Everyone should read the SPIEGEL story and check the graphics and docs about the NSA's Tailored Access Operation. They describe the hardware and software tools the NSA uses to break into every level of computing – from your cellphone up to carrier class internet routers. The Apple iPhone for example is, as was to be expected, one of the devices the NSA can crack and silently control anytime it tries.

Jacob Appelbaum, who helped reporting the story, yesterday gave an hour long talk about these NSA abilities. I recommend to listen to it. He rightly points out one of the main issues that even supporters of the NSA spying should have serious headaches about. If the NSA can use the software and hardware bugs in various devices to take control over them then others can do this too. I bet that there are criminals out there who use exactly the same problematic holes the NSA uses for its spying. Such holes should be fixed and not abused.

One aspect that may help top rein in the NSA's totally overdone "collect it all" and "hack it all" attitude is the extreme damage this report will do to the U.S. computer and internet companies. Why would I buy Cisco routers or an iPhone when it is publicly known that these are extremely unsafe devices?

The NSA hacking and spying was the biggest story of 2013. It is also quite likely that further reporting on and the fallout from it will be the biggest story of 2014. Some media try to propagandize that people are okay with this NSA business and that no actions need to follow. Don't let them fool you. People do care and many are already changing some of their online habits. But there has to build even more pressure for real change to come.

My big "thank you"s for this year goes to Edward Snowden for the courage to go public with the NSA interna and to Glenn Greenwald for the excellent management of the drip by drip publication that keeps this very important story alive.

Thank you also to my readers and the commentators here who keep me motivated to continue this blog. Have a good new year in which hopefully no one will spy on you.

August 2013: Saudis offer Russia secret oil deal if it drops Syria

As-Safir said Prince Bandar pledged to safeguard Russia’s naval base in Syria if the Assad regime is toppled, but he also hinted at Chechen terrorist attacks on Russia’s Winter Olympics in Sochi if there is no accord. “I can give you a guarantee to protect the Winter Olympics next year. The Chechen groups that threaten the security of the games are controlled by us,” he allegedly said.

December 2013: Second Blast Hits Russia, Raising Olympic Fears

A deadly suicide bombing at a crowded railroad station in southern Russia on Sunday, followed by a blast in a trolley bus on Monday in the same city, raised the specter of a new wave of terrorism just six weeks before the Winter Olympics in Sochi.

President Vladimir V. Putin’s government has worked to protect the Olympics with some of the most extensive security measures ever imposed for the Games. But the bombings, in Volgograd, underscored the threat the country faces from a radical Islamic insurgency in the North Caucasus that has periodically spilled into the Russian heartland, with deadly results, including several recent attacks.

One doesn’t attack Stalingrad without receiving a blowback. The Russian security forces will have an immediate harsh response on the local level. There will be pressure on Putin to also directly respond towards Saudi Arabia. Russia will feel the need to set a precedence. The response will therefore likely come, though probably delayed, in a rather spectacular form.

I am back home now and catching up on the news. Some issues:

The Daily Star picks up what we assessed ten days ago:

A corruption scandal in Turkey may see embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad outlast his Turkish adversary Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in the latest sign Turkish foreign policy on Syria is undergoing a major recalibration, analysts say.

Along with supplies from Turkey the Syrian insurgents are still getting weapons and (western) military advice through Jordan: Aid to Syrian rebels flows through a complex maze and Syrian rebels get arms and advice through secret command centre in Amman.

The Saudis will spend $3 billion on French weapons for the Lebanese army. That sum is double the yearly budget of the rather toothless Lebanese army. Those arms will certainly not be sufficient and used to fight Israel. Is this Saudi support for the Lebanese Salafis? And will those weapons really go to Lebanon or will they end up elsewhere? How much of this is simply to bribe Hollande?

C.J. Chivers at the NYT has to retract his missile "trajectory" analysis of the chemical weapon use in Syria. We told you that it was wrong as soon as the NYT published the original claim.

A big story at the NYT whitewashes the Benghazi attack that killed the U.S. ambassador. It is missing a whole lot of points: the diplomatic outpost was the cover for a CIA operation

• the CIA bought weapons there to ship them to Turkey and to their proxies in Syria
• the ambassador was involved in the weapon transfer
• "AlQaeda" groups had an interest to acquire those weapons for their own groups in Syria
• some AQ-affiliates (the brother of AQ leader al-Zawahiri in Egypt) started an international protest over some anti-Muslim video as an operational diversion and cover for taking over the CIA arms depots in Libya

Without some deeper digging into the above points, missing in the NYT, the whole Benghazi story is just a fairy tale.

News & views …

To all of us some contemplative, hope- and peaceful holidays. May the walls come down.

Picture courtesy of the Bethlehem Association

Use as open thread …

The War Nerd thinks there will be no blowback for Saudi Arabia from sending Jihadis to kill Syrians.

The Middle East has been Saudi-ized while we looked on and laughed at those goofy Saudis who didn’t understand progress. No wonder they’re content to play dumb. If we took a serious look at them, they’d be terrifying.

And of all their many skills, the one the Saudis have mastered most thoroughly is disruption. Not the cute tech-geek kind of disruption, but the real, ugly thing-in-itself. They don’t just “turn a blind eye” to young Saudi men going off to do jihad—they cheer them on. It’s a brilliant strategy that kills two very dangerous birds with one plane ticket. By exporting their dangerous young men, the Saudis rid themselves of a potential troublemaker while creating a huge amount of pain for the people who live wherever those men end up.

This worked well, the War Nerd says, and Wahabized Afghanistan and Chechnya while the blowback, he says, has been zero in those cases:

[L]et’s total up the number of Saudi Sunni killed in this “blowback” from the Afghan jihad. I’m no math whiz myself, but I think I can give a pretty exact figure: Zero. None.

In short, there was no blowback for the Saudis. Blowback by Saudis, and by Saudi-funded groups, Hell yeah, but blowback within Saudi Arabia, against Saudis (real Saudis, which means Sunni), nope. Nary a bit.

It is a good argument but I am not convinced. There has been some blowback from other Saudi Jihad interventions that the War Nerd leaves out. There was, for example, a serious attempt to kill the Saudi deputy intelligence minister. The blowback also does not have to come from Jihadis. Syria is nearer to Saudi Arabia than Afghanistan or Chechnya and its allies are more potent forces.

Someone within the Syrian, Iranian or Hizbullah's inelligence services will surely be able to come up with some good ideas.

In its 28th recommendation Obama's NSA Review Group, which included no technological experts, asserted (pdf via emptywheel):

Upon review, however, we are unaware of any vulnerability created by the US Government in generally available commercial software that puts users at risk of criminal hackers or foreign governments decrypting their data. Moreover, it appears that in the vast majority of generally used, commercially available encryption software, there is no vulnerability, or “backdoor,” that makes it possible for the US Government or anyone else to achieve unauthorized access.

Like other seemingly assuring assertions from the NSA and related entities this one turns out to be false:

As a key part of a campaign to embed encryption software that it could crack into widely used computer products, the U.S. National Security Agency arranged a secret $10 million contract with RSA, one of the most influential firms in the computer security industry, Reuters has learned.

Documents leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden show that the NSA created and promulgated a flawed formula for generating random numbers to create a "back door" in encryption products, the New York Times reported in September. Reuters later reported that RSA became the most important distributor of that formula by rolling it into a software tool called Bsafe that is used to enhance security in personal computers and many other products.

Undisclosed until now was that RSA received $10 million in a deal that set the NSA formula as the preferred, or default, method for number generation in the BSafe software, according to two sources familiar with the contract.

RSA security products, widely used so far, are not secure. The NSA paid RSA to use a weak encryption which the NSA can easily break. If the NSA can break these others can too. They thereby have a backdoor into RSA software and whoever uses those insecure products should do away with them.

If the NSA Review Group was unaware of paid for NSA backdoors in commercial products how many of its other recommendations tackle the real problems?

Yeah. Thought so.

The publishing of NSA secrets continues. The Guardian, Spiegel and the New York Times report on efforts to listen to new satellite connections. The tests were run against a (partitial) “target database” and their results reveal what targets that “target database” contains. These included international organizations like UNICEF, Non-Government-organizations like Médecins du Monde, high European Union functionaries, economic entities like the oil giant Total and the electronics and military producer Thales. They include many heads of states and state institutions as well as some alleged terrorists. Some of the target numbers were obtained from U.S. officials who share their rolodexes with the NSA.

The NSA spying on telephone data in the United States has decisively helped in zero terrorists cases instead of the 54 cases the NSA had claimed. The real international target list is likewise not primarily aimed at “terrorists” as the NSA claims. I also doubt that it is mainly just to target politicians or political entities. I believe that most of the targets will turn out to be economic entities and that this will be the real issue that brings up a storm against international NSA spying. Notice that the wording the NSA uses when asked about economic spying gets more elaborate and includes more caveats each time questions are asked. This from the NYT piece linked above:

In a statement, the N.S.A. denied that it had ever carried out espionage to benefit American businesses.

“We do not use our foreign intelligence capabilities to steal the trade secrets of foreign companies on behalf of — or give intelligence we collect to — U.S. companies to enhance their international competitiveness or increase their bottom line,” said Vanee Vines, an N.S.A. spokeswoman.

But she added that some economic spying was justified by national security needs. “The intelligence community’s efforts to understand economic systems and policies, and monitor anomalous economic activities, are critical to providing policy makers with the information they need to make informed decisions that are in the best interest of our national security,” Ms. Vines said.

How can one detect “anomalous economic activities” when one does not observe the “normal” economic activities? One can not and that caveat thereby reveals the real activities.

There is also the history of the current spying activities:

The documents that were reviewed also suggest that the satellite dragnet is likely a continuation of the legendary global Echelon surveillance network, which was the subject of an investigation by a committee of the European Parliament in 2000.

In their 2001 final report, the EU politicians presented a wealth of convincing evidence of industrial espionage allegedly committed through Echelon …

When the NSA spokesperson says “We do not … give intelligence we collect to — U.S. companies” the next question must be who does the NSA give that “economic” intelligence to and to whom does that entity  (likely the CIA as was the case with Echelon data) hand those secrets?

Pressure on non-U.S. politicians to build a really secure Internet communication systems will only come when the companies in their countries find out that their well-being depends on it. With many new revelations about the NSA still to come it is likely that we will soon see that the economic aspect of the spying scandal, and the response to it from parties that have real stakes in such issues, is a major if not the major part of the whole affair.

Reuters reports that the U.S. and the British government have somewhat given up on regime change in Syria:

Western nations have indicated to the Syrian opposition that peace next month talks may not lead to the removal of President Bashar al-Assad and that his Alawite minority will remain key in any transitional administration, opposition sources said.
…
"Our Western friends made it clear in London that Assad cannot be allowed to go now because they think chaos and an Islamist militant takeover would ensue," said one senior member of the Coalition who is close to officials from Saudi Arabia.

So the "west" has agreed that Assad will stay as will the government structure around him. Good.

But down in the report is some bad news:

[O]pposition activists in Syria have said that Turkey has let a weapons consignment cross into Syria to the Islamic Front, the rebel group that overran the Bab al-Hawa border crossing last week, seizing arms and Western equipment supplied to non-Islamists.

That Erdogan is supplying the Saudi financed Islamic Front, who's leader has no profound ideological difference with AlQaeda, will not be liked by Turkey's NATO allies who want to get rid of these guys.

That issue will only add to Erdogan's troubles. Yesterday the police in Istanbul arrested dozens of people related to Erdogan's AK Party including the sons of three ministers involved in a number of graft cases. Just hours later the five police leaders responsible for the case were fired and two new prosecutors were named to oversee the whitewash of the issue. More police chiefs were fired today after the justice minister intervened. This hasty cover-up seems to show that the cases are valid. This corruption and justice scandal comes on top of a fight between Erdogan and the powerful Gülen movement which had supported Erdogan throughout the last elections. Lacking Gülen support his chances to win the three elections coming up next year are now seriously diminished.

It seems more and more likely that Erdogan will have to leave his office before the Syrian president leaves his. That would be a quite fair historic outcome.

A year ago a British doctor, Abbas Khan, went to Syria to help on the side of the insurgents. He was caught by the Syrian government and sent to jail. He was to be released during the next days but then committed suicide.

The BBC, “reporting” on the issue, writes:

Syrian authorities have said their post-mortem examination showed he killed himself while in detention.

But his family has said this is not credible as he was due to be released.
…
Mr Khan’s brother said that it was “pure fiction” that Mr Khan had committed suicide as he had written to relatives saying he was looking forward to coming home for Christmas.

On Tuesday, the Foreign Office said that the doctor had been “in effect murdered” by the Syrian authorities and at best his death was “extremely suspicious“.

Nowhere in that current piece does the BBC mention that the doctors family earlier feared, as the BBC itself reported just five days ago, that the doctor was likely to commit suicide:

The family of a British doctor, imprisoned by the Syrian government for over a year, is growing increasingly concerned for his mental health.
…
His brother, Afroze, said Dr Khan was depressed. “There is a real possibility he may want to harm himself.”
…
In his most recent letter Dr Khan wrote: “Being kept in appalling and inhuman conditions has seen my mental health markedly deteriorate, I suffer from almost constant depression and suicidal ideation.”

The family feared, and the doctor himself practicality announced, his possible suicide. Five dates later the man is dead and has, according to the Syrian government, killed himself.

But now the earlier feared and reported possible suicide is suddenly called “not credible” and “pure fiction” and the BBC does not even mention the contradiction to its earlier report but goes solely with the family’s (and British government) new propaganda line.

Is that official amnesia the BBC is practicing here or Big Brother like historical revisionism?

June 2010 – Sangin: Afghanistan's poppy town that became deathtrap for British army

Of the 300 British soldiers who have died in Afghanistan since 2001, 96 have been in Sangin, the most dangerous place in the country for Nato soldiers.
…
Four years after UK troops deployed there, the Taliban continue to aggressively contest control of the Helmand town, which has become infamous for the vast number of improvised explosive devices used by insurgents, which have been responsible for most British deaths.

Dec 16 2013 – David Cameron declares 'mission accomplished' in Afghanistan

British troops are coming home from Afghanistan because it is "mission accomplished" in the country, David Cameron has said.

The Prime Minister made the comments after flying into Afghanistan to visit British troops at Camp Bastion in Helmand Province.
…
A source said: "The summary of where we're at in Helmand is overwhelmingly positive. The campaign here is on track and the Afghans are in a good place in the short, medium and long term.

Dec 16 2013 – ANA, Taliban jointly patrol Sangin

LASHKARGAH (PAN): Afghan National Army (ANA) soldiers and Taliban jointly patrol areas in the Sangin district of southern Helmand province, residents and elders say …

Sangin Community Council Secretary Syed Wali told Pajhwok Afghan News on Monday he himself had seen ANA personnel and militants jointly patrolling the district in tanks and armoured vehicles.
…
The ANA had surrendered to the fighters three checkpoints in the Majeed Square area that were supposed to block Taliban’s entry into the city, he said.

On Sunday, Mohammad added, the Taliban hosted ANA personnel in the Chahar Deh village of Sangin.

News & views …

Congrats to China for successfully soft-landing its Chang’e-3 lunar probe and its rover on the moon. It is now the third nation which has done so. The lunar probe is later supposed to return to the earth. Good luck with that. China’s next space program will likely be a manned moon program picking up where the United States ended its large space program.

Congratulations also to Iran which today for the second time lauched a “manned” space flight and successfully landed and recovered the ape that took the flight.

While the scientific values of these flights can be debated the excitement that comes from achieving such aims can not. China and Iran will both be proud of what they did and deserve to be lauded for this technical achievement.

As the News York Times now admitts one can not trust anything written in a New York Times editorial. (Are the news-pages any better?)

April 16, 2009 – Editorial: Roxana Saberi

Iran’s government needs to release Ms. Saberi and end this dangerous farce.
…
A former F.B.I. agent who went missing in 2007 while on a business trip, Robert Levinson, is also believed to be imprisoned.

September 18, 2009 Editorial: Iran’s Captives

[Iran] must free Robert Levinson, a former F.B.I. agent missing since 2007.

October 23 2009 – Editorial: More Iranian Injustice

… Robert Levinson, a former F.B.I. agent has been missing since 2007. These victims of Iran’s autocratic leaders must be released.

November 11 2009 – Cruel, Pointless Games

Tehran’s latest outrage is to accuse three American hikers, held for more than three months, of spying.
…
Robert Levinson, a former F.B.I. agent who traveled to Iran on a business trip, has been missing since 2007.

Now we learn: A Disappearing Spy, and a Scandal at the C.I.A.

The New York Times has known about the former agent’s C.I.A. ties since late 2007, when a lawyer for the family gave a reporter access to Mr. Levinson’s files and emails.

Writing from Dubai David Ignatius pens a small piece on the alleged loss of the global standing of the United States. It is the usual claptrap of some Saudis and Republicans blaming Obama for not killing enough of their perceived enemies.

Interestingly there are three headlines to that piece. On the Washington Post opinion page it is:

Erosion of U.S. power
Allies have harsh words for the White House.

On the article subpage it is:

U.S. allies are restless

The browser window headline and the URL to the piece contain this:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/david-ignatius-is-america-losing-to-the-axis-of-weevils/2013/12/13/…

Are “restless allies” a sign of “erosion of [U.S.] power”? Does that make sense? And what the hell are weevils???

But that Ignatius and his headline writers can not decide and label what his piece is really about is not the issue here. That comes in the last paragraph which compares the demise of the Soviet Union under Gorbachev with the United States:

Returning to Gorbachev, the paradox is that, although he was right in trying to change an outmoded, overburdened system, he didn’t foresee the consequences. He thought he could pull on a few stray threads without unraveling the sweater. The analogy is unfair, in that Soviet power was malign whereas U.S. hegemony has generally been positive. But a common theme is that repositioning a superpower is a tricky business.

Mr. Ignatius obviously does not know the definition of “hegemony:

he·gem·o·ny

[hi-jem–uh-nee, hej–uh-moh-nee] 

noun, plural he·gem·o·nies.

1.

leadership or predominant influence exercised by one nation over others, as in a confederation.

2.

leadership; predominance.

3.

(especially among smaller nations) aggression or expansionism by large nations in an effort to achieve world domination.

The world is not a confederation and the U.S. is not in any agreed upon leadership of the world. But the third definition fits: Hegemony and striving for it by a large nation is aggression. And the claim that U.S. hegemonic aggression has “generally been positive” is an oxymoron, a contradiction in itself.

For whom has U.S.hegemony “generally been positive”? For all those people killed in Vietnam? For Iraqis? For the next of kin of those “mistakenly” killed 14 Yemenis and those 22 wounded by U.S. drones and missiles while on their way to a wedding?

The U.S. position is in decline because people like Mr. Ignatius are incapable to see the U.S. aggressive hegemonic aspirations as what they are and like most people outside the United States do see them. Ignatius would likely respond that he is well traveled and knows the world. But small talking with some billionaire oil-sheiks dictators who’s position depend on U.S. military power will certainly not give the correct impression.

The first open sign of a change of U.S. policy towards supporting the Assad government in Syria came from Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker who advised to talk to Assad. Now the former CIA chief General Hayden says that Assad winning would be the best geopolitical outcome of the conflict. The BBC, which so far acted as a reliable pro-insurgency propaganda outlet, is now asking if it is Time to rethink a future with Assad?

"Someone has got to bite the bullet and say Assad stays," says Prof Joshua Landis, Director of the Centre of Middle Eastern Studies at Oklahoma University whose views are frequently sought by policy makers in Washington.

"We don't have another game in town."

Professor "Aleppo has fallen" Landis should notice that China, Russia and Iran, as well as this site, have been saying this all along. Anyway. As some regard Landis as an expert his change of mind will be noticed in the State Department and the White House.

Attempts by the U.S. to try to talk to the Islamist Front can not be taken seriously:

The Obama administration is willing to consider supporting an expanded Syrian rebel coalition that would include Islamist groups, provided the groups are not allied with al-Qaeda and agree to support upcoming peace talks in Geneva, a senior U.S. official said Thursday.

In addition, the official said, the Americans would like the Islamic Front groups to return U.S. vehicles, communications gear and other non-lethal equipment they seized last weekend from warehouses at the Syria-Turkey border.

The Americans would also like a pink pony.

Those Islamists will not agree to any conditions Washington will ask for and to request that the weapons, ammunition and cars the Front has stolen from the Free Syrian Army are given back just shows that there is no serious opening.

But while the wind in official Washington turns, clandestine efforts to further weaken the Syrian government may well continue. The Saudis are buying some 15,000 new anti-tank weapons and their current stock will be unloaded onto their Islamic Front mercenaries in Syria. It is inconceivable that this could be done without intimate knowledge and help from the CIA and U.S. special operations. It may still take several more month until such efforts, now largely done to prep up U.S. leverage in the Geneva talks, will be ended.

Supproting the new momentum the UN report (pdf) on the usage of chemical weapons in Syria is out and the results will put many more doubts on the Obama administration's allegations that the Syrian government was responsible for those:

Cont. reading: Syria: U.S. Moving Towards Supporting Assad

On November 24 the P5+1 and the Islamic Republic of Iran agreed on a temporary deal about the Iranian nuclear program and the sanctions against it. The agreed upon Joint Plan Of Action (pdf) includes this clause in the Elements of a first step which both sides are supposed to have by now implemented:

In return, the E3/EU+3 would undertake the following voluntary measures:

• Pause efforts to further reduce Iran's crude oil sales, enabling Iran's current customers to purchase their current average amounts of crude oil. Enable the repatriation of an agreed amount of revenue held abroad. For such oil sales, suspend the EU and U.S. sanctions on associated insurance and transportation services.

• Suspend U.S. and EU sanctions on:

• Iran's petrochemical exports, as well as sanctions on associated services

• …

• The U.S. Administration, acting consistent with the respective roles of the President and the Congress, will refrain from imposing new nuclear-related sanctions.

Today the United States broke the deal by imposing additional sanctions on Iran. There are now new sanctions against 4 persons, 12 companies and 36 reflagged ships many of them linked to Iran's oil sales and associated services.

Just two weeks ago the Obama administration had warned that new sanctions would thwart diplomatic talks with Iran:

Secretary of State John Kerry videotaped a message to members of Congress warning against any new sanctions during the six-month period of talks foreseen by a deal struck last weekend in Geneva.
…
The White House echoed the message, warning that any "additional sanctions before this diplomatic window could be pursued would undermine our credibility about the goal of these sanctions."
…
New sanctions would "violate the spirit" of the interim agreement and, [State Department spokeswoman] Psaki warned Tuesday, could divide the parties to the deal "because other countries would think that the United States is not living up to our end of the bargain in terms of giving the negotiations a chance."

Two days ago the undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence at the Treasury Department David Cohen wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the U.S. would continue to "enforce current sanction":

To disrupt and disable those facilitating Iran's nuclear and missile programs, we will identify front companies, evaders and malefactors and sanction them. Along with our partners across the U.S. government, my team at Treasury has done so more than 600 times in the last several years. This will continue unabated.

This may be an attempt to stop new sanction legislation pushed for by the Israel lobby in the U.S. Congress. But the Israel-firsters will push for war no matter what the Obama administration does. They will ignore this move – or even see it as weakness – and they will push stronger.

There are now new persons, new companies and new ships on the just published new sanction list. The ship sanctions and some of the company sanctions clearly aim at hindering oil exports. I doubt that the people of Iran, especially those who are against any deal, will see these as enforcement of current sanctions.  They and other countries will see these new sanction designations as a break of the letter and spirit of the Joint Plan Of Action.

These new sanctions are exactly what the Obama adminsitration warned of just two weeks ago. They are  a confirmation that the U.S. does not want a deal. But it wants Iran to be seen the party that steps away from the current agreement. I doubt, given the new sanctions the U.S. now published, that such a plan will work.

Why is Tom Shanker writing this nonsense and why is the New York Times publishing it?

AL UDEID AIR BASE, Qatar — Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel’s visit to the advanced air operations center here this week was not just a stop at an important outpost of the United States military. It was also a major step forward for Pentagon transparency.

The highly classified American facility, officially called the Combined Air and Space Operations Center, coordinated all of the attack and surveillance missions for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — and would be equally critical if an American president decided that only bombs and missiles could halt Iran’s nuclear ambitions. It hosts liaison officers from 30 allies in Europe and the Persian Gulf.

Until this week, however, its location was carefully guarded by the Pentagon and the Qatari government, out of concerns from both about sensitivities to its presence.

That Al Udeid is a central command headquarter and the operations center for Afghanistan and other wars in the area has been widely known for over a decade. There was absolutely nothing secret about it. It is mentioned on many Defense Department and miltary units’ websites and the Global Security piece on it is years old.

A search on the NYT website list 92 results for “AL UDEID AIR BASE”. The NYT even officially announced its creation starting September 2002 and detailed coverage continued over several major stories (see samples below).

So why is Hagel announcing such nonsense and why is the NYT printing it?

Cont. reading: What Is This “Secret” Nonsense On Al Udeid About?

On Friday the Al-Qaeda Light™ Islamist Front in Syria took over the headquarter and warehouses of the U.S. proxy force – the Supreme Military Council. The head of the SMC, General Idris first fled to Turkey and then to Doha, Qatar. The Unites States and Great Britain claim to have stopped providing 'non-lethal' aid to the insurgency in North Syria. Turkey is said to have closed its border to Syria though there is some doubt about that:

One Western diplomat expressed doubt that the Turkish government was fully cooperating with Western efforts to staunch the flow of fighters. "We are still experiencing operational difficulties, although we have seen signs that it is improving. As to whether a ‘shift’ ever occurred, that is still an open question,” the diplomat says.

The U.S. claims it still has to learn what actually was stolen from its 'non-lethal' aid but the Free Syrian Army certainly knows its losses. The cache on 'non-lethal' aid captured by the Islamic Front was indeed significant:

[A senior FSA Supreme Military Council official] said that the Islamic Front raided a total of ten warehouses belonging to the Western-backed umbrella group and seized a significant arsenal of weaponry, including 2,000 AK-47 rifles, 1,000 assorted arms—including M79 Osa rocket launchers, rocket-propelled grenades, and 14.5mm heavy machine guns—in addition to more than 200 tons of ammunition. At least 100 FSA military vehicles were also taken in the attack.

U.S. lethal and 'non-lethal' aid is still flowing, though now mainly through Jordan, and Turkey is silently keeping up its support for AlQaeda in Syria and Iraq. The U.S. never had qualms with using Islamist proxy forces. It is in talks with the Islamist Front and I doubt that it is retracting from its general plan of destroying Syria. The ideological differences between the FSA, the Islamist Front and AlQaeda are anyway small – if they exist at all.

But the Free Syrian Army, which never really existed as a consistent fighting force force, and the Syrian Military Council are finished. The Islamic Front, sponsored mainly by Saudi Arabia, is now the main opposition to the Syrian state. The U.S. plans to present some alternative government structure to the Syrian government are finished too. The Islamist Front is not presentable as such. It has committed war crimes and kidnaps and kills journalists and the few civil opposition activists who actually exist. If the Geneva II talks, announced for January, actually happen there will be no one other than the current Syrian government who can claim legitimacy.

When Thomas Hegghammer and other 'experts' muses about the ideological motives of the foreign Islamist fighters in Syria they miss the most profane but most important one: money. The Islamist Front and other  fighters are offered and paid relatively high wages by the various clandestine outlets in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and elsewhere:

One Kuwait-based effort raised money to equip 12,000 rebel fighters for $2,500 each.

For many unemployed young men in the Middle East and elsewhere $2,500 is more than they can hope to make anywhere else. The ideological motivation of violent Jihad is only a smoke screen to disguise that these are foreign sponsored mercenaries.

When the Gulf oil dictatorships call for 'foreign militias' to leave Syria they of course do not refer to those they are paying themselves. They still have illusions that their mercenaries could actually win but they lost the battle for Damascus and will lose the war over Syria. Soon the blow back will come to their countries.

The United States Secretary of State seems to have some problems differentiating between democracies and dictatorships as well as protests against these.

Earlier this year the Egyptian army disposed the legitimately elected Morsi government. Protests in various roads and plazas against that coup were brutally suppressed.

In an television interview in Pakistan, Mr Kerry said: "The military was asked to intervene by millions and millions of people, all of whom were afraid of a descendance into chaos, into violence.

"And the military did not take over, to the best of our judgement – so far. To run the country, there's a civilian government. In effect, they were restoring democracy."

Over 600 largely peaceful protesters were killed, many wounded and many incarcerated on dubious grounds by the Egyptian army and police in the crackdown against sit-ins and other protests against the military coup.

In Kiev some thousands of protesters, including neo-nazis, rally against the legitimately elected government. They not only protested but blockaded, stormed and occupied public buildings. Not so peaceful protesters used bulldozers to break up police lines. Today, after waiting three weeks, riot police started to clear the buildings and blockades.

Evan Hill, a journalist who regularly reports from Egypt, commented:

Interesting how little violence cops in Kiev are using, at least as far as I've seen.

The NYT reports:

Officers in helmets pushed through the crowds with shields but did not use the truncheons hanging at their sides.

As the security forces spread throughout the square, a large crowd of protesters brandishing sticks, clubs, metal rods and anything else they could find massed in front of the Trade Unions building, which leaders of the demonstration had turned into the headquarters of what they call the National Resistance.

U.S. Secretary of State Kerry released the following statement:

The United States expresses its disgust with the decision of Ukrainian authorities to meet the peaceful protest in Kyiv’s Maidan Square with riot police, bulldozers, and batons, rather than with respect for democratic rights and human dignity. This response is neither acceptable nor does it befit a democracy.

Note:

Killing of largely peaceful protesters against a coup in which the military deposed the democratic elected government is "restoring democracy".

Removing not-so-peaceful protesters who attempt a coup against a dully elected democratic government is "disgusting".