[W]ith longtime U.S. nemesis Moammar Gaddafi dead and Libya’s onetime rebels now in charge, the coalition air campaign has emerged as a foreign policy success for the Obama administration and its most famous Cabinet member, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Clinton credited with key role in success of NATO airstrikes, Libyan rebels, WaPo

"Foreign policy success"? Like Al Qaida's flag flying above the courthouse in Benghazi, Libya?

via vice

Or maybe this?

The cycle of retribution appears already to have started. The town of al Jemel, a scattering of sandy homes in the palm-studded desert southwest of Tripoli, is one example.

Residents said brigades from faraway Misrata had appeared at their doorstep a week ago, breaking into people's homes and looking for Gaddafi loyalists.

Dozens of young men have disappeared and four have been killed in detention, said Al Koni Salem Mohammed, the uncle of one of those killed.

Speaking at a mourning ceremony on the edge of town, he shook with grief as he showed the death certificate listing "electric shocks" as a cause of death. He said the body had been dumped outside the detention centre with its tongue and genitals cut off.
Cycle of revenge hangs over Libya's fragile peace, Reuters

As Clinton is now, through that sycophantic WaPo piece, taking full credit for what happened with Libya, we should never forget her responsibilty as that country falls further apart.

News & views …

The "Israel will bomb Iran" meme has been used so often that it doesn make much sense to take it serious anymore.

So why even discuss when it, as now, comes up again?

The difference is that the old campaign, via IDF jail guard Goldberg in The Atlantic and others in U.S. venues, was supposed to influence the U.S. to do the dirty work.

The new version of the meme is coming through major commentators in the Israeli press and its purpose seems is to publicly warn Israelis about some lunacy Netanyahoo and his defense minister Barak are seemingly committed to.

Alex Fishman wrote about it in an OpEd in Yediot Aharonot/Ynetnews on the 12th, Amin Oren on the 14th in Haaretz, colomnist Sefi Rachlevsky on the 17th also in Haaretz. And now teasered on page one of the weekend edition of of the Hebrew dead tree version of Yediot Aharonot the "the best-connected, most influential journalist in Israel" Nahum Barnea (partly translated here, here and here) issues the same warnings.

All these well know writers revolve their pieces around three issues:

First: The Shalit prisoner deal was done to "clean up" for the next big issue.

Second: Recently former Israel Defense Forces chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi, Shin Bet security service head Yuval Diskin, Mossad head Meir Dagan and former head of the Israeli air force Amos Yadlin were replaced. The new people in these jobs are more willing to defer to the politicians. As Nahim Barnea sets it:

But as far as is known, on the Iranian issue, their view matches that of their predecessors: all four, it seems, rule out a military strike at this time. The difference is in their willingness to fight [for their viewpoint]: the previous directors arrived at meetings after years of success, each in their organization, enjoying strong public standing. Toward the politicians they projected determination and self-confidence. The new ones are less well known, less emphatic, less consolidated.

Third: There are serious signals that Netanyahoo and Barak will go for it shortly without any regard of the consequences.

All these writers warn that this is a dangerous road ahead and ask the new heads of those agencies and the public to interfere.

This all may, like before, come down to nothing. But when four well know Israeli journalists from different political quarters warn the Israeli public of the same issue something is happening beyond the usual rumor mill stuff.

Time to eat some craw. It seems that I have been wrong with this analysis:

That lets me believe that Turkey has now accepted that a conflict with Syria (and Iran) is not in its interest.

Instead Turkey is escalated the conflict with Syria:

Once one of Syria’s closest allies, Turkey is hosting an armed opposition group waging an insurgency against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, providing shelter to the commander and dozens of members of the group, the Free Syrian Army, and allowing them to orchestrate attacks across the border from inside a camp guarded by the Turkish military.
…
On Wednesday, the group, living in a heavily guarded refugee camp in Turkey, claimed responsibility for killing nine Syrian soldiers, including one uniformed officer, in an attack in restive central Syria.
…
The interview was held in the office of a local government official, and Colonel As’aad arrived protected by a contingent of 10 heavily armed Turkish soldiers, including one sniper.

To allow such a terrorist group to have official shelter and protection in Turkey is near to an outright declaration of war. on Syria

Syria (and Iran) can not allow such outside terrorist group to fester. If Bashir Assad wants to keep the backing of his army, he has to respond to the killing of its officers and soldiers and the response has to be towards Turkey.

The Turkish foreign minister Davutoğlu, who once was so proud of his zero problems with neighbors policy, now sounds quite different:

“We clearly see Assad is no more capable of orchestrating the process [of democratization],” Davutoğlu was quoted as saying by the Bugün daily on Wednesday, as he repeated his take on the Syrian issue as a struggle already lost by Assad, who “refused to lend an ear to what Turkey had to say and walked away from his promises every time.”

He is wrong in that analysis. Over the last days very large pro-Assad rallies took place in Damaskus, Aleppo and Lattakia. Assad is far from falling. Even the NYT has to admit that:

[W]ith mass pro-government rallies and a crackdown that has, for now, stanched the momentum of antigovernment demonstrations, the Syrian government appears in a stronger position than it did this summer.

Syria and Iran can still play the Kurdish card and unleash the PKK. Davutoğlu does not believe this will  happen:

Davutoğlu ruled out fears that Syria may go back to its policy of mobilizing PKK forces to terrorize Turkey in the face of the fallen alliance between the two countries, telling the Yeni Şafak daily that “Syria should not even think about doing that, based on previous experience.” “Everyone knows where that road leads.”

Davutoğlu is again flawed. Deterance does not work if the opposite side has no good alternative. If the only alternative for Assad and his followers is to go down, or to take “that road”, I believe “that road” will be taken.

As Turkey is now openly supporting terrorism against Syria, it can not expect the other side to refrain from such measures.

State violence against the #Occupy movements seem to increase. In certain ways that's a good sign. It helps the movement to grow. It helps to unmask and show the real face of the 1% state. Authoritarianism looks the same all over the world.

The rules must continue to be to not demand anything and to not put forward any leader.

Just occupy. It worked in Tahrir square and can work everywhere else.

The right moment for everything else will come over time.

The Libyan regime is requesting further NATO help. (One wonders who gave it the idea.) But is not clear what the purpose of further NATO support should be.

According to AlJazeera the purpose is to keep Gaddhafi supporters from fleeing to neighbor countries:

NATO should stay involved in Libya until the end of this year to help prevent loyalists of Muammar Gaddafi from leaving the country, Mustafa Abdel Jalil, the interim leader, has said.
…
"We look forward to NATO continuing its operations until the end of the year," Jalil said at a conference in Doha, the Qatari capital, on Wednesday.

Stating that stopping the flight of Gaddafi supporters to other countries was a priority, he said: "We seek technical and logistics help from neighbouring and friendly countries."

According to the New York Times the purpose is to keep Gaddhafi supporters from invading from neighbor countries:

“We have asked NATO to stay until the end of the year, and it certainly has the international legitimacy to remain in Libya to protect the civilians from Qaddafi loyalists,” the interim leader, Mustafa Abdel-Jalil, chairman of the Transitional National Council, said in an interview with the pan-Arab news channel Al Jazeera.

“Qaddafi still has supporters in neighboring countries, and we fear those loyalists could be launching attacks against us and infiltrating our borders,” he said. “We need technical support and training for our troops on the ground. We also need communications equipment, and we need aerial intelligence to monitor our borders.”

To keep them in or to keep them out? Which is it?

Libya's desert borders are too long to be controllable by any force. People will always be able to come in or leave the country without anyone noticing. Even if one could control the borders how is one supposed to differentiate between a coming or leaving Gaddhafi supporter versus the coming or leaving anti-Gaddhafi Libyan?

The situation on the ground is, as Tony Karon points out, comparable to Afghanistan in 2002 or maybe even 1992. There is no central power accepted by all parts of the country and the new government has no real power over the various militia.

To put NATO boots on Libyan ground would be the repeat of the NATO adventure in Afghanistan with, ten years later, a likely comparable outcome.

Boeing profit lifted by commercial, defense sales says Reuters. But that isn't true. Boeing was only profitable by using an accounting trick that may risk its long term survival.

Boeing's new 787 airliner has sold well as discount pricing was introduced even before the first machine was flying. But it turned out that the jet had construction problems and was first late, then later and then even later.  The first few dozens of those machines, three years after they were supposed to be flying, are still sitting on the tarmac in Seattle and will have to be reworked.

It is normal to make losses on the first few hundred machines of a new commercial jet model. The development costs and new tools have to be accounted for and their cost usually gets spread out over the first few hundred sales of a new model. These sales thereby to not produce a large profit. But every additional machine hopefully sold after that will not have to carry the burden of being accounted against the then paid off development and tool costs. It will thereby likely be very profitable and it will provide cash for the development of future products.

The usual production quantity used for such amortization calculation of commercial airplanes is 300-400. As the Aviation Week Flightblogger points out that 300-400 number was what the 1998 Boeing Annual Report argued and was, so far, used in every Boeing program even when the total sales number was reasonably expected to be much higher.

But for the 787 and this years "profit" Boeing used a much different number. From the Reuters report:

Boeing said on Wednesday it would calculate the profitability of the program based on 1,100 planes.

Boeing has some 800 orders for the 787 plane on its books though some of those may get canceled. The production rate is supposed to be 10 machines per month but only starting in 2013, and likely later, onwards. The new calculation then spreads out the amortization costs over more that the next ten years.

What will happen when by then a competitor – Airbus, the Chinese, Russians, Brazil or Japan – come up with a competitive product? What will happen if a new global economy slump leads to more cancellations of orders? What happens if the plane turns out to burn more fuel than expected or, being the first model with major carbon-fiber structures, turns out to have less longevity than expected?

Usual accounting would limit those future balance sheet risks by putting all the development and tool costs onto the first batches of the model. Stretching those costs over a much larger number of planes, as Boeing does now, creates short term book profits but puts serious risks to the future survival of the company.

Using the established calculation Boeing would have had to report a big loss for this quarter and this and probably the next year. By changing the amortization base that loss was turned into a book profit.

The CEO and the top management of the company get their bonuses paid for the short range balance sheet results. Putting the amortization costs of the product development onto a larger, probably unrealistic, number of sales will increase their short term personal income. But it does risk the companies long term survival.

Creative destruction, in the neoliberal sense, at its best.

A rather weird piece in the NYT reports on earlier discussions in the White House about what to do with Gaddhafi:

Last Wednesday evening, the White House convened a 90-minute meeting to tackle a looming, delicate question: What should be done with the Libyan dictator, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, if he were captured alive, either in Libya or in a neighboring country?

Less than 24 hours later, the debate was moot. Colonel Qaddafi was dead, after being pulled alive from a drain pipe and succumbing later to gunshot wounds.

"Succumbing to gunshot wounds" is a quite evading expression for a direct pistol shot into the head and another into the heart of Gaddhafi after he was captured alive, only lightly wounded, and after he was sodomized.

There is also an issue with the timeline here. The NYT piece puts the discussion about what to do with Gaddhafi to Wednesday the 19th. But the White House decision was already announced on Tuesday the 18th by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in Tripoli:

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton encouraged the country's unsteady new leadership to commit to a democratic future free of retribution, and acknowledged in unusually blunt terms that the United States would like to see former dictator Moammar Gadhafi dead.

"We hope he can be captured or killed soon so that you don't have to fear him any longer," Clinton told students and others at a town hall-style gathering in the capital city.

Indeed the NYT piece seems to be an after-the-fact whitewash, based on the typical anonymous senior officials, of what really happened.

From the very beginning this was about regime change and the earlier attacks on Gaddhafi compounds by NATO bombers were clear attempts to kill him. Not one of the three stooges, Cameron, Sarkozy and Obama, wanted Gaddhafi to stand in court and tell about all the cooperation and money he provided to them. There never was a serious discussion about "what to do with Gaddhafi." They wanted him dead all along.

Meanwhile, as anticipated, the situation in Libya is getting worse. The revolutionaries are now doing away with their pro-western attitude, the "western" face Mahmoud Jibril resigned, and start to show their real face:

Cont. reading: NYT Whitewash Of Gaddhafi Killing And Other Libya Issues

Three puzzle pieces about operations against Mexican drug cartels let me assume that U.S. Special Forces are involved in recent mass killings of alleged Zeta Cartel members in Mexico.

From a piece which ran on October 20 in the LA Times: Mystery group targets Veracruz drug cartel

VERACRUZ, Mexico — Callers to the radio program were voicing support for the Matazetas, the Zeta killers.

Better they fight among themselves. Let them kill each other. Anything to rid us of thugs who long ago took control of our city and are slaughtering our people.
…
Yet, it also comes with a disturbing question: Just who is behind the killings of Zetas? Another drug gang? Agents acting on behalf of the government or military? An ad hoc group whose presence is tolerated by authorities as well as the public?
…
On Sept. 20, nearly three dozen half-naked bodies were dumped in broad daylight on a busy highway underpass in a well-to-do tourist area of Veracruz, the state capital. Fourteen more turned up days later — during a convention of the nation's top state and federal prosecutors. Then, on Oct. 6, barely 48 hours after announcing a major security offensive, military and police found 36 bodies, and 10 more turned up the next day.

In videotaped presentations, a group of masked men with military bearing have claimed responsibility for the spate of killings, portraying it as a cleansing operation. Many bodies had a "Z" for Zeta written on the back with ink marker, a witness said.

The mystery group announced it was in Veracruz as "the armed branch of the people, and for the people."

My first though after reading the above was "That's JSOC".

The U.S. Joint Special Operation Command and its Special Mission Units does dirty work against terrorists, often in cooperation with the CIA. It sometimes uses local forces which it trains, supplies with information and leads into combat. It is also quite good at Information Operations, i.e. issuing propaganda in support of its operations. Those callers to the radio program supporting these mass killings may be something other than random radio listening Mexican civilians.

Are such U.S. units involved in extralegal killing of assumed drug gangsters in Mexico?

The Zeta Cartel was founded by 30 former Mexican Army Special Forces. Anyone who wants to fight them needs some superb military capabilities. The success of the Matazetas, the Zeta killers, points to high qualified military trained personal with additionally very good access to information about the gangs.

Today's NYT adds to the picture on the intelligence side:

As the United States has opened new law enforcement and intelligence outposts across Mexico in recent years, Washington’s networks of informants have grown there as well, current and former officials said. They have helped Mexican authorities capture or kill about two dozen high-ranking and midlevel drug traffickers, and sometimes have given American counternarcotics agents access to the top leaders of the cartels they are trying to dismantle.

Typically, the officials said, Mexico is kept in the dark about the United States’ contacts with its most secret informants — including Mexican law enforcement officers, elected officials and cartel operatives — partly because of concerns about corruption among the Mexican police, and partly because of laws prohibiting American security forces from operating on Mexican soil.
…
[T]he United States, hoping to shore up Mexico’s stability and prevent its violence from spilling across the border, has expanded its role in ways unthinkable five years ago, including flying drones in Mexican skies.

U.S. drones over Mexico do not only allow for visual surveillance, which is often useless, but also for the more effective SIGINT, signal intelligence, side of the drone capability. IMSI catcher on board of the drones allow the operators to know the location of each mobile phone in the surveillance area and to listen to what is said through them. If one has the number of a mobile phone of a suspect the drone can find out where the person who carries it is and which other phone carriers that person is meeting. This method of finding assumed suspects and their networks has been used in Iraq and is widely used by JSOC in Afghanistan, often with deadly consequences for innocent civilians.

A third piece for the puzzle comes from a blog post Col. Pat Lang wrote in December 2009: JSOC and the Mexican drug lords

I suggest that [JSOC] should be unleashed on the Mexican drug cartels. Kill or capture. Kill or capture. Those should be the instructions. The legal niceties could be "cleaned up" through arrest or execution warrants. On the other hand, maybe that is not necessary if recent history is a guide.

As one can tell from the dates of the comments to the piece, Pat Lang reissued that post three days ago on the front page of his blog. It is now back in the archives. But why did he republish it?

In recent days there were reports about mysterious mass killing of Zetas by high qualified military personal, acknowledgment of high-tech U.S. intelligence operations against the drug cartels in Mexico and a former Defense Intelligence Agency head relaunched a two year old blog post that demanded JSOC "kill or capture" operations against drug cartels.

Looks like a duck, walks like a duck, …

Unlike the Taliban the Zetas do have the capability to hit inside the United States. If JSOC is really operating those death squadrons in Mexico we can soon expect some violent retributions on the northern side of the border.

The Clinton says:

"No one should miscalculate America's resolve and commitment to helping support the Iraqi democracy. We have paid too high a price to give the Iraqis this chance. And I hope that Iran and no one else miscalculates that."

It is not astonishing that Clinton falls for sunk cost fallacy, she is a lawyer after all, but can't she even understand the basics of the situation in Iraq?

A democratic Iraq is good for Iran.

Iraq's democratically elected government just kicked out the U.S. military from its launching position for an attack on Iran. Iran has no interest to change that. Any elected government in Iraq, voted in by the Shia majority, will likely take the same stance. A democratic Iraq is better for Iran than for the U.S.

That's what the U.S. is supporting? I do not believe that for even a minute. I am sure it would rather have Saddam Hussein back.

A week ago AP reported that all U.S. military will leave Iraq by the end of the year. The retreat was first denied by Pentagon sources, but then officially announced by Obama two days ago. Still, according to those reports, 10,000 diplomats and 5,000 contracted security personal were supposed to stay in Iraq. That seemed unlikely to me and I wrote:

[The] embassy is a fixed target which can easily be harassed with by rocket and mortar fire. Its logistic lines of communication are also open to permanent challenges. The mercenaries guarding it will have severely restricted rules of engagement and will not be able to prevent attacks.
..
Additonally there is pressure from Congress to reduce the State Department's budget.

This all will soon lead a reduction of the now planned immense U.S. diplomatic presence in Iraq. A year from now that presence may very well come down to more normal levels of just a few hundred people.

Today a New York Times report confirms my analysis:

Beyond the final withdrawal of troops that President Obama announced Friday, America’s fiscal troubles are dictating a drastic scaling back of plans for diplomatic, economic and cultural programs once deemed vital to steadying Iraq, building a long-term alliance and prying the country from Iran’s tightening embrace.
…
[T]he expansion of a diplomatic presence will be much smaller than imagined, a victim not only of budgetary constraints but also of a growing awareness that the decision to withdraw American soldiers makes it much harder for diplomats to safely do their work. The State Department’s more extensive plans were drawn up at a time when military officials were pushing to keep up to 20,000 soldiers in Iraq next year.

There will be no U.S. consulates in Mosul, Kirkuk and Dilaya province and allover the plans will be harshly reduced. The piece gives no new numbers for the currently assumed diplomat and contractor presence but one can guess that the plans are now down to a total of some 5-10,000. This will come down further and in the end there will be nothing left but a normal embassy and an oversized static security ring manned by contractors around it.

That will still be an attractive target and al Sadr calls to take it on:

In response to a query of one of his followers […], Muqtada said “they are all occupiers and resisting them after the end of the agreement is an obligation.”

There is always some political screaming in the U.S. about foreign aid which is why the Republican candidates want to slash it.

A lot of this is because people do not know how much foreign aid the U.S. is giving. A poll found that people believe that 25% of the government budget goes to foreign aid. In reality it is about 1%.

One reason for this impression may well be that U.S. politicians like to make large pledges of foreign aid even though they do not have the intent of holding such pledges. This leads to tables like this one (pdf) from an analysis of aid pledged and given to Afghanistan since 2002 by Global Humanitarian Assistance.

Less than 30% of the U.S. money pledged to Afghanistan was actually disbursed.

bigger

The money publicly pledged will often not be committed and the money committed might or might not be disbursed. Additionally the disbursement does not say anything about who gets the money and it is more often then not that some civil contractor in Washington DC will get more of the disbursed money than the people it is supposed to reach. And of course none of those numbers says anything about the achieved or not-achieved results.

The diverging numbers on aid to Afghanistan are not much different than pledges to other countries. Of $4.1 billion USAID commitment to Pakistan between 2005 and 2010 only $1.9 billion was disbursed. Numbers on Haiti tell a similar story.

The misperception the people have about foreign aid may well be because the politicians like to use the deceptive numbers. Big pledges make for positive the headlines, real spending does not.

With Gaddhafi gone the Lidless Eye of NATO turns to its next target, Syria, for a repeat of the successful model that was applied in Libya. But the plan for Syria has a flaw in that it depends on Turkey. But attacks by Kurds can press Turkey to abandon the plan.

Alastair Crooke explains the plans that have been made to engineer the downfall of Assad and Syria's fall into post-revolutionary hell. The main actors behind this plot:

In operational terms, Feltman and his team coordinate, Qatar hosts the "war room", the "news room" and holds the purse strings, Paris and Doha lead on pushing the Transitional Council model, whilst Bandar and Turkey jointly manage the Sunni theater in-country, both armed and unarmed.

For details please read Crooke's piece. It is quite good and makes sense.

There are two weak points in these plans. Crooke only points out that control of the Salafi's, as is shows in Libya, is difficult and there are others then Prince Bandar in the house of Saud, that may have very different ideas on how to use them.

Another weak point in the plan is the role of Turkey and the role of the Kurds. Turkey's prime minister Erdogan supported some Syrian opposition folks to set up their National Transitional Council in Turkey. But the Syrian Kurds were not amused when they were not included.

The killing of the Kurdish activist Mashaal Tammo in Syria was not followed, as the plans provided, by the Kurdish main parties joining the insurgency against Assad. They smelled the rat and did not blame him for that death.

Then Erdogan was suddenly confronted with a big attack by 100 fighters of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) on his military at the Iraqi border. He responded with a division size invasion of North Iraq.

I do not believe that the two issues, Turkey plotting against Syria and the Kurdish attacks in south-eastern Turkey are unrelated. As I wrote back in August:

Some people hope for the Turks to get involved in Syria. Forget about it. Syria, Iraq and Iran have, like Turkey, partly Kurdish population. If they want to pressure Turkey to stay away from an intervention in Syria they only need to unleash some of the Kurdish rebels into east Turkey.

The countries with Kurdish populations, Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria, have always used the various Kurdish groups to challenge their respective neighbors when they found it necessary or convenient to do so.

After recently damaging the relations with Iran by accepting a NATO anti-missile radar on Turkish ground and by plotting against Syria, Erdogan now had to again sue for piece:

Turkey is seeking Iran's support for its fight against Kurdish rebels, as thousands of troops press ahead with an air and ground offensive against militants in northern Iraq for a third day.

Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu met Iranian Foreign Minister Ali Akbar Salehi in Ankara on Friday to discuss closer cooperation against the separatist rebels, who have also attacked Iran in the past.

The Iranians will, of course, support Turkey against the Kurds. Provided, as they will have quietly requested, that Turkey leaves its hands off their Syrian ally. That Turkey has now given in to Iranian demands  is visible in its public rejection of the U.S. allegations of an Iranian plot against the Saudi ambassador in Washington. This even after having been shown evidence by U.S. emissaries.

That lets me believe that Turkey has now accepted that a conflict with Syria (and Iran) is not in its interest.

Turkey leaving the revolutionary club takes a big and necessary piece out of the plan: A safe base like Benghazi inside Turkey from where the revolutionaries could jump off their attack on Syria under NATO air cover. One wonders how the plotters will adapt their plans to that.

First the news was that Gaddhafi had been captured alive in Sirte with two wounds in his legs.

Then the news was that he has been killed and a picture of what may be a dead Gaddhafi.

I guess it would have been too embarrassing for those revolution leaders and former Gaddhafi functionaries and for those "western" politicians (I am looking at you Sarkozy) who earlier embraced him to have him testify in court.

This will not be the end of the fighting in Libya. With Gaddhafi dead the various groups which made up this revolution will now fully turn to fighting each other over their share of the loot. Without a strong common leadership and without a common ideology the different interests of the people from Benghazi, Misurata, Tripoli and the south will be unable to agree on a new government structure. Additionally guerrilla and sabotage activities by Gaddhafi followers are likely to continue. This revolution then, like others, will eat its children.

I am sad for the people of Libya.

The doubts about the alleged plot by the Iranian Quds force to assassinate a Saudi ambassador keeps growing.

Iran now says that the number two person accused in the plot is an MEK agent.

Interpol has found new evidence showing that the number two suspect in connection with the alleged Iranian government’s involvement in a plot to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington is a key member of the terrorist Mojahedin Khalq Organization (MKO), the Mehr News Agency has learnt.

Gholam Shakuri was last seen in Washington and Camp Ashraf in Iraq where MKO members are based.

The person in question has been travelling to different countries under the names of Ali Shakuri/Gholam Shakuri/Gholam-Hossein Shakuri by using fake passports including forged Iranian passports. One passport used by the person was issued on 30/11/2006 in Washington. The passport number was K10295631.

Interpol declined to comment on this which makes me wonder a bit. If this would be wrong why would Interpol not reject it?

Via Richard Silverstein we learn that there is some confirmation for Shakuri's ties to the MEK:

[I]n fact, a former high-ranking MEK leader, Massoud Khodabandeh (he has allowed me to use his name), writing in the Gulf2000 listserv, confirmed that Shakuri is in fact an MEK member.

(The Gulf2000 listserv is run by Iran scholar Gary Sicks and includes many Middle East scholars.)

The evidence is piling up that the whole plot was an intelligence operation against, not by, Iran.

This again makes me wonder why the administration is still sticking to its fairytale of an Iranian plot. Officially that tale is supposed to help convince other countries to agree on further sanctions, but it now has so many holes that I seriously doubt that it can be achieved.

Still the administration is pumping the scheme of a bumbling but at the same time seemingly almighty and "increasingly aggressive" Qods force:

"They're being more aggressive … not only in Iraq but worldwide," one senior U.S. official said in an interview.
…
U.S. officials who spoke to Reuters declined to provide details of the evidence that the Quds Force may have other plots in the works. But two officials stressed they were based on more than just speculation or analysis.

"These are not merely aspirational plots dreamed up by the Quds Force. In fact, there is active planning around them," a second senior U.S. official told Reuters. Both senior officials played down concerns any attack was imminent.

A third U.S. official said the recklessness of the alleged attempt to assassinate Saudi Ambassador Adel al-Jubeir in Washington suggested that Quds "may be involved in other actions."

Who do those anonymous "officials" want to convince with such a talk? No evidence, no explanation of motives and then the "analysis" that the alleged and likely false plot may be proof that further plots are in the making.

This is so obviously lowest level propaganda that even a Fox news viewer will be unlikely to fall for it. So, again, why is the Obama administration keeping this up?

At the age of 78  old time Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus is in a position where he can write without fear of career consequences.

This is a good use of such liberty:

As the country reviews its spending on defense and foreign assistance, it is time to examine the funding the United States provides to Israel.

Let me put it another way: Nine days ago, the Israeli cabinet reacted to months of demonstrations against the high cost of living there and agreed to raise taxes on corporations and people with high incomes ($130,000 a year). It also approved cutting more than $850 million, or about 5 percent, from its roughly $16 billion defense budget in each of the next two years.

If Israel can reduce its defense spending because of its domestic economic problems, shouldn’t the United States — which must cut military costs because of its major budget deficit — consider reducing its aid to Israel?

Any other Washington insider asking this question (and indirectly, as Pincus does, answering it with yes) would get destroyed by The Lobby. The only thing they can do to Pincus is to call him a self-hating Jew.

They will start doing so tomorrow, if not today.

Your news & views …

The U.S. has pressed the Pakistani army to attack the Pakistani tribal area of North Waziristan. The Pakistanis have made clear that they do not want to do so. Now the U.S. seems to go for it alone. But is it the right target?

The Pakistani resistance against attacking its own people and to further incite domestic terrorism in their own country has led Obama adviser Bruce Riedel to calls for A New Pakistan Policy: Containment. The U.S. believes that the Haqqani network, which it says is responsible for the recent attack on its embassy in Kabul, is residing in North Waziristan. Right wing authors have for some time called for invading it.

But are the Haqqanis really in North Waziristan?

During the war against the Soviets the tribal Pakistani area most often used for attacks towards Kabul was the Kurram agency where the border points to Kabul like a beak. It provides the shortest route to Kabul. 

For some time the Taliban were fighting with the significant local Shia population there and could not use the province as their jump-off base into Afghanistan. But recently it emerged that peace deals have been signed between those groups and the way through Kurram into Afghanistan is again open.

Bahukutumbi Raman, former head of the counterterrorism division of India's secret service RAW, believes that the Haqqani network has moved there:

My assessment is that the Haqqani network no longer operates from North Waziristan. It now operates from Pakistan’s Kurram Agency. The cadres and the training camps are in Kurram, but the leaders, who are high-value targets for U.S. drone attacks, are spread out across the country to avoid airborne attacks. The cadres carry out hit-and-withdraw raids into Afghanistan.

But the U.S. insists on doing North Waziristan and, as the Pakistanis ain't doing, it now seems to want to do it on its own:

The United States shifted hundreds of its troops to the Afghan area bordering North Waziristan on Sunday along with heavy arms and gunship helicopters and sealed the Pak-Afghan border for all types of movement.
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Pakistani security officials and tribal sources in Ghulam Khan area said US forces had arrived there during the night between Saturday and Sunday and occupied nearby hilltops and established observation posts. Sources said US forces had set up a huge military base across the border and shifted gunship helicopters, heavy tanks, long-range artillery guns and other heavy weapons to the border area. The villagers in Ghulam Khan said Nato warplanes were also seen flying over the border region several times during the day.

It is not yet clear if the U.S. is a just putting up a blocking position or if this the build-up for a large raid across the border. Just putting troops there is, like violating Pakistani airspace in Baluchistan, a threat on its own. The troops will draw fire and with that long range artillery the response might well land in Pakistan.

There it could expect resistance:

Tribesmen in North Waziristan were concerned about the arrival of US forces at their doors, but vowed to render every sacrifice for the defence of their homeland in case foreign troops crossed over into Pakistan.

However, they said they did not expect US forces to cross the border to enter Pakistani territory. “It will be a blunder on their part if the Americans enter North Waziristan,” said a noted tribal chieftain, Malik Mamoor Khan, in Miramshah. Another tribal elder, Malik Nasrullah Khan, said Waziristan was the land of brave and peace-loving tribespeople and they would never allow any outside power to invade it.

Whatever may happen with the new U.S. build up, blocking all border movement, artillery duels or an invasion into North Waziristan, it may all be in vain. If B. Raman is right the Haqqanis are not there anymore and will not care.

All attempts to press Iraq into keeping U.S. troops in Iraq failed. The U.S. is giving up:

The U.S. is abandoning plans to keep U.S. troops in Iraq past a year-end withdrawal deadline, The Associated Press has learned.
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A Pentagon spokesman said Saturday that no final decision has been reached about the U.S. training relationship with the Iraqi government.

But a senior Obama administration official in Washington confirmed Saturday that all American troops will leave Iraq except for about 160 active-duty soldiers attached to the U.S. Embassy.

A senior U.S. military official confirmed the departure and said the withdrawal could allow future but limited U.S. military training missions in Iraq if requested.

The U.S. still plans to keep a division sized embassy with a brigade of contractor guards.

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad is the largest in the world, and the State Department will have offices in Basra, Irbil and Kirkuk as well as other locations around the country where contractors will train Iraqi forces on U.S. military equipment they're purchasing.

About 5,000 security contractors and personnel will be tasked with helping protect American diplomats and facilities around the country, the State Department has said.

But that embassy is a fixed target which can easily be harassed with by rocket and mortar fire. Its logistic lines of communication are also open to permanent challenges. The mercenaries guarding it will have severely restricted rules of engagement and will not be able to prevent attacks.

Aside from those problems I find it dubious to believe that Iraqi politicians and government functionaries are willing to talk to all those diplomats. Why should they?

In the end most of the diplomats will sit in their offices with nothing to do but to be ready to jump up and head to the bunkers when the next rocket alarm goes off. Additonally there is pressure from Congress to reduce the State Department's budget.

This all will soon lead a reduction of the now planned immense U.S. diplomatic presence in Iraq. A year from now that presence may very well come down to more normal levels of just a few hundred people.

Isn`t there anyone remembering the impossibleness of successful jungle warfare against local guerrilla?

In a letter to Congress announcing the deployment, President Barack Obama said that up to 100 U.S. special-operations trainers and military advisers would assist African forces in their search for Joseph Kony, the fugitive head of the Lord's Resistance Army.
U.S. to Pursue African Rebels

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May 1961 – President Kennedy sends 400 American Green Beret 'Special Advisors' to South Vietnam to train South Vietnamese soldiers in methods of 'counter-insurgency' in the fight against Viet Cong guerrillas.
America Commits 1961 – 1964

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Update (2:15pm):

The media make this a Lord's Resistance Army/Joseph Kony "bad guy" – Ugandan government "good folks" show which is, unsurprisingly, a very skewed view of a long ranging ethnic and civil war. Short version: After Idi Amin was finally out the first governments, somewhat elected, were mostly ethnic Luo from the Achoi and Langi people in north Uganda. The ethnic Bantu from south Uganda had some problems with that and in 1986 the today still reigning dictator Museveni overthrew the government. Since then the Lord's Resistance Army acted as a northern resistance against the government. It has support from the northern population which resulted in the government's tactic to put most Achoi into concentration camps know for very high death rates.

The above is very simplified and others will certainly know much more about the detailed background than I do. But the point is that "good" and "bad" is a concept that doesn't work well in usually very complex ethnic conflicts as the one in Uganda. A solution there as for many other conflicts in Africa may be a realignment of the arbitrary borders the colonial overlords established along major ethnic (and language) lines.

As for human rights and the alleged brutality of the Lord's Resistance Army, well, Human Rights Watch says the Ugandan army is just as bad.