Afghanistan

FIRST POST: Obama is in Afghanistan!!!

HongPong — Sat, 19 Jul 2008 01:56:06 -0600

I have made the internet's very goddamn first post about Obama arriving in Afghanistan today. AWESOME.

Here it is Breaking: Obama has arrived in Afghanistan! | The Agonist

We were about to call it a night, and had drifted past a CNN rerun of Bill Nye and Larry King rambling about UFOs. Suddenly this secret variant of CNN known as "CNN International" broke in, and unknown anchors announced Barack Obama has arrived in Afghanistan. They said their staff had only learned in the last 30 minutes - it is still not on Google News (although the Wapo called it "coming days").

With a little luck our guy from Registan can peer sideways at the spectacle there? First post?!
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This is a good catch in the 24 hour internet news cycle.... Thank you very much. Our sponsors tonight are beer and Aqua Teen reruns....

Iran cools out; Hating on Obama's Chi town days, etc.

HongPong — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:54:06 -0600

Fisa vote? America Gets to Know Obama, and Vice Versa

Remarks of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold in Opposition to the FISA Amendments Act

Bob Ostertag: A Powerful, Easy Way to Tell Obama to Get FISA Right. Shorter: Give money to Feingold instead.Bob Ostertag: Update: Sending Your Obama Money to Feingold

Seymour Hersh: US Training Jondollah and MEK for Bombing preparation

Iran war clouds cool?! Now it's definite: No attack on Iran | The Agonist

BBC NEWS | South Asia | Militants breached US Afghan base

Despite Fireworks, War Clouds Recede - by Jim Lobe

The Shift- by Justin Raimondo

Iran and the Photoshop Threat- by Justin Raimondo

but more negatively, Coercive 'Diplomacy' – Prelude to War- by Justin Raimondo

Looking Into the Lobby (i.e. a fun evening with AIPAC!)

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Olmert says Palestinian peace deal closer than ever | Reuters.com

ANALYSIS / Olmert can't recover from latest police interrogation - Haaretz - Israel News

Palestinian conflict hits cyberspace - The National Newspaper

You can always get some controversial stuff from GlobalResearch.ca - Centre for Research on Globalization:

Israel ’s War with Iran and The Zionist Power Configuration in America- not sure if this is very useful, but some useful data points between the bombast & bla bla bla...

The Terrorist Watch List reaches 1,000,665 Names and is still Growing!

McCain's Nomination - A Possible September Surprise?

The JFK Assassination and 9/11: the Designated Suspects in Both Cases

Breaking Iraq and Blaming Iran

Minot AFB Clandestine Nukes - several pilots DEAD

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The FBI's plan to "profile" Muslims | Salon

Bush Nominates Neocon War Apologist to U.S. Propaganda Board | PEEK | AlterNet

A terror! globeandmail.com: Khadr interrogation footage puts spotlight on CSIS

43 nations creating Mediterranean union - Yahoo! News

Suspect Soldiers - Suspect Soldiers: Troubled histories follow some troops to Iraq war - sacbee.com

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The people @ Larry Johnson's No Quarter continue to pursue that darn Obama: Barack's Africa problem, Enough Already, linking around approvingly to: Global Labor and Politics: That “Guy Who Lives in My Neighborhood”: Behind the Ayers-Obama Relationship and The Three Blind Men and the Elephant: The New Yorker on Obama : NO QUARTER and Global Labor and Politics: Chicago's "Citizen of the Year"? Obama, Ayers and Daley. I think i need a Chicago guru to decode all this. But certainly it's one big line of criticism/attack, Obama's ascendancy thru the glorious Foundation Sponsored Left, and other choice matters to mutter about.

The 10 Mental Illnesses Batman Indisputably Has . Lulz. I got to see an advance screening on Wednesday night, tres chic.

Yahoo! Search BOSS - YDN Very cool new search engine building system from Yahoo!

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Sasha Baron Cohen is now using the Bruno character to mess with people's heads! The new Borat is coming: Bruno's Prank: Arkansas Cage Fights Turn Gay, Crowd Goes Crazy - Entertainment on The Huffington Post

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Cryptogon gets an ominous Business Week story:

The Polar ice cap may be melting, but the U.S. economy is frozen, starting right here in my small town. Gradually rising levels of dismay at the gas pump and in the supermarket gave way to paralytic shock last week when “lock-in” notices from the local fuel company arrived. This year’s advance price for home heating oil is nearly twice what people paid last year. A collective gasp of disbelief from my tough, resourceful Maine neighbors echoed across the meadows and up the rocky coast. Many claimed they would never sign the contract. “What’s your alternative?” I asked a friend.

“I don’t have one,” he muttered.

In the days that followed, a new quality of dread settled over the place like soot, as people weighed their options. Heat or food? Gas or electricity? Medicine or mortgage payments? What to give up? What to cut back? The conversations were everywhere. In the supermarket, I heard one man tell another: “When I was a kid, you woke up, went into the bathroom, and broke up the ice in the toilet. Now my kids will have to do the same. America is moving backward.”

My neighbors are like deer caught in the headlights: frozen in fear as something sinister, implacable, and wholly unanticipated lurches toward them. A reckoning has begun to unfurl like a dark flower, slowly at first, then gathering urgency and force. This is not a short detour after all, but an untraveled road to an unknown place from which there is no return, no escape…and we are not prepared.

Sy Hersh: Covert war in Iran escalates: Baluchis used as pawns in risky scheme, Special Ops out of control

HongPong — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:38:00 -0600

I noted all this nonsense a while ago: March 27, 2007: New GeoMap; Kremlin warns of "Operation Bite" American attack on Iran April 6? More rumors etc.

The latest twist is that apparently the Democrats agreed to give Bush as much money as they wanted in order to do the "U.S. Covert - BALUCHIS" attack detailed on this sketch here. At roughly the time of my post, actually!

April 4, 2007: Iran paranoia, covert war escalates; Tensions rise as Persian Gulf fills with carriers, media crews, tribal revolts; US Air Force buzzes infiltrated Iranian Khuzestan

At that time we had the excellent "Approximate Covert Crisis GeoMap: Shitstorm 2007:

April 8, 2007: Jundullah: Baluchi ally of the United States... And Al Qaeda... in covert Iran war.

Since those heady days, I haven't had too much to say about the Baluchi pawn situation. However, the drums of war have continued and my tasty diagrams are as accurate as last year. Both the CIA-sponsored tribal uprisings and the Mujahideen el-Khalq actions are going forth accordingly.

At least, that's what good ol Seymour Hersh has divined from his vast array of establishment sources, who generally seem quite frightened of the alternate chains of command that Dick Cheney has built up from his office.

Annals of National Security: Preparing the Battlefield: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership. The covert activities involve support of the minority Ahwazi Arab and Baluchi groups and other dissident organizations. They also include gathering intelligence about Iran’s suspected nuclear-weapons program.

Clandestine operations against Iran are not new. United States Special Operations Forces have been conducting cross-border operations from southern Iraq, with Presidential authorization, since last year. These have included seizing members of Al Quds, the commando arm of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, and taking them to Iraq for interrogation, and the pursuit of “high-value targets” in the President’s war on terror, who may be captured or killed. But the scale and the scope of the operations in Iran, which involve the Central Intelligence Agency and the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), have now been significantly expanded, according to the current and former officials. Many of these activities are not specified in the new Finding, and some congressional leaders have had serious questions about their nature.

Pay very close attention to this part, kiddos, because herein lies the primary potential source of a cataclysmic Iran war: the "small group" at the White House who are developing an alternate chain of command.

Fallon’s early retirement, however, appears to have been provoked not only by his negative comments about bombing Iran but also by his strong belief in the chain of command and his insistence on being informed about Special Operations in his area of responsibility. One of Fallon’s defenders is retired Marine General John J. (Jack) Sheehan, whose last assignment was as commander-in-chief of the U.S. Atlantic Command, where Fallon was a deputy. Last year, Sheehan rejected a White House offer to become the President’s “czar” for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. “One of the reasons the White House selected Fallon for CENTCOM was that he’s known to be a strategic thinker and had demonstrated those skills in the Pacific,” Sheehan told me. (Fallon served as commander-in-chief of U.S. forces in the Pacific from 2005 to 2007.) “He was charged with coming up with an over-all coherent strategy for Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and, by law, the combatant commander is responsible for all military operations within his A.O.”—area of operations. “That was not happening,” Sheehan said. “When Fallon tried to make sense of all the overt and covert activity conducted by the military in his area of responsibility, a small group in the White House leadership shut him out.”

The law cited by Sheehan is the 1986 Defense Reorganization Act, known as Goldwater-Nichols, which defined the chain of command: from the President to the Secretary of Defense, through the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and on to the various combatant commanders, who were put in charge of all aspects of military operations, including joint training and logistics. That authority, the act stated, was not to be shared with other echelons of command. But the Bush Administration, as part of its global war on terror, instituted new policies that undercut regional commanders-in-chief; for example, it gave Special Operations teams, at military commands around the world, the highest priority in terms of securing support and equipment. The degradation of the traditional chain of command in the past few years has been a point of tension between the White House and the uniformed military.

“The coherence of military strategy is being eroded because of undue civilian influence and direction of nonconventional military operations,” Sheehan said. “If you have small groups planning and conducting military operations outside the knowledge and control of the combatant commander, by default you can’t have a coherent military strategy. You end up with a disaster, like the reconstruction efforts in Iraq.”

Admiral Fallon, who is known as Fox, was aware that he would face special difficulties as the first Navy officer to lead CENTCOM, which had always been headed by a ground commander, one of his military colleagues told me. He was also aware that the Special Operations community would be a concern. “Fox said that there’s a lot of strange stuff going on in Special Ops, and I told him he had to figure out what they were really doing,” Fallon’s colleague said. “The Special Ops guys eventually figured out they needed Fox, and so they began to talk to him. Fox would have won his fight with Special Ops but for Cheney.”

The Pentagon consultant said, “Fallon went down because, in his own way, he was trying to prevent a war with Iran, and you have to admire him for that.”

There you have it. This is huge. Bigger than the usual British-style strategy of renting local warlords like the Baluchis. Also duly noted:

A strategy of using ethnic minorities to undermine Iran is flawed, according to Vali Nasr, who teaches international politics at Tufts University and is also a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. “Just because Lebanon, Iraq, and Pakistan have ethnic problems, it does not mean that Iran is suffering from the same issue,” Nasr told me. “Iran is an old country—like France and Germany—and its citizens are just as nationalistic. The U.S. is overestimating ethnic tension in Iran.” The minority groups that the U.S. is reaching out to are either well integrated or small and marginal, without much influence on the government or much ability to present a political challenge, Nasr said. “You can always find some activist groups that will go and kill a policeman, but working with the minorities will backfire, and alienate the majority of the population.”

The Administration may have been willing to rely on dissident organizations in Iran even when there was reason to believe that the groups had operated against American interests in the past. The use of Baluchi elements, for example, is problematic, Robert Baer, a former C.I.A. clandestine officer who worked for nearly two decades in South Asia and the Middle East, told me. “The Baluchis are Sunni fundamentalists who hate the regime in Tehran, but you can also describe them as Al Qaeda,” Baer told me. “These are guys who cut off the heads of nonbelievers—in this case, it’s Shiite Iranians. The irony is that we’re once again working with Sunni fundamentalists, just as we did in Afghanistan in the nineteen-eighties.” Ramzi Yousef, who was convicted for his role in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who is considered one of the leading planners of the September 11th attacks, are Baluchi Sunni fundamentalists.

One of the most active and violent anti-regime groups in Iran today is the Jundallah, also known as the Iranian People’s Resistance Movement, which describes itself as a resistance force fighting for the rights of Sunnis in Iran. “This is a vicious Salafi organization whose followers attended the same madrassas as the Taliban and Pakistani extremists,” Nasr told me. “They are suspected of having links to Al Qaeda and they are also thought to be tied to the drug culture.” The Jundallah took responsibility for the bombing of a busload of Revolutionary Guard soldiers in February, 2007. At least eleven Guard members were killed. According to Baer and to press reports, the Jundallah is among the groups in Iran that are benefitting from U.S. support.

The C.I.A. and Special Operations communities also have long-standing ties to two other dissident groups in Iran: the Mujahideen-e-Khalq, known in the West as the M.E.K., and a Kurdish separatist group, the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan, or PJAK.

The M.E.K. has been on the State Department’s terrorist list for more than a decade, yet in recent years the group has received arms and intelligence, directly or indirectly, from the United States. Some of the newly authorized covert funds, the Pentagon consultant told me, may well end up in M.E.K. coffers. “The new task force will work with the M.E.K. The Administration is desperate for results.” He added, “The M.E.K. has no C.P.A. auditing the books, and its leaders are thought to have been lining their pockets for years. If people only knew what the M.E.K. is getting, and how much is going to its bank accounts—and yet it is almost useless for the purposes the Administration intends.”

I have zero faith in any element of America's political class to even understand what is happening, let alone get some degree of control over these covert operations, ever escalating and widening out into the aggressive galaxy of contractors and militant baby boomers, all set in motion on their own, partitioned even from the regional American military commanders.

When even the President's direct regional commander, General Fallon, couldn't find out what the fuck Special Forces are actually doing, then by definition we have a serious and insane war conspiracy unfolding.

And for now, that is basically all I can say.

Random links: The latest Systemic Margin Call; Russians blame 85% of Afghanistan opium on American aviation!

HongPong — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 02:23:03 -0600

Or also, from the last several days...

Political Punch: Liberal bloggers sayin Clinton ads darken Obama. Some others say it is a YouTube artifact effect.

Atmosphere released a free MP3 from the next album.

Hillary, Obama and the Establishment Machine | The Agonist

Hm. Definitely interesting: The Man Between War and Peace, Admiral Fallon.

Cuban Cyber Rebels and their flash drives and blogs! Viva Cuba flashdriva!

Smashing Magazine has nice design and free fonts.

io9 has random sci fi stuff. cool design too.

When in doubt, check out the Gary Webb video @ Archive.org, late in his life reflecting on the whole Los Angeles CIA crack cocaine thingy.

Global Guerillas is pretty buzzwordy, but it's pretty good. For your daily dose of super-modern open source insurgent warfare, extortion through DDoS - both Russian and Botnet variants, the imminent insect techno-eschaton, and how one super-empowered individual guerilla Henry Okah has brought Nigeria into total chaos and propelled oil over $100 a barrel. This Robb guy is definitely paying attention. National security bureaucracies are doomed?! Not if they can hoard up their own very biggest bestest haystack!

Meanwhile the economic crash continues apace. Much hand-wringing at one of my favorite spots, the Agonist . Wheat is over $12/bushel.

Buffett: it's a recession, stupid.

Banks face systemic margin call, $325 billion hit: JP Morgan!

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Wall Street banks are facing a "systemic margin call" that may deplete banks of $325 billion of capital due to deteriorating subprime U.S. mortgages, JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM.N:Quote, Profile, Research), said in a report late on Friday.

JPMorgan, which sent a default notice to Thornburg Mortgage Inc. (TMA.N: Quote,Profile, Research) after the lender missed a $28 million margin call, said more default notices and margin calls were likely. The Carlyle Group's mortgage fund also failed to meet $37 million in margin calls this week.

"A systemic credit crunch is underway, driven primarily by bank writedowns for subprime mortgages," according to the report co-authored by analyst Christopher Flanagan. "We would characterize this situation as a systemic margin call."

The credit crisis that began about a year ago will likely intensify after Friday's weak February U.S. employment report "that most definitely signals recession," JPMorgan said.

Bush Family Piggy Bank Receives Default Notice! | The Agonist

The best news I have heard is the insane bastards in Florida who have taken advantage of the crashed system. They are sitting in their homes, paying nothing at all, waiting for the totally conked court system to struggle with the lost paperwork at every level of the mortgage. An awesome thing to behold!! The Big Picture | Foreclosure-proof Homeowners:

What is shocking, that in each and every case, I have been told by brokers and banks that the owners, have ceased paying their mortgages in some cases for nearly 2 years and have continued to occupy these homes. Now, these are homes in excess of $2,000,000 in the very best neighborhoods in South Florida. Brokers have added that these buyers further complicated things by putting huge home equity lines on top of their mortgages and now have no possibility of selling their homes for amounts needed to cover their accumulated debt.

America is amazing. Ok.

Bloomberg.com Citigroup needs Arab cash, fast!!!! Rlly fast!!!

Russians pissed off about American/Pakistani opium smuggling support in Afghanistan: (via cryptogon)

Narco Aggression: Russia accuses the U.S. military of involvement in drug trafficking out of Afghanistan by Vladimir Radyuhin

Global Research, February 24, 2008: Global Research Editor's Note

The global proceeds of the Afghan drug trade is in excess of 150 billion dollars a year. There is mounting evidence that this illicit trade is protected by the US military.

Historically, starting in the early 1980s, the Afghan drug trade was used to finance CIA covert support of the Islamic brigades. The 2003 war on Afghanistan was launched following the Taliban government's 2000-2001 drug eradication program which led to a collapse in opium production in excess of 90 percent.

The following report, which accuses the United States of using military transport planes to ship narcotics out of Afghanistan confirms what is already known and documented regarding the Golden Crescent Drug Trade and its insiduous relationship to US intelligence.

February 23, 2008

Russia, facing a catastrophic rise in drug addiction, accuses the U.S. military of involvement in drug trafficking from Afghanistan.....

....“Unfortunately, they [NATO] are doing nothing to reduce the narcotic threat from Afghanistan even a tiny bit,” Putin angrily remarked three years ago. He accused the coalition forces of “sitting back and watching caravans haul drugs across Afghanistan to the former Soviet Union and Europe.” As time went by, Russian suspicions regarding the U.S. role in the rise of a narco state in Afghanistan grew deeper, especially after reports from Iraq said that the cultivation of opium poppies was spreading rapidly there too.

“The Americans are working hard to keep narco business flourishing in both countries,” says Mikhail Khazin, president of the consultancy firm Niakon. “They consistently destroy the local infrastructure, pushing the local population to look for illegal means of subsistence. And the CIA [Central Intelligence Agency] provides protection to drug trafficking.”

U.S. freelance writer Dave Gibson recalled in an article published in American Chronicle in December what a U.S. foreign intelligence official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, told NewsMax.com in March 2002 of the CIA’s record of involvement with the international drug trade. The official said: “The CIA did almost the identical thing during the Vietnam War, which had catastrophic consequences – the increase in the heroin trade in the USA beginning in the 1970s is directly attributable to the CIA. The CIA has been complicit in the global drug trade for years, so I guess they just want to carry on their favourite business.”

AFP

(A USAF cargo plane takes off from the U.S. airbase in Incirlik in Turkey in March 2003. A Russian news channel reported that drugs from Afghanistan were hauled by American transport aircraft to the U.S. airbases in Kyrgyzstan and Turkey.)

Now Russia has joined the fray accusing the U.S. military of involvement in the heroin trafficking from Afghanistan to Europe. The Vesti channel’s report from Afghanistan said that drugs from Afghanistan were hauled by American transport aircraft to the U.S. airbases Ganci in Kyrgyzstan and Incirlik in Turkey.

The Ganci Air Force base at the Manas international airport in Kyrgyzstan was set up in late 2001 as a staging post for military operations inside Afghanistan. The Kyrgyz government threatened to close the base after neighbouring Uzbekistan shut down a similar U.S. airbase on its territory in 2005, but relented after Washington agreed to make a one-off payment of $150 million in the form of an assistance package and to pay $15 million a year for the use of the base.

One of the best-informed Russian journalists on Central Asia, Arkady Dubnov, recently quoted anonymous Afghan sources as saying that “85 per cent of all drugs produced in southern and southeastern provinces are shipped abroad by U.S. aviation.”

A well-informed source in Afghanistan’s security services told the Russian journalist that the American military acquired drugs through local Afghan officials who dealt with field commanders in charge of drug production.

Writing in the Vremya Novostei daily, Dubnov claimed that the pro-Western administration of President Hamid Karzai, including his two brothers, Kajum Karzai and Akhmed Vali Karzai, are head-to-heels involved in the narcotics trade.

The article quoted a leading U.S. expert on Afghanistan, Barnett Rubin, as telling an anti-narcotics conference in Kabul last October that “drug dealers had infiltrated Afghani state structures to the extent where they could easily paralyse the work of the government if decision to arrest one of them was ever made.”

Sure, they can say the Russians are grumbling like usual. But from Moscow's perspective, the U.S. is just trying to keep on top of all the Players in the Game. And they run the Wire all over the whole territory, so they know exactly who is doing what where, and can watch the opium caravans go cruising by. The fact that this doesn't track in American conventional wisdom is a monument to the intentional ignorance of Baby Boomers, regardless of how accurate the Russians are here.

The planes, the drugs, the detainees, it all seems to be part of a nexus of secret military/DHS contractor airlines. These guys are soooo 1980s. The ponzi scheme depends on information asymmetry, which can always be disrupted......

UK diplomat: "Britain is protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time," Afghan-Uzbek-Russian pathway = $$ & Power!

HongPong — Sun, 22 Jul 2007 17:01:39 -0600

All is going well on my trip and I'm now in France. I have been scanning the UK media quite heavily over the last week and later I'll share some really funny material (including a huge media buzz over cannabis & the seven members of the new cabinet who smoked it in the past). But for now just consider this basically obvious, yet also rather shocking, situation. In many ways nothing is new. Dostum, one of the elemental warlords of the situation, the leader of the ethnic Uzbek contingent in Afghanistan and currently a top minister, has for decades based his entire regional political economy around the export of opium. What's new is an entrenched Russian angle going to St. Petersburg, as well as the ongoing, pointless fight around there (as compared to the Moghuls and other hordes that have failed to secure the area for their purposes).

On a different note I'd recommend, as always, checking out agonist.org. The proprietor of the site is visiting Mexico right now, but the writing from contributors is, as always, well selected and top-notch.

I am reposting this article in full because it is an accurately framed deep reference to the regional situation, and also provides a new angle on the Litvinienko assassination that I haven't yet heard. One of the top stories in the UK last week was of course the booting of four Russian diplomats from the embassy after Putin failed to extradite a former FSB security officer supposedly implicated in the murder. (Of course I don't know what happened to Litvinienko, but the whole thing has reeked of Public Relations / PSYOPS manipulation, and I just don't grok why the Russkies didn't put two bullets in their former spy's head, and instead chose a lurid, slow poison offering dramatic time for interviews &etc. Altho the blanket of CCTV cameras in London woulda made that pretty hard to do....)

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Britain is protecting the biggest heroin crop of all time, By Craig Murray, former UK ambassador to Uzbekistan
Mail on Sunday
Sunday July 22, 2007

This week the 64th British soldier to die in Afghanistan, Corporal Mike Gilyeat, was buried. All the right things were said about this brave soldier, just as, on current trends, they will be said about one or more of his colleagues who follow him next week.

The alarming escalation of the casualty rate among British soldiers in Afghanistan – up to ten per cent – led to discussion this week on whether it could be fairly compared to casualty rates in the Second World War.

But the key question is this: what are our servicemen dying for? There are glib answers to that: bringing democracy and development to Afghanistan, supporting the government of President Hamid Karzai in its attempt to establish order in the country, fighting the Taliban and preventing the further spread of radical Islam into Pakistan.

But do these answers stand up to close analysis?

There has been too easy an acceptance of the lazy notion that the war in Afghanistan is the 'good' war, while the war in Iraq is the 'bad' war, the blunder. The origins of this view are not irrational. There was a logic to attacking Afghanistan after 9/11.

Afghanistan was indeed the headquarters of Osama Bin Laden and his organisation, who had been installed and financed there by the CIA to fight the Soviets from 1979 until 1989. By comparison, the attack on Iraq – which was an enemy of Al Qaeda and no threat to us – was plainly irrational in terms of the official justification.

So the attack on Afghanistan has enjoyed a much greater sense of public legitimacy. But the operation to remove Bin Laden was one thing. Six years of occupation are clearly another.

Few seem to turn a hair at the officially expressed view that our occupation of Iraq may last for decades.
Lib Dem leader Menzies Campbell has declared, fatuously, that the Afghan war is 'winnable'.

Afghanistan was not militarily winnable by the British Empire at the height of its supremacy. It was not winnable by Darius or Alexander, by Shah, Tsar or Great Moghul. It could not be subdued by 240,000 Soviet troops. But what, precisely, are we trying to win?

In six years, the occupation has wrought one massive transformation in Afghanistan, a development so huge that it has increased Afghan GDP by 66 per cent and constitutes 40 per cent of the entire economy. That is a startling achievement, by any standards. Yet we are not trumpeting it. Why not?

The answer is this. The achievement is the highest harvests of opium the world has ever seen.

The Taliban had reduced the opium crop to precisely nil. I would not advocate their methods for doing this, which involved lopping bits, often vital bits, off people. The Taliban were a bunch of mad and deeply unpleasant religious fanatics. But one of the things they were vehemently against was opium.

That is an inconvenient truth that our spin has managed to obscure. Nobody has denied the sincerity of the Taliban's crazy religious zeal, and they were as unlikely to sell you heroin as a bottle of Johnnie Walker.

They stamped out the opium trade, and impoverished and drove out the drug warlords whose warring and rapacity had ruined what was left of the country after the Soviet war.

That is about the only good thing you can say about the Taliban; there are plenty of very bad things to say about them. But their suppression of the opium trade and the drug barons is undeniable fact.

Now we are occupying the country, that has changed. According to the United Nations, 2006 was the biggest opium harvest in history, smashing the previous record by 60 per cent. This year will be even bigger.

Our economic achievement in Afghanistan goes well beyond the simple production of raw opium. In fact Afghanistan no longer exports much raw opium at all. It has succeeded in what our international aid efforts urge every developing country to do. Afghanistan has gone into manufacturing and 'value-added' operations.

It now exports not opium, but heroin. Opium is converted into heroin on an industrial scale, not in kitchens but in factories. Millions of gallons of the chemicals needed for this process are shipped into Afghanistan by tanker. The tankers and bulk opium lorries on the way to the factories share the roads, improved by American aid, with Nato troops.

How can this have happened, and on this scale? The answer is simple. The four largest players in the heroin business are all senior members of the Afghan government – the government that our soldiers are fighting and dying to protect.

When we attacked Afghanistan, America bombed from the air while the CIA paid, armed and equipped the dispirited warlord drug barons – especially those grouped in the Northern Alliance – to do the ground occupation. We bombed the Taliban and their allies into submission, while the warlords moved in to claim the spoils. Then we made them ministers.

President Karzai is a good man. He has never had an opponent killed, which may not sound like much but is highly unusual in this region and possibly unique in an Afghan leader. But nobody really believes he is running the country. He asked America to stop its recent bombing campaign in the south because it was leading to an increase in support for the Taliban. The United States simply ignored him. Above all, he has no control at all over the warlords among his ministers and governors, each of whom runs his own kingdom and whose primary concern is self-enrichment through heroin.

My knowledge of all this comes from my time as British Ambassador in neighbouring Uzbekistan from 2002 until 2004. I stood at the Friendship Bridge at Termez in 2003 and watched the Jeeps with blacked-out windows bringing the heroin through from Afghanistan, en route to Europe.

I watched the tankers of chemicals roaring into Afghanistan.

Yet I could not persuade my country to do anything about it. Alexander Litvinenko – the former agent of the KGB, now the FSB, who died in London last November after being poisoned with polonium 210 – had suffered the same frustration over the same topic.

There are a number of theories as to why Litvinenko had to flee Russia. The most popular blames his support for the theory that FSB agents planted bombs in Russian apartment blocks to stir up anti-Chechen feeling.

But the truth is that his discoveries about the heroin trade were what put his life in danger. Litvinenko was working for the KGB in St Petersburg in 2001 and 2002. He became concerned at the vast amounts of heroin coming from Afghanistan, in particular from the fiefdom of the (now) Head of the Afghan armed forces, General Abdul Rashid Dostum, in north and east Afghanistan.

Dostum is an Uzbek, and the heroin passes over the Friendship Bridge from Afghanistan to Uzbekistan, where it is taken over by President Islam Karimov's people. It is then shipped up the railway line, in bales of cotton, to St Petersburg and Riga.

The heroin Jeeps run from General Dostum to President Karimov. The UK, United States and Germany have all invested large sums in donating the most sophisticated detection and screening equipment to the Uzbek customs centre at Termez to stop the heroin coming through.

But the convoys of Jeeps running between Dostum and Karimov are simply waved around the side of the facility.

Litvinenko uncovered the St Petersburg end and was stunned by the involvement of the city authorities, local police and security services at the most senior levels. He reported in detail to President Vladimir Putin. Putin is, of course, from St Petersburg, and the people Litvinenko named were among Putin's closest political allies. That is why Litvinenko, having miscalculated badly, had to flee Russia.

I had as little luck as Litvinenko in trying to get official action against this heroin trade. At the St Petersburg end he found those involved had the top protection. In Afghanistan, General Dostum is vital to Karzai's coalition, and to the West's pretence of a stable, democratic government.

Opium is produced all over Afghanistan, but especially in the north and north-east – Dostum's territory. Again, our Government's spin doctors have tried hard to obscure this fact and make out that the bulk of the heroin is produced in the tiny areas of the south under Taliban control. But these are the most desolate, infertile rocky areas. It is a physical impossibility to produce the bulk of the vast opium harvest there.

That General Dostum is head of the Afghan armed forces and Deputy Minister of Defence is in itself a symbol of the bankruptcy of our policy. Dostum is known for tying opponents to tank tracks and running them over. He crammed prisoners into metal containers in the searing sun, causing scores to die of heat and thirst.

Since we brought 'democracy' to Afghanistan, Dostum ordered an MP who annoyed him to be pinned down while he attacked him. The sad thing is that Dostum is probably not the worst of those comprising the Karzai government, or the biggest drug smuggler among them.

Our Afghan policy is still victim to Tony Blair's simplistic world view and his childish division of all conflicts into 'good guys' and 'bad guys'. The truth is that there are seldom any good guys among those vying for power in a country such as Afghanistan. To characterise the Karzai government as good guys is sheer nonsense.

Why then do we continue to send our soldiers to die in Afghanistan? Our presence in Afghanistan and Iraq is the greatest recruiting sergeant for Islamic militants. As the great diplomat, soldier and adventurer Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Alexander Burnes pointed out before his death in the First Afghan War in 1841, there is no point in a military campaign in Afghanistan as every time you beat them, you just swell their numbers. Our only real achievement to date is falling street prices for heroin in London.

Remember this article next time you hear a politician calling for more troops to go into Afghanistan. And when you hear of another brave British life wasted there, remember you can add to the casualty figures all the young lives ruined, made miserable or ended by heroin in the UK.

They, too, are casualties of our Afghan policy.

Quick Iran angles all around

HongPong — Mon, 09 Apr 2007 02:43:37 -0600

Were these UK hostages looking too happy in Iran? They're getting bitched at, but their cool demeanors contributed to avoiding a war, so who should complain?

More on the botched American raid that led to the hostage crisis. Rightwing toadies denounce ABC exposing CIA aid to the Baluchi radical militants. Brits admit their team was collecting intel on Iran when captured.

Here's GlobalResearch.ca's blob of Iran info: Covert wars inside Iran sponsored by the U.S.

More on American training exercises in the Gulf and other hawkish moves, see also this one.

David Hicks, Australian Guantanamo detainee, silenced as plea bargain slanted to help PM Howard's re-election, suppress torture talk

HongPong — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 22:40:33 -0600

Justice has been blatantly compromised by international politics and diplomacy in a way that would be deplored in any other arena.

--The Australian newspaper editorial (April 2)

I agree that I will not communicate with the media in any way regarding the illegal conduct alleged in the charge and the specifications or about the circumstances surrounding my capture and detention as an unlawful enemy combatant for a period of one (1) year. I agree that this includes any direct or indirect communication made by me, my family members, my assigns, or any other third party made on my behalf......

i. I have never been illegally treated by any person or persons while in the custody and control of the United States. This includes the period after my capture and transfer to US custody in Afghanistan in December 2001, through the entire period of my detention by the United States at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. I agree that this agreement puts to rest any claims of mistreatment by the United States.

j. I further understand and agree that the entire period of detention as an unlawful enemy combatant is based upon my capture during armed conflict, has been lawful pursuant to the law of armed conflict and is not associated with, or in anticipation of, any criminal proceedings against me.

4. In exchange for the undertakings made by the United States in entering this Pretrial Agreement, I voluntarily and expressly waive all rights to appeal or collaterally attack my conviction, sentence, or any other matter relating to this prosecution whether such a right to appeal or collateral attack arises under the Military Commissions Act of 2006, or any other provision of United States or Australian law. In addition, I voluntarily and expressly agree not to make, participate in, or support any claim, and not to undertake, participate in, or support any litigation, in any forum against the United States or any of its officials, whether uniformed or civilian, in their personal or official capacities with regard to my capture, treatment, detention, or prosecution.

--The David Matthew Hicks pre-trial agreement - 26 March 2007 (fulltext)

Our first example of how sordid Guantanamo military tribunals are used as political theatre, and slanted for Bush-favored international politicians. In this case, Hicks, a young Australian captured and accused of Taliban ties finally got a plea bargain and a short prison sentence to be carried out in Australia, to which he may return at once.

Interestingly, the plea bargain states that he has to disclaim his earlier claims of torture at the hands of Guantanamo prison wardens, and he is also gagged from speaking to the media for an additional several months after he's released. Down under, it smells like Bullshit!

"I can accept the imposition of a no-profit clause. But not being able to speak to the media for a year? You've got to question what's going to be achieved by gagging him for that length of time," said Geoff Holland of the the University of Technology, Sydney, an expert on freedom of speech. "If it's something he could say that would compromise Australian security, then one would expect the gag would be ongoing."

Greens leader Bob Brown claimed the gag had been sought by the Howard Government. "It's a fix," Senator Brown said. "The message has gone very clearly from Canberra to Washington to Guantanamo Bay: 'Don't allow Hicks to be released until after the elections and certainly don't allow him to speak'.

"It's tawdry, it's despicable, it's a political fix overriding what should have been an Australian justice matter right from the outset." Senator Brown said such a gag would have been illegal in the US, where citizens are guaranteed freedom of speech under the constitution.

In a complete coincidence, the controversial conservative (and Bush-allied) Prime Minister Howard is up for election - a couple months before the Gitmo-imposed Media gag expires. A total coincidence!! Convenience and silence, in one handy package!!!

On some site I forget, they note this is the 21st century's version of cutting out your tongue. Fair enough.

What would really round out this fine exercise in international electioneering cashing in on the Terrorist War Coin?

How about press reports indicating that the plea bargain was never even negotiated with the "prosecution" in Gitmo's kangaroo courts. Rather it got worked out with the officers overseeing the farce, who apparently were in touch with the Howard government. It's pretty goddamn obvious and "disturbing" according to The Australian paper editorial:

Editorial: Plea bargain is less than perfect justice April 02, 2007

THE more that is known about the terms of the plea bargain agreed to by confessed terror trainee David Hicks, and the way it was concluded, the more disturbing it becomes. While the arrangement may serve the purposes of the US and Australian governments and ensure Hicks gets out of prison quickly, it does little to dispel complaints that the process was riddled with political interference. As Geoff Elliot reports in The Australian today, the prosecution, judge and jury were kept out of the loop. Hicks's US defence lawyer, Major Michael Mori, went over their heads to Washington where he negotiated directly with the head of the Convening Authority for US military commissions, Susan Crawford. While not a political figure in her own right, Ms Crawford has had a long working association with US Vice-President Dick Cheney. At the end of negotiations, the eight-member panel of the military commission in Guantanamo Bay was presented with a done deal. This is at odds with the version of events given by John Howard, who said the plea bargain was negotiated between the military prosecution and Mr Hicks's lawyers.

There is an unmistakable stench of political expediency to the terms of the plea bargain, in particular the extraordinary 12-month gag order that prevents Hicks from speaking publicly about the actions to which he has pleaded guilty or the circumstances surrounding his capture, interrogation and detention. The gag also silences family members and any third party. While no one would suggest Hicks should not be allowed to sell his story, a blanket gag order that extends beyond the period of incarceration is a disturbing erosion of free speech. And the fact it is only in place for one year gives a clear impression its main purpose is to keep Hicks quiet until after the federal election.

This guy says he got off too light for what he was accused of, but the gag order damages the Aussie public's right to hear about the case. (also Hicks to arrive in secret)

I'm gonna steal a couple grafs from TalkingPointsMemo because basically it nails the case:

On the one hand, you have Hicks being held for five years without trial amidst allegations of torture and other mistreatment, fighting simply to get a fair hearing. His case has become an internationally known example of the Bush Administration's blatant disregard for basic human rights.

On the other hand, you have the outcome of the case determined not by conventional Anglo-American standards of due process, including evidence presented to an impartial fact-finder, but by the political considerations of the Bush Administration and its ally Howard. Or as a spokesperson for the military commissions candidly told the Post, "Like it or not, the detainees at Guantanamo are from different countries, and that sometimes is a factor."

It's another example of politics trumping the War on Terror when it suits the Bush Administration. While you might feel some relief that there is an end in sight to Hicks' Kafkaesque detention, you can't help but be left with niggling doubts. Was Hicks a true danger? Perhaps not. But prosecutors thought Hicks would have received a decades-long sentence if the case went to trial. Has Hicks been vindicated? Not at all. The able representation of Hicks by Maj. Dan Mori took advantage of the political situation in Australia to win his client's eventual release. Mori knew the game that was being played, and played it.

It is a deeply unsatisfying outcome.

That's the core truth here. The law is supposed to stabilize society and provide a platform for further developments. The Bush Adminstration has such a lazy, self-contradictory approach to building any kind of legal foundation for its activities, that political expediency -- bailing out Howard -- becomes preferable. All this military tribunal structure seems shoddy and worthless.

If the Nuremburg Trials were a house made brick upon brick, providing order and context to humanity, then the Guantanamo Tribunals are a crumpled pile of vinyl siding knocked down by Hurricane Katrina.

New GeoMap; Kremlin warns of "Operation Bite" American attack on Iran April 6? More rumors etc.

HongPong — Tue, 27 Mar 2007 07:04:06 -0600

General Ivashov pointed to a partition of Iran along the same lines as Iraq, and a subsequent carving up of the Near and Middle East into smaller regions. "This concept worked well for them in the Balkans and will now be applied to the greater Middle East," he commented.

There's certainly a theory behind General Ivashov's view, that America can just slice and dice ethnic groups and trumpet freedom all the way down ("re-Ottomanization"). Problem is that this can't be done all "tidy" like in Yugoslavia. There, the "Kosovo Liberation Army" was an inspired creation of MPRI and DynCorp, linked with Saudi Wahhabi adventuring fundamentalists, Al Qaeda and financed by the Turkish opium smuggling establishment. Yugoslavia was kinda sweet in that way. Everyone had a piece of the action but it was close enough to responsible Europeans to get tamped down eventually.

Iran, on the other hand, is bracketed by the Persian Gulf, disintegrating Iraq and increasingly destabilized Afghanistan. The border-straddling Pashtuns and Baluchis are both in a troublesome position now, and this spells trouble in nuclear-armed Pakistan. The Baluchis and the U.S. Special Forces have been up to something since 2001. The smaller Central Asian states are at the mercy of bigger forces.

Classic blunders: At least they have the class to stage war provocations in a Gulf, just like the old days. Before we got SUCKED INTO A LAND WAR IN ASIA. God damn...

Russia is not happy. An American attack would unleash dozens of individual proxy forces (like the MEK, Baluchi mercenaries, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, etc) available to the highest bidder: Chalabi will really be the model here, I'd bet. Get the cash upfront, as it's always been, since Alexander the Great brought gold and opium. That doesn't serve Russia's interests, it seems to me.

I bet you there won't be an American attack on Iran April 6. However, with tensions mounting right alongside oil prices, Big Words ought to be coming from Russia, and apparently the Kremlin's General Staff itself is trying to ward off America's impending Iran war.

Just imagine it. They were prepared to push the button all through the Cold War. Now they're finally sitting back and getting rich a bit, and the United States, already occupying the adjacent two countries to Iran, is now actively stirring up trouble in Khuzestan and Balochistan. I think it's time for a chart!

I drew this little guy when I was having a migraine. I'll put up the rest later.

I think it has most of your basic factors of the situation. If I were the damn Joint Chiefs I sure as hell wouldn't park the carriers in the Persian Gulf. Look at it. The little triangles and X's I drew represent hundreds of clandestine docks full of suicide speedboats and probably very sweet missiles. Really. The US carriers are floating around in that without any room to maneuver. Which is why the Brits have been fucking around on their speedboats over the line in the narrow coastal estuary, the Shatt al-Arab, that Iran and Iraq have been bitching about forever. The local fishermen know exactly where the damn line is, and the British Navy engages in this idiocy?

What the hell, it's my website and I'll repost the material in full. However I'll also try to put half of it on the Read More fold, which should work nice and fast now. [original source in Russian]

Webster Tarpley is one of those conspiracy guys. Etc. I found this posted on the decidedly tinfoil Rense.com. But hey when there's obviously a conspiracy to start a war with Iran, why not see what the hatters have? This is really just a framing of a Russian article, which itself appears a bit of a desperate message from the once-fearsome Kremlin.

Anyhow here's the Tarpley story. Again my view is that everyone is blustering right now but the Russians are pretty fucking serious. For bonus points note that the Russians viewed the removal of Democratic law requiring Bush to visit Congress before an Iran attack as an absolute indicator war is ON. And for triple bonus points the Russians note that AIPAC representing the "Israeli extreme right" was crucial in getting Pelosi to pull that language.

Operation Bite - April 6 Sneak Attack By US Forces On Iran Planned - Russian Military Sources Warn

General Ivashov Calls For Emergency Session Of UN Security Council To Ward Off Looming US Aggression

By Webster G. Tarpley 3-25-7

WASHINGTON DC -- The long awaited US military attack on Iran is now on track for the first week of April, specifically for 4 AM on April 6, the Good Friday opening of Easter weekend, writes the well-known Russian journalist Andrei Uglanov in the Moscow weekly "Argumenty Nedeli." Uglanov cites Russian military experts close to the Russian General Staff for his account.

The attack is slated to last for twelve hours, according to Uglanov, lasting from 4 AM until 4 PM local time. Friday is a holiday in Iran. In the course of the attack, code named Operation Bite, about 20 targets are marked for bombing; the list includes uranium enrichment facilities, research centers, and laboratories.

The first reactor at the Bushehr nuclear plant, where Russian engineers are working, is supposed to be spared from destruction. The US attack plan reportedly calls for the Iranian air defense system to be degraded, for numerous Iranian warships to be sunk in the Persian Gulf, and the for the most important headquarters of the Iranian armed forces to be wiped out.

The attacks will be mounted from a number of bases, including the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. Diego Garcia is currently home to B-52 bombers equipped with standoff missiles. Also participating in the air strikes will be US naval aviation from aircraft carriers in the Persian Gulf, as well as from those of the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean. Additional cruise missiles will be fired from submarines in the Indian Ocean and off the coast of the Arabian peninsula. The goal is allegedly to set back Iran's nuclear program by several years, writes Uglanov, whose article was re-issued by RIA-Novosti in various languages, but apparently not English, several days ago. The story is the top item on numerous Italian and German blogs, but so far appears to have been ignored by US websites.

Observers comment that this dispatch represents a high-level orchestrated leak from the Kremlin, in effect a war warning, which draws on the formidable resources of the Russian intelligence services, and which deserves to be taken with the utmost seriousness by pro-peace forces around the world.

Asked by RIA-Novosti to comment on the Uglanov report, retired Colonel General Leonid Ivashov confirmed its essential features in a March 21 interview: "I have no doubt that there will be an operation, or more precisely a violent action against Iran." Ivashov, who has reportedly served at various times as an informal advisor to Putin, is currently the Vice President of the Moscow Academy for Geopolitical Sciences.

Ivashov attributed decisive importance to the decision of the Democratic leadership of the US House of Representatives to remove language from the just-passed Iraq supplemental military appropriations bill which would have demanded that Bush come to Congress before launching an attack on Iran. Ivashov pointed out that the language was eliminated under pressure from AIPAC, the lobbing group representing the Israeli extreme right, and of Israeli Foreign Minister Tsipi Livni.

"We have drawn the unmistakable conclusion that this operation will take place," said Ivashov. In his opinion, the US planning does not include a land operation: " Most probably there will be no ground attack, but rather massive air attacks with the goal of annihilating Iran's capacity for military resistance, the centers of administration, the key economic assets, and quite possibly the Iranian political leadership, or at least part of it," he continued.....

The bell tolls for Musharraf & Pakistan: Disintegration, Democracy or Doom?

HongPong — Fri, 23 Mar 2007 10:37:23 -0600

Pakistan is pretty much screwed right now. There is an ongoing covert effort by the U.S. to stir up the Baluchis to attack Iran, the Taliban is operating firmly out of the Pakistani city of Quetta (once the British 'garrison town' at the fringe of Colonial India), and the major interest groups underpinning Musharraf's rule are basically running for the door.

The latest crisis was when Musharraf fired the chief justice of the Supreme Court for failing to extend and further rationalize his military dictatorship. This crisis appears to have alienated Islamic fundamentalists, intelligence service heavies, and other major parts of the political scene from Musharraf. Meanwhile, Waziristan tribal areas and the Pashtun sector beyond Quetta trend towards a basically Taliban-oriented autonomous structure.

If we want to get buzzwordy, could say that "fourth generation warfare entities like religious foundations and tribal segments are focusing primary loyalties to themselves and acting independently, moving away from the central government's military dictatorship, as the factionalized army and ISI act accordingly and autonomously." Or something like that.

(note: the Baluchis, like the Pashtuns and Afghanistan's other major ethnic groups, were placed across national frontiers by meddlesome Europeans in the 19th century. The Baluchis, a historically nomadic people, are trisected between Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran. They have recently suffered repression from the Pak government)

So you'll want to read this analysis by Ahmed Rashid. No one really knows the cogs of Central Asia better than this journalist.

Musharraf at the Exit
By Ahmed Rashid
Thursday, March 22, 2007; Page A21

LAHORE, Pakistan -- In the rapidly unfolding crisis in Pakistan, no matter what happens to President Pervez Musharraf -- whether he survives politically or not -- he is a lame duck. He is unable to rein in Talibanization in Pakistan or guide the country toward a more democratic future.

Since March 9, when Musharraf suspended the chief justice of the Supreme Court, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, public protests have escalated every day -- as has a violent crackdown by the police and intelligence agencies on the media and the nation's legal fraternity.

The legal convolutions about Chaudhry's dismissal boil down to one simple fact: He was not considered sufficiently reliable to deliver pleasing legal judgments in a year when Musharraf is seeking to extend his presidency by five more years, remain as army chief and hold what would undoubtedly be rigged general elections.

Musharraf's desire to replace Chaudhry with a more pliable judge has badly backfired. After just 10 days of protests, lawyers around the country have made it clear to the senior judiciary that they will not tolerate further legal validations for continued military rule or tolerate Musharraf remaining as president. At least seven judges and a deputy attorney general have resigned in protest.

Across the country, in law offices, in the media, among the opposition parties and other organized sections of civil society, the feeling is growing that Musharraf will have to quit sooner rather than later. After eight years of military rule it appears people have had enough.

Some of that tasty Iran paranoia; BYOT (Bring Your Own Threat); Somalia plots a template for intervention

HongPong — Tue, 16 Jan 2007 02:29:35 -0700

The air is thick with PSY OPS again. We are seeing, for example, a lot of bluster from the Israelis in the neoconservative media networks. For example the conservative UK Times ran the story: Revealed: Israel plans nuclear strike on Iran which was pretty alarming, but the Times runs this story approximately every 6 months. More on this particular info burst @ the Agonist. Bloomberg on this like a year ago. An insightful comment on the free-for-all from stalwart RawStory reporter Larisa Alexandrovna.

Smart bit of the day: Steve Clemons @ TheWashingtonNote puts this in some reasonable International Relations context:

I suspect that we will soon see more collisions between US military squads and Special Force operations against suspected Syrian and Iranian convoys and personnel -- civilian and military -- inside Iraq as well as more border interdiction. At some point, these units will go into Syria and Iran to accomplish their "disruption" missions.

At that point, Syria and Iran will make a calculation as to whether they should respond with proportionate military force against US military assets -- or whether they respond in lateral ways against other players in the region -- like American allies in Afghanistan or Iraq, or Israel. Alternatively, Iran could pump up the sophistication of weaponry it is supplying to Shiite groups and design and organize higher profile assaults on the Sunni population and American and British forces -- operating through proxies.

Despite Vice President Cheney's desire to see Iran directly fire a few missiles at our troops in response to provocations from the U.S. -- thus firmly establishing a casus belli for a full-fledged American attack against Iran -- Iran will probably be craftier than that and will respond in fuzzy, indirect, but highly disruptive ways -- through Hezbollah, Shiite militia, and other agents.

Also, expect to see Iran's top tier diplomats, theocrats and political elite make "mutual interest" trips to Moscow and Beijing. Iran will offer highly lucrative "energy arrangements" that major powers focused on further global ascension won't be able to resist. Unless America is willing to figure out and pay the diplomatic price desired by China and Russia for uniform action against Iran, then Iran will cultivate these two rising peer competitors and balancers against American power.

Given Japan's and Europe's direct dependence on Iranian oil exports, as the heat in the region rises and direct military collisions occur, Japanese and European diplomats will attempt to wedge themselves between the conflicting parties.

America may again find itself diplomatically isolated as it wages a subtle war against Iran -- which despite Iranian funding of destabilizing non-state forces in many parts of the Middle East -- may find that it has a diplomatic edge because America never engaged in credible diplomatic engagement with Iran over its nuclear program and about its regional misbehavior.

.........Ahmadinejad wants an attack on Iran nearly as much as Cheney does. An American or Israeli bombing of its nuclear facilities and the killing of 6,000 of its top engineering talent (and the many tens of thousands who happen to be near them at the time of the bombing) will consolidate his power inside the country -- something he is no where close to at this point.

The nightmare scenario -- as if this was not bad enough -- is that Iranian-backed agents in the region roll out disruption plans across moderate Sunni regimes -- particularly Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

Many I have spoken to from the defense and foreign affairs sectors from various Middle East states worry about well-disguised yet successful assassination attempts against Saudi or Jordanian leaders -- throwing the Sunni regimes into turmoil and igniting national and regional rage that they feel will ultimately be anti-American, anti-occupation, anti-colonial, and of course, anti-Israel.

In other words a clusterfuck that will be a horrible disaster for real U.S. interests. But who gives a shit about that anyway?

More on Focus: Mission Iran from UK Times. Obviously such nuclear attacks would contaminate big swaths of Asia with radioactive fallout, which is a pretty ghastly prospect.

Bush is brandishing the big saber and kidnapping Iranian diplomatic officials, a clear act of war if there ever was one. Of course we have the attempted normative structure - a propaganda by deed - attempting to roust the myth of the unstoppable righteous American Action for yet another poorly-thought-out round.

CBS reports of a 'secret ground campaign' against Iranian 'networks,' which is a bizarre yet modern-sounding project. Of course the sad reality is that these heavily Iranian-supported networks are the keystones of the political environment in Iraq - and a keystone of the military support of the Maliki government. It was mere hours after British forces 'captured' Basra in 2003 when they discovered that a sheik had already overthrown the Baath Party, with the help of thick Iranian-backed 'networks' like the Dawa Party and SCIRI.

The bottom line is that the networks Bush now promises to annihilate are simply the core of the fourth-generation warfare style Shiite primary loyalty groups. Muqtada al-Sadr is the most independent of Iran, and he has already been classed a FULL DEMON by our shrewd media, so there is no real legitimate Shiite political structure not subject to American annihilation in the forthcoming campaign.

Critiques of the Bush speech a paragraph at a time.

Somali Schemes: We need to realize that this is about dominating the oil on the geological formation between Yemen and Somalia. Consider this article from the Sudan Tribune. Comment on the Agonist about 'backing losers'. Many local nomads obliterated by U.S. airstrikes and no one in the media cares that this generates X number of American enemies.

The ugly side here is that the Special Forces is being used as a way to interface with small warlords who will cut a deal to help the U.S. lock up energy resources - and their general milieu of top-down dictatorship is the best way to prevent the money from that from being distributed in a more socialist way. We are also waiting for Special Forces to spring Baluchis on the Afghan-Pakistan-Iran intersection, as a way to cause problems for the Iranians.

New York Times January 13, 2007

Pentagon Sees Covert Move in Somalia as Blueprint By MARK MAZZETTI

WASHINGTON, Jan. 12 — Military operations in Somalia by American commandos, and the use of the Ethiopian Army as a surrogate force to root out operatives for Al Qaeda in the country, are a blueprint that Pentagon strategists say they hope to use more frequently in counterterrorism missions around the globe.

Military officials said the strike by an American gunship on terrorism suspects in southern Somalia on Sunday showed that even with the departure of Donald H. Rumsfeld from the Pentagon, Special Operations troops intended to take advantage of the directive given to them by Mr. Rumsfeld in the weeks after the Sept. 11 attacks.

American officials said the recent military operations have been carried by the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command, which directs the military’s most secretive and elite units, like the Army’s Delta Force.

The Pentagon established a desolate outpost in the Horn of Africa nation of Djibouti in 2002 in part to serve as a hub for Special Operations missions to capture or kill senior Qaeda leaders in the region.

Few such “high value” targets have materialized, and the Pentagon has gradually relocated members of the covert Special Operations units to more urgent missions in Iraq and Afghanistan.

But officials in Washington said this week that the joint command had quietly been returning troops and weaponry to the region in recent weeks in anticipation of a mission against members of a Qaeda cell believed to be hiding in Somalia.

Gen. Peter Pace, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told members of Congress on Friday that the strike in Somalia was executed under the Pentagon’s authority to hunt and kill terrorism suspects around the globe, a power the White House gave it shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks.

It was this authority that Mr. Rumsfeld used to order commanders to develop plans for using American Special Operations troops for missions within countries that had not been declared war zones.

Keep an eye on Antiwar.com, duh.

Litvinenko conspiracy bits: Firedoglake on it.