[R-G] Senate to Hold Confirmation Hearings for New US Ambassador to Turkey

[Anthony Fenton]

http://rastibini.blogspot.com/2008/09/senate-to-hold-confirmation-hearings.html

Monday, September 22, 2008
SENATE TO HOLD CONFIRMATION HEARINGS FOR NEW US AMBASSADOR TO TURKEY
"It is said that power corrupts, but actually it's more true that  
power attracts the corruptible. The sane are usually attracted by  
other things than power."
~ David Brin.


It looks like there will be Senate confirmation hearings next  
Wednesday (24 September) for the next US ambassador to Turkey, James  
F. Jeffrey, from ANCA:


     The Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) has called on  
members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to closely  
scrutinize ten serious shortcomings in the Administration’s handling  
of the U.S. - Turkey relationship, during the September 24th  
confirmation hearing for James Jeffrey to serve as the next U.S.  
Ambassador to Turkey.

     In letters to panel Chairman Joe Biden (D-DE) and other key  
Committee members, ANCA Chairman Ken Hachikian outlined the  
Administration’s failings, and encouraged strict scrutiny of the  
nominee in order to “ensure accountability for past errors, as well as  
to apply the lessons learned from these setbacks in charting a more  
productive and principled course for U.S.-Turkey relations.”



Who is James F. Jeffrey? You can get the official rundown of his  
career from the State Department:


     James F. Jeffrey assumed the position of Principal Deputy  
Assistant Secretary in the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs on August  
21, 2006.

     Ambassador Jeffrey, in collaboration with the Assistant Secretary  
for Near Eastern Affairs, will lead the Bureau's Iran Policy Team and  
coordinate Bureau public diplomacy and internal management, serving as  
Acting Assistant Secretary when the Assistant Secretary is traveling.

     A career member of the U.S. Foreign Service, James Jeffrey served  
as He served as Senior Advisor to the Secretary of State for Iraq from  
August 2005 to August 2006. Amb. Jeffrey served as Deputy Chief of  
Mission in Baghdad from June 2004 to March 2005. From March to June  
2005 Ambassador Jeffrey was U.S. Charge d'affairs to Iraq. He served  
as Ambassador to Albania from 2002-2004. Previously he was Deputy  
Chief of Mission in Turkey and Kuwait. Other assignments have included  
Deputy Special Representative for Bosnian Implementation, postings in  
the Department's European and Near Eastern Bureaus, and overseas  
service in Turkey, Bulgaria, Germany and Tunisia.



But what about his real career? For starters, Jeffrey is involved with  
the administration's efforts to manufacture consent for a war with  
Iran, from the Boston Globe:


     The existence of ISOG (Iran Syria Policy and Operations Group)  
reflects an intensification of the Bush administration's planning on  
Iran. Syria, which has linked itself to Iran through military pacts,  
is a lesser focus for the group. Its workings have been so secretive  
that several officials in the State Department's Near Eastern Affairs  
bureau said they were unaware it existed.

     [ . . . ]

     ISOG was modeled after the Iraq Policy and Operations Group, set  
up in 2004 to shepherd information and coordinate US action in Iraq.  
ISOG has raised eyebrows within the State Department for hiring  
BearingPoint -- the same Washington-based private contracting firm  
used by the Iraq group -- to handle its administrative work, rather  
than State Department employees.

     [ . . . ]

     ISOG is led by a steering committee with two leading hawks on  
Middle East policy as chairmen: James F. Jeffrey, prinicipal deputy  
assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, who once headed  
Iraq policy, and Elliott Abrams, deputy national security adviser for  
"Global Democracy Strategy." Michael Doran, a Middle East specialist  
at the White House, steps in when Abrams is away. Elizabeth Cheney,  
the vice president's daughter, who was the former deputy assistant  
secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, served as cochairwoman  
before she took a maternity leave earlier this year.



Okay, right there we have Jeffrey linked with the Bush  
administration's efforts for regime change in Iraq, which were based  
on lies ranging from accusations that Saddam was behind the 9/11  
attacks to the WMD lies and the Niger yellow cake forgeries.

We also have Jeffrey linked to BearingPoint which has some very shady  
history. From Sourcewatch:


     * In July of 2003, BearingPoint was awarded a contract by USAID  
worth $79.5 million to facilitate Iraq's economic recovery with a two- 
year option worth a total of $240,162,688.[2][3] Responsibilities in  
this contract include:

     1. Creating Iraq's budget

     2. Writing business law

     3. Setting up tax collection

     4. Laying out trade and customs rules

     5. Privatize state-owned enterprises by auctioning them off or  
issuing Iraqis shares in the enterprises.

     6. Reopen banks and jump-start the private sector by making small  
loans of $100 to $10,000.

     7. Wean Iraqis from the U.N. Oil-for-Food Program, the main  
source of food for 60% of the population.

     8. Issue a new currency and set exchange rates. [4]


     * In January 2003 BearingPoint won a $3.95 million contract  
financed by the World Bank to aid the Afghanistan government upgrade  
its accounting system.[5]

     * In March of 2003, USAID awarded BearingPoint a $39.9 million  
contract to help rebuild the economy in Afghanistan.

     [6] In November 2005, USAID awarded another contract, this three  
years and worth $45 million. [7] The overall worth of contracts in  
Afghanistan could be worth as much as $350 million. [8]



BearingPoint has also been involved in the drafting of the Iraq Oil  
Law for the benefit of Big Oil:


     BearingPoint, a Virginia based contractor is being paid $240m for  
its work in Iraq, winning an initial contract from the US Agency for  
International Development (USAid) within weeks of the fall of Saddam  
Hussein in 2003. A BearingPoint employee, based in the US embassy in  
Baghdad, was hired to advise the Iraqi Ministry of Oil on drawing up a  
new hydrocarbon law.

     BearingPoint employees gave $117,000 to the 2000 and 2004 Bush  
election campaigns, more than any other Iraq contractor.

     The process of drafting the oil law has been particularly  
troubling. The timeline of which entities have seen the draft when  
suggests that Iraqi interests are not being considered first and  
foremost:

     * Draft shown to US government and major oil companies – July 06

     * Draft shown to the International Monetary Fund September 06

     * Draft shown to Iraqi Parliament: February 07

     The Iraq National Oil Company would have exclusive control of  
just 17 of Iraq’s 80 known oil fields, leaving two-thirds of known —  
and all of its as yet undiscovered — reserves open to foreign control.



Not surprisingly, the Iraqi Oil Workers' Union and the Electrical  
Utility Workers' Union opposed the law and protested BearingPoint's  
involvement in the drafting of it. Antonia Juhasz also mentioned  
BearingPoint's role in the drafting of the Iraq oil law at the time of  
the Baker-Hamilton report:


     WHILE THE Bush administration, the media and nearly all the  
Democrats still refuse to explain the war in Iraq in terms of oil, the  
ever-pragmatic members of the Iraq Study Group share no such reticence.

     Page 1, Chapter 1 of the Iraq Study Group report lays out Iraq's  
importance to its region, the U.S. and the world with this reminder:  
"It has the world's second-largest known oil reserves." The group then  
proceeds to give very specific and radical recommendations as to what  
the United States should do to secure those reserves. If the proposals  
are followed, Iraq's national oil industry will be commercialized and  
opened to foreign firms.

     [ . . . ]

     For any degree of oil privatization to take place, and for it to  
apply to all the country's oil fields, Iraq has to amend its  
constitution and pass a new national oil law. The constitution is  
ambiguous as to whether control over future revenues from as-yet- 
undeveloped oil fields should be shared among its provinces or held  
and distributed by the central government.

     This is a crucial issue, with trillions of dollars at stake,  
because only 17 of Iraq's 80 known oil fields have been developed.  
Recommendation No. 26 of the Iraq Study Group calls for a review of  
the constitution to be "pursued on an urgent basis." Recommendation  
No. 28 calls for putting control of Iraq's oil revenues in the hands  
of the central government. Recommendation No. 63 also calls on the  
U.S. government to "provide technical assistance to the Iraqi  
government to prepare a draft oil law."

     This last step is already underway. The Bush administration hired  
the consultancy firm BearingPoint more than a year ago to advise the  
Iraqi Oil Ministry on drafting and passing a new national oil law.

     Plans for this new law were first made public at a news  
conference in late 2004 in Washington. Flanked by State Department  
officials, Iraqi Finance Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi (who is now vice  
president) explained how this law would open Iraq's oil industry to  
private foreign investment. This, in turn, would be "very promising to  
the American investors and to American enterprise, certainly to oil  
companies." The law would implement production-sharing agreements.



As for BearingPoint's Afghanistan contracts:


     USAID’s own March 13, 2007 announcement of the five year $218.6  
million contract that will run through January 2012 states that it is  
for the purpose of: strengthening “the performance of ministries,  
businesses, non-governmental organizations, universities and local  
governments; establish(ing) permanent, sustainable capacity in the  
public, private and high education sectors; and build(ing) the skills  
of key personnel in the Afghan public and private sectors, through  
scholarship.”

     For a company that is still correcting, according to the  
Washington Business Journal, its financial reports for accounting  
errors, whose revenues rose by 10 percent to $2.65 billion in 2006  
over the previous year, a contract worth even $218.6 million must seem  
like a drop in the bucket. Still it adds up for a company which  
reaches out at every opportunity to take advantage of swelling its  
bottom line from US government outsourcing as a result of the  
downsizing of the US Foreign and Civil Service after the Cold War. It  
doesn’t hurt in filling the company’s coffers that BearingPoint,Inc.  
is close to the current administration and contributes to the  
Republican Party particularly in election years.



It's quite obvious that BearingPoint has not accomplished anything in  
Afghanistan for which it was paid. And what about those "accounting  
errors"? Would that be "accounting errors" like those of Bear Stearns,  
Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrel Lynch, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac  
and, perhaps soon to be Washington Mutual and Wachovia? Behold the  
American way of doing business! Behold the failure of capitalism!

Jeffrey's other interesting link from the Boston Globe article is his  
close association with Mr. Iran-Contra himself, Elliot Abrams. Abrams'  
big deal is the promotion of "freedom" and "democracy" abroad,  
particularly in the Middle East. Of course, "freedom" and "democracy"  
only apply to American ruling elites. From Sourcewatch:


     Hours before Bush's second inauguration in January 2005, the  
White House announced that Abrams would serve as Bush's deputy  
assistant and as the deputy national security adviser for global  
democracy strategy under NSC Adviser Stephen Hadley, who had been  
Condoleezza Rice's deputy at the NSC when she was adviser. In his  
announcement of Abrams's new position, Hadley called Abrams one of the  
administration's strongest and most consistent advocates of American  
strength and the expansion of freedom worldwide.

     Abrams is a key proponent of the "freedom and democracy" policy  
that Bush highlighted during his 2005 State of the Union Address, and  
has been an important figure in dealings with Israel. Prior to Rice's  
first trip to Israel as secretary of state, Abrams met with Prime  
Minister Ariel Sharon's top adviser, Dov Weisglass, to establish the  
parameters of the Rice-Sharon meetings.

     [ . . . ]

     While Bush's supporters are generally pleased with the  
administration's strong backing of Israel, many criticize the State  
Department and Rice. Leading the attack has been Perle, who along with  
Feith, a former Pentagon undersecretary for policy, has worked with  
Abrams since the mid-1970s, when both worked for [Senator Henry  
"Scoop", D-WA] Jackson. In a Washington Post op-ed that coalesced  
conservative forces against Rice, Perle wrote that, having moved from  
the NSC to State, Rice is "now in the midst of—and increasingly  
represents—a diplomatic establishment that is driven to accommodate  
its allies even when (or, it seems, especially when) such allies  
counsel the appeasement of our adversaries" (June 25, 2006).



There we have James F. Jeffrey not far removed at all from the Prince  
of Darkness and "the stupidest fucking guy on the face of the earth",  
both of whom are tightly linked to the American Turkish Council (ATC).  
In turn, the ATC is so tightly linked to AIPAC that it's been referred  
to as the "mini-AIPAC".

The other person of interest who was involved with Jeffrey's ISOG was  
Dick Cheney's daughter, Elizabeth. Even now that she's out of public  
service, she's still doing a lot of footwork for ISOG, from the WaPo:


     . . . judging from her remarks at AIPAC, Liz is one Cheney  
unhappy with key elements of U.S. Mideast policy, from Lebanon and the  
peace process to how the White House dealt with elections in the  
Palestinian territories. She was also critical of Israel's performance  
in the 2006 war in Lebanon, citing "Israel's inability, unwillingness  
to do what was necessary . . . to fundamentally deal a blow to  
Hezbollah."

     "I think that getting back to a situation where our enemies in  
the region understand that America will stand up for its friends, that  
America will stand up for its principles and that we have red lines is  
critically important," Cheney told the friendly audience at AIPAC.  
"When those red lines aren't there, when our enemies like Iran and  
Syria begin to believe that they can act with impunity, you see  
situations like you have got in Lebanon today -- where Hezbollah now  
has a veto over that government, where Hezbollah will be able, I fear,  
to significantly continue its efforts to rearm in southern Lebanon,  
continue to threaten Israel and allow Iran a real chokehold on the  
region."



The big problem with Liz Cheney's AIPAC comments is that the US has no  
friends and fewer principles.

We'll be watching the news for more on Jeffrey and his confirmation  
hearings, both of which have been flying under the radar of official  
American state propaganda organs (i.e. the media). That fact alone  
makes me suspect that Jeffrey's appointment is something the regime  
doesn't want anyone to pay attention to.

Given the methods of the Washington regime, especially as regards the  
Middle East, "freedom", and "democracy", we should be prepared to  
expect the worst out of this appointment.