Three pieces to read:

Obama continues secret renditions, secret prisons and torture: The CIA's Secret Sites in Somalia – Jeremy Scahill, Nation

The next is about Ahmed Wali Karzai and was written before he got killed yesterday. In all the obituaries about him it was of course mentioned that he was smuggler, warlord, land thief, tribal leader, CIA agent and whatnot. But nowhere did I see mentioned what is reported here. That Ahmed Wali Karzai was just a move away from being made the official governor of Kandahar. That may very well have been the reason why he was killed: Governor Ahmed Wali Karzai – Matthieu Aikins, Harper's

Cynical French, a naive PM, foolish MPs. This Libyan misadventure will end in tears – Max Hastings, Mirror

Please use this thread to discuss the above and as open thread.

Terror Strikes Mumbai, 3 blasts, 10 reported dead

Three explosions have taken place in Mumbai on Wednesday evening – two in South Mumbai at Opera House and in Zaveri Bazar and one at Dadar West, in central Mumbai. The Home Ministry has confirmed a terrorist attack and Mumbai is on high alert.

All blasts took place during rush hour and in crowded places.

Eyewitnesses said about 15 to 20 people have taken to hospital in Zaveri Bazar. Reports said six people had died in the Dadar blast, four in the Zaveri Bazaar blast. Government sources put the number of injured at 60.

Who was it?

It is likely that this or that Pakistani group will be blamed and with it the Pakistani government. That is about the last thing that country needs right now.

Then again – it could be a diversion from the serious pressure the Pakistani military is under. From its own people for the CIA Abootabad raid and the continuous drone war the U.S. is waging on Pakistan and from the U.S. which demands servile cooperation with its schemes.

BTW: What happened to the U.S. national Matthew Craig Barrett, the possible CIA agent who was very publicly arrested in Pakistan four weeks ago and was supposed to be deported two weeks ago. There is not one bit of news on him since his arrest.

With so much pressure on Pakistan one wonders not if, but when the political system will break and a new government or a new dictator be swept in.  Any ideas if/when/what might happen?

The very stupid CIA operation the Guradian revealed will cost many, many lives.

CIA organised fake vaccination drive to get Osama bin Laden's family DNA

As part of extensive preparations for the raid that killed Bin Laden in May, CIA agents recruited a senior Pakistani doctor to organise the vaccine drive in Abbottabad, even starting the "project" in a poorer part of town to make it look more authentic, according to Pakistani and US officials and local residents.
…

The CIA tried, unsuccessfully, to get some DNA from the children in Bin Laden's hideout to find out if he was there. The fake vaccination campaign was set up to get access to them.

But this, now public, stunt will jeopardize many legitimate vaccination drives like the ones UNICEF and the WHO are organizing in Afghanistan:

United Nations agencies and the Afghan health ministry are conducting a three-day campaign aimed at vaccinating an estimated 7.7 million children under the age of five against polio.

So far the Taliban cooperated with such vaccination campaigns. From now on they will not trust these anymore. The abuse of such medical services for spying operations will be deadly for many children.

By law U.S. agencies are not allowed to use journalist covers for spying. The same should apply for medical personal. The harm done in cases like this is much bigger than any perceived benefit.

As Sec State Clinton calls President Assad of Syria "not indispensable" the neocons and the Israel lobby want Turkey to invade Syria. Reuel Marc Gerecht writes in the Weekly Standard:

Ideally, we should want to see the Turks establish a buffer zone or safe haven on the Syrian side of the border (Ankara sometimes did this in Iraq to counter nefarious Kurdish activity). Such a Turkish intervention, which would likely be backed by the French, would be convulsive inside Syria and would signal to the military that Ankara had irreversibly chosen sides.

Soner Çağaptay, a resident at the an Israeli lobby think tank Washington Institute, opines in Hürriyet:

[W]hen reacting to the unrest in Syria, the instinct of the Justice and Development Party, or AKP, government in Ankara will be to avoid conflict and opt for a buffer zone inside Syria to manage the likely flow of refugees on Syrian territory. But if that does not work, Turkey could take matters into its own hands, sending troops into Syria. Did I just say Turkey might invade Syria? Yes. And what a can of worms such an intervention would open, humanitarian though it would be.

For those writers the aim of this plot is to move Syria away from Iran and to tie down Turkey in the "western" fold.

Turkey's foreign minister is currently in Tehran and it does not sound like he has any intention to further incite a conflict in Syria:

“Syria is a close friend of both Iran and Turkey, which has close relations with the two countries. It is important for us that there are no more civilian deaths and that the country starts work on reforms as soon as possible,” Davutoğlu said.

Davutoğlu added that Turkey has expressed its position on this to the Iranian side and listened to the Iranian side, adding that both countries agreed on the “inevitability of [the] reform process in Syria and that the process should be completed without instability.”

So it is very doubtful that Turkey will do anything with regards to Syria. But that will of course not stop the usual suspects to lobby for another war.

Rumsfeld: I have said for some time that there are al Qaeda in Iraq, and there are.
REMARKS BY DONALD H. RUMSFELD – DEFENSE SECRETARY, August 20, 2002

—

“The reason you guys are here is because on 9/11 the United States got attacked, and 3,000 not just Americans, but 3,000 human beings got killed, innocent human beings, because of Al Qaeda,” Mr. Panetta told Army troops at Camp Victory, the sprawling American military base in Baghdad.

Later, Mr. Panetta told reporters that he was not speaking of the reasons for the 2003 American-led invasion but rather was referring to events afterward.

“I wasn’t saying, you know, the invasion, or going into the issues or the justification of that,” Mr. Panetta said. “It was more the fact that we really had to deal with Al Qaeda here.”
Panetta Presses Iraq for Decision on Troops, July 11, 2011

Panetta is obviously lying, just as Rumsfeld did.

A guy who is now, 9 years later, still willing to lie to about the Iraq invasion will not be honest on anything else either. He will stick to the program whatever that may be.

Keep that in mind when Panetta says anything about Iran or Afghanistan or any other issue.

Clarifying: I would have doubted what Panetta says in any case. But he had up to now not made outlandish claims as this one. As the second Iran NIE confirmed the first one, I though Panetta, then the CIA boss, was rather on the reality based side than a hack. Now he is just that.

Sarkoleon thought he could to do a quick job grabbing Libya's riches. That turned out to not be possible. War is expensive. Fighting a stalemate in the desert is neither fun nor does it make for good headlines. Time to give up:

France's defense minister said it was time for Libya's rebels to negotiate with Muammar Gaddafi's government, signaling growing impatience with progress in the conflict.
…
"We have … asked them to speak to each other," Longuet, whose government has until now been among the most hawkish on Libya, said on French television station BFM TV.

"The position of the TNC (rebel Transitional National Council) is very far from other positions. Now, there will be a need to sit around a table," he said.

Asked if it was possible to hold talks if Gaddafi had not stepped down, Longuet said: "He will be in another room in his palace with another title."

The French plan now: Gaddhafi will stay and the rebels will be pressed into a ceasefire.

But the French made the mistake to earlier invite the U.S. in on this war. The "liberal interventionists" in Washington, who have little to lose in this game but their reputation, will want to keep the war going:

Soon after, the State Department in Washington issued a message that gave no hint of compromise.

"The Libyan people will be the ones to decide how this transition takes place, but we stand firm in our belief that Gaddafi cannot remain in power," it said in a written reply to a query.

The Libyan people will of course not be allowed to decide. The chance of them deciding that Gaddhafi should stay is too high. Washington will prevent that.

I expect the war to continue for another few month with no decisive victory for either side. Only when the British and French together withhold their troops from continuing the war will Washington agree to negotiations. Even after that it will try everything to spoil any decent compromise.

Troops on the ground? That would change the picture. But I doubt that Congress will agree to allow for such. It seems as this war, like man other before it, will end with a whimper instead of a glorious bang.

Sarkoleon thought he could to do a quick job grabbing Libya's riches. That turned out to not be possible. War is expensive. Fighting a stalemate in the desert is neither fun nor does it make for good headlines. Time to give up:

France's defense minister said it was time for Libya's rebels to negotiate with Muammar Gaddafi's government, signaling growing impatience with progress in the conflict.
…
"We have … asked them to speak to each other," Longuet, whose government has until now been among the most hawkish on Libya, said on French television station BFM TV.

"The position of the TNC (rebel Transitional National Council) is very far from other positions. Now, there will be a need to sit around a table," he said.

Asked if it was possible to hold talks if Gaddafi had not stepped down, Longuet said: "He will be in another room in his palace with another title."

The French plan now: Gaddhafi will stay and the rebels will be pressed into a ceasefire.

But the French made the mistake to earlier invite the U.S. in on this war. The "liberal interventionists" in Washington, who have little to lose in this game but their reputation, will want to keep the war going:

Soon after, the State Department in Washington issued a message that gave no hint of compromise.

"The Libyan people will be the ones to decide how this transition takes place, but we stand firm in our belief that Gaddafi cannot remain in power," it said in a written reply to a query.

The Libyan people will of course not be allowed to decide. The chance of them deciding that Gaddhafi should stay is too high. Washington will prevent that.

I expect the war to continue for another few month with no decisive victory for either side. Only when the British and French together withhold their troops from continuing the war will Washington agree to negotiations. Even after that it will try everything to spoil any decent compromise.

Troops on the ground? That would change the picture. But I doubt that Congress will agree to allow for such. It seems as this war, like man other before it, will end with a whimper instead of a glorious bang.

Why pubertal juveniles should not write military press releases:

The International Security Assistance Force, composed of countries worldwide, was established to secure Afghanistan. June 28 marked the first day of a series of missions that enabled pilots from Australia, the United Arab Emirates and the United States to embrace the ISAF dream as they combined forces to destroy insurgent repeater towers in southern Afghanistan.

"Embrace the ISAF dream?" Seriously?

Rupert Murdoch’s media companies are neo-liberal ideological propaganda machines. It is no wonder that they are therefore, like News Of The World in the UK has now proved to be, also criminal enterprises.

The revelation that NOTW payed bribes to policemen, massively manipulated voice mail boxes to find other peoples private stuff it could sensationalize and that Murdochs News Corp tried to cover it all up, only confirm what many people already knew.

The British prime minister Cameron, who like his alter ego Bliar got elected with support from Murdoch’s media and hired a former editor of NOTW as spokesperson, is now in a hot seat. Murdoch’s plan to get a majority share in the BSkyB broadcaster, something Cameron earlier helped along, could now be in jeopardy. But Murdoch doesn’t like to lose and he will certainly try, with Cameron’s help, to trick his way around the legal issues. To Murdoch politicians are just his string puppets.

Back in January Adam Curtis posted RUPERT MURDOCH – A PORTRAIT OF SATAN which includes several old BBC portraits of Murdoch. The man has a legacy of lying, deceiving and breaking promises as well as working around the laws.

Murdoch should go down. Unfortunately, that is unlikely to happen.

A serious scandal is brewing in Germany after the public got wind about a secret decision by the the security cabinet to sell 200 main battle tanks to Saudi Arabia.

The Merkel administration says to its own excuse that the U.S. and Israel did not protest against this sale. That only makes one wonder why they were asked. Ain't Germany sovereign?

But the question is not really about a $1+ billion tank deal with the Saudi, they do have lots of U.S. build M1A1 as well as British Challengers and could easily get more, the question is about the specific version of this first class tank the Saudis have asked for.

The Leopard II A7+ (PSO) variant was specifically developed for "Peace Support Operations". Such Orwellian termed operations, as this video of a pretty lousy military show depicts, consist of suppressing demonstrations and rebellions as well as general fighting in urban terrain.

Cont. reading: German Tanks For Saudi “Peace Support Operations”

The Leverett's at their site Race For Iran have long called for a "Grand Bargain" with Iran in which the U.S. would guarantee (one wonders how believable) not to touch the Iranian form of government while Iran would give up its support for "the resistance", i.e. Hizbullah and the Palestinians.

But as the Lebanese scholar Amal Saad-Ghorayeb writes in a recent Conflicts Forum’s monograph, such a "Grand Bargain" may not be possible, unless the U.S. completely changes its stand in the Middle East. This because a "Grand Bargain" as envisioned now would necessitate for the Islamic Republic to give up the core values of its ideological foundation, anti-imperialism and justice, and thereby render it into an empty hull.

Via the Friday Lunch Club an excerpt from the recommendable paper An Examination of the Ideological, Political and Strategic Causes of Iran’s Commitment to the Palestinian Cause (page 13/14, footnotes omitted):

[T]he Islamic Republic would most likely reject not merely the content but the very logic underlying the Leverett’s ‘Grand Bargain’ proposal, were it ever to be officially adopted by the Obama administration. The Leveretts’ recommendation that policymakers make clear their intention to “not seek a change in the nature of the Iranian regime, but rather, changes in Iranian policies that Washington considers problematic,” is self-contradictory and reductive for it ignores the reality that the nature of the Iranian political system is not merely defined by its Shiíte Islamic theocracy and liturgy but is essentially shaped by its policies, particularly the ones deemed unsavory by the US. In fact, the very policies which Washington seeks to change comprise an essential part of Iran’s self-understanding as an Islamic state. Accordingly, the Leverett proposal misidentifies Iran’s national security policy with the physical security of the regime, or its mere survival as an institutional entity, rather than with the security of the regime’s identity, or being as a “particular kind of actor” — its “ontological security”. Thus, when Washington demands policy changes of Iran while reassuring it that it would leave its Islamic form of government intact, in so doing, it is threatening Tehran’s ontological security as a particular kind of Islamic actor.

Cont. reading: Why Iran Would Reject The “Grand Bargain”

Obama disappointed on many, many issues.

He escalated the war in Afghanistan and started new ones in Somalia, Yemen and Libya. He kept Guantanamo open and found new ways to hide prisoners. He let the CIA torturers get off for free. He gave hundreds of billions to Wall Street and made no effort to clean it up. He doesn't give shit about the constitutional war powers. He is more zealous about whistle blowers than anyone before him. He is pandering to Israel and its lobby.

The people in the U.S. might have been okay with most of the above. But now, I hope, they will find him overreaching and this should be the deserved end of his presidency: In debt talks, Obama offers Social Security cuts

President Obama is pressing congressional leaders to consider a far-reaching debt-reduction plan that would force Democrats to accept major changes to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for Republican support for fresh tax revenue.

This used to be the holy grail for the Democrats. Selling out on Social Security and Medicare is something large majorities in the U.S. are against. Doing so would probably be the end of the party.

Will this finally result in a serious primary challenge for Obama?

Nato will stay out of Libya: Rasmussen, February 24
"I would like to stress that Nato has no plans to intervene and we have not received any request," Rasmussen said after talks with Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych.

—

NATO plans for all eventualities in Libya: Rasmussen, March 3
"I'd like to stress that NATO doesn't have any intention to intervene, but as a defense alliance and security organization, we do prudent planning for all eventualities," Rasmussen said after talks with Montenegro Prime Minister Igor Luksic.

—

Nato 'is impartial' in Libya, says Rasmussen, March 28
The secretary general of Nato has insisted that it is "impartial" and coalition forces in Libya will not arm the rebels to attack Col Gaddafi.

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Rasmussen says no NATO ground troops for Libya, March 28
Rasmussen: The UN mandate does not authorise the use of forces on the ground. We are there to protect civilians against attack. We are there to implement a no-fly zone; we have no intention of putting troops on the ground.

—

NATO Head Rasmussen – 'There Is No Military Solution to the Libya Conflict', April 13
Rasmussen: The honest answer is that there is no military solution to this conflict. We need a political solution, and it's up to the Libyan people to come up with one.

—

Rasmussen: "NATO needs more precision strike fighters in Libya", April 15
NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said here Thursday that NATO generally has sufficient military assets for the Libyan mission, but it needs more precision strike aircraft as Libyan government troops changed their tactics.

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'Game over' for Gaddafi: Nato chief, May 9
'The game is over for Gaddafi. He should realize sooner rather than later that there's not future for him or his regime,' the Nato secretary-general told CNN's State Of The Union program.

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Rasmussen: Nato in Libya 'as long as it takes', June 9
Speaking to the BBC, Mr Rasmussen said that Nato members had agreed to extend operations in Libya for another 90 days and would be there "for as long as it takes".

—

Libya War: NATO to use any means – Rasmussen, June 23
“We are allowed to use any means necessary. But I do not want to talk about what we are preparing,” he said.

Rasmussen said he was not surprised by the fact that Gaddaffi still continues to resist NATO and the opposition.

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Rasmussen Rules out NATO Land Operations in Libya, July 4
"We have no intention of deploying troops on the ground (in Libya)," Rasmussen said after meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the Black Sea resort of Sochi.

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NATO: 'Game over' for Gadhafi, July 6
"The momentum is against Gadhafi, his economic strength to sustain war is declining, his generals and ministers are deserting, the international community has turned against him," [NATO secretary-general Rasmussen] told reporters in Brussels. "For Gadhafi, the game is over."

On a recent secret visit to Iraq President Barack Obama exchanged offerings with Iraq's Prime Minister al-Maliki. This according to knowledgeable circles.

As we are told Obama fell to his knees begging al-Maliki take up his offer to keep 10,000 U.S. occupation troops in Iraq past this year's end. Al-Maliki stayed seated but offered Obama a date.

While some Obama officials immediately explained that the date offered was the one on which al-Maliki would positively decide the question, other officials questioned that interpretation.

On July 1 the New York Times headlined: Iraq Cracks Down on Iran-Backed Shiite Militias. Nowhere does the article under that headline provide any facts which support the claim that those militia are backed by Iran. Those militia are allegedly Shia and that is enough to call them "Iran-backed".

Today the Washington Post headlines: Weapons prove Iranian role in Iraq, U.S. says. But the article contains no, that is zero, evidence for that claim. It says that:

Jeffrey[, the U.S. ambassador to Iraq,] provided details of the forensic testing after Gen. Lloyd Austin, commanding general of U.S. forces in Iraq, declined to do so earlier in the day.

But the article does not say or explain what "details of the forensic testing" the ambassador provided. Instead it mentions old U.S. assertions from 2009 and from 2008 and it trots out the old false meme of "explosively formed projectile” found in Iraq as coming from Iran. It also quotes an "expert" from the Israel Lobby who, of course, blames Iran for everything between sunrise and sundown.

Both articles, while using the claim of Iranian involvement in their headlines, do not provide any news at all with regard to Iranian connections to groups in Iraq. Their sole purpose seems to reenforce the meme by repeating it over and over.

I’ve got nothing.

Whatever …

There was a public exchange between U.S. and Pakistan officials over the last days with contradicting claims about the operation of and from the airbase Shamsi in Baluchistan province in south-west Pakistan. Later on, both agreed on a status picture. But is it the true one? terrorists in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Drone hangers at Shamsi – Google map

The dispute started with the Pakistani defense minister saying on Wednesday in the Financial Times that Pakistan ordered the base to be shut down and evacuated and that operations there were halted:

Pakistan is pushing the US to abandon an airbase in Balochistan that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) has reportedly been using for years to undertake its drone campaign inside the country’s tribal areas, the defence minister said.

Defence Minister Ahmed Mukhtar’s statement confirming that the US had been told to leave the Shamsi airbase is the latest indication of the simmering tensions between the key war-on-terror allies.

Pakistani commentators lauded this step which made it difficult to change that position:

The announcement of Defence Minister Chaudhary Ahmad Mukhtar that the United States has been asked to vacate the Shamsi airbase in Balochistan has widely been hailed by people of Pakistan, who consider it belated but still timely move as part of the efforts to restore national honour and dignity.
…
Shamsi had become subject of a heated national debate and disgust with people considering it as a stigma for the country and therefore, the move of the Government to get it vacated is a welcome development.

But someone in the U.S. did not like the Pakistani claim and on Thursday directly rebutted it via Reuters:

Cont. reading: So What Really Is the Operational Status of Shamsi?

When the news about "rape" allegedly committed by then IMF chief Strauss-Kahn came up I wrote that the case "smells of entrapment":

Now it may of course well be that Mr. Strauss-Kahn didn't behave like a gentleman. But does anybody believe that some other high up, for example the CEO of Goldman Sachs, would have been shamed like this over such an issue without the usual official cover up attempt?

It seems clear now that this case indeed stinks to high heaven:

The sexual assault case against Dominique Strauss-Kahn is on the verge of collapse as investigators have uncovered major holes in the credibility of the housekeeper who charged that he attacked her in his Manhattan hotel suite in May, according to two well-placed law enforcement officials.
…
According to the two officials, the woman had a phone conversation with an incarcerated man within a day of her encounter with Mr. Strauss-Kahn in which she discussed the possible benefits of pursuing the charges against him. The conversation was recorded.

That man, the investigators learned, had been arrested on charges of possessing 400 pounds of marijuana. He is among a number of individuals who made multiple cash deposits, totaling around $100,000, into the woman’s bank account over the last two years. The deposits were made in Arizona, Georgia, New York and Pennsylvania.

The investigators also learned that she was paying hundreds of dollars every month in phone charges to five companies. The woman had insisted she had only one phone and said she knew nothing about the deposits except that they were made by a man she described as her fiancé and his friends.

In addition, one of the officials said, she told investigators that her application for asylum included mention of a previous rape, but there was no such account in the application. She also told them that she had been subjected to genital mutilation, but her account to the investigators differed from what was contained in the asylum application.

With a witness like that any prosecution is dead.

The case was obviously used to move Strauss Khan out as IMF chief. He had argued to forgive debt and to let the bankers bleed. Only two days ago Sarkozy's finance minister, Christine Lagarde, was installed as new neoliberal IMF chief. And today we learn that the case against Strauss-Kahn falters. I do not for a moment believe that this timing is pure coincident. The prosecutors certainly knew about the witness' unreliability for weeks. They fried Strauss-Kahn just long enough to finish the plan.

Whether it was the U.S. who did him in -Strauss-Kahn had also suggested to replace the dollar as reserve currency with IMF Special Drawing Rights-, or the Sarkozy government which wanted to eliminate a Strauss-Kahn as a Sarkozy challenger in the next presidential election in France, will only come out years from now.

What points to Sarkozy is the little publicized fact that the New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, who's department leaked like a sieve all the damaging "facts" about the Strauss-Kahn case, is a friend of Sarkozy who in 2006 was awarded the France’s Legion of Honor by France’s Interior Minister, then one Nicolas Sarkozy.

Whatever it may be. This case, just like the one against Elliot Spitzer and the rape allegations against Julian Assange, will remind anyone in charge anywhere to stay with the bankers' party line. A serious ratfucking, like Strauss-Kahn experienced, will be the penalty for any deviation.