It should come as no surprise to anyone that the big guns are still out against House Resolution 106 recognizing the Armenian Genocide which is or was scheduled to be put before the U.S. Congress for a full vote next month. As has been mentioned on this blog time and time again, such resolutions are not new and the outcome has to date always been the same.

That is, citing national security concerns and foreign policy objectives, whoever is in the White House — Democrat and Republican alike — kill such bills before they can reach the floor. Now is no exception, with AFP reporting that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is urging U.S. lawmakers to drop the bill because of a strategic relationship with the modern-day Republic of Turkey.

“This is a very delicate time with Turkey,” she told the House of Representatives Foreign Relations Committee, which voted two weeks ago to label the Ottoman Empire’s World War I massacre of Armenians as genocide.

“We have extremely important strategic interests with the Turks,” Rice said, appealing to the House as a whole not to vote on the controversial resolution.

“This was something that was a horrible event in the mass killings that took place, but at the time of the Ottoman Empire. These are not the Ottomans,” she said of the modern-day Turkish state.

Rice on Tuesday held talks with Armenian Prime Minister Serzh Sarkisian, and she told the House panel that she had urged both the Armenians and Turks to work together on bridging their historical differences. “But I continue to believe that the passage of the… Armenian genocide resolution would severely harm our relationships with Turkey,” the secretary of state said.

[…]

Some of the House members told Rice that the resolution was never intended to be a slight on Turkey itself. But in any case, support for the genocide tag appears to be waning in the full House following Turkey’s threat to cut off its logistical support for U.S.-led war efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Reuters reports that Turkey has launched military strikes against Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) camps in Iraq. The brief incursion involved airstrikes and ground troops. Thirty-four Kurdish rebels are believed killed with no Turkish casualties. The military action comes as Turkey threatens a major incursion into Northern Iraq following the adoption of a resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide in the U.S., and the deaths of 12 soldiers near the border on Sunday.

Turkish warplanes and troops have attacked Kurdish rebels inside Iraq and forces were being built up on the border, but Ankara was holding back from any major strike for now, military sources said on Wednesday.

News of the sorties, between Sunday and Tuesday evening in which Turkish warplanes flew 20 km (13 miles) into Iraq and some 300 ground troops advanced about 10 km, put Baghdad under greater pressure to act against PKK rebels operating from the north of its territory.

[…]

Turkey, which has NATO’s second biggest army, has deployed as many as 100,000 troops, backed by tanks, F-16 fighter jets and helicopter gunships, along the mountainous border in preparation for a possible large-scale strike.

[…]

“Further ‘hot pursuit’ raids into northern Iraq can be expected, though none have taken place so far today (Wednesday),” a military official said.

2004 Democratic Party Presidential Candidate Nominee, Howard Dean, plants a tree at the Armenian Genocide Memorial, Tsitsernakaberd, Yerevan, Republic of Armenia © Onnik Krikorian / Oneworld Multimedia 2005

Via Blogian, the New York Times reports that Democratic party support for a resolution recognizing the Armenian Genocide is waning. According to the paper, a dozen lawmakers have withdrawn their support for the resolution which is expected to be voted on in the U.S. Congress next month. The Armenian lobby shouldn’t be surprised, however. This is what always happens whenever such a resolution gets through. American national security concerns and U.S.-Turkish relations are always the reason and that’s unlikely to change in the foreseeable future.

Until today, the resolution appeared to be on a path to House passage, with strong support from the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi of California. It was approved last week by the House Foreign Affairs Committee. But this evening, a group of group of senior House Democrats had made it known they were planning to ask the leadership to drop plans for a vote on the measure.

“Turkey obviously feels they are getting poked in the eye over something that happened a century ago, and maybe this isn’t a good time to be doing that,” said Representative Allen Boyd, a Florida Democrat who dropped his sponsorship of the resolution Monday night. .

Others who took the same action said that while they deplored the mass killings of Armenians by the Ottoman Empire, beginning in 1915, the modern-day consequences in the Middle East could not be overlooked.

“We simply cannot allow the grievances of the past — as real as they may be — to in any way derail our efforts to prevent further atrocities for future history books,” said Representative Wally Herger, Republican of California.

“I think it is a good resolution and horrible timing,” said Representative Mike Ross, Democrat of Arkansas.

The Turkish government has lobbied heavily against the resolution, which is nonbinding and largely symbolic. But lawmakers attributed the erosion in support mainly to fears about a potential Turkish decision to deny American access to critical military facilities in that nation and its threat to move forces into northern Iraq to attack Kurdish rebels.

“This vote came face to face with the reality on the ground in that region of the world,” said Representative Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus and an opponent of the resolution.

[…]

The biggest fear, several former officials said, is that Turkish forces could push past the border and head for Kirkuk, forcing Iraq to respond and presenting the United States with mediating between two allies and a decision about whether to commit American troops. Such a crisis could also draw in Iran, which has also had growing problems with Kurdish groups crossing into its territory from Iraq.

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As U.S. President George W. Bush reiterates his determination to prevent last week’s House Resolution 106 affirming the Armenian Genocide from being passed by Congress, RFE/RL reports that illegal Armenian immigrants are being deported from Turkey. Meanwhile, the discussion in the blogosphere continues and once again, the main issue seems to be not based on whether the Armenian Genocide occured, but rather one of why the Democrats, and Speaker Nancy Pelosi, introduced the resolution now.

This question is specifically raised by a number of American bloggers, especially when the logistics of supplying U.S. troops in Iraq might be affected by the Armenian Genocide resolution. David Aikman at Implications sets the scene.

There seems little historical doubt that the Armenian massacre was indeed genocide. The eye-witness accounts of the time are overwhelming, and Ottoman government documents talking openly about eliminating the Armenians as a people group are plentiful from the period 1915–1917. But with the U.S. dependent on the friendship of Turkey to support a difficult war in Iraq, it seems at the very least an ill-timed notion to rub Turkey’s face in the judgment of history. True, all Armenians and American-Armenians will feel affirmed by official American national recognition of the injustice they suffered. But isn’t it more important that the Turks themselves should finally come to acknowledge the truth of what happened to the Armenians 92 years ago? That may yet take decades to come to pass. Assuredly, it won’t be hastened by this week’s Congressional resolution. And what if resupplying American troops in Iraq is seriously compromised by a Turkish curtailment of U.S. base usage in Turkey? To rephrase Congressman Lantos’ well-stated dilemma: “Is the gratification of wounded Armenian sensibility worth the possibly serious risk that could ensure to American forces in wartime?” Perhaps not.

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As conflict in Iraq continues to grab international headlines while the citizens of many countries with troops making up part of the U.S.-led coalition question their deployment, former Soviet and Eastern bloc republics seem more eager to send troops. In January, Armenia sent a fresh contingent of troops to Iraq despite criticism from the country’s ethnic Armenian population. Earlier this week, two ethnic Armenian women were killed by foreign security guards.

However, while the Armenian and Azerbaijani contingents in Iraq are reported to number 46 and 150 personnel respectively, the Georgian force numbers 2,000. Keen to prove itself and eventually join NATO, the Georgian contingent is now the subject of a New York Times photo story. The Travel Photographer has more.

The New York Times featured photographs of Georgian troops being sent to Kut, an area near Iran, in a recent slideshow. Its accompanying article tells us that at a time when other countries (such as Great Britain) are pulling troops out as fast as they can, Georgia has more than doubled its troop levels in Iraq to 2,000 soldiers.

What’s in it for Georgia, you ask? Ah, well…Georgia seeks NATO membership as a security guarantee against Russia, and by sending its troops to Iraq, its politicians hope that the United States will reciprocate by supporting Georgia’s membership. This is what is defined as realpolitik.

The NYT photo story, From the Caucasus to the Fertile Crescent, is here.

Got chatting to the guy who I assume is the owner of my local kiosk last night. It seems like it’s his, although he doesn’t seem to do much when he’s in the shop apart from sit in a corner, smoke and drink coffee. He does at least drive around in a Mercedes, and his wife and grown-up kids seem well to do, I suppose.

Anyway, after all the obligatory pleasantries the conversation turned to the biggest news of the past week. “Why did they hang Saddam?” he asked as if I somehow knew the inner workings of Whitehall and Washington. Funny how people here think that every Brit and American represents the policy of their Government.

Certainly, it was interesting to discover that he believed Saddam was executed to suit western interests rather than anything about Iraqi justice prevailing.

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Reporters Without Borders has an interesting round up of reaction from the global blogosphere on the execution of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein. Their blog presents a variety of opinions and is worth a look. You won’t agree with everything written there, but it’s certainly an excellent example of how blogs can present a plurality of opinion exactly when we need it.

Each week, Reporters Without Borders publishes the opinions of bloggers throughout the world on an important development, thereby broadening the range of views on current events. The blogs are selected by a team of bloggers of very diverse origins and cultures. We give priority to blogs which Internet users have written in their mother tongue, and we translate them into English and French.

This week : what bloggers from France, Irak, Uruguay, Iran, USA… say about Saddam Hussein’s execution

[…]

Saddam Hussein was tried for genocide and crimes against humanity in events that happened almost 2 decades ago. His guilt in that one trial spoke to a single chapter whose murderous mark personifies a sliver of the total crimes that Hussein committed in over a quarter century of terror. Yet the mainstream media is beside themselves in trying to recreate the image of Saddam Hussein the killer into Saddam Hussein the victim.

[..]

Saddam Hussein was executed before the New Year. Everyone saw him being hanged on TV or on the Internet. This kind of thing does not usually make much of an impression on me. What with all the horrors you see every day on the Internet or on TV, you gradually lose your sensitivity, you get used to morbid things. But this time I was shocked. We are now well into the 21st century and these were scenes that made me think of the Inquisition, when the entire village would gather to burn a witch and watch her die in the flames.

The posts can be found at http://www.rsfblog.org

Well, it’s an interesting way to see in the New Year, with controversy surrounding the release of footage of last Thursday’s execution of Saddam Hussein on the Internet. Certainly, the video phone has come of age although as only two senior Iraqi officials were apparently allowed to have their mobiles with them as the ex-dictator went to the gallows, it’s perhaps a perverse form of citizen journalism, I suppose. Nevertheless, it’s quite a moment for the online world as The Huffington Post explains.

The execution happened, the coverage began, and the inevitable question arose: would the networks air full video clips of Saddam Hussein’s hanging? Those thirsting for gory details that potentially squeamish networks wouldn’t provide needed to look no further than YouTube, which held versions aplenty of the now infamous camera phone video within hours of the execution (an occurrence that surprised just about no one). Meanwhile, networks wrung their hands over whether the value of the context and authenticity shown in the videa outweighed the material’s gruesome nature. Even Fox, which teased viewers with early footage that stopped just short of the moment of death, balked at showing the dictator’s neck breaking on air (though, as Gawker pointed out, they wasted no time in ponying up the full video on the Fox website). Blogs and independent news sites nabbed and posted the unofficial video (which was reportedly more graphic and detailed than the brief clip released by the Iraqi government) in droves, and soon the question of whether or not to run it became somewhat moot.

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The BBC reports that Saddam Hussein has finally been executed. To be honest, I had totally forgotten about him. Hard to say whether this is good or bad, but it’s ironic to read what Bush had to say about Hussein’s death. Right, democracy and executions. Not.

“It is a testament to the Iraqi people’s resolve to move forward after decades of oppression that, despite his terrible crimes against his own people, Saddam Hussein received a fair trial.

“It is an important milestone on Iraq’s course to becoming a democracy that can govern, sustain, and defend itself, and be an ally in the War on Terror.”

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Nothing to do with Armenia, apart from relatively close proximity and an Armenian minority, but the BBC reports that the deposed Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein has been found guilty of crimes against humanity and sentenced to death. Hussein will apparently be hung.

The former Iraqi president was convicted by a Baghdad court for his role in the killing of 148 people in the mainly Shia town of Dujail in 1982.

His half brother Barzan al-Tikriti was also sentenced to death, as was Iraq’s former chief judge Awad Hamed al-Bandar

Former Vice-President Taha Yassin Ramadan got life in jail and three others received 15 year prison terms.

Another co-defendant, Baath party official Mohammed Azawi Ali, was acquitted.

Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki hailed the conviction in a televised address, saying that the sentence was “not a sentence on one man, but a sentence against all the dark period of his rule”.

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