Starting Points

Jan 10, 2010

Al-Qaeda has a new strategy. Obama needs one, too.

Image by robertodevido via Flickr

By Bruce Hoffman
Sunday, January 10, 2010; B01

In the wake of the failed Christmas Day airplane bombing and the killing a few days later of seven CIA operatives in Afghanistan, Washington is, as it was after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, obsessed with "dots" -- and our inability to connect them. "The U.S. government had sufficient information to have uncovered this plot and potentially disrupt the Christmas Day attack, but our intelligence community failed to connect those dots," the president said Tuesday.

But for all the talk, two key dots have yet to be connected: Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the alleged Northwest Airlines Flight 253 attacker, and Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, the trusted CIA informant turned assassin. Although a 23-year-old Nigerian engineering student and a 36-year-old Jordanian physician would seem to have little in common, they both exemplify a new grand strategy that al-Qaeda has been successfully pursuing for at least a year.

Throughout 2008 and 2009, U.S. officials repeatedly trumpeted al-Qaeda's demise. In a May 2008 interview with The Washington Post, then-CIA Director Michael Hayden heralded the group's "near strategic defeat." And the intensified aerial drone attacks that President Obama authorized against al-Qaeda targets in Pakistan last year were widely celebrated for having killed over half of its remaining senior leadership.

Yet, oddly enough for a terrorist movement supposedly on its last legs, al-Qaeda late last month launched two separate attacks less than a week apart -- one failed and one successful -- triggering the most extensive review of U.S. national security policies since 2001. Al-Qaeda's newfound vitality is the product of a fresh strategy that plays to its networking strength and compensates for its numerical weakness. In contrast to its plan on Sept. 11, which was to deliver a knock-out blow to the United States, al-Qaeda's leadership has now adopted a "death by a thousand cuts" approach. There are five core elements to this strategy.

First, al-Qaeda is increasingly focused on overwhelming, distracting and exhausting us. To this end, it seeks to flood our already information-overloaded national intelligence systems with myriad threats and background noise. Al-Qaeda hopes we will be so distracted and consumed by all this data that we will overlook key clues, such as those before Christmas that linked Abdulmutallab to an al-Qaeda airline-bombing plot.

Second, in the wake of the global financial crisis, al-Qaeda has stepped up a strategy of economic warfare. "We will bury you," Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev promised Americans 50 years ago. Today, al-Qaeda threatens: "We will bankrupt you." Over the past year, the group has issued statements, videos, audio messages and letters online trumpeting its actions against Western financial systems, even taking credit for the economic crisis. However divorced from reality these claims may be, propaganda doesn't have to be true to be believed, and the assertions resonate with al-Qaeda's target audiences.

Heightened security measures after the Christmas Day plot, coupled with the likely development of ever more sophisticated passenger-screening and intelligence technologies, stand to cost a lot of money, while the war in Afghanistan constitutes a massive drain on American resources. Given the economic instability here and abroad, al-Qaeda seems to think that a strategy of financial attrition will pay outsize dividends.

Third, al-Qaeda is still trying to create divisions within the global alliance arrayed against it by targeting key coalition partners. Terrorist attacks on mass-transit systems in Madrid in 2004 and London in 2005 were intended to punish Spain and Britain for participating in the war in Iraq and in the U.S.-led war on terrorism, and al-Qaeda continues this approach today. During the past two years, serious terrorist plots orchestrated by al-Qaeda's allies in Pakistan, meant to punish Spain and the Netherlands for participating in the war on terrorism, were thwarted in Barcelona and Amsterdam.

Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, suicide bombers and roadside explosives target contingents from countries such as Britain, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands, where popular support for deployments has waned, in hopes of hastening their withdrawal from the NATO-led coalition.

Fourth, al-Qaeda is aggressively seeking out, destabilizing and exploiting failed states and other areas of lawlessness. While the United States remains preoccupied with trying to secure yesterday's failed state -- Afghanistan -- al-Qaeda is busy staking out new terrain. The terrorist network sees failing states as providing opportunities to extend its reach, and it conducts local campaigns of subversion to hasten their decline. Over the past year, it has increased its activities in places such as Pakistan, Algeria, the Sahel, Somalia and, in particular, Yemen.

Once al-Qaeda has located or helped create a region of lawlessness, it guides allies and related terrorist groups in that area, boosting their local, regional and -- as the Northwest Airlines plot demonstrated -- international attack capabilities. Although the exact number of al-Qaeda personnel in each of these areas varies, and in some cases may include no more than a few hard-core terrorists, they perform a critical force-multiplying function. Their help to indigenous terrorist groups includes support for attacks -- by providing weapons, training and intelligence -- and, equally critical, assistance in disseminating propaganda, such as by building Web sites and launching online magazines modeled on al-Qaeda's.

Fifth and finally, al-Qaeda is covetously seeking recruits from non-Muslim countries who can be easily deployed for attacks in the West. The group's leaders see people like these -- especially converts to Islam whose appearances and names would not arouse the same scrutiny that persons from Islamic countries might -- as the ultimate fifth column. Citizens of countries that participate in the U.S. visa-waiver program are especially prized because they can move freely between Western countries and blend easily into these societies.

Al-Qaeda has become increasingly adept at using the Internet to locate these would-be terrorists and to feed them propaganda. During the past 18 months, American and British intelligence officials have said, well over 100 individuals from such countries have graduated from terrorist training camps in Pakistan and have been sent West to undertake terrorist operations.

In adopting and refining these tactics, al-Qaeda is shrewdly opportunistic. It constantly monitors our defenses in an effort to identify new gaps and opportunities that can be exploited. Its operatives track our congressional hearings, think-tank analyses and media reports, all of which provide strategic intelligence. By coupling this information with surveillance efforts, the movement has overcome many of the security measures we have put in its path.

A survey of terrorist incidents in the past seven months alone underscores the diversity of the threats arrayed against us and the variety of tactics al-Qaeda is using. These incidents involved such hard-core operatives as Balawi, the double agent who played American and Jordanian intelligence to kill more CIA agents than anyone else has in more than a quarter-century. And sleeper agents such as David Headley, the U.S. citizen whose reconnaissance efforts for Lashkar-i-Taiba, a longtime al-Qaeda ally, were pivotal to the November 2008 suicide assault in Mumbai. And motivated recruits such as Abdulmutallab, the alleged Northwest Airlines bomber, and Najibullah Zazi, the Afghan-born U.S. resident arrested in New York last September and charged with plotting a "Mumbai on the Hudson" suicide terrorist operation. And "lone wolves" such as Maj. Nidal Hassan, accused of killing 13 people at Fort Hood in November, and Abdulhakim Muhammad, a convert to Islam who, after returning from Yemen last June, killed one soldier and wounded another outside an Army recruiting center in Little Rock.

But while al-Qaeda is finding new ways to exploit our weaknesses, we are stuck in a pattern of belated responses, rather than anticipating its moves and developing preemptive strategies. The "systemic failure" of intelligence analysis and airport security that Obama recently described was not just the product of a compartmentalized bureaucracy or analytical inattention, but a failure to recognize al-Qaeda's new strategy.

The national security architecture built in the aftermath of Sept. 11 addresses yesterday's threats -- but not today's and certainly not tomorrow's. It is superb at reacting and responding, but not at outsmarting. With our military overcommitted in Iraq and Afghanistan and our intelligence community overstretched by multiplying threats, a new approach to counterterrorism is essential.

"In the never-ending race to protect our country, we have to stay one step ahead of a nimble adversary," Obama said Thursday. He spoke of the need for intelligence and airport security reform, but he could have, and should have, been talking about the need for a new strategy to match al-Qaeda's.

Remarkably, more than eight years after Sept. 11, we still don't fully understand our dynamic and evolutionary enemy. We claim success when it is regrouping and tally killed leaders while more devious plots are being hatched. Al-Qaeda needs to be utterly destroyed. This will be accomplished not just by killing and capturing terrorists -- as we must continue to do -- but by breaking the cycle of radicalization and recruitment that sustains the movement.

Bruce Hoffman is a professor of security studies at Georgetown University and a senior fellow at the U.S. Military Academy's Combating Terrorism Center.He will be online to chat with readers on Monday at 11 a.m. Submit your questions and comments before or during the discussion.

In Britain or France, my aging mother would have gotten better health care

Image by seiuhealthcare775nw via Flickr

By Sara Mansfield Taber
Sunday, January 10, 2010; B01

In the final months before her death in May, my mother kept her shoes on all day, even when napping. She had to -- at her assisted-living facility in Mitchellville, Md., three certified nursing assistants looked after 39 residents. My mom couldn't depend on one of them to have the time to put her shoes on when she needed to get out of bed. Only in the mornings and evenings, when one of her private aides was with her for about 30 minutes, did she have personalized care.

Disabled by heart disease, two hip replacements and depression, my mother was often groggy when I visited. She needed me to take her hand and pull her up so she could grab the bed rail and maneuver into a sitting position. Though she brightened when I told her stories about her grandchildren over lunch in the facility's dining room, her joy vanished as soon as we returned to her unit. A blank look on her face, she would lay back on her bed, prone and helpless.

Like many American women of my generation, I struggled to figure out how to best care for my aging mother. As the end neared, I compared notes with my friends Fiona and Juliette. Fiona lives in Canada, but her mother lives in their native England, while Juliette lives with her mother in their family home in France. How could we establish safe and comfortable environments for our ailing mothers? How could we find high-quality medical care within reach of their incomes, and our own? And how could we preserve their mental health and sense of well-being while limiting our stress?

My mother's plight made my stress considerable. Each month, Lois Taber paid $4,069 to reside in her assisted-living community, $1,400 for private aides and an average of $140 for medications. Just before she died at age 82, she liquidated assets from her 401(k) to pay for a $5,800 hearing aid. At $169.50 per ride, the retirement home's fee for transporting her to medical appointments was prohibitive. Other than Medicare, my mom had no government-subsidized elder-care services. Already, the lack of affordable in-home support had forced my parents to leave their beloved house in Chevy Chase, Md., to receive the basic care they needed.

Overseas, things are different -- that is, better. In England, which has a national health system similar in structure to our Veterans Affairs system, Fiona's mum, Pat Reid, suffers from disabling arthritis and diabetes, and cannot move without great pain. But a government-supplied home health aide visits Pat at breakfast, lunch and dinner every day. This costs the family 120 pounds a week (approximately $785 per month), a little more than half of what my mom paid for private aides. Lower-income patients receive this service free. The National Health Service provides general practitioners, nursing care, ambulance services, diabetic clinic visits, medications and hospitalizations for no charge. Doctors and nurses make home visits.

In addition, Pat's son Simon, who has no work at the moment and lives in his mother's converted garage, receives 50 pounds a week (about $325 per month) from the government to help him look after her. With this government support, Pat is able to stay in the home where she lived with her husband for more than 35 years. The cost of her care is well within her monthly income of 2,000 pounds.

In France, Juliette's maman, Madeleine Fournot, has Alzheimer's disease. She receives assistance via a national health reimbursement system similar to Medicare as well as through a special program for the elderly and disabled called l'Allocation Personalisée à l'Autonomie ("Personal Autonomy Allocation"). Since the government refunds 560 of every 1,200 euros Juliette spends on her mother's medical expenses, she is able to hire a caregiver who looks after her mother around the clock 3 1/2 days per week. This allows Madeleine to stay in her suburban Paris home, where her family has lived for three generations, and provides Juliette a regular respite from elder care.

Madeleine receives one free doctor's visit per month, and the doctor makes house calls when needed. Four days a week, a physical therapist visits her, charging a one euro co-pay per visit -- less than the cost of a cup of coffee on the Champs-Élysées. Because Madeleine is on blood thinners, a hematology technician comes each week to check her blood levels. If she is in bed when he arrives, she can stay snug under her covers while he takes the sample. All medications related to Madeleine's Alzheimer's are free, as is transportation to her neurologist in Paris. Her doctor simply fills out a form stating that she cannot stand without assistance, and she is reimbursed for the 30-minute taxi ride into the city.

Other services available to Madeleine include daily medication-administration house calls by a trained nurse, daily meal service (a three-course lunch and soup for dinner) and a specially designed activity program for Alzheimer's patients. The total monthly cost of Madeleine's care is 1,500 Euros, or $2,205.

I am struck by all that Fiona's mum and Juliette's maman can take for granted. They enjoy access to services far beyond free and full medical and prescription drug coverage. In England, my mother's $5,800 hearing aid would have been free. While Mum and Maman get house calls from their doctors and cash compensation for family members who care for them, I often had to take time off from work -- an expensive proposition for a self-employed psychologist and writer -- to help Mom. Taking her back and forth to her medical appointments ate up entire days and, with her disabilities, she could barely get in and out of my car. This was hard work, not quality time with an aging parent.

Mom, Mum and Maman were not very different people. All three married civil servants, led middle-class lives and retired on government pensions. Pat and her husband, a BBC editor and translator who escaped five Italian prison camps during World War II, sought to create a peaceful life for their children. After her husband died, Pat took a job on the local council for village planning. Madeleine spent most of her middle years in Afghanistan, where her husband was posted with the United Nations. My mother worked in orphanages and schools in Asia, Europe and the United States as she followed my father, a CIA officer, across three continents. All three women eventually became widows and developed significant medical problems. Illness and enfeeblement limited their lives, and they came to require help with their daily activities.

There, the similarity ends. As seniors, each woman's quality of life was shaped by her government's health-care policies. The services offered to older people in Britain and France seem, to this American observer, straightforward, logical and humane. These countries provide the basic help their elders need to remain in their homes and in their communities, close to family and friends. It upsets me to think how much more peacefully my mother's life might have ended had she had the support available to older people in Britain and France. Why should Mum and Maman be able to grow old at home, but not Mom?

Many Americans protest that Europeans pay high taxes for medical care. It is true that people in other countries pay more in taxes, but, between out-of-pocket expenses and private health insurance premiums, many Americans spend much of their tax savings staying alive. Of course, high-quality health care costs money. Treating Mom like Mum and Maman is expensive. But Pat and Madeleine both have much lower living and medical expenses than my mother had, and, unlike Americans, they never had to pay for health insurance in their prime.

If our taxes were somewhat higher but we received dependable services that enabled us to spend less out of pocket on doctors' visits, medications and nursing care -- services that helped us remain independent, at home, and that relieved our families of financial and emotional burdens -- wouldn't peace of mind outweigh the additional cost?

My mother, a physical therapist and teacher with a blow of cumulus hair, was a hard-working person whose motto was: "If, at the end of the day, I can say I've helped someone's life to be better, then I've had a good day." It would have been nice if, at the end of her days, she could have taken her shoes off.

Sara Mansfield Taber, a psychologist and writer, is the author of "Bread of Three Rivers: The Story of a French Loaf."

Powerful Japanese politician Ozawa flexes his muscles as party leader falters

Image via Wikipedia

By Blaine Harden
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 10, 2010; A16

TOKYO -- Shrewd, stern and baggy-eyed, Ichiro Ozawa has prowled the back rooms of power in Tokyo for more than four decades. Last year, he masterminded an election victory that crushed the political party that ruled Japan for nearly half a century.

Yet after the historic vote, as his Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) took power, Ozawa chose not to join the government. Instead, he served officially as his party's secretary general and unofficially as its all-powerful political wizard. The local press dubbed him the "shadow shogun."

Now, with the new government stumbling, its poll numbers sinking and another national election looming, Ozawa, 67, has stepped out of the shadows and is beginning to wave his wand.

He played a major role in undermining Finance Minister Hirohisa Fujii, who resigned last week. Ozawa has also handed down directives on social spending and highways toll rates to Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, whose leadership ability he has reportedly criticized in private.

In a remarkable display of foreign-policy chutzpah, Ozawa last month led a 645-member, five-airplane pilgrimage of lawmakers and other leaders on a visit to Beijing, where he met with Chinese Premier Hu Jintao.

The DJP has questioned the long-held traditional alliance between Japan and the United States, with Hatoyama so far refusing to follow through on relocation of a U.S. Marine base on Okinawa sought by Washington.

In Washington, Ozawa is viewed with a mixture of alarm and understanding. Some in the Obama administration portray him as a Rasputin-like character plotting to push Japan away from the United States. Others understand him as an old-time pol, more interested in winning elections than in international affairs. Ozawa, they recall, was a mastermind behind the defeat of the once powerful Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in 1993. That victory proved short-lived, though, when Ozawa botched the handling of a coalition government.

Asked to explain Ozawa's new role in governing Japan, the head of the DPJ's international department, Yukihisa Fujita, said in a statement: "Government policies are overseen by the cabinet led by prime minister Hatoyama, and party affairs by the secretary general Ozawa. There is a division of labor with close cooperation and leadership between the two."

But Japan's two most influential newspapers -- which are not friendly with the new government -- have detected a new form of two-headed rule. The Yomiuri newspaper calls it "dual-governance." The Asahi suggests "there is another prime minister outside the cabinet."

Japan's election schedule virtually guarantees that Ozawa's relative influence will expand into mid-summer, when there is a vote for the upper house of parliament. The DPJ needs to gain just seven seats in that 242-member chamber to win a majority, which would give it commanding control over parliament for several years. The party already dominates the lower house, and analysts here agree that Ozawa is likely to lead his party to another sizable win.

There is, however, a legal roadblock confronting the ever-more-visible DPJ shogun. The Tokyo prosecutor's office wants to question Ozawa about $4.31 million from his political fund that was used to buy real estate in Tokyo six years ago. Ozawa agreed this week to meet with prosecutors, although the seriousness of his legal difficulties over the unreported land purchase is not yet clear.

The investigation is an echo of a separate fundraising investigation that last year forced Ozawa to resign as head of the DPJ and forfeit his chance of becoming prime minister. In that case, as in the current one, Ozawa said his aides acted without his knowledge.

There are questions, though, about the political motivations of the Tokyo prosecutor's office, which has old allegiances to the Liberal Democratic Party, the former ruling party.

This winter, the rise of Ozawa's public profile has roughly coincided with the falling poll numbers and perceived leadership failures of Hatoyama, who took over the DPJ last summer after Ozawa stepped down as party leader.

Hatoyama's approval numbers have plummeted in the past three months from above 80 percent to below 50 percent. Part of the reason, according to newspaper polls, is indecision on key policy matters. Still, his party remains far more popular than the LDP, which has collapsed since losing the election in August and is now supported by less than 20 percent of voters.

Ozawa is a champion of the DPJ's most popular new policies, pushing to strip policymaking authority from bureaucrats and give it to elected officials. He has also forced increased transparency in how the government spends public money, opening up a process that for decades was kept behind closed doors, with decisions often made by senior bureaucrats who later took jobs in companies that received public money.

"The people see Ozawa's toughness and admire his emotional strength," said Harumi Arima, a political analyst in Tokyo. "It is because of him that people feel the DPJ will actually change things and make thing better. They feel Hatoyama is a weakling."

Other analysts say that while Ozawa is unquestionably a powerful voice in the government, he is not the only one -- and that he shares control with Hatoyama and the new finance minister and former deputy prime minister, Naoto Kan. "To say that Ozawa has single control doesn't reflect reality," said Koichi Nakano, an assistant professor of political science at Sophia University in Tokyo.

Still, there is a perception that Ozawa, if Hatoyama continues to stumble, may take over the government after the summer election. "Deep down, Ozawa wants to win that election and become prime minister," said Arima. "He wants the honor, as well a mark in history that he has changed Japan."

Special correspondent Akiko Yamamoto and staff writer John Pomfret in Washington contributed to this report.

Elite Revolutionary Guard's expanding role in Iran may limit U.S. options

Image by Hamed Saber via Flickr

By Thomas Erdbrink
Washington Post Foreign Service
Sunday, January 10, 2010; A10

TEHRAN -- A major expansion in the role played by Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps is giving the elite force new economic and political clout, but it could also complicate efforts by the United States and its allies to put pressure on the Iranian regime, according to U.S. officials and outside analysts.

Commanders of the Revolutionary Guard say its growth represents a logical expansion for an organization that is not a military force but a popular movement that protects the ideals of the 1979 Islamic revolution and Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. The Guard's expanded economic role is mirrored by a greater role in politics and security since the disputed presidential election in June, which the government says was won by incumbent Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a landslide but which the opposition says was stolen.

U.S. officials consider the Guard a ripe target for sanctions over Iran's controversial nuclear program because of the group's central role in repressing post-election opposition protests. The officials are also concerned that broader-based sanctions risk alienating the Iranian public at a time when the government here faces protests from an energized opposition. But they also know that because of the Guard's growing economic influence, sanctions on it could pinch the broader Iranian public as well.

Supporters and opponents alike say the Guard has dramatically expanded its reach into Iran's economy, with vast investments in thousands of companies across a range of sectors. Working through its private-sector arm, the group operates Tehran's international airport, builds the nation's highways and constructs communications systems. It also manages Iran's weapons manufacturing business, including its controversial missile program.

The Guard has received at least $6 billion worth of government contracts in two years, according to state-run media. But the amount could be much higher in reality because many deals are not made public. Known large projects include the construction of a subway system in the eastern city of Mashhad and infrastructure ventures in the oil and gas industry. In September, Etemad-e Mobin, an investment company that Iranian media have widely linked to the Guard, bought a 51 percent share of the national telecommunications business minutes after it was privatized. Its main competitor was disqualified at the last moment because of "security problems."

Current U.N. and U.S. sanctions already target the Guard, as well as some related companies, for involvement in Iran's nuclear and missile programs. The U.S. Treasury Department has assembled lists of dozens of companies that it suspects are Guard front operations or affiliates. U.S. officials say they hope to broaden the existing sanctions to include this substantial list of additional Guard companies, either with U.N. Security Council authority or through a coalition that would include major industrialized powers and key Persian Gulf countries.

Guardians of the system

Constitutionally established as a defender of the Islamic revolution, the Guard was created to work separately from the regular army, which was distrusted by the country's new leaders when they took over in 1979. The religious leadership has used the Guard to take on competing political and ethnic groups. It was also at the forefront of fighting during the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s.

Saying the Islamic revolution had entered a "new phase," the Guard led a deadly crackdown on street protests after the election last year and accused opposition politicians, dissidents and journalists of an elaborate plot to bring down Iran's leaders. The Guard has since grown into one of the most visible power players in the country and is the strongest opponent of the grass-roots movement that has staged protests in several cities.

"They [the Guard] have become the main, most faithful caste, to protect the system of Islamic government," said Mashallah Shamsolvaezin, a former journalist, who now works as an analyst at the Center for Scientific Research and Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran. "In exchange, wealth, power and respect are being transferred to them at an increasing rate." He was among many arrested last month after a day of major demonstrations. The reason for the arrest was not clear.

Ties between the Guard and the Ahmadinejad government are close.

Key cabinet ministries, such as oil, energy, interior and defense, are led by former Guard commanders. A former energy minister, Parviz Fattah, was appointed deputy commander of the Guard's massive Khatam ol-Anbia construction division, which is at the heart of the organization's business activities. It has 29 branches, called 'Ghorbs,' which build airplanes, dams, and oil and gas installations. Most of the Guard's contracts are with the government.

Opposition leaders say the Guard's business interests are corrupting the organization. "If the Guard has to calculate on its abacus every day to see how much the prices of their shares have gone up or down, it cannot defend the country and national interests," opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi said last week in a statement posted on a Web site linked to him.

"After the war, the Guard did not become a useless military machine, which would be of no use during peacetime," said the Guard's top commander, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Ali Jafari, in a September interview with the Jam-e Jam newspaper. "Today we are active in the fields that the revolution requires."

The Guard's construction garrison acts as a commercial company, but it is unclear what happens with its revenue. Commanders say the Guard income is transferred to the national treasury, but there are no public records that provide any amounts. Most of the group's contracts are carried out by its business divisions, which directly compete with private-sector firms.

The rise of the Guard

Iranian officials say they are undaunted by the threats of new sanctions. They point to four previous rounds of U.N. sanctions that have not proved very effective.

"U.S. sanctions will have no negative effect since the Guard organization is self-sufficient. Everything they need is here in Iran," Kazem Jalali, a member of the parliament's national security and foreign policy committee, said in an interview. "The Americans know that the Guard Corps is a defender of the values of the Islamic revolution. So the Americans aim to target its core."

The Guard's expansion into Iran's economy started in the early 1990s, when then-President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani tried to jump-start private enterprise in the state-run economy by allowing state organizations to undertake commercial projects. The political rise of the Guard runs parallel with the ascendancy of the reformists in 1997. The movement called for more personal freedoms, fewer Islamic restrictions and a greater role for democracy. Political hard-liners turned to the Guard for more muscle in combating the reformists; in exchange, the Guard was given more influence in the economy and in politics.

In a November interview with the Ettemaad-e Melli newspaper, which is critical of the government, Guard commander Gen. Massoud Jazayeri said that the force could now "even compete with huge multinational and international companies" and added: "We don't want to receive an income but want to satisfy the people."

The result has been that the Guard controls a large part of Iran's economy, analysts say. "You can't see a single project above $10 million that is not executed by the Guard or one of their organizations," said Shamsolvaezin, the analyst. He warned that economic power could produce more demands for political power. "Some of our leaders now fear that [the Guard] will take everything into their hands."

Staff writer Glenn Kessler in Washington and special correspondent Kay Armin Serjoie in Tehran contributed to this report.

Immigrants invest in U.S. businesses in exchange for visas

Image by yewenyi via Flickr

By N.C. Aizenman
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 10, 2010; A06

The number of foreigners willing to invest $500,000 to $1 million in a U.S. business in exchange for a visa roughly tripled in the past fiscal year, as dozens of cash-strapped enterprises and local governments scrambled to attract wealthy foreign backers through a previously obscure provision of immigration law.

Under the EB-5 visa program, immigrants who can demonstrate that their investment created or preserved at least 10 U.S. jobs after two years are granted legal permanent residency along with their spouses and children.

Although immigrants are allowed to establish businesses under the program, most prefer to invest in "regional centers" -- public or private enterprises that are certified by the government to receive funds from EB-5 investors and that can count jobs indirectly created by the investment toward the 10 required.

The minimum outlay mandated is $1 million, but immigrants can reduce that to $500,000 by investing in a regional center or establishing businesses in areas designated as economically disadvantaged.

The program was established in 1990, but potential investors and businesses were often dissuaded by the U.S. government's slow and inconsistent administration of the complex rules. In the past year, however, a gradual streamlining of procedures coincided with the recession and credit crunch to dramatically boost interest in the program.

In a matter of months, more than 50 private and public enterprises were certified as regional centers, increasing the total from 23 to 74. Three are in the Washington area.

With so many more investment opportunities to choose from, the number of immigrants (including investors and their immediate family members) who obtained EB-5 visas jumped from 1,443 in fiscal 2008 to 4,218 in the 2009 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, according to the State Department.

Most were granted to people from Asia, particularly China and South Korea. Several scholars said they expect the number to double again this year.

"What happens with programs like this is that sometimes, all of a sudden they get discovered, and then intermediaries begin to really promote them both here and internationally," said Demetrios Papademetriou, president of the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington think tank that recently released a report about the trend.

Statistics on the total invested through the EB-5 program are not available, but the capital infusion has been a boon to Washington area businesses. The Capitol Area Regional Center, a real estate investment fund based in the District, has been working to raise a projected $250 million from immigrant investors for use in Washington area construction projects.

Perhaps the greatest potential beneficiaries are nonprofit agencies such as the District's Anacostia Economic Development Corp., which was approved as a regional center in June. Over the next three years, the group hopes to raise $50 million from immigrant investors to develop real estate projects and small businesses in wards 7 and 8 -- a princely sum compared with the $2 million in private capital it raised for its last major building project in Anacostia.

"Normally, to get equity capital to these areas is almost impossible," said Michael Wallach, chief operating officer of the corporation. "These two wards have the highest unemployment rate in the city and the lowest incomes."

But because the primary motivation of the immigrant investors whom Wallach is wooing is to create enough jobs to meet the visa requirement rather than to maximize the return on their investment, they might prove less skittish.

'It was worth it to me'

Program participant Eric Canal-Forgues, a law professor and businessman from France, is a case in point. In 2007, he invested $500,000 in a regional center that funded construction of Comcast's headquarters in Philadelphia.

He said it is unlikely that he will get more than a 1 percent return by the five-year point at which he will be allowed to withdraw his money. That will barely cover the roughly $50,000 in administrative costs of his investment, let alone the loss of value because of inflation.

But Canal-Forgues, 47, who has moved with his wife and two children to Miami, said he has no regrets. "I knew the conditions going in, and it was worth it to me," he said. He said that Miami was attractive because of its financial opportunities and that he plans to open a franchise of children's clothing stores.

But more than anything else, he said, "we really wanted our children to be raised in a dual culture, French and American, especially because I think the educational system at the university level is much stronger here than in France."

Statistics suggest that many EB-5 applicants might also find the program appealing because it is considerably speedier than other options: Nearly 70 percent of immigrants granted investor visas in fiscal 2009 were from China or South Korea, countries whose nationals face decade-long waits for family-reunification visas because of quotas on the annual number allowed in from any one country.

Concerns about fraud

That immigrant investors are more focused on obtaining visas than maximizing profits -- combined with the government's limited capacity for oversight -- has caused even some avid proponents of the EB-5 program to worry that a profusion of fraudulent or ill-advised ventures might soon flourish alongside legitimate ones.

"The thing that concerns me most is that some fly-by-night [operation] will lose a large group of investors' money, and it will poison the well for the rest of us," said David Morris, founder of EB-5 America, a Washington regional center that invested $20 million to refurbish the Sugarbush ski resort in Vermont in past years and is now raising money for construction projects in the District.

Yet Morris also notes that some of the stricter rules of the EB-5 program -- including the rigid timeline by which the job creation requirement must be met -- do not always mesh with the realities of the business world, with consequences for both immigrant investors and potential business ventures.

For instance one of Morris's clients, Rodrigo Martinez, a Mexican immigrant who lives in Arlington County, was initially keen to invest in a project to renovate the historic O Street Market at Seventh and O streets NW. "The fact that you are helping to have a positive effect on the community that you're joining, I really liked that idea," said Martinez, 27.

But fearing that construction delays would prevent that project from creating sufficient jobs in time, Martinez, who attended law school in the United States and now works as a business consultant, switched his money last year to the Sugarbush resort instead.

Supporters of the EB-5 program also complain that the government's review process for approving potential regional centers is still too slow, especially at a time when a similar Canadian visa program is attracting three times as many immigrant investors.

Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor at Cornell University's law school and executive director of a trade association of regional centers, said the number of EB-5 visas being granted falls well short of the maximum 10,000 allowed each year.

"There's a lot more that we could be doing to promote the EB-5 program so that it can achieve its true potential in this economic recession," he said.

Bipartisan support

Powerful members of Congress on both sides of the aisle agree. In a rare bipartisan convergence on an immigration issue, Sens. Patrick J. Leahy (D-Vt.), chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), the ranking member, recently joined forces in an effort to make the regional centers permanent. (The centers were established under a pilot program that has been extended several times since the 1990s).

Leahy said he was impressed by the millions of dollars that EB-5 visa holders have invested in ski resorts such as Jay Peak and other projects in the distressed northeastern region of Vermont.

Because of legislative wrangling unrelated to the EB-5 program, Leahy had to settle for a three-year extension in the fiscal 2010 Homeland Security Appropriations bill adopted in the fall.

Still, Leahy predicted that not only will all aspects of the program soon be made permanent but also that the annual number of visas might be increased.

"Once it's permanent, I think we're really going to see the true value of this," he said. "At a time when we're seeing so many of our jobs exported out of the country, this creates jobs in the United States."

Abortion rights activists get ready for another year of challenges

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

By Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 10, 2010; A04

CHICAGO -- Supporters of a woman's right to choose an abortion had reason to feel confident a year ago, with a newly elected Democratic president whose party controlled the House and the Senate.

But not long after President Obama lifted a ban on U.S. funding for international health groups that support abortion, a gunman killed the nation's most prominent abortion doctor, George Tiller. And by year's end, congressional majorities voted to limit access to abortion coverage in proposed health-care reform legislation. The fact that an antiabortion Michigan Democrat won the day stunned abortion-rights advocates.

"We think the potential now for even more mischief and more attacks on pro-choice politics is very, very evident," said Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. "The other side is really going to attack on every front. They're just emboldened."

The new year finds the opposing political forces at loggerheads once more, as both sides prepare for health-care negotiations and events surrounding the 37th anniversary, on Jan. 22, of the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision that legalized abortion.

The federal fight over health care is "the primary focus of all the mainstream pro-life movements," said Douglas Johnson, legislative director of the National Right to Life Committee. At the state level, activists are dueling over a fresh batch of antiabortion ballot initiatives and midterm candidacies.

All eyes on Kansas

In Kansas this week, jury selection will begin in the first-degree murder case against Scott Roeder, who is accused of killing Tiller in his Wichita church on May 31. Soon after the killing, Tiller's family closed his clinic, a long-standing refuge for women and a site of daily protests that often turned bitter.

Sedgwick County District Judge Warren Wilbert ruled Friday that attorneys for Roeder can argue that he shot Tiller to protect the lives of unborn babies -- and, therefore, could be guilty of voluntary manslaughter instead of first-degree murder.

The judge said Roeder could not argue that the killing was actually justified but rather that he had an unreasonable but honest belief that the circumstances justified deadly force.

While Roeder's supporters welcomed the ruling, one major abortion rights group condemned it. "Allowing an argument that this cold-blooded, premeditated murder could be voluntary manslaughter will embolden anti-abortion extremists and could result in 'open season' on doctors across the country," Katherine Spillar, executive vice president of the Feminist Majority Foundation, warned in a statement.

Mainstream antiabortion groups have denounced the slaying as the act of a disturbed figure on the far fringe of society and political life. Johnson said the National Right to Life Committee condemns "in the most unequivocal ways violent activity."

"Most people recognize that individuals like that can crop up and associate themselves with any kind of cause," Johnson said. He added that the Roeder case, however prominent, would have no influence on the abortion component of the health-care debate in Congress.

From Hill, 'a wake-up call'

It was a vote last year in Congress, where the action over abortion had become less intense than in many statehouses, that startled and dismayed abortion rights forces. A provision sponsored by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) would prevent women who receive federal insurance subsidies from buying insurance that pays for abortions.

"The Stupak amendment was a wake-up call, and a big surprise to people all over the country who . . . generally thought that the basic right was in place and basic access was secure," said Marcia Greenberger, co-president of the National Women's Law Center.

If Congress approves a health-care bill and Obama signs it into law, the new legislation, in whatever form it takes, will probably leave significant decisions to the states, where activists and organizations on both sides are preparing to mobilize.

"By necessity, things will change in a variety of ways," Greenberger said. "And the whole question about coverage for abortion services has been put in the spotlight in a way that it never has been before. There's a whole new arena that will generate a lot of heat."

Antiabortion forces' fight

If they cannot make it illegal through federal law or the courts, opponents of abortion intend to make the procedure harder to obtain.

Already, successful legislative campaigns by antiabortion forces have quietly changed the way women in many states access abortion. Waiting periods, notification laws, required sonograms and mandated scripts have been added to medical protocols, to the satisfaction of abortion opponents and the consternation of providers.

Legislators in Montana introduced more antiabortion bills in 2009 than during any other session in the past 20 years, said Allyson Hagen, executive director of NARAL Pro-Choice Montana.

With the state legislature out of session, she expects this year's focus to be on political races and a proposed constitutional amendment that would establish "personhood" from the moment of conception. Similar ballot initiatives are being pursued elsewhere, although a proposed amendment in Colorado lost in 2008 by 46 points.

"Personhood" supporters are hurrying to gather 49,000 signatures by mid-June, said lead organizer Ann Bukacek, who said a constitutional amendment would lay the groundwork for an end to abortion. Two years ago, she said, the effort fell 17,000 signatures short because the group got a late start.

"I think we'll get it this time, and if we don't, we'll do it again," said Bukacek, an internist at Hosanna Health Care in Kalispell. "We'll never stop. These are innocent, defenseless human beings who are being slaughtered. We're never going to stop fighting for their rights."

Not much concrete with this Steele

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By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 10, 2010; A02

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael S. Steele published a book this past week titled "Right Now." It should have been called "Going Rogue."

Sarah Palin already preempted that title for her best-selling memoir, but it is Steele, even more than Palin, who has carved out the role of the go-it-alone, shoot-from-the-lip political leader. Palin used the title as a tongue-in-cheek way of tweaking her McCain campaign critics, who used those words to denigrate her during the 2008 campaign. Steele embodies their meaning.

Steele made waves all week by saying his party will probably not win back the House in November; by being the target of House leadership aides who want their counterparts at the RNC to muzzle the chairman; by telling his critics to "shut up." He has made waves repeatedly as chairman. His book, should it actually be read, will stir as much reaction in Republican circles as in Democratic ones.

The book is in part a predictable broadside aimed at President Obama, the Democrats and all things liberal. But it is also a broadside aimed at the Republican Party and its leadership over the past decade. He writes less as RNC chairman and more as would-be president of the Tea Party movement, with whom he seems to feel more kinship and camaraderie than with the Republican establishment whose chairmanship he actively sought.

Much of what he says, in both substance and style, will resonate with conservatives. "Not all of us gave up the fight and not all the time," he says of the battle many on the right have waged against Democrats for many years. "But many, especially among our leaders, have in recent years allowed our principles to be buried under layers of compromise or outright abandonment in the name of power and acceptance and going along to get along."

He writes that over the past decade, Republicans lost their way. "The disparity between our rhetoric and our action grew until our credibility snapped. It wasn't the fault of our ideals. It was the failure of our leaders to live up to them."

His Republican targets are both named and unnamed. President George H.W. Bush gets a dart for raising taxes after pledging not to do so -- a criticism other Republicans have made many times before. He praises President George W. Bush for promoting a conservative program of cutting taxes and keeping the country safe, calling it "a debt we cannot repay." Then he savages Bush and other Republican leaders for being part of a party leadership that "acquiesced to big government, big spending and increased federal control that diminishes the authority of families and individual rights."

Who are those other Republican leaders who led the party astray? Are they former Senate leaders such as Trent Lott and Bill Frist, or current leader Mitch McConnell? Are they former House speaker Dennis Hastert or former House GOP leader Tom DeLay? Does he mean to include the current House GOP leader, John Boehner? Are they his predecessors at the RNC -- such people as Ken Mehlman or Ed Gillespie or Marc Racicot or Mike Duncan? Steele doesn't say, but he is plenty angry.

Steele opposes much: the Medicare drug benefit passed during George W. Bush's presidency, which he sees as fiscally profligate; the bank and auto bailouts started by Bush and extended by Obama (which many on the left and right dislike intensely); smoking bans in restaurants. He depicts efforts to combat global climate change as "the latest environmental fad."

He even seems to oppose the current Social Security program, asserting that liberals have expanded it "from a Depression-era retirement program into a mammoth, catch-all public insurance system headed for bankruptcy." There's no question that Social Security has financial problems, but Steele offers no prescription for making the system financially sound. He says George W. Bush tried to do that; what Bush proposed was to allow workers to shift some of their payroll taxes into private accounts. He did not lay out a plan for solvency, hoping that Congress would step up to the responsibility in considering his plan for partial privatization.

In an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News -- the same interview in which he said he doubts Republicans can win back the House this year -- Steele voiced perhaps the most pertinent question for Republicans as they aspire to becoming a governing party once again. "Are we ready?" he asked. His answer: "I don't know."

Steele's critique of his party highlights the conflict Republicans felt in coming to power in the 1990s as an anti-government movement with the responsibility to run the federal government. Republicans, particularly conservatives such as Steele, never found a way to reconcile their antipathy toward government with their responsibilities as those in charge.

During the first year of the Obama presidency, Republicans have gained politically through a posture of outright opposition to the Democrats' domestic agenda. At some point, they will need to produce a governing agenda that goes beyond broad principles and offers voters a concrete sense of the policies they would try to put in place if they took power.

Would they try to repeal the health-care bill that is nearing enactment in Congress? How would they create more jobs? Would they enact more tax cuts? If so, how large, and for whom? How would they attack the deficit and debt issues? Which programs would they cut or eliminate? Would they tackle entitlement spending? Would they favor cuts in Social Security or Medicare benefits or increases in taxes to make those programs more fiscally sound? What checks, if any, would they impose on free markets? How would they prevent another financial meltdown of the kind that occurred in 2008? Would they seek international action to reduce carbon emissions?

Steele's book is subtitled "A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda." It is a campaign manifesto, but it falls far short of answering his own question as to whether Republicans are ready to govern. Perhaps Steele will leave it to others in his party to show that they are.

Video links Pakistan Taliban to deadly CIA bombing

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By DEB RIECHMANN
The Associated Press
Sunday, January 10, 2010; 4:41 AM

KABUL -- In a video broadcast after his death, the Jordanian suicide bomber who killed seven CIA employees sits cross-legged on the floor next to the new chief of the Pakistani Taliban, confirming the group was behind the brazen attack in eastern Afghanistan.

Yet multiple insurgent groups have claimed responsibility for the bombing, and a senior Pakistani militant told The Associated Press that al-Qaida and Afghan Taliban fighters were also involved in one of the worst attacks in the U.S. intelligence agency's history.

The suicide attack inside the CIA base - which the bomber said was meant to avenge the death of the former Pakistani Taliban leader in a CIA missile strike - could prompt the U.S. to further pressure the government of Pakistan to crack down on militants who operate on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistani border. U.S. missile strikes against targets on the Pakistan side already are on the rise.

Seven CIA employees and a Jordanian intelligence officer were killed Dec. 30 when the suicide bomber detonated his cache of explosives at Camp Chapman, a tightly secured CIA base in Khost province, a dangerous region southeast of the Afghan capital Kabul.

The CIA had cultivated the bomber - a Jordanian doctor identified as Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi - in hopes of obtaining information about al-Qaida's second in command, Ayman al-Zawahri.

Defending his agents, CIA Director Leon Panetta said the bomber was about to be searched before the blast occurred.

"This was not a question of trusting a potential intelligence asset, even one who had provided information that we could verify independently. It is never that simple, and no one ignored the hazards," Panetta wrote in a Washington Post op-ed piece posted online Saturday. "The individual was about to be searched by our security officers - a distance away from other intelligence personnel - when he set off his explosives."

Al-Balawi turned out to be a double-agent - perhaps even a triple-agent. In the 1 1/2 minute video, the bomber said he attacked the CIA to avenge the death of Baitullah Mehsud, the longtime leader of the Pakistani Taliban who was killed in August.

"This jihadi attack will be the first revenge operation against the Americans and their drone teams outside the Pakistan border," the bomber said on the video. Al-Balawi - wearing an Afghan hat and camouflaged jacket - said the Pakistani Taliban, now under the leadership of its new chief Hakimullah Mehsud, would fight till victory.

"We will never forget the blood of our emir Baitullah Mehsud," said al-Balawi. "We will always demand revenge for him inside America and outside."

Statements by Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida leaders since the attack have confused efforts to figure out which group's fingerprints were on the blast that struck a blow to the CIA's field expertise in Afghanistan.

A senior militant with the Pakistani Taliban told AP the suicide bomber received training from Qari Hussain, a leading commander of the Pakistani Taliban believed to have run suicide bombing camps. The militant, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of security reasons, said al-Qaida and the Haqqani network, a highly independent Afghan Taliban faction, also were involved.

Hussain's Lashkar-e-Janghvi group, a violent anti-Shiite Muslim organization, is believed to provide a reservoir of suicide bombers and has been linked to some of the more spectacular bombings in Pakistan and the death of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Arsala Rahmani - a former minister in the Taliban government that was toppled in the U.S.-led invasion of Afghanistan following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks - said the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida often work in unison against Western forces.

"Most of the time, the Afghan Taliban, Pakistani Taliban and al-Qaida ... they are fighting together," said Rahmani.

A senior NATO intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to release the information, said all insurgent groups have subordinated themselves to the senior Afghan Taliban leadership, believed to be based in Quetta, Pakistan.

After the attack al-Qaida's No. 3, Sheikh Mustafa Abu al-Yazid, issued a statement also saying the CIA was targeted to avenge the death of Baitullah Mehsud, as well as the killing of two al-Qaida figures - Abdullah Saeed al-Liby and Abu Saleh al-Somali.

Terrorist watchdog groups disagreed whether the message from al-Qaida claimed responsibility for the strike.

Mahmood Shah, a former security chief for Pakistan's tribal regions, said the Pakistani Taliban likely provided logistics to the bomber, but al-Qaida probably provided the recruit himself.

The CIA attack would be the most prolific strike on a U.S. target by the Pakistani Taliban under the 20-something Hakimullah Mehsud's watch. It is also unusual because the Pakistani Taliban rarely claim responsibility for strikes in Afghanistan.

A major Pakistani army offensive in its South Waziristan tribal region is believed to have forced many Pakistani Taliban leaders to go on the run to other parts of the lawless tribal belt along the Afghan border. Hakimullah Mehsud, for instance, is believed to be evading the Pakistani military offensive by hiding somewhere along the border dividing South and North Waziristan tribal regions.

Though the group initially appeared to be in disarray after the August missile strike and the offensive, it and linked militant groups are suspected in a rising tide of violence in Pakistan. More than 600 people have died in a range of suicide and other bombings across the nuclear-armed country since October.

The release of the al-Balawi footage gives the U.S. proof that Pakistani elements are involved in attacks on its security apparatus in Afghanistan, observers said. Already since the CIA attack, the U.S. has accelerated its use of drone-fired missiles to take out militant targets in Pakistan's tribal regions.

At least six such strikes have hit North Waziristan, where the Haqqanis have strongholds, in recent days, including two missiles fired into a home Saturday in Data Khel that killed two people and wounded three others, two Pakistani intelligence officials said.

----

Associated Press writers Maamoun Youssef in Cairo, Jamal Halaby in Amman, Jordan, Nahal Toosi and Kathy Gannon in Islamabad, and Rasool Dawar in Peshawar, Pakistan contributed to this report.

For Obama, a tough year to get the message out

Image by jurvetson via Flickr

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, January 10, 2010; A01

In winning the White House, Barack Obama's team earned a reputation for skill and discipline in dominating the communications wars with opponents. In office, virtually the same team has struggled, spending much of the past year defending the administration's actions on the two biggest domestic issues -- the economy and health care.

The White House has sought to sell health-care reform as a way to make coverage affordable and accessible to middle-class families. But it was also presented at various times as a cost-containment measure, a restraint on greedy insurance companies, a moral imperative to cover the uninsured and, to Democratic lawmakers, as a "can't fail" enterprise. The president and his aides sent mixed signals on the "public option" as well, voicing support for a government-run plan while signaling their willingness to see it die to get a bill passed.

On the economy, administration officials put themselves at a disadvantage with faulty projections of the jobless rate and an overly rosy prediction of how many jobs the stimulus package would create or save. Once they had put in place policies to deal with the worst of the crises Obama inherited, they moved on to health care and later to Afghanistan. The result was a perceived loss of focus in addressing public unrest about unemployment that has prompted a shift back to the economy recently.

It is an axiom of political communication that the president wields the world's biggest megaphone and is therefore capable of setting an agenda and dominating a debate. Obama has used his rhetorical skills repeatedly to good effect, but officials acknowledge that there are limits.

"There is real power there," White House senior adviser David Axelrod said of the president's platform. "But it's not a magic wand. The bully pulpit does not put people to work."

Obama's advisers have learned what previous White House teams came to realize when they arrived in Washington, which is the vast difference between campaigning and governing. Asked what happened to the Obama team, Mark McKinnon, who was a media adviser to President George W. Bush, said, "They're human. They've walked into the propellers of the federal government."

Axelrod said the challenge of managing and controlling messages in a campaign and in the White House is "the difference between tick-tack-toe and three-dimensional tick-tack-toe. It's vastly more complicated."

One factor is the times in which Obama is governing. Double-digit unemployment colors public opinion, and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the continuing threat of terrorism frame the challenging foreign policy environment. But other factors also affect the White House's message management.

Governing lacks the singular focus of a campaign. A White House must manage multiple issues on any given day, can rarely pick and choose its battles, and must speak to many audiences at the same time. Successful campaigns maintain control of their message most of the time. Even the best of White House operations struggle to maintain a semblance of control in the face of competition from allies on Capitol Hill, the bureaucracy and the opposition party.

Those who see problems in the Obama White House message operation say they are not the result of an effective opposition.

"I don't think the Republicans have mounted this great, disciplined message operation," said Matthew Dowd, who was a top campaign adviser to Bush in 2000 and 2004 and is now an independent analyst for ABC News. "It's a lack of prioritizing by the administration and being disciplined by what those [priorities] are."

Dan Pfeiffer, the White House communications director, challenged critics who contend that the health-care message has been inconsistent.

He said that "you can draw a straight line substantively and rhetorically" through all of Obama's major speeches on health care, but he added that, because of the complexity of the issue, "there have been a number of fronts" in the message war that have required the administration's engagement. Still, public support for the overall initiative declined through the year.

On the economic debate, former White House communications director Anita Dunn said the administration has always seen health-care reform as a central part of its economic message. "Our lack of success at doing that . . . is one of the reasons that people feel there wasn't the focus" on the economy, she said. Another White House official asserted that on the economy, "We've got a better story to tell than we've told."

Meeting expectations

The campaign performance set high expectations for the Obama team. A Democratic strategist, who requested anonymity in order to speak candidly, said the Obama team rarely lost control of its campaign message but "hasn't won a single message battle" this year. Phil Singer, who battled the Obama team as part of Hillary Rodham Clinton's communications operation in the Democratic primaries, offered a counter view.

"They've done a pretty good job," he said. "The challenges they face are under-appreciated, given the success they had during the campaign."

Pfeiffer said the Obama team suffers from distorted impressions of the campaign's successes. Through much of 2007, he said, stories about Obama's campaign emphasized not the team's skill but "how we were getting our clock cleaned" by the Clinton campaign. In early September 2008, he added, critics were saying Obama's advisers were being outflanked by John McCain, Sarah Palin and the GOP message operation.

"What got us through those tough periods, both in the campaign and what I think is now, is that we were not particularly worried about the short-term impact of the quote-unquote message blips," Pfeiffer said.

Not everyone agrees this White House has maintained that long-term focus. Still, White House officials also question whether anyone else could have delivered a more effective message about the administration's economic policies, given the steps they decided were necessary to combat the deepest recession since the Depression.

"Believe me, no one sat around in December [2008] and said, 'I think it would be a great political strategy to start out with a $787 billion recovery package and then move on to a bill to support banks and the auto companies,' " Axelrod said. "That's not exactly a winning political strategy." Added Pfeiffer: "There is no salesman, living or dead, who could make that popular."

White House officials also contend that, in the end, the health-care measure will prove more popular in practice than it has been through the long legislative debate.

"There's a long history and cynicism about such efforts because there are so many carcasses in the road," Pfeiffer said. He added that the only way to overcome skepticism that government can oversee major changes to the health-care system "is to pass it and prove you can do it."

Controlling the message

A campaign team has near-total control over its message. A White House does not. "When it's either legislative strategy or regulatory strategy, you have to cede a considerable amount of control to people who don't share your interest, even if they're in your party," said Dan Bartlett, communications director in Bush's White House.

White House officials also cannot ignore events, as campaigns often do. "You can pick and choose what you want to discuss and what you don't want to discuss," Axelrod said. "When you're president of the United States, you have a responsibility to deal with the problems as they come."

Pfeiffer added: "In the White House, you have the myriad of challenges on any given day and are generally being forced to communicate a number of complex subjects at the same time."

Obama's campaign skillfully exploited technology and new media to communicate its message and organize in states. In the White House, officials have discovered those techniques' limits, though they still experiment with them.

The communications office has used the White House blog to rebut Republican opponents or push stories they see as inaccurate. Still, in the age of Twitter, opponents often have an easier time picking apart pieces of a health-care bill than the White House has in explaining a bill's complexities.

Critics of the administration say Obama has taken on so much that his message lacks a singular focus. "They've lost the narrative," Bartlett said. McKinnon added: "The umbrella under which everything sits seemed pretty clearly defined in the campaign and not so clearly defined now."

White House officials acknowledge that internal assessments have led them to conclude they have been too reactive and too tactical. This year will offer a chance to correct that problem by developing more strategic communications plans, particularly on the economy and to sell health-care reforms, assuming they are enacted into law.

But Axelrod said the best antidote to all the criticisms aimed at the White House and to declining poll numbers will be a genuine turnaround in the economy.

"People are unsettled and unhappy about that, and they should be," he said. "The politics will follow the progress, and as we climb out of this terrible hole that we've been in, the politics will respond."