beautiful 5000 year old Baalbek, named by the Phoenicians after their Sun God, Baal, in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, one can enjoy, amidst the detailed ruins of the Temples of Bacchus and Jupiter perhaps the finest examples of Imperial Roman architecture at its apogee. In this cradle of resistance to tyranny, with its Shia majority and some argue the birthplace of Hezbollah, one is reminded that in Lebanon history has always repeated itself.

The Phoenicians, the Egyptians, the Persians, the Babylonians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Arabs, the Crusaders, the Turks, the French and now the US and Israel. While Lebanon is an ancient place, it has almost always been controlled by someone other than the local inhabitants.

As next month’s crucial Lebanese Presidential election looms, seen widely here as a contest which may well determine whether US/Israel dominance and interference is terminated sooner rather than later, one is reminded that it was 25 years ago, nearly to this day, that another crucial Lebanese election was held on virtually the same fundamental issues by a similarly deeply split populace.

On the one side now as then, are indigenous forces that identify with their Arab roots and that seek to assert an indigenous identity and a more nationalist ideology, and on the other side are forces that prefer close ties to the US and France as well as international alliances. Among these are some who are prepared to accept a peace treaty with Israel even before the achievement of a just solution to the Question of Palestine including the full Right of Return plus Full, Fair and Equitable compensation for Lebanon’s 430,000 Palestinians.

Lebanon’s current President, Emile Lahoud, extended in office by Syrian diktat in 2004, is scheduled to leave office in November. The parliament is scheduled to convene to elect a president on September 25. A quorum of two-thirds is necessary for the election to proceed. A simple majority vote is necessary to elect a president, once (and if) a quorum has assembled.

While many of the issues from 1982 are the same, so are many of the players such as Nabeh Berri, Salim al-Hoss, Samir Geagea, Walid Jumblatt, Amin Gemayel, Michel Aoun, the Christian and Muslim religious leaders, ambitious Generals, and the list goes on.

So too, is the nearly identical role and posture of the US administration. Read the rest of this entry »

With very few honourable exceptions, the Congressional RepublicoDemocratic War Party is at one in their policy toward Iraq. Those who expected Democratic leaders to suddenly recover backbone after the mandate given to them after the November elections and inject sanity into the Bush administration’s murderous Iraq policy were going to be courting disappointment.

As a result, the destruction, likely enclavisation and ethnic cleansing of Iraq continues apace. Over 1,000,000 Iraqi and over 3000 US lives have been lost since the 2003 invasion, sacrificial lambs slaughtered for Empire at the ungodly altar of neocon-neoliberal wealth and privilege, particularly, but not limited to, its Washington and Tel Aviv branches.  (See also the Nir Rosen interview in “Iraq Does Nor Exist Anymore“)

Chris Floyd has this pegged right in his important piece Bipartisan Paradise: Liberals, Bush Unite in Ethnic Cleansing of Iraq, in which he writes:

It is now obvious that one impetus behind the “surge” was to accelerate the “ethnic cleansing” of Iraq. Given the manifest failure to establish a strong central government to serve as a client state, the conquerors now find it easier to deal with separate ethnic enclaves, which can police themselves, shake out their own internal conflicts (however bloodily) and thus establish some kind of solid leadership that can cut deals and guarantee investments. Most of the measures taken during the “surge” seem aimed precisely at ethnic cleansing: the increased support of the Iraqi government security forces — which are largely Shiite militias — has been matched with what some see as the lunatic policy of arming Sunni militias.

The latter is indeed a lunatic policy — if your aim is to establish security and political rapprochement in Iraq. And although the leaders of the United States are indeed a gang of depraved moral idiots, they are not lunatics. Even they could see the folly of such a course — again, if the aim was actually security and political cohesion. Thus one can only conclude that this is not their aim, that their aim is indeed to exacerbate ethnic conflict, to foment more violence, in what amounts to a stealth operation of ethnic cleansing.

This serves two main purposes: first, as noted above, it will help shake the country out, eventually, into more manageable enclaves — each one stronger and more cohesive than the current government (which is largely a fictional notion at this point), yet weaker, and more malleable, than any stable and legitimate central government would be. And since the only kind of central government that could achieve stability and legitimacy in the eyes of all Iraqis would be one which was genuinely sovereign, truly independent from American domination, we will never see such a government in Baghdad as long as U.S. troops are in Iraq.

Which brings us to the second purpose of the “surge’s” arming of sectarian gangs: to maintain a level of violence and chaos that would “justify” the continuing presence of American troops in Iraq. A permanent military presence is one of the overriding goals of the invasion, set down long before the war, before 9/11, even before the loser Bush was given the presidency by five Supreme Court justices (two of whom had family members working for the Bush operation). Therefore, to the Bushists, any measure is justified that will keep American troops in Iraq — including fomenting bloody sectarian conflict and carrying out ethnic cleansing. Read the rest of this entry »

A refreshingly honest and well-made 43 minute documentary from Canada’s CBC, notwithstanding the implicit acceptance of other official lines. This Fifth Estate installment looks at the lies that led to the illegal and immoral invasion of Iraq, and the Bush administration/PNAC’s manoeuverings (H/T: Fanonite). CBC is Canada’s national public broadcaster.

Meanwhile, a timely remainder about the reality of the grim conditions in Iraq, compiled by Steve Lendman.

Iraq’s real ‘Surge’

(T)he so-called “surge” is a bust. All that’s “surging” is the number of:

• daily attacks played down in the major media;
• deaths that a Just Foreign Policy report calculates at over 1 million since March, 2003 based on updating an earlier Lancet study estimating 655,000 or more deaths through July, 2006;
• uncontrollable violence throughout the country;
• refugees fleeing for safety; the International Rescue Committee and UNHCR estimate the number at around four million including the internally displaced with a further 40,000 Iraqis fleeing their homes each month; and
• a near-total breakdown of essential services like electricity, drinking water, sanitation, medical care, education, security and even food compounded by mass unemployment and extreme poverty; the result is a crisis level humanitarian disaster of epic proportions that continues to worsen.

A July 30, 2007 Oxfam International and NCCI network of aid organizations report had grim findings. It estimates:

• eight million Iraqis need emergency aid - one-third of the population;
• four million can’t buy enough to eat;
• 70% of Iraqis have no adequate water supply;
• 80% lack adequate sanitation;
• 28% of children are malnourished;
• the rate of underweight baby births has tripled;
• 92% of Iraqi children suffer learning problems due to fear; and
• there’s been a mass exodus of around 80% of doctors, nurses, teaching staff at schools and hospitals and other vitally needed professionals.

UPDATED with additional links

This image has already received a good airing in the blogosphere; following on the heels of Cheney’s near-sensible statements back in 1994 about the lunacy of invading and occupying Iraq, I thought it might be worthwhile to air again in service of a timely reminder about another Orwellian neoconservative policy backflip, this time on Iran and its national ambitions to go nuclear.

(NB. A colleague informed me the other day that former governor of Hong Kong Chris Patten had wryly observed that the prefix “neo” before a word might as well mean “not” in these times, particularly as they pertain to the terrible twins neocon and neoliberal. That is, neocons are really not true conservatives at all, neoliberals are really not genuine small ‘l’ liberals in the classical sense. I agree).

Click for larger image and better resolution

The above is an advertisement commissioned by US energy companies advocating nuclear energy for the US. It features the Shah of Iran Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was brought to power after 1953 after a CIA-supported coup ousted democratically-elected Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh. The Shah was in turn deposed with the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The Iranian nuclear programme was launched with the active input of the US in the 1950s. Iran was urged to invest its oil profits in expensive US nuclear technology, on the rationale that Iran’s oil was a finite resource and going nuclear was an energy investment for the longer-term future. Read the rest of this entry »

Produced last year by Jewish Conscience, this video features a variety of Jewish voices speaking out.

Meanwhile -

Amira Hass reports that Gaza residents tell of demeaning practices by Shin Bet; and the WaPo reports that Patrick Syring, a State Dept employee, is facing charges over threats and slander against the Arab-American Institute.

If Not Now, When?

R/T 14 minues; H/T: Haitham Sabbah

A metaphysical saying has it that “while the soul slumbers, God speaks to us in numbers”. One can only hope seeing the raw magnitude of some of these numbers really will help more souls to awaken to the folly of this war and occupation.

Drawn from a variety of sources, this collection of facts-by-numbers was put together by Tom Engelhardt (Tomdispatch.com, 16 August), who also offers some cogent analysis on the use of language. I’ve added the visuals.

All-time Highs in Iraq: Escalation by the Numbers

Someday, we will undoubtedly discover that, in the term “surge” — as in the President’s “surge” plan (or “new way forward”) announced to the nation in January — was the urge to avoid the language (and experience) of the Vietnam era. As there were to be no “body bags” (or cameras to film them as the dead came home), as there were to be no “body counts” (”We have made a conscious effort not to be a body-count team” was the way the President put it), as there were to be no “quagmires,” nor the need to search for that “light at the end of the tunnel,” so, surely, there were to be no “escalations.”

The escalations of the Vietnam era, which left more than 500,000 American soldiers and vast bases and massive air and naval power in and around Vietnam (Laos, and Cambodia), had been thoroughly discredited. Each intensification in the delivery of troops, or simply in ever-widening bombing campaigns, led only to more misery and death for the Vietnamese and disaster for the U.S. And yet, not surprisingly, the American experience in Iraq — another attempted occupation of a foreign country and culture — has been like a heat-seeking missile heading for the still-burning American memories of Vietnam.

As historian Marilyn Young noted in early April 2003 with the invasion of Iraq barely underway: “In less then two weeks, a 30 year old vocabulary is back: credibility gap, seek and destroy, hard to tell friend from foe, civilian interference in military affairs, the dominance of domestic politics, winning, or more often, losing hearts and minds.” By August 2003, the Bush administration, of course, expected that only perhaps 30,000 American troops would be left in Iraq, garrisoned on vast “enduring” bases in a pacified country. So, in a sense, it’s been a surge-a-thon ever since. By now, it’s beyond time to call the President’s “new way forward” by its Vietnamese equivalent. Admittedly, a “surge” does sound more comforting, less aggressive, less long-lasting, and somehow less harmful than an “escalation,” but the fact is that we are six months into the newest escalation of American power in Iraq. It has deposited all-time high numbers of troops there as well, undoubtedly, as more planes and firepower in and around that country than at any moment since the invasion of 2003. Naturally enough, other “all-time highs” of the grimmest sort follow.

This September, General David Petraeus, our escalation commander in Iraq, and Ryan Crocker, our escalation ambassador there, will present their “progress report” to Congress. (”Progress” was another word much favored in American official pronouncements of the Vietnam era.) The very name tells you more or less what to expect. The report has already been downgraded to a “snapshot” of an ongoing set of operations, which shouldn’t be truly judged or seriously assessed until at least this November, or perhaps early 2008, or …

With that in mind, here is the second Tomdispatch “by the numbers” report on Iraq. Consider it an attempt to put the Iraqi quagmire-cum-nightmare — two classic Vietnam-era words — in perspective.

Few numbers out of Iraq can be trusted. Counting accurately amid widespread disruption, mayhem, and bloodshed, under a failing occupation, in a land essentially lacking a central government, in a U.S. media landscape still dizzy from the endless spin of the Bush administration and its military commanders is probably next to impossible. But however approximate the figures that follow, they still offer an all-too-vivid picture of what the President’s much-desired invasion let loose. No country could suffer such uprooting, destruction, death, loss, and deprivation, yet remain collectively sane.

American civilian and military officials now talk about staying in Iraq through 2008, or 2009, or into the next decade, or for undefined but lengthening periods of time. And yet Iraq (by the numbers) has devolved month by month, year by year, for four-plus years. There was never any reason to believe that the latest escalation — or any future escalation, whatever it might be called, and whether accomplished via the U.S. military or by a growing shadow army of guns-for-hire employed by private-security firms — could be capable of anything but hurrying the pace of that devolution. So imagine what Iraq-by-the-numbers will be like in 2008 or 2009, given the clear determination of the Bush administration’s “strategic thinkers” to garrison that country into the distant future.

Here, then, is escalation in Iraq by the numbers — almost all of them continue to “surge” — as of mid-August 2008:

• Number of American troops stationed in Iraq: 162,000 (plus at least several thousand government employees), an all-time high.
• Estimated number of U.S.-(taxpayer)-paid private contractors in Iraq: More than 180,000, again undoubtedly an all-time high. That figure includes approximately 21,000 Americans, 43,000 non-Iraqi foreign contractors (including Chileans, Nepalese, Colombians, Indians, Fijians, El Salvadorans, and Filipinos among others), and 118,000 Iraqis, but does not include a complete count of “private security contractors who protect government officials and buildings,” according to State Department and Pentagon figures obtained by the Los Angeles Times. Read the rest of this entry »

Dick Cheney rendering a judgment, publicly, on the strategic ill-advisability of invading and occupying Iraq in 1994, before the full-throttle war-mongering of the Israel Lobby and the profiteering prospects of his own companies would change things. (R/T: 1:22)

UPDATED with transcript from Editor&Publisher after video clip

Read the rest of this entry »

Rightly finding the Bush neocons abhorrent doesn’t mean that the corollary is that Clinton is somehow held up as a paragon of virtue or that it was an administration that differentiated itself as a real alternative in this era of unilateralism in US foreign policy. This blog has been duly critical of both Congressional Democrats and Congressional Republicans and the current two party system has proved to be but wings of the same corporate war party. As John Pilger, in Good ‘Ol Bill, the liberal hero, reminds us:

Clinton is able to make a shedload because he is contrasted with the despised Bush as the flawed good guy who did his best for the world and brought economic boom to the US - the fabled American dream no less. Both notions are finely spun lies. What Clinton and Blair have most in common is that they are the most violent leaders of their countries in the modern era; that includes Bush.

Consider Clinton’s true record:

In 1993, he pursued George H W Bush’s invasion of Somalia. He invaded Haiti in 1994. He bombed Bosnia in 1995 and Serbia in 1999. In 1998, he bombed Afghanistan; and, at the height of his Monica Lewinsky troubles, he momentarily diverted the headline writers to a major “terrorist target” in Sudan that he ordered destroyed with an onslaught of missiles. It turned out to be sub-Saharan Africa’s largest pharmaceutical plant, the only source of chloroquine, the treatment for malaria, and other drugs that were lifelines to hundreds of thousands. As a result, wrote Jonathan Belke, then of the Near East Foundation, “tens of thousands of people - many of them children - have suffered and died from malaria, tuberculosis and other treatable diseases”.

Long before Shock and Awe, Clinton was destroying and killing in Iraq. Under the lawless pretence of a “no-fly zone”, he oversaw the longest allied aerial bombardment since the Second World War. This was hardly reported. At the same time, he imposed and tightened a Washington-led economic siege estimated to have killed a million civilians. “We think the price is worth it,” said his secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, in an exquisite [not!]  moment of honesty.