Text & Video Fwd: OUTRAGE IN BAHRAIN

Bruce Gagnon's Organizing Notes
Friday, February 18, 2011
OUTRAGE IN BAHRAIN



"Washington is now faced again with another hard choice…," wrote Graham Fuller, a former senior CIA Mideast analyst who teaches at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, in the International Herald Tribune on the eve of Thursday's attack. He warned that the naval base could be lost if the regime falls.

"Continue to go with local repressive regimes out of a misguided sense of 'American interests'? Hold on to unpopular military bases at all costs – thereby deepening local anger and perhaps giving Iran ultimately a greater voice in events?" he asked. "Or should it quietly drop support for this repressive regime, allow events to take their course and accept that long-overdue change is coming?"

"We should speak out more strongly in support of change and democratic process and stop clinging to traditional dictators even if they're pro-American," Fuller said in a telephone interview on Thursday.

The United States last year provided Bahrain with about $21 million in military assistance, a substantial amount given the country's relatively small size. Of that total, about $1 million was designated for counterterrorism aid, much of it to the police and military forces that are suppressing the protests in the country's capital.