A just published Washington Post piece claims: Syria’s Druze minority is shifting its support to the opposition.

Its evidence for the alleged shift is … solely from the insurgency side:

Members of Syria’s Druze community, a small but significant religious minority, are joining the opposition in bigger numbers, ramping up pressure on the beleaguered government of President Bashar al-Assad, according to opposition activists and rebel military commanders.

There is no evidence in the whole piece of a shift in the Druze community but those not-verifiable self-serving insurgency claims. A real highlight is this paragraph:

Yet there is now even a Druze-dominated unit of rebel fighters, the Bani Maarouf battalion, operating in the Damascus suburbs, including Jaramana, which was formed in late December.

That link goes to video that shows a group of 30 men proclaiming to be some new unit. Why is the reporter calling this a "battalion". Thirty men are a small platoon. There are three or four platoons to a company and four or five companies make up a battalion. That is the about the same in every army of this world. Why is a Washington Post reporter writing about a "battalion" when that "battalion" doesn't even have 5% of the nominal size of a real on? And how does he know that these are indeed Druze?

There are thousands of such videos of such groups, often multiple ones of the ever same folks and their sole purpose is exaggerate the size of the insurgency. They are sheer propaganda. The one the WaPo reporter chose is especially ridiculous. Take a look at this gun that one of the guys holds.

full screenshot

Those "Druze" must have v_e_r_y long arms if they can fire weapons with such shoulder stocks.

Thet WaPo piece's claim of Druze joining those insurgents is just as much propaganda as the one that claimed the Druze are joining the opposition in March 2012 and the one that claimed so in July 2012 and the one that claimed so a month ago.

All of these piece are based on insurgency sources and all of them are false. The Druze know very well that they, as a religious minority, would be in much more trouble should the insurgency win then they have ever been and ever will be under Bashar al-Assad.

Indeed instead of more people joining the opposition we see the opposition falling apart. Not only the exile opposition which never manages to unite, but also on the ground. This video shows a brawl between Free Syrian Army and Jabhat al-Nusra protesters in Idleb with the Nusra supporters tearing up FSA flags.

As their situation on the ground worsens we are likely to see more such fights, even deadly ones, between those various opposition groups.

In December Iran claimed that it had retrieved all data from the U.S. stealth drone RQ-170 Sentinel it had managed to take down a year earlier:

"All the intelligence existing in this drone has been completely decoded and extracted and we know each and every step it has taken (during its missions)," Commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) Aerospace Force Brigadier General Amir Ali Hajizadeh told reporters here in Tehran on Monday.

Today a short video revealed footage the drone had taken on its flights and which the Iranians downloaded from its internal storage. This includes pictures of the Kandahar airbase from which the drone was flown.

Additional footage appears in this Iranian documentary about the drone capture (in Farsi) (24min).

Excerpts (13 min) from that documentary are available with English subtitles:

Cont. reading: Iranian Documentation On Catching Drones

The convicted criminal neocon Elliott Abrams is writing in Commentary about the 2007 bombing of the alleged nuclear reactor at Al-Kibar in Syria. As was to be expected his story isn't straight. Indeed there is huge discrepancy in it. He starts with the Israelis coming to Washington to tell what they thought they had found:

[Mossad chief Meir Dagan] showed us intelligence demonstrating that Syria was constructing a nuclear reactor whose design was supplied by North Korea, and doing so with North Korean technical assistance. Dagan left us with one stark message: All Israeli policymakers who saw the evidence agreed that the reactor had to go away.

There then began a four-month process of extremely close cooperation with Israel about the reactor, called al-Kibar. As soon as our own intelligence had confirmed the Israeli information and we all agreed on what we were dealing with, Hadley established a process for gathering further information, considering our options, and sharing our thinking with Israel.

Reading these lines one would think that the U.S. services confirmed the Israeli take that their pictures of that place showed indeed a nuclear reactor.

But much later into the story we learn the opposite. After some month of intense debate Bush decided to not bomb the "reactor":

Cont. reading: Some New Bits On The Syrian Al-Kibar “Reactor”

The administration's counterterrorism policies are leading to media censorship, refutation of basic rights and to more terrorism. The man responsible for these consequences should not become head of the CIA.

Today the Washington Post's homepage tries to sell this item as news:

The piece says:

President Obama’s plan to install his counterterrorism adviser as director of the CIA has opened the administration to new scrutiny over the targeted-killing policies it has fought to keep hidden from the public, as well as the existence of a previously secret drone base in Saudi Arabia.

… a 2011 attack that killed al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki, was carried out in part by CIA drones flown from a secret base in Saudi Arabia.

The Washington Post had refrained from disclosing the location at the request of the administration, which cited concern that exposing the facility would undermine operations against an al-Qaeda affiliate regarded as the network’s most potent threat to the United States, as well as potentially damage counterterrorism collaboration with Saudi Arabia.

The Post learned Tuesday night that another news organization was
planning to reveal the location of the base, effectively ending an
informal arrangement among several news organizations that had been
aware of the location for more than a year.

Moon of Alabama, unlike the self censoring Washington Post and other media, reveled that such a base is in Saudi Arabia in June 2011. Referring to a NYT piece we wrote:

Cont. reading: Brennan’s Saudi Drone Base: Censorship, Assassinations, More Terrorists

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, […] nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; […]
Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution

NBC News scoops: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americans

The White Paper (pdf), which is not a formal legal reasoning, tries to explain that the United States can kill a citizen if:

(1) an informed, high level official of the U.S. government has determined that the targeted individual poses an imminent threat of violent attack against the United States; (2) capture is infeasible, and the United States continues to monitor whether capture becomes feasible; and (3) the operation would be conducted in a manner consistent with applicable law of war principles.

There was no "imminent threat" of a violent attack against the United States when it killed Anwar al-Aulaqi, a preacher who himself never took up arms and a U.S. citizen. The White Paper is covering up the crime by redefining "imminent" in a way no sane person can accept. As NBC explains:

[T]he confidential Justice Department “white paper” introduces a more expansive definition of self-defense or imminent attack than described by Brennan or Holder in their public speeches. It refers, for example, to what it calls a “broader concept of imminence” than actual intelligence about any ongoing plot against the U.S. homeland.

“The condition that an operational leader present an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future,” the memo states.

Instead, it says, an “informed, high-level” official of the U.S. government may determine that the targeted American has been “recently” involved in “activities” posing a threat of a violent attack and “there is no evidence suggesting that he has renounced or abandoned such activities.” The memo does not define “recently” or “activities.”

So if one may once have been involved in murky "activities" and one may not have renounced that involvement one is thereby an "imminent threat". This is just laughable.

Just like the silly justification for preemptive cyber-attacks the real reasoning in the White Paper is simply "might makes right".

For many centuries just people have worked to eliminated that archaic notice of "justice". The U.S. is now reintroducing it to the world.

But "might is right" is not justice. It is a refutation of the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do to you." It will, in time, come back to haunt the United States and its people. Real justice can come in rather mysterious ways.

Bones Under Parking Lot Belonged to Richard III

Why did the Brits bury their king under a parking lot?

The NYT is trying to sell some administration spin:

Last summer, as the fighting in Syria raged and questions about the United States’ inaction grew, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton conferred privately with David H. Petraeus, the director of the C.I.A. The two officials were joining forces on a plan to arm the Syrian resistance.

The idea was to vet the rebel groups and train fighters, who would be supplied with weapons.
..
Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Petraeus presented the proposal to the White House, according to administration officials. But with the White House worried about the risks, and with President Obama in the midst of a re-election bid, they were rebuffed.

The facts do not concur with this.

Early September 2012 a ship with weapons from Benghazi arrived in Turkey. The weapons were for fighting the Syrian government. There was some controversy to which groups those weapons should go.

On September 11 2012 the U.S. ambassador to Libya met with the Turkish consul general in Benghazi. It was the last meeting before the ambassador was killed.

When on the same the CIA station in Benghazi was attacked and later evacuated there were 25 CIA or CIA related persons there. This wasn’t a small station for observation of this or that but a huge operation.

It is quite obvious that the CIA and the State Department were involved in organizing weapons for the Syrian insurgency. The White House may (likely) or may not (unlikely) have known about that. If the White House shut down that operation it did so after September 11, not “during the summer”.

It is certainly no pure coincidence that the above NYT spin is published on the same day as an exclusive interview the authors had with Hillary Clinton.

Together they mark the start of the Hillary 2016 campaign.

The Islamic Republic of Iran had announced that it would reveal a new fighter plane. Everyone thought that such would be an updated copy of the Northrop F-5 which Iran bought before its revolution.

But instead Iran came up with this:

bigger, more pictures here

Wow! I am impressed. (As are others.) That is a very, very unique design with polyhedral wings and with some elements of the MDD X-36 and of Boeing’s Bird of Prey.

This Ghaher (or Qaher) is not just a mockup. President Ahmedinejad said the bird has flown several thousand hours^* and Iranian TV showed short flight clips.

While this may not be a world class fighter yet, it seems to lack a sophisticated radar, it definitely shows that Iran has a very capable aeronautics industry.

Congrats Iran. And again, I am impressed.

Update: ^*This was a mistranslation in a forum.

On yesterday Israel's attack on Syria Al Akhbar writes:

The Israelis were also betting that Syria will not respond, as was the case with previous attacks, like the one against a “nuclear” facility in Deir Ezzor in 2007.

But the circumstances are different this time on a number of levels. At present, a lack of response on the part of Syria means that it is accepting Israel’s terms, something that Damascus may view as intolerable in the current situation.

If there is no response from Damascus Israel will have set an example for Turkey and others that they can directly the Syrian government without fear of reprisal.

I don't think that Syria can let that happen. There is too much at risk. It will have to respond to Israel's attack. It may be willing to do so. Unlike 2007 when Syria did not acknowledge the Israeli attack it now immediately published it and has thereby giving itself some right to respond.

But how?

This raises a number of questions as to how Syria will respond: Will it fire back openly, or will it carry out some sort of covert operation? Will it target the Zionist state directly or attack its interests abroad? And will it be done in such a way as to make an Israeli response inevitable, thus sparking a regional war?

My best guesses:

• The response will be a covert operation,
• it will target Israel directly and most likely strike at a military or political target,
• the level of retaliation will be more or less proportional to the attack and without leaving a calling card thereby avoiding an Israeli response.

But can Syria really conduct such an operation on its own or will it need help from others?