photo credit: The U.S. Army

US/Israel relationship is getting a little less special.

Certainly, it was thought, Israel would get the message.

Israel didn’t. When Vice President Joe Biden was embarrassed by an Israeli announcement that the Netanyahu government was building 1,600 new homes in East Jerusalem, the administration reacted. But no one was more outraged than Biden who, according to the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth, engaged in a private, and angry, exchange with the Israeli Prime Minister. Not surprisingly, what Biden told Netanyahu reflected the importance the administration attached to Petraeus’s Mullen briefing:  “This is starting to get dangerous for us,” Biden reportedly told Netanyahu. “What you’re doing here undermines the security of our troops who are fighting in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. That endangers us and it endangers regional peace.” Yedioth Ahronoth went on to report: “The vice president told his Israeli hosts that since many people in the Muslim world perceived a connection between Israel’s actions and US policy, any decision about construction that undermines Palestinian rights in East Jerusalem could have an impact on the personal safety of American troops fighting against Islamic terrorism.” The message couldn’t be plainer: Israel’s intransigence could cost American  lives.

There are important and powerful lobbies in America: the NRA, the American Medical Association, the lawyers — and the Israeli lobby. But no lobby is as important, or as powerful, as the U.S. military. While commentators and pundits might reflect that Joe Biden’s trip to Israel has forever shifted America’s relationship with its erstwhile ally in the region, the real break came in January, when David Petraeus sent a briefing team to the Pentagon with a stark warning: America’s relationship with Israel is important, but not as important as the lives of America’s soldiers. Maybe Israel gets the message now.

via The Petraeus briefing: Biden’s embarrassment is not the whole story, by Mark Perry | The Middle East Channel.

We are still in Iraq, but we are steadily withdrawing forces. Camp Taji has been handed over to the Iraqi government.

The Jail at Camp Taji north of Baghdad holds 3,000 inmates, mostly “low level insurgents”, the military said.

Only a small number of inmates have been convicted of a crime with most detained because of Iraqi government-issued arrest warrants.

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The prison in Camp Taji was opened in 2008.

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The US military controls one other prison in Iraq, while all others including the notorious Abu Ghraib have been handed over to the Iraqis.

via BBC News – US hands over prison to the government of Iraq.

Tony Blair’s widely panned appearance at last week’s Chilcot inquiry into the origins of the Iraq war reminded the world about the former British prime minister’s role in that lethal fiasco. Like many of the Iraq war’s instigators here in the United States, Blair has gotten a free pass while flaunting his lack of remorse. Indeed, the failure to hold him accountable resulted in his appointment as the special envoy of the “Mideast Quartet” in June 2007,  charged with reviving the peace process on behalf of its members — the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and the Russian Federation.
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During Blair’s long-winded justification of his actions, he compared the current threat from Iran’s nuclear program with the supposed threat from Iraq’s supposed WMD arsenal no fewer than 58 times. “We face the same problem about Iran today,” he said — a call to war that sounded weirdly discordant coming from a man committed to encouraging peaceful negotiation.

via Joe Conason – Did Tony Blair blow it as Mideast envoy? – Salon.com.

Tony Blair as Mideast Peace Envoy is a ridiculous position for someone who either grossly miscalculated  or lied through his teeth to magnify the threat Saddam Hussein posed to the rest of the world. At this point, all that matters is that Tony Blair is the absolute wrong choice. Conason captures the worst thing about Blair’s inquiry appearance: “We face the same problem about Iran today,”.

As he vociferously defends his decision to lead his nation into a costly invasion of Iraq Blair’s belief that 2010 Iran is the “same problem” as 2003 Iraq means that he believes we should attempt to bomb and bribe them into a functioning Democracy as well. Not the best mindset for a peace convoy.