A while ago a headline in Great Britain read: Unashamed 'country boy' David Cameron makes passionate defence of Fox hunting

So people went hunting and here is the result:

BBC: "BREAKING NEWS: UK Defence Secretary Liam Fox has resigned, his office confirms"

Fox held his young friend, best man and rumored gay partner, Adam Werritty as an unofficial adviser while Werritty was on the payroll of some Israel lobby folks, U.S. defense industry companies and a hedge fund that held defense investments.

There were additional issues with Fox acting against the established rules of his former ministry plus the non-disclosure of other lobby contacts (including rumored Israeli intelligence contacts).

Fox was, through is non-profit Atlantic Bridge, one of the main contact persons between the British conservatives and the U.S. neo-conservatives. His resignation could lead to a U.K.policy that is less U.S. centric. He was a Thatcher man and more to the right than his rival Cameron who will now likely feel some relief over this resignation. But with Cameron's own problems over his connections to Murdoch's News Corp he could well be the next fox to be hunted down.

The International Security Assistance Force (ISAF/NATO) in Afghanistan is in a media war with civil organizations about its success in Afghanistan. One organization, the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office, may have become a casualty in this fight.

In the most recent ISAF spat it responds to a study Alex Strick van Linschoten and Felix Kuehn did for the Afghan Analyst Network. They took a detailed look into ISAF press releases about night raids. Their study was the base for a recent Guardian feature which includes some interactive maps:

The study shows that for every "leader" killed in the raids, eight other people also died, although the raids were designed to be a precise weapon aimed at decapitating the Taliban on the battlefield by removing their commanders.

The report notes that in briefings to the US media, aggregate claims made for the number of Taliban leaders killed or detained over a given period were sometimes much greater than the numbers recorded in the daily press releases.

ISAF shot back against the study essentially saying "Please don't believe what we are putting out in our daily press releases. Our real data looks much better. Trust US!"

Even Anthony Cordesman, the grey eminence at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says ISAF media briefings are "taking on the character of the daily press follies in Vietnam."

But aside from ISAF there are unfortunately few sources for real data of what is happening on the ground in Afghanistan.

Two weeks ago the United Nations reported a 39% increase of violent incidents in Afghanistan compared to 2010. ISAF, which claims that incidents were down, immediately disputed those numbers:

"Following an initial evaluation, ISAF found (the U.N. report) inconsistent with the data that we have collected," ISAF said in a statement.

Another reliable source about incidents in Afghanistan was, until recently, the Afghanistan NGO Safety Office (ANSO). The organization was founded to provide other NGOs with daily information about local security issues in the country.

Since 2008 ANSO also provided detailed bi-weekly and quarterly reports about security incidents in all Afghan provinces. Supported by EU Humanitarian Aid, the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation and the Norwegian Foreign Office it had western and Afghan staff on the ground in five regional and a central office. Its reports were published on its website and through the United Nations' Reliefweb and the Canadian Conflict Monitors.

ANSO reports provided the facts for many critical media reports about the situation in Afghanistan. The last big media echo for ANSO was in late May when its director coined the phrase "perpetually escalating stalemate" for the situation in Afghanistan:

Cont. reading: What Happened To The Afghanistan NGO Safety Office?

The failed used car salesman Mansour J. Arbabsiar, who is accused in the “Iran kills Saudi ambassador” movie plot, is a hapless idiot and petty criminal whose businesses deals always went wrong. He couldn’t even match his socks, smoked marihuana and drank a lot of alcohol, was nonreligious, an opponent of the Iranian regime and only cared about money. A business man who knows him calls him “worthless” and his neighbors believed he was dealing in drugs.

But Arbabsiar had some money through inherited land holdings in Iran. Those holdings may well be the source of the $100,000 wired from Iran to the Drug Enforcement Administration informant. Israel’s Mossad, the MEK cult or some drug dealers in Iran are other possible sources for the money.

The Obama administration insists that it has proof of Iranian government involvement in the assassination plot. Some anonymous officials though are already walking back that claim. It seems that they have no proof at all, just a hunch.

Every Iran expert interviewed thinks the story as presented is nonsense: Alireza Nader from Rand Corp, Kenneth Katzman of the Congressional Research Service, former CIA agent Robert Baer, Carter era NSC official Gary Sicks, Bush 2 NSC official Hillary Mann Leverett (also here), Muhammad Sahimi of PBS/Tehran Bureau and Iran scholar Hamid Serri.

To me the indictment reads as if a nutty Mansour J. Arbabsiar attempted a drug deal which was then turned into an terrorism entrapment by and through the paid criminal Drug Enforcement Administration informant.

The Obama administration seems to use this case for three purposes:

• Diversion from the subpoena to AG Holder in the Fast and Furious gun running case which was served yesterday, from the #OccupyWallStreet movement and the general economic malaise
• To get some momentum for additional international sanctions on Iran
• To prop up the connections with the Saudi regime as that had threatened to distance itself from the U.S. over the U.S. veto of a Palestinian state

The administration’s case for the “plot” is now falling apart. Yesterday’s hype in the media has by now been replaced with doubts and mistrust. Given the obvious weakness of the case this was predictable.

But why then did the Obama administration use this case at all? Why come up with such a weak case that was sure to make it a laughing stock?

Israel has finally agreed to let 1,000 Palestinians out of jail in a deal to get the captured IDF soldier Shalit released by Hamas.

The deal has been negotiated over for years and offers looking quite similar to the current deal were rejected by the Netanyahoo government several times.

I wonder why Netanyahoo agreed to this deal right at this point in time. Why not earlier? Why not later? Why does he think that this is the right moment?

Any ideas?

The Obama administration is offering us this Hollywood movie script. I do not believe a word of it. It makes no sense at all. Iranian officials agreeing on such a flimsy plot? Never. This is just another entrapment fantasy by the ignore-the-constitution organization of AG Holder.

The United States on Tuesday accused Iranian officials of plotting to murder Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States in a bizarre scheme involving an Iranian-American used-car salesman who believed he was hiring assassins from a Mexican drug cartel for $1.5 million.

The alleged plot also included plans to pay the cartel, Los Zetas, to bomb the Israeli Embassy in Washington and the Saudi and Israeli Embassies in Argentina, according to a law enforcement official.

The plotters also discussed a side deal between the Quds Force, part of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, and Los Zetas to funnel tons of opium from the Middle East to Mexico, the official said. The plans never progressed, though, because the two suspects — the Iranian-American and an Iranian Quds Force officer — unwittingly were dealing with an informant for the Drug Enforcement Administration, officials said.

Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., who announced the murder plot at a news conference in Washington, said it was “directed and approved by elements of the Iranian government and, specifically, senior members of the Quds Force.” He added that “high-up officials in those agencies, which is an integral part of the Iranian government, were responsible for this plot.”

Emptywheel looks at the the details the criminal complaint and also thinks this is utter bull****.

Soma reasons why this doesn't add up:

• The current political situation isn't bad for Iran. Why mess this up?
• The Los Zetas cartell is a business that hates to be disturbed by U.S. law enforcement. Why agree to such a deal which would make it a target for just $1.5 million when the real business makes billions. Iran knowns this and would not work with such a group.
• Iranian secret service using a phone call to the U.S. to talk about an assassination plot?
• Iranian secret service wiring money from a known Quds Force account to the U.S.?
• Why smuggle raw opium when you can easily make and smuggle the higher value product heroin?

I judge this to be an attempt to divert from #OccupyWallStreet and the general economic situation.

This does not mean that it is irrelevant. Some Congress folks and the Zionist lobby will certainly use this and try to incite war against Iran.

This is embarrassing for anyone who, like me, would like to see a real European Union.

Tymoshenko Sentenced to Jail Despite EU Warnings

Prior to the verdict in the trial against former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko, the European Union made it clear that there would be consequences should she be found guilty and jailed.

But in a ruling announced on Tuesday morning, Judge Rodion Kireyev said that Tymoshenko abused her position as head of government and "used her powers for criminal ends." The verdict? Guilty. She was sentenced to seven years in prison, just as state prosecutors had requested.

Isn't intervening in a a running legal case before the court has found a judgement against the rule of law?

In mid-September, German Chancellor Angela Merkel brought up the Tymoshenko case with Yanukovych and told him that EU assistance depended on Ukraine's commitment to democracy. And a group of European politicians likewise expressed their concern during a September meeting in Yalta. "I hope we brought to (Yanukovych) very clearly the message that the rule of law is of critical importance," Swedish Foreign Minister Carl Bildt said following the meeting.

Indeed, many observers felt that an adjournment of the trial late last month was called in order to give Yanukovych more time to consider the possible repercussions of a guilty verdict. The president, for his part, has insisted he has no influence over the court.

Which is of course as it should be. The "rule of law" calls for independent courts and the EU attempts to press the president of the Ukraine to interfere in the court procedures only shows that the EU has no interest in following those rules.

Tymoshenko made billions through gas deals. Does anyone believe that money was made in a just and legal way?

Yesterday the Saudi-U.S. counter-revolution in Egypt showed its ugly face. Protest by Coptic Egyptians over attacks on Coptic churches by Salafists were used by the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces to stoke more sectarian strife. Copts and other Christian groups are about 10% of the Egyptian population.

Private media were shut down and the state media went into full propaganda mode against the Copts. TV anchors called to “protect the army from the Copts” while the army was killing protesters.

The date the SCAF promised to give up its rule to a civil government has been moved to 2013 without major protests by the civil political parties. The council clearly wants to stay in power and the sectarian ploys will help it to achieve that. The $4 billion the Saudis invested in it seems to pay off.

If its people want a democratic Egypt they will need another revolution to create it.

It is not about "Demands":

Under certain circumstance and with the agreement of a judge the German police can wiretap private phone calls. With regards to wiretapping voice-over-Internet connection a big public policy discussions lasted over several years. In the end the German constitutional court finally allowed for wiretap capabilities for voice-over-internet connection like through Skype and the use of special police software smuggled onto a suspects personal computer for such purpose.

But the court sharply distinguished between the capability to listen in to phone communication and the capability to sniff through general content of a personal computer. It demanded that tools which provide the police with the first capability should not have the capability to do any other things. To do the second was a big no-no for the court and it judged such would be illegal as it would severe the basic human right to privacy.

So what did the police do? It, of course one might say, broke the law.

As the Chaos Computer Club, a 25 year old hacker organization which promotes privacy, found, the "Federal Trojan" software the police uses for sniffing into Skype calls allows full manipulation of the hosting PC. The software can install additional programs and it can upload, download and manipulate files.

"This refutes the claim that an effective separation of just wiretapping internet telephony and a full-blown trojan is possible in practice – or even desired," commented a CCC speaker. "Our analysis revealed once again that law enforcement agencies will overstep their authority if not watched carefully. In this case functions clearly intended for breaking the law were implemented in this malware: they were meant for uploading and executing arbitrary code on the targeted system."

Even worse, the software is written on an amateur level, uses unsecured communication methods and, once installed, leaves the computer open to be manipulated by anyone on the Internet.

A scandal will now ensue and is likely to have political consequences. Someone, likely the head of the German Federal Police, will have to step down.

Politically this will help the German Pirate Party to win further political support. To the astonishment of the established parties the Pirates, pro-privacy and contra unreasonable copyright laws, captured 8.9% of the votes in the recent city/state elections in Berlin. They have the potential to top 10% in the next federal elections.

Vettel wins world-championship, the hawkish German federal "terror, terror" police will likely be decapitated and the content/copyright mafia will see more political resistance. What a nice Sunday.

What's one your mind?

News & views …

Obama Warns Pakistanis on Militants

President Obama said his administration was concerned about Pakistan’s commitment to American interests, …

Why the f*** should Pakistan be committed to American interests? This while the U.S., through its India and Afghanistan policy, is acting against Pakistani interests. Pakistan, like any other nation, takes care of its own national interest, not any foreign one.

The headline to the piece should have been: “Obama Lacks Basic Understanding of Foreign Policy”.

To consider today's Steve Jobs hype citing some excerpts from the Wikipedia entry about him seems appropriate.

Jobs returned to his previous job at Atari and was given the task of creating a circuit board for the game Breakout. According to Atari founder Nolan Bushnell, Atari had offered $100 for each chip that was eliminated in the machine. Jobs had little interest in or knowledge of circuit board design and made a deal with Wozniak to split the bonus evenly between them if Wozniak could minimize the number of chips. Much to the amazement of Atari, Wozniak reduced the number of chips by 50, a design so tight that it was impossible to reproduce on an assembly line. According to Wozniak, Jobs told Wozniak that Atari had given them only $700 (instead of the actual $5,000) and that Wozniak's share was thus $350.
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While Jobs was a persuasive and charismatic director for Apple, some of his employees from that time had described him as an erratic and temperamental manager.
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In the coming months, many employees developed a fear of encountering Jobs while riding in the elevator, "afraid that they might not have a job when the doors opened. The reality was that Jobs' summary executions were rare, but a handful of victims was enough to terrorize a whole company." Jobs also changed the licensing program for Macintosh clones, making it too costly for the manufacturers to continue making machines.
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After resuming control of Apple in 1997, Jobs eliminated all corporate philanthropy programs.
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In 2005, Jobs responded to criticism of Apple's poor recycling programs for e-waste in the U.S. by lashing out at environmental and other advocates at Apple's Annual Meeting in Cupertino in April.
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In 2005, Steve Jobs banned all books published by John Wiley & Sons from Apple Stores in response to their publishing an unauthorized biography, iCon: Steve Jobs.

The article doesn't go into the outsourcing of the production of Apple products to a Chinese company which is essentially using slave labor with 16 hour work days and a series of employee suicides. This while Apple products are beyond real price competitions and the company is making extraordinary profits.

Jobs was reported to be the 42nd of the richest men list in the United States.

He marketed some good products. The NeXT cube was nice. Jobs though wasn't a nice man.

It was utterly predictable that the war in Libya would not be over even if Gaddhafi would be pushed away. The various fractions of the rebels could always be expected to start fighting over the loot. Frankly – why shouldn't they? This is happening now and NATO is preparing to go into Libya to clean up the mess the three stooges, Obama, Sarkozy and Cameron, created.

Nato officials are also concerned that fighting could break out among the factions that brought down Gaddafi's regime.

They believe the alliance would be under an obligation to intervene under the terms of its UN mandate to protect the Libyan population.

"If it degenerates into a big fight between factions, we will have to take action," a senior official said.

"If the scale and scope is of an order that justifies Nato intervention, we will intervene."

The situation is of course already degenerating and there is already fighting between various rebel factions. But a multisided civil war situation like this can not be refereed from the air. To intervene here means ground troops and a lot of them. Those will then be, as in Afghanistan, just another faction in an ever widening civil war.

From various news items:

Remember what happened after they did this in Iraq?

Libya's new government is setting up a security agency whose main task would be to root out those who remain loyal to deposed leader Muammar Gaddafi in towns and cities it now controls.

Ahmed al Dharrat, Libya's new interim internal affairs minister, told Reuters the new agency would replace a much-feared security service which ruled the North African nation through fear and arrests throughout Gaddafi's 42 years in power.

"Regarding internal security, there has been an order to abolish it. And we are studying a way of creating a body," al Dharrat said in an interview.

In Tripoli – people from Ziltan versus the LIFG:

An NTC spokesman who did not want to be named because he is not allowed to speak to the media about the incident told CNN "immediately after the journalist left the area, members of the rival Zintan-based Kekaa militia surrounded members of the Tripoli Brigade and stopped them from leaving."

"They had issued an arrest warrant from the Zintan Military Council for Belhaj and his deputy," the NTC spokesman added.
…
More members from the Tripoli Brigade based in Metiga airport arrived in pickup trucks armed with heavy artillery and surrounded the Kekaa Brigades and "convinced" them to leave after accusations were exchanged between the two groups and tension that may have escalated to fighting, the spokesman said.

In the South – Berbers versus Arabs:

Berbers from Nalut and Arabs from nearby Seaan clashed Saturday with Kalashnikov rifles and machine guns in the Nefusa mountains. A family of three caught in the crossfire was killed in the incident, Ahmed Hussein who witnessed the incident, told CNN.

Cont. reading: NATO To Intervene In Libya’s Multisided Civil War

The WaPo's David Ignatius claims that the U.S. is using drones only against those who want to directly attack the U.S. The drones are thereby supposed to "deter" from doing so and not to intervene in civil wars on the ground.

A hint of deterrence in U.S. drone-war strategy

[I]n recent weeks a subtle limit has emerged in drone policy: Despite calls by some U.S. officials for drone attacks against the training camps of AQAP and al-Shabab, the al-Qaeda affiliate in Somalia, neither has been targeted. That’s a deliberate policy decision — aimed partly at preventing the spread of a Taliban-style insurgency to new theaters, such as Yemen and Somalia.
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[A]s a matter of policy, Brennan and other top officials have decided (for now) against such strikes in the new battlegrounds, in part to prevent an ever-widening war that fosters the very Islamic insurgency we want to contain.

One wonders why WaPo even bothered to print the piece as the facts very obviously differ from that narrative.

Despite its claims the U.S. is openly engaged in the civil wars in Yemen and in Somalia on the sides of the U.S. supported dictators. 

US drone strike kills six in Somalia – Oct 5, 2011

The US drone attack left six civilians dead and many more injured in the Dhoobley town located near Kismayo, the capital of the lower Juba region and a port city located some 500 kilometers (310 miles) south of the Somali capital of Mogadishu on Wednesday.

Hassan Ali, a Somali military official, told Press TV that the strike sought to target an al-Shabab base in the area. However, the casualties were all civilians.

The drone attack comes as 20 civilians, among them eight women, were wounded in a US aerial attack on the outskirts of Kismayo late on Tuesday.

US drone kills 5 al-Qaida militants in Yemen – Oct 5, 2011

A U.S. drone strike killed five al-Qaida-linked militants in southern Yemen on Wednesday, Yemeni officials said.

An official, who spoke on condition of anonymity according to military rules, said the dawn strike targeted militant hideouts in the al-Arqoub area east of Zinjibar, capital of Abyan province.

Cont. reading: Drone War Against Somalis and Yeminite Isn’t “Deterrence”

For the imperial war on Libya Qatar provided the propaganda via Al Jazeerah, it provided the crucial Arab League request for a "no-fly zone", its Special Force troops –like the Egyptians, French, British and Bulgarian- trained the rebels. Quatar took care of the oil the rebels wanted to sell and gave them money, it also provided lots of arms, Belgian FN assault rifles and Milan anti-tank missiles, to the rebels and its air-force took part in the bombing of the country.

Now it wants a say in what happens next in the "new" Libya.

But here it gets funny. "Western" imperialists do not like other imperialists, especially not darker skin Muslim imperialists in funny garbs, to do as they do.

Which brings us to this rather comical Guardian piece:

Qatar accused of interfering in Libyan affairs
Western diplomats say Arab state is bypassing international agreements, to pursue its own agenda.

The tiny Arab emirate of Qatar, a leading supporter of the revolution in Libya, has been accused by western diplomats of interfering in the country's sovereignty.

The claims come amid growing concern among Libyans in the National Transitional Council (NTC) and western officials that Qatar, which supplied arms to Libyan revolutionaries, is pursuing its own postwar agenda at the cost of wider efforts to bring political stability to the country.
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A senior diplomat said: "There is a question now about what foreign players like Qatar are doing in Libya – whether it is being helpful and respectful of Libyan sovereignty. "Qatar is not being respectful, and there is a feeling that it is riding roughshod over the issue of the country's sovereignty."

One might think this is satire fresh out of The Onion. How could anyone dare to interfere in Libya's sovereignity? Such is just unthinkable!

But that "senior diplomat", after having broken the UN resolutions on Libya on several issues, after having ignored the sovereignty of Libya in all aspects and after having bombed the Libyan people, seems serious in this.

All foreign powers with an interest in Libya, among which are the US, Britain and France, have had their own agendas. However, the source said: "There is a feeling that Qatar has been providing money and support to certain individuals."

But that is exactly what the other countries have done as well. The National Transitional Council is filled with expats from Washington, London and Paris, financed by the various secret services of those countries.

The guy Qatar is accused of supporting is no other than Abdelhakim Belhadj, former CIA prisoner and freed from jail by Saif al-Islam Gaddhafi. Belhaj, commanding a large gang of experienced folks from his Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, is currently the military commander of Tripoli.

At the centre of concerns are allegations that, rather than supporting the NTC, Qatar has chosen to back favoured key figures with financial and other resources. Most prominent among these would be the Islamist head of Tripoli's military council, Abdul-Aziz Belhaj.

The CIA abducted and tortured Belhaj and then provided him to Gaddhafi who kept him in jail for some years before he got freed. How come those "western" countries would object to this guy now? Is someone afraid of revenge?

Of particular concern over the last month has been how Qatar has chosen to throw its weight behind a group of Libyan individuals including Sheikh Ali Salabi, a Libyan cleric who resides in Doha and has close relations with Belhaj.

There has been the growing friction between Salabi and the NTC's interim prime minister, Mahmoud Jibril. Salabi has appeared on television to suggest Jibril is a "tyrant in waiting".

Salabi may be right on that.

He is, by the way, the senior cleric that brokered the deal between the senior LIFG leadership, including Bejhaj, and Gaddafi’s son, Seif al-Islam, for their release from prison. I would not be astonished to learn that Salabi is still in contact with Seif al Islam Gaddhafi.

U.S. Secretary of Defense Panetta was in Israel today meeting with Defense Minister Barak for a second time in only two weeks.

Before his arrival the newspaper Haaretz in its Hebrew version (via Richard Silverstein) headlined that the meeting as an "Urgent Consultation on Iran".

Silverstein suspected that Bibi Netanyahoo and Ehud Barak were planing a surprise attack on Iran and that Panetta was send to whistle them back.

I thought that a bit outlandish but this Haaretz piece now at the end of the visit makes is theory quite believable.

It starts with a former Mossad chief, who had earlier warned against an attack on Iran, but then adds a long part on Panetta and his press conference with Barak:

Former Mossad chief Meir Dagan said Monday that a military strike on Iran was "far from being Israel's preferred option," telling the Council for Peace and Security that "there are currently tools and methods that are much more effective."

Dagan also said Iran's nuclear program was still far from the point of no return, and that Iran's situation is "the most problematic it has been in since the revolution" in 1979.
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Dagan made his remarks on the same day that visiting U.S. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta passed on a clear message from his boss in Washington: The United States opposes any Israeli attack on Iran's nuclear facilities.

At a joint press conference with Defense Minister Ehud Barak, Panetta stressed that any steps against Iran's nuclear program must be taken in coordination with the international community.

The United States, he said, is "very concerned, and we will work together to do whatever is necessary" to keep Iran from posing "a threat to this region." But doing so "depends on the countries working together," he added.

He repeated the word "together" several times in this context.

As the U.S. for strategic reasons has currently no interest at all in bombing Iran Panettas "together" means "we won't and you won't either".

It seems that Netanyahoo and Barak really had some crazy ideas here. An Israeli attack now would indeed have some preferable circumstances that are likely to vanish. The U.S. still controls airspace and flies over Iraq and could let Israeli planes take that route, the current weather before the onset of winter is favorable, Obama is under pressure to support Israel and succumbed to it before the UN. An attack would of course also let the issue of the Palestinian statehood bid in front of the UN vanish from the international agenda.

A surprise attack on Iran by Israel alone, while useless against Iran's nuclear program, would inevitably be followed by some acts from Iran against Israel to which the U.S. would than be pressed to respond by the Israel-firsters in Congress and the media.

Let's hope that Panetta has given his warning in such a way that it really deters Netanyahoo. With carzies liek Netanyahoo and Barak simply saying "no", without some believable threat in case the no is not followed, will likely not be enough.

#OccupyWallStreet is a quite amazing open source insurgency which has a good potential to grow into something much bigger.

That it is already fought by the establishment, paid by the banks, is a sign that the powers that are are afraid of it and take it seriously.

For some serious success the movement has to be copied and extended to every financial district all over the world. That seems to be starting now.

Learn from Tahir. Do not allow any agenda. Accept no leadership. Just occupy.

I’m guided by a signal in the heavens
I’m guided by this birthmark on my skin
I’m guided by the beauty of our weapons
First we take Manhattan, then we take Berlin

Just block the corrupt and inhuman business that Wall Street symbolizes and that has affected and injured so many people all around the world. Others will follow. I do.

There were several U.S. attempts to keep its troops in Iraq. The U.S. offer was lowered from 30,000 to 10,000 to 3,000 to trainers. This seems to settle it and the number of U.S. soldiers in Iraq looks to be about zero.

Iraq’s Prime Minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has said on Thursday that the presence of foreign experts and trainers during the purchase of weapons is a natural thing, reiterating that the presence of the US troops in his country would end by end of the current year

“The presence of the American troops is settled and shall end by the end of the current year, according to an agreement between both sides, and there won’t remain a single foreign soldier in the country,” a statement by the Prime Minister’s office reported.

But Prime Minister Maliki said that the “presence of foreign experts and trainers during the process of purchase of weapons is something natural and is followed in other parts of the world.”

Those few trainers, mostly civilians anyway, that will be needed for the F-16s and other stuff Iraq buys will not be relevant. They can not influence Iraqi operations nor will they be able to influence anything with regards to Iran.

This outcome is the best for all involved.

Pakistan has long demanded a seat at the negotiation table about Afghanistan's future. It did its very best to prevent direct negotiations between the Taliban and the U.S. and its attached Afghan puppet Karzai. It earlier arrested Taliban politicians like Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar who were involved in direct negotiations and it may have been involved in the recent attack on the Peace Council head Burhanuddin Rabbani who was trying to establish other direct contacts with the Taliban.

It seems that now the U.S. and its Afghan puppet Karzai have given in to this Pakistani demand:

A spokesman for Mr Karzai, Siamak Herawi, reiterated on Sunday that peace talks with the Taliban were suspended and that a new peace strategy would be spelled out "very soon".

On Friday, Mr Karzai made it clear where the efforts should focus.

He said: "[Taliban leader] Mullah Omar doesn't have an address… their peace emissary turns out to be a killer, whom should we talk to?

"The Afghan nation asks me who's the other party that you hold talks with? My answer is, Pakistan."

This is a very significant step Karzai is taking and it is unlikely he would take it without U.S. support. Direct negotiations with Pakistan which include its interest could indeed lead to a solution that is more stable and peaceful than the current situation.

The quite bellicose accusations by Admiral Mullen against Pakistan were walked back first by annonymous officials and then by Obama himself:

President Barack Obama is declining to endorse strong criticism of Pakistan leveled by the outgoing chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, while saying Pakistan must do more to deal with insurgents.

This suggests that the fight between the military industrial complex, which wants to see the war to continue to keep the money flowing towards it, and the administration which needs to get the U.S. out of the $12 billion per month wars for overall economic reasons has for now been won by the civil side.

But the internal fight in the U.S. is not yet over. The U.S. military can easily spoil any new negotiations by enraging the Pakistani side. A special force raid into Pakistan that leaves some Pakistani soldiers dead is all that is needed to prolong or even escalate the issue. India, which has no border with Afghanistan, is of course also still working against Pakistan's negotiation interests.

If Obama really wants to set a new route out of Afghanistan he must now take serious steps to prevent such spoilers of a comprehensive Afghan peace solution even after the tenths anniversary of the war.

The military mission in Libya is largely complete, and NATO's involvement could begin to wrap up as soon as this coming week after allied leaders meet in Brussels, Belgium, the top U.S. commander for Africa said.

Well, well. Just in time:

Syrian activists formed a council to coordinate efforts to end President Bashar al-Assad’s rule and stop his deadly crackdown that has claimed more than 3,600 lives this year.
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Syria’s opposition is following the path taken by Libya’s rebels, who formed a National Transitional Council during that country’s uprising.
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While the council rejects any outside intervention in Syria’s internal affairs, it seeks United Nations protection for the Syrian people, Ghaliun said.

Does anyone believe that these news items appearing on the same day is just a random coincident?