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By Jamal Dajani
MIR Video

Speaking in the East Room of the White House last week, President George W. Bush said that the U.S. was taking heavy casualties in Iraq.� Stating his concern, he said, "I know many Americans are not satisfied with the situation in Iraq. I am not satisfied either."
What prompted President Bush to speak so candidly was the inescapable fact that more than 100 American soldiers have been killed in October alone in the worst monthly toll in a year and the fact that Americans will decide the fate of his party in the voting booths in the next few days. Nevertheless, the President did not waver from insisting that the U.S. is still winning the war in Iraq. " Absolutely, we're winning," Bush said. "As a matter of fact, my view is the only way we lose in Iraq is if we leave before the job is done."

Are we winning?

If we are talking about the loss of less than three thousand US troops in three years of conflict, then perhaps we are winning the war on the insurgents. The problem with this is the fact that U.S. military experts never take into account the tens of thousands of Iraqis who have died since the invasion. Nor do they consider the level of resentment it has generated against the U.S. in the region.

Increasingly, both the administration as well as its adversaries in the Democratic Party have been drawing parallels between the war in Iraq and Vietnam. However, Iraq does not resemble Vietnam but rather the "old" Afghanistan during the Soviet era when in the 1980s, thousands of Arab and Muslim fighters descended on Afghanistan to fight the Soviet occupation forces that had invaded the country in 1979. The Soviet military was unable to quell the lightly armed, resourceful Afghan and Arab mujahideen. At that time, there were 130,000 Soviet soldiers in Afghanistan, a country of 24 million. This ratio roughly matches that of the U.S. in Iraq. The Soviets were ultimately defeated and withdrew from the country in 1988. In a similar fashion, Iraq has now become a magnet for Islamic extremists who want to fulfill their Jihadist duties by expelling the U.S. from Arabia. According to many analysts in the Middle East, the U.S. adventure in Iraq will also eventually go down in history books as a terrible defeat in the same way.

There is perhaps that one similarity between the Iraq and Vietnam wars which is the influence of both on the elections. Just as Vietnam was a hot issue in its time, so too has Iraq become one for this November 7.� Even President Bush thinks that the insurgents could affect the outcome of the mid-terms, claiming that the rise in violence during Ramadan is designed to impact voting here.

An interesting phenomenon in the Arab press is the unusual amount of attention that has been paid to the impending U.S. elections. With a third of the Senate and 36 state governorships being contested, the stakes are very high for Bush.� Arabs are covering the lead-up to these mid-term elections very closely, and analysts engaged in election predictions have been forecasting a similar outcome on both sides of the ocean. They agree that the Republicans will have to give up some seats and are similarly unsure whether that will be enough for the Democrats to regain control of the congress. Arab coverage however, is putting a greater emphasis on whether these elections will have an impact on a U.S. withdrawal from Iraq.

"Will the victory of the Democrats in the US mid- elections provide good options for ending the occupation in Iraq?" This was the headline of Al Basrah News on a day when the City of Basra witnessed the killings and kidnappings of more than fifteen Iraqi police officers.

Several programs on TV channels like Al Madar program on Abu Dhabi TV, focused on what has been dubbed as "the Iraqi Card," and how the Democrats should play that card intelligently. Would they admit to defeat, thus playing into the hands of� the Republicans and alienating the American voter, who according to Arab TV pundits "is not and will not cope with defeat," or will they play it smart by promising to leave Iraq with dignity without admitting defeat. There are also the "doomsday pundits" who have been warning that Bush might attack Iran by air and sea just before the elections to prove to his domestic audience that his party is best at preserving and protecting their way of life, thereby ensuring a Republican victory in congress. Critics say that such an attack would have a devastating effect on world opinion, but based on previous experiences, it appears that the Bush Administration has little concern regarding this.

Ironically enough with all recent Arab media analysis of the upcoming U.S. elections, similar scrutiny was not given to the most recent Presidential Elections in Egypt and Yemen when the longstanding� presidents of both countries were ushered into office for another term with little attention paid to questionable election procedures in Egypt and a media monopoly in Yemen. In addition to this there is barely any debate about the complete lack of elections in many Arab countries. Perhaps this great interest in a mid-term election several thousands miles away might awaken the spirit of many of the pundits to demand serious and free elections in their own backyards.

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By Simon Jenkins
The Guardian, October 18th 2006

The Baker report on an exit strategy from Iraq, leaked this week in the US, is as sensible as it is sensational. It rejects "staying the course" as no longer plausible and purports to seek alternatives to just "cutting and running". Stripped of political sweetening, it concludes that there is none. America must leave Iraq without preconditions and hope that its neighbours, hated Syria and Iran, can clear up the mess. This advice comes not from some anti-war coalition but from the Iraq study group under the former Republican secretary of state, James Baker, set up by Congress with President George Bush's endorsement. Students of Iraq studies should at this point sit down and steady their nerves. Kissinger is in Paris. The Vietnam moment is at hand.

Earlier this week Bush telephoned the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, to reassure him about rumours swirling through Washington that the Pentagon was about to topple him for being useless. It was reported that Maliki had just two months to get both his army and the escalating violence - running at some 100 deaths a day - under control. Washington was allegedly searching for a new "strong man" to pull the militias into line and assert the power of central government over Iraq's catatonic insecurity.

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By Chris Hedges
Truthdig Report, October 23, 2006�

I sent my New York University journalism students out to write stories based on any one of the themes in the Ten Commandments.� A woman of Armenian descent came back with an article about how Armenians she had interviewed were covetous of the Jewish Holocaust.� The idea that one people who suffered near decimation could be covetous of another that also suffered near decimation was, to say the least, different. And when the French lower house of parliament approved a bill earlier this month making it a crime to deny the Armenian genocide I began to wonder what it was she, and those she had interviewed, actually coveted.

She was not writing about the Holocaust itself�no one covets the suffering of another�but how it has become a potent political and ideological weapon in the hands of the Israeli government and many in the American Jewish community.� While Armenians are still fighting to have the genocide of some 1.5 million Armenians by the Ottoman Turks accepted as historical fact, many Jews have found in the Nazi Holocaust a useful instrument to deflect criticism of Israel and the dubious actions of the pro-Israeli lobby as well as many Jewish groups in the United States.

Norman Finkelstein, who for his writings has been virtually blacklisted, noted in "The Holocaust Industry" that the Jewish Holocaust has allowed Israel to cast itself and "the most successful ethnic group in the United States" as eternal victims.� Finkelstein, the son of Jewish survivors of the Nazi Holocaust, goes on to argue that this status has enabled Israel, which has "a horrendous human rights record," to play the victim as it oppresses Palestinians or destroys Lebanon.� This victim status has permitted U.S. Jewish organizations (the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress and others) to get their hands on billions of dollars in reparations, much of which never finds its way to the dwindling number of Holocaust survivors.� Finkelstein's mother, who was in the Warsaw ghetto, received $3,500, while the World Jewish Congress walked away with roughly $7 billion in compensation moneys.� The organization pays lavish salaries to its employees and uses the funds to fuel its own empire.� For many the Nazi Holocaust is not used to understand and deal with the past, and more importantly the universal human capacity for evil, but to manipulate the present.� Finkelstein correctly writes that the fictitious notion of unique suffering leads to feelings of unique entitlement.

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Interview By Mahan Abedin
SaudiDebate.com, October 23, 2006

Fouad Ali Al-Ibrahim was born in Safwa, eastern Saudi Arabia, in 1960. He joined the Islamic Revolution Organisation in 1980 and served in its central committee until 1993. Currently, Ibrahim is a leading member of the National Coalition for Democracy in Saudi Arabia and continues to oppose the Saudi regime from London.

Mahan Abedin: How do you account for the rise of Saudi Shi'a political consciousness in the modern era?

Fouad Ibrahim: The main factor was the relationship between the Shi'as and the Saudi state. This relationship has never been based on anything even remotely resembling the concept of modern citizenship. It has always been based on the concepts of forced annexation and extreme oppression. This is why the Shi'as have never felt part of the Saudi state. This goes back to the foundation of the first Saudi state in the middle of the 18th century

MA: So basically the historic Shi'a narrative in the Peninsula revolves around oppression and alienation?

FI: Yes, but there is also an external factor relating to the flooding of foreign workers to the Eastern province, many of whom worked for Arabian-American Oil Company (ARAMCO). These foreign Arab workers imported Arab nationalist ideology to the Eastern province and managed to win over the loyalties of many local Shi'as. They contributed to the development of Shi'a political consciousness. In fact the Shi'a of the Eastern province have constituted the base for many opposition movements in the region.

MA: Has the area now known as the Eastern province been Shi'a since the beginning of Islamic history?

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By Karen Armstrong
The Guardian, October 26, 2006

I spent seven years of my girlhood heavily veiled - not in a Muslim niqab but in a nun's habit. We wore voluminous black robes, large rosaries and crucifixes, and an elaborate headdress: you could see a small slice of my face from the front, but from the side I was entirely shielded from view. We must have looked very odd indeed, walking dourly through the colourful carnival of London during the swinging 60s, but nobody ever asked us to exchange our habits for more conventional attire.

When my order was founded in the 1840s, not long after Catholic emancipation, people were so enraged to see nuns brazenly wearing their habits in the streets that they pelted them with rotten fruit and horse dung. Nuns had been banned from Britain since the Reformation; their return seemed to herald the resurgence of barbarism. Two hundred and fifty years after the gunpowder plot, Catholicism was still feared as unassimilable, irredeemably alien to the British ethos, fanatically opposed to democracy and freedom, and a fifth column allied to dangerous enemies abroad.

Today the veiled Muslim woman appears to symbolise the perceived Islamic threat, as nuns once epitomised the evils of popery. She seems a barbaric affront to hard-won values that are essential to our cultural identity: gender equality, freedom, transparency and openness. But in the Muslim world the veil has also acquired a new symbolism. If government ministers really want to debate the issue fruitfully, they must become familiar with the bitterly ironic history of veiling during the last hundred years.

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By Coco Macpherson
Rolling Stone, November 2,�2006

THE VIDEO CLIP IS A VIOLENT BLUR OF images and sounds - a beach, a sliver of ocean, the sour, persistent drone of a siren.� Rescue workers claw at a pile of blankets � one staggers through the sand dragging the lifeless body of a child by its shirt. This is the deadly aftermath of a June artillery strike, allegedly by Israeli forces, that killed seven members of a Palestinian family as they picnicked on a beach in northern Gaza. This clip will never run on the nightly news. But you can watch it � and thousands of other videos like it � on YouTube and Google Video.

While the U.S. media refuseto show graphic war footage, the sickening reality is readily available on the wildly popular video-sharing sites. A huge range of uncensored war material � from amateur clips captured on cell-phone cameras in Beirut to full-blown satellite news programs about the Middle East � has given Americans unprecedented access to images considered too real for TV: bloody, unsanitized footage from the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and the West Bank. For a White House obsessed with controlling images of the war, the wheels may be coming off the bus.

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By Souheila Al-Jadda
USA Today Blog, October 11, 2006

Many Arab TV news media criticized Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's visit last week to the Middle East, questioning her intentions and recent U.S. policies in the region.

The Mosaic Intelligence Report brings you the most important news and views from the Middle East. An offshoot of Link TV's Peabody Award-winning "Mosaic: World News from the Middle East," a daily compilation of translated television news reports from throughout the Arab world, MIR highlights issues and events that you don't see in mainstream Western media.

The Mosaic Intelligence Report recently launched a daily blog, which offers Mosaic video and news, links to staff articles and a forum for readers and Middle East experts to share their opinions and perspectives on the current crisis.

Join the bloggers and share your constructive insight here.

Visit the MIR Blog�
Or Watch The Latest Mosaic Intelligence Report Video

Dear Sir,�
I have watched Link TV a great deal, and especially appreciate the Mosaic News Report. Each time I see the differing, often opposing, viewpoints of the various news agencies it's clear how deeply the cultural, political and religious differences are. Variety is not in itself a cause for hatred, but the mindset of those caught up in the Middle East has been polarized by so many years of conflict with each other, that conflict is all they know.� I see news of hopeless struggle, little progress in the political arena, no progress at all in the religious sector. The killing goes on day after day, justified for each group and nation by the very killing taking place. The perpetual motion machine is not a scientific impossibility, but is in fact running full throttle. How will populations make peace with one another? Does the United States suppose it will be able to legislate goodwill in human hearts?
Greg Harrison

To the Editor,
I would like to propose a secular solution to the continued state of war in the Middle East. The majority of Jews and Palestinians are not religious. Create three countries: A Jewish state for Jews who need an exclusively Jewish state, a Palestinian state for Palestinians who need an exclusively Palestinian state, and a larger Palestinian-Jewish state for the vast majority -�Palisraelians, who seek peace and equal justice under law that does not value one human life higher than another.� My Palestinian neighbor, Mahmoud Ibrahim, and I have been able to live together in peace for the last 20 years. I find it offensive that people dismiss my three-state solution as being naive, while continuing to posit the same failed two-state solution that goes against human nature and the impossibility of which is the assumption upon which "successful" British/American foreign policy has been based.
Leonard Isenberg

Dear Sir,
I found the article on Iran very interesting.� In the interviews Ahmadinejad seems intelligent and perceptive.� Despite some highly incendiary remarks he has made, his general tone is rational and calm.�But I'm terrified the irresponsible cowboys running this country will destroy Iran before all this can play out.� I am hoping that Ahmadinejad's appearances in this country will help to counter the warriors, and better yet, that they reflect the press opposing the neocons on this one.�But maybe I'm reading into things.�In any case, you are leading the way. Thank you for being there.� Mosaic makes me feel connected with the affairs of the world.
Judith Bello

Dear Sir,
It's so nice to see the Muslim news from the Middle East.Living in America all you get is the same anti-Islamic propaganda and pro-zionist news. Islamophobia is very popular here in the USA .It is very hard to be a Muslim in this racist country, where the zionists control the media and the government.
Dave Cutler

Dear Sir,
The state of Israel should have been placed where the Holocaust happened...Germany. Why should the Palestinians and every other bordering state suffer in order to create secure borders for Israel. Why not allow the Palestinians and Lebanese people the right o tprotect themselves from Israeli/American bombs and bullets?
Mary Kilgallon

Disclaimer:�Mosaic Intelligence Report�will put up as many of your comments as possible but we cannot guarantee that all e-mails will be published.�MIR reserves the right to edit comments that are published.

The Mosaic Intelligence Report (MIR) is a periodical newsletter which will bring you the most important news and views from the Middle East. Relying on Mosaic broadcasts and Middle Eastern press, MIR will highlight issues and events that you don't see in mainstream Western media.

Mosaic: World News from the Middle East features selections from daily TV news programs produced by national broadcasters throughout the Middle East. The news reports are presented unedited and translated, when necessary, into English.
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Mosaic includes television news broadcasts from selected national and regional entities. Some of the broadcasters are state controlled and others are private networks, often affiliated with political factions. These news reports are regularly watched by 280 million people in 22 countries all over the Middle East.

Mosaic is supported by various grants, foundations and viewers like you. Mosaic is broadcast on Link TV. Link TV broadcasts programs that engage, educate and activate viewers to become involved in the world. These programs provide a unique perspective on international news, current events, and diverse cultures, presenting issues not often covered in the U.S. media. Link TV connects American viewers with people at the heart of breaking events, organizations in the forefront of social change and the cultures of an increasingly global community.

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Jamal Dajani
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