Last Call For The Burden Of Proof

Over the weekend Seymour Hersh unloaded accusations of a massive cover-up by the Obama administration over the events of the death of Osama bin Laden. Fair warning: it's a hefty read. but let me save you a lot  of trouble: his conclusion is that Pakistani intelligence (ISI) knew exactly where bin Laden was, the US knew the ISI knew, and everyone lied about it.

And the story is complete bullcrap, too.  First, Hersh's side:

The most blatant lie was that Pakistan’s two most senior military leaders – General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, chief of the army staff, and General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, director general of the ISI – were never informed of the US mission. This remains the White House position despite an array of reports that have raised questions, including one by Carlotta Gall in the New York Times Magazine of 19 March 2014. Gall, who spent 12 years as the Times correspondent in Afghanistan, wrote that she’d been told by a ‘Pakistani official’ that Pasha had known before the raid that bin Laden was in Abbottabad. The story was denied by US and Pakistani officials, and went no further. In his book Pakistan: Before and after Osama (2012), Imtiaz Gul, executive director of the Centre for Research and Security Studies, a think tank in Islamabad, wrote that he’d spoken to four undercover intelligence officers who – reflecting a widely held local view – asserted that the Pakistani military must have had knowledge of the operation. The issue was raised again in February, when a retired general, Asad Durrani, who was head of the ISI in the early 1990s, told an al-Jazeera interviewer that it was ‘quite possible’ that the senior officers of the ISI did not know where bin Laden had been hiding, ‘but it was more probable that they did [know]. And the idea was that, at the right time, his location would be revealed. And the right time would have been when you can get the necessary quid pro quo – if you have someone like Osama bin Laden, you are not going to simply hand him over to the United States.’ 

This spring I contacted Durrani and told him in detail what I had learned about the bin Laden assault from American sources: that bin Laden had been a prisoner of the ISI at the Abbottabad compound since 2006; that Kayani and Pasha knew of the raid in advance and had made sure that the two helicopters delivering the Seals to Abbottabad could cross Pakistani airspace without triggering any alarms; that the CIA did not learn of bin Laden’s whereabouts by tracking his couriers, as the White House has claimed since May 2011, but from a former senior Pakistani intelligence officer who betrayed the secret in return for much of the $25 million reward offered by the US, and that, while Obama did order the raid and the Seal team did carry it out, many other aspects of the administration’s account were false.

Hersh lays out his theory, and cites a number of former intelligence sources for his work, nearly all of them anonymous sources.

That's where the problem comes in, as CNN's Peter Bergen dismantles Hersh pretty cleanly.

Hersh's account of the bin Laden raid is a farrago of nonsense that is contravened by a multitude of eyewitness accounts, inconvenient facts and simple common sense. 

Let's start with the claim that the only shots fired at the Abbottabad compound were the ones that killed bin Laden. That ignores the fact that two SEALs on the mission, Matt Bissonnette, author of "No Easy Day," and Robert O'Neill have publicly said that there were a number of other people killed that night, including bin Laden's two bodyguards, one of his sons and one of the bodyguard's wives. Their account is supplemented by many other U.S. officials who have spoken on the record to myself or to other journalists. 

I was the only outsider to visit the Abbottabad compound where bin Laden lived before the Pakistani military demolished it. The compound was trashed, littered almost everywhere with broken glass and several areas of it were sprayed with bullet holes where the SEALS had fired at members of bin Laden's entourage and family, or in one case exchanged fire with one of his bodyguards. The evidence at the compound showed that many bullets were fired the night of bin Laden's death. 

Common sense would tell you that the idea that Saudi Arabia was paying for bin Laden's expenses while he was living in Abbottabad is simply risible. Bin Laden's principal goal was the overthrow of the Saudi royal family as a result of which his Saudi citizenship was revoked as far back as 1994. 

Why would the Saudis pay for the upkeep of their most mortal enemy? Indeed, why wouldn't they get their close allies, the Pakistanis, to look the other way as they sent their assassins into Pakistan to finish him off? 

Common sense would also tell you that if the Pakistanis were holding bin Laden and the U.S. government had found out this fact, the easiest path for both countries would not be to launch a U.S. military raid into Pakistan but would have been to hand bin Laden over quietly to the Americans. 

Indeed, the Pakistanis have done this on several occasions with a number of other al Qaeda leaders such as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the operational commander of 9/11, who was handed over to U.S. custody after a raid in the Pakistani city of Rawalpindi in 2003. So too was Abu Faraj al-Libi, another key al Qaeda leader who was similarly handed over by the Pakistanis to U.S. custody two years later.

Oh, and it gets much worse for Hersh's narrative.  Somebody fed Hersh the line he wanted, and he ran with it. Gergen makes much more sense.  This is a hit job on arguably President Obama's most powerful first-term foreign policy accomplishment, and it comes just as the 2016 campaign is picking up?

Max Fisher at Vox also has serious problems with Hersh's story.

Perhaps the most concerning problem with Hersh's story is not the sourcing but rather the internal contradictions in the narrative he constructs. 

Most blatant, Hersh's entire narrative turns on a secret deal, in which the US promised Pakistan increased military aid and a "freer hand in Afghanistan." In fact, the exact opposite of this occurred, with US military aid dropping and US-Pakistan cooperation in Afghanistan plummeting as both sides feuded bitterly for years after the raid. 

Hersh explains this seemingly fatal contradiction by suggesting the deal fell apart due to miscommunication between the Americans and Pakistanis. But it's strange to argue that the dozens of officials on both sides would be competent enough to secretly plan and execute a massive international ruse, and then to uphold their conspiracy for years after the fact, but would not be competent enough to get on the same page about aid delivery. 

And there are more contradictions. Why, for example, would the Pakistanis insist on a fake raid that would humiliate their country and the very military and intelligence leaders who supposedly instigated it? 

A simpler question: why would Pakistan bother with the ostentatious fake raid at all, when anyone can imagine a dozen simpler, lower-risk, lower-cost ways to do this?

Naah.  Sy Hersh can have a goddamn seat. Both Fisher and Bergen make mincemeat of him.

Making A Moose Of Things

I can't think of anything more banal and bone-tiring than the thought of Sarah Palin speaking at the annual NRA convention but here we are.

During a speech at the National Rifle Association's annual convention on Saturday, Palin, also the 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee, criticized President Obama's administration for treating suspected terrorists too gingerly.

Discussing "enemies who would utterly annihilate America - they who'd obviously have information on plots," she said, "Oh, but you can't offend them, can't make them feel uncomfortable, not even a smidgen."

"Well, if I were in charge," she continued, as the audience erupted in applause at the prospect, "they would know that waterboarding is how we baptize terrorists."

She criticized the administration for pursuing a national security strategy that, in her estimation, pokes "our allies in the eye, calling them adversaries, instead of putting the fear of God in our enemies."

Palin also rallied the pro-gun audience to continue protecting their right to bear arms, saying their efforts are "needed now more than ever because every day, we are seeing more and more efforts to strip away our Second Amendment rights."

She warned that the president and his administration were trying to enact gun control to keep a firmer grip on the American people, and she urged the roughly 13,000 NRA faithful in the crowd to fight back.

"If you control oil, you control an economy. If you control money, you control commerce," she said. "But if you control arms, you control the people, and that is what they're trying to do."

So awesome, in a Palin administration we'd be shooting our rifles all day and torturing all the bad guys all night.  Big American party time! Yeah, President Obama was really a softy when he had Seal Team Six put a bullet in Osama's brain.  Oh well.

Glad she'll never be president.

Four Versus Thousands

John Hinderaker at Power Line is outraged, OUTRAGED I TELL YOU that President Obama did nothing to stop the BENGHAZI MASSACRE DEBACLE and HAS HE NO SHAME?

The White House admitted today that President Obama made no phone calls–none, zero–on the evening of September 11, 2012, during the seven or eight hours when Americans were being murdered in Benghazi. He didn’t talk to Leon Panetta, or any military personnel, or Hillary Clinton. What was he doing that night? We may never know; perhaps writing the speech that he gave at a campaign event the next day in Las Vegas.

Information on Benghazi has to be pried out of the administration with a crowbar; Lindsay Graham got the White House to identify the calls that Obama made that night–none–by holding up Chuck Hagel’s confirmation. Graham says he will put a hold on John Brennan, too, until he gets more facts on Benghazi from the stonewalling White House. Good for him.

The administration’s quiescence in the face of the terrorist attack in Benghazi has always seemed inexplicable. Why didn’t anyone try to help the besieged Americans over the course of that long night? Leon Panetta and General Martin Dempsey testified on Benghazi before the Senate Armed Services Committee last week, but their account made no sense. They said that no help was dispatched to try to save the Americans because 1) the State Department never requested it, and 2) there wasn’t enough time. But there was plenty of time, seven or eight hours before the last two Americans were finally overcome.

Hey Johnny?  I've got seven words for you.

"Bin Laden determined to Strike in US".

You see, when the previous President went AWOL, thousands of US civilians died and we got stuck in two decade-plus long wars where hundreds of thousands more died.   The current President is the one who cleaned up that particular Bin Laden mess and is still cleaning up after it.

And you bring up four guys after that happened?  You're not even worth the time to mock, man.  Go away.  Shoo.

Seriously Unfinished Bush Business

The NY Times drops this op-ed from Kurt Eichenwald, detailing a parttern of how intelligence on the 9/11 attacks were ignored because the crazy neocon assholes in the Bush administration thought it was -- get this now -- disinformation to distract us from the real threat, Saddam Hussein.

No really.  That's the deal.

The direct warnings to Mr. Bush about the possibility of a Qaeda attack began in the spring of 2001. By May 1, the Central Intelligence Agency told the White House of a report that “a group presently in the United States” was planning a terrorist operation. Weeks later, on June 22, the daily brief reported that Qaeda strikes could be “imminent,” although intelligence suggested the time frame was flexible.

But some in the administration considered the warning to be just bluster. An intelligence official and a member of the Bush administration both told me in interviews that the neoconservative leaders who had recently assumed power at the Pentagon were warning the White House that the C.I.A. had been fooled; according to this theory, Bin Laden was merely pretending to be planning an attack to distract the administration from Saddam Hussein, whom the neoconservatives saw as a greater threat. Intelligence officials, these sources said, protested that the idea of Bin Laden, an Islamic fundamentalist, conspiring with Mr. Hussein, an Iraqi secularist, was ridiculous, but the neoconservatives’ suspicions were nevertheless carrying the day. 

In response, the C.I.A. prepared an analysis that all but pleaded with the White House to accept that the danger from Bin Laden was real. 

“The U.S. is not the target of a disinformation campaign by Usama Bin Laden,” the daily brief of June 29 read, using the government’s transliteration of Bin Laden’s first name. Going on for more than a page, the document recited much of the evidence, including an interview that month with a Middle Eastern journalist in which Bin Laden aides warned of a coming attack, as well as competitive pressures that the terrorist leader was feeling, given the number of Islamists being recruited for the separatist Russian region of Chechnya. 

And the C.I.A. repeated the warnings in the briefs that followed. Operatives connected to Bin Laden, one reported on June 29, expected the planned near-term attacks to have “dramatic consequences,” including major casualties. On July 1, the brief stated that the operation had been delayed, but “will occur soon.” Some of the briefs again reminded Mr. Bush that the attack timing was flexible, and that, despite any perceived delay, the planned assault was on track. 

Yet, the White House failed to take significant action. Officials at the Counterterrorism Center of the C.I.A. grew apoplectic. On July 9, at a meeting of the counterterrorism group, one official suggested that the staff put in for a transfer so that somebody else would be responsible when the attack took place, two people who were there told me in interviews. The suggestion was batted down, they said, because there would be no time to train anyone else. 

So, if this is all true, the neocons in the Bush administration were always, always, always going after war with Iraq, and they got it.  We kind of knew that already, so I don't see what this op-ed ultimately changes, but it's a nice reminder going into the election in two months that the same people now want open war with Iran.

You think Romney will stand up to stop them?   Sure he will.  Just like Bush did with Iraq, right?

The Greatest 9/11 Troll Poll Ever

I do love it when Tom Jensen and the Public Policy Polling crew stick in a completely bizarre question to ask a specific group of voters, and this week's Ohio poll was no exception as Nick Baumann at MoJo notes:

In what some (one guy on Twitter) have called "a stroke of comic genius," Public Policy Polling decided to ask Ohio Republicans who they thought "deserved more credit for the killing of Osama bin Laden: Barack Obama or Mitt Romney. In what some (my colleague Tim Murphy) have called "the greatest thing ever," a full 15 percent of Ohio Republicans surveyed said Romney deserved more credit than the president. Another 47 percent said they were "unsure." 

So, 62 percent of Ohio Republicans are pretty much Obama-hating dipsticks.  No "news" there.  Here's the interesting part:

The poll didn't offer an option for "the Navy SEALs" or "the troops," who undoubtedly would have blown out Romney and Obama if they were options. The news in this poll—as much as any one poll can be news—is that it found Obama leading Romney by five percentage points in Ohio. (The full poll results are here.) No Republican has ever won the presidency without winning Ohio. Here's a reality check on the state of the presidential race: Nate Silver, the New York Times' polling guru, now gives the president a nearly 80 percent chance of winning reelection.

But yeah, 62% of Ohio Republicans flat out refuse to give Obama credit for killing bin Laden.  You can fill in your own reasons as to why.

Mrs. Mojo Rice In (2016)

If the measure of the competition in 2016 is "Which speech at the GOP Convention was given by the the best liar" then Condi Rice is clearly the person to beat.

Rice began her speech by recalling the September 11 terrorist attacks, which lead to the invasion of Afghanistan.

“This young century has been a difficult one,” she said. “I will never forget the bright September day, standing at my desk in the White House, when my young assistant said that a plane had hit the World Trade Center — and then a second one — and a third, the Pentagon. And then the news of a fourth, driven into the ground by brave citizens that died so that many others would live. From that day on our sense of vulnerability and our understanding of security would be altered forever.”

Rice, who was deeply involved in the Iraq war, said that the world no longer had a clear idea of where America stood on international issues like nuclear weapons in Iran and the uprisings in Syria. She insisted the United States needed to reclaims its status as the custodian of world power.

“When our friends and our foes, alike, do not know the answer to that question — clearly and unambiguously — the world is a chaotic and dangerous place,” Rice continued. “The U.S. has since the end of World War II had an answer — we stand for free peoples and free markets, we are willing to support and defend them — we will sustain a balance of power that favors freedom.”

“And I know too that there is weariness — a sense that we have carried these burdens long enough,” she added. “But if we are not inspired to lead again, one of two things will happen — no one will lead and that will foster chaos — or others who do not share our values will fill the vacuum. My fellow Americans, we do not have a choice. We cannot be reluctant to lead — and one cannot lead from behind.”

Nowhere in the speech did she mention Osama Bin Laden.  But she quietly took the radical elements of the GOP to task towards the end, speaking to the "sensible center".  It really is too bad that the one sane Republican left in the GOP party hierarchy is a blood-drenched war criminal and inveterate liar.  Condi Rice is frightfully intelligent, which compounds all her many sins, denials, and oversights in allowing this country (if not actively leading us) into two bloody wars that never should have happened.  You can bet that if she's allowed anywhere near the halls of power again, tens of thousands will die and millions will suffer.  We're still paying for her "vision of leadership" more than a decade later.

Of the most dangerous people at the GOP Convention that I fear in 2016?  This dark-winged angel of death is at the top of the list.  For the GOP, she is a stark reminder that the Dubya era happened, something they've been pretending didn't.  There's a huge gap in US history for the GOP from the years 1790 to 1980 or so, and 8 years missing from 2000 to 2008.  All Republicans will ignore that first massive gap, but the second more recent one is something none of them can go near without being irradiated with Dubya's complete failures.  That's a huge anvil around her neck if she goes forward in 2016.

But there's no doubts she can never be allowed to be part of another President's administration again.  Hell, she should be rotting in The Hague if there were any justice on Earth.

Pretty clear that's not going to happen.

Knee Deep In Koch-A-Poo

What does a right wing foundation, legions of winger bloggers and your own hack author buy you for your Citizens united free speech money?  If you're the Koch brothers, you use the change in your couch to buy a "devastating new bombshell" that Barack Obama really didn't give the order to kill bin Laden and therefore deserves no credit.  Luckily, Hart Williams over at His Vorpal Sword is there to illuminate us all that the "bombshell" author is Richard Miniter, of not, one, not two, but three Koch brothers outfits:

Institute for Humane Studies is Charles Koch’s pet and first “foundation.” You know, like Americans for Prosperity and Freedomworks, both of which came from their original Koch parent “Citizens for a Sound Economy.”  Eric O’Keefe — currently heading the Sam Adams Alliance, and formerly President of Americans for Limited Government — sits on its board of directors.  The Competitive Enterprise Institute comes of the same ideological parentage. Here was their “journalism fellowship” awardee (cash) for 1995-1996: Michelle Malkin. CEI gives out a big award every year. In 2006  the winner was John Stossel (formerly of ABC now of Fox) and in 2001, it was Stephen Moore, then of the Cato Institute (Koch controlled) and founder of the “Club for Growth.” Now a Wall Street Journal editorial board member.

There's a shocker.  And we see what the Kochs are buying here:

Notice any pattern here? How about “Bin Laden was CLINTON’s FAULT!” followed by “We’re WINNING the war on terror!”

Now somehow Obama’s GETTING bin Laden is a bad thing, an accidental thing, a questionable thing.

Ham-handed swiftboating from an author of questionable objectivity with a long Koch employment and an ideological axe to grind.

And, of course, the professional character assassins at the Daily Caller (funded by Foster Friess) cite the pre-publication copy they’ve mysteriously acquired as a “BOMBSHELL REVELATION!”

Election coming up. Obama’s signature achievement in the “War on Terror” must be disparaged and destroyed. Book comes up with perfect timing from a “New York Times best-selling author.” You know, like Paris Hilton or Snooki or the Kardassian sisters.

Doesn't matter if it's true or sourceable or corroborated.  But a couple months of "Was Barack Obama really responsible for making the call to get Osama bin Laden?  A new book claims..." on all the "news" channels followed by GOP pit bulls growling "How dare he take credit!" and watch the swing voters fall away.

We're knee deep in Koch-a-poo and it's rising higher by the day.  Pretty soon it'll be "Remember when Dubya killed bin Laden after that Obama guy lost the Twin Towers?"

Laugh.  The people who'll believe that?  Their votes count just as much as yours do.  The Kochs know that.  They're counting on it, in fact.

Have you registered anyone to vote this year?  Time's running out.  We need you out there to help fight this, and the only way we win is by voting.

While we still can, of course.

Last Call

Conservatives are screaming themselves hoarse over President Obama even mentioning that Bin Laden was turned into compost on his watch.  Now a number of Navy SEAL vets are attacking their Commander-in-Chief, saying he deserves zero credit.

Ryan Zinke, a former Commander in the US Navy who spent 23 years as a SEAL and led a SEAL Team 6 assault unit, said: ‘The decision was a no brainer. I applaud him for making it but I would not overly pat myself on the back for making the right call.

‘I think every president would have done the same. He is justified in saying it was his decision but the preparation, the sacrifice - it was a broader team effort.’

 Mr Zinke, who is now a Republican state senator in Montana, added that Mr. Obama was exploiting bin Laden’s death for his re-election bid.  ‘The President and his administration are positioning him as a war president using the SEALs as ammunition. It was predictable.’ 

Oh, so you mean the headline should be "Republican veterans attack Commander-in-Chief for making correct call."  Now, when have we run across Republican veterans going after a sitting CiC?

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) continued to hammer the Obama re-election team over its use of the death of Osama bin Laden in a campaign commercial, echoing Mitt Romney's statement that any president - including Jimmy Carter - would have made the same call.

“I say any president, Jimmy Carter, anybody, any president would have, obviously, under those circumstances, done the same thing.  And to now take credit for something that any president would do is indicative of take over campaign we're under -- we're -- we're seeing…So all I can say is that this is going to be a very rough campaign," McCain told Fox News in an interview set to air Monday night. "And I've had the great honor of serving in the company of heroes.  And, you know the thing about heroes, they don't brag.”

If the President is Barack Obama, he gets nothing.   The black guy should be impeached for even mentioning the fact he did something that Bush didn't do for, oh, seven plus years.  After all, when Bush didn't kill or capture Bin Laden, he kept us safe through his failure.  These guys keep bringing up Jimmy Carter as a mantra.

Really?

Remember, Republicans want you to think that getting rid of the guy who was responsible for killing 3,000 New Yorkers was a failure on the President's part, and want you to punish him in November for it.  That's where we are right now with our "patriotic" friends on the right.  He's guilty of making George W. Bush look bad, and that's an unpardonable sin.

Last Call

Please recall that the last time we had a Republican in the White House, it was stuffed to the gills with psychopathic nutjobs like CIA black ops man Jose "Big Boy Pants" Rodriguez here, who spent years justifying outright torture of suspects after the fact.

Jose Rodriguez: For the first time in our history, we had an enemy come into our homeland and kill 3,000 people. I mean, that was a huge deal. People jumping from the towers to their death. The people running away from the cloud of dust, terrified out of their mind. This was a threat. And we had to throw everything at it.

Which is why Jose Rodriguez says that when he ran the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, he came up with the idea of employing harsh interrogation techniques. And 10 years later, he feels he still has to justify their use.

Lesley Stahl: You had no qualms? We used to consider some of them war crimes.

Jose Rodriguez: We made some al Qaeda terrorists with American blood on their hands uncomfortable for a few days. But we did the right thing for the right reason. And the right reason was to protect the homeland and to protect American lives. So yes, I had no qualms.

Rodriguez spent 31 years in the CIA's Clandestine Service where spies are revered as "fighter jocks". He rose thru the ranks, eventually running covert operations as head of the Latin America division. When al Qaeda struck on 9/11, he'd had no experience in counterterrorism or the Middle East. But he wanted "in" on the war on terror, and went to the CIA's Counterterrorist Center, where the main objective was to stop another attack on the U.S. homeland.

And he went all in, folks.  Do  Watch the whole thing. These guys? Crazier than a warthog on fire.  Imagine what will happen when they take us to war with Iran for another decade, and what we'll justify after the fact when we round up whomever for even more indefinite detention?  And yeah, I'm aware of the fact we're still holding plenty of folks now under the Obama administration, but for the most part those programs have been dismantled.  Do you think that will be the case if Romney's elected?

As for the Big Boy Pants crack, well, that's from Rodriguez himself:

Jose Rodriguez: We needed to get everybody in government to put their big boy pants on and provide the authorities that we needed.

Lesley Stahl: Their big boy pants on--

Jose Rodriguez: Big boy pants. Let me tell you, I had had a lot of experience in the agency where we had been left to hold the bag. And I was not about to let that happen for the people that work for me.

All about the pants, man.  All about the pants.

Zombie Ghost Pirate Terrorists Could Kill You Like That, Bob

Ten years after the Transportation Security Administration was created, Republicans have a bunch of conflicting, hypocritical nonsense to helpfully spout in order for you to approve of them grifting the system they made in the first place.

Reps. John Mica (R-Fla.) and Paul Broun (R-Ga.) want to give the Transportation Security Administration a series of drastic reforms for its birthday this week.

Days before the 10th anniversary of the TSA's founding, and also one of the busiest travel periods of the year, the GOP lawmakers took the agency to task Wednesday using a new report titled “A Decade Later: A Call for TSA Reform.”

"Americans have paid $60 billion funding TSA and they are no safer today than they were before 9/11," Broun said during a news conference at Washington's Ronald Reagan National Airport announcing the report. Mica, who wrote the the law that established the TSA in the wake of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, agreed. Despite the fact that there have not been any incidents since that day, the TSA has not made flying safer, he said.

"We are safer today, but not because of TSA," Mica said. "It's because the American people will not allow an aircraft to be taken over. We saw on Flight 93, and almost every instance of a successful thwarting since, it's been the passengers, the pilots and the crew."

I'm no huge fan of the TSA but the notion that the guy who "wrote the law establishing the TSA" saying we're no safer now than we were on September 10, 2010 is idiocy.  The plan here is obvious, defund the TSA to the point it can't do its job anymore, declare government unable to work, then privatize airport security by farming out everything to contractors to "save money" and create profit for the GOP's corporate masters.  Should anything happen to an airplane, blame the Dems.

The "government can't possibly work" gameplan is in full effect here, just like similar plans to rid us of the Departments of Education, Labor, Energy, yadda yadda.  Why, Zombie Ghost Pirate Bin Laden could steal the treasure of Monkey Island kill your entire family at any time.  Government has failed you again!


Besides, real Americans just beat up any terrorists they see and don't need to rely on others to protect themselves.  Get to work making yourself safer, citizen.  Alternately, we'd like to sell you Zombie Ghost Pirate Terrorist repelling rock for a nominal fee...

Last Call

Looks like the Obama administration is moving on bringing troops home from Afghanistan, but even McClatchy is warning that any drawdowns come with a metric crapton of caveats:

President Barack Obama is expected to unveil his U.S. troop reduction plan for Afghanistan next week, buoyed by assessments by senior defense officials that the U.S. war strategy is headed in the right direction and has weakened the Taliban-led insurgency.


But some U.S. officials in Washington and in Afghanistan are concerned that many of the gains aren't sustainable, and conditions are too fragile to allow for the "significant" troop drawdown that Obama is being pressured to begin next month by some top aides and growing numbers of lawmakers of both parties.

Violence is worse, many Taliban appear to have moved elsewhere rather than fight U.S. forces surged into the south, the Afghan government and security forces remain far from capable, and counter-insurgency cooperation with Pakistan is all but frozen, these U.S. officials said.

"The situation is terrible. Has there been a qualitative change that disadvantages the opposition and advantages the (U.S.-led) coalition? I don't buy it," said a U.S. official, who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to discuss the issue publicly. "The Taliban remains a clever, adaptive enemy."

Not even "White House officials" or "Pentagon officials" but the all-purpose "US officials" which basically means "This is so far off the record that it smells like dead fish."   Somebody's hell-bent on raining on the "let's bring them home" parade, even with bin Laden dead.

It'll be interesting to see where this all shakes out.  This makes me question just how bi-partisan the effort by Republicans really is about bringing troops home, too.  In fact, this seems like a concerted effort to both minimize the success of bin Laden's death, and to pin the "continued failure in Afghanistan" on Obama, something right up the Republicans' alley for 2012.

I'm moderately surprised McClatchy is playing ball with this, but there you are.

Pak-ed With Questions, Part 4

Needless to say with the death of OBL, Pakistan Islamists are not happy.

Two American officials were saved by their armored vehicle Friday when it was hit by a bomb in the northwestern city of Peshawar, in an apparent revenge attack for the killing of Osama bin Laden.


It was the first assault on American interests in Pakistan since the May 2nd U.S. special forces operation that found and killed bin Laden in a town in the north of the country.

The two U.S. government employees were on their way from home to work at the U.S. Consulate in Peshawar, at about 8:30 a.m., when the bomb exploded. There were different accounts on whether the bomb was carried on a motorbike, in a parked car or planted on the road, said U.S. embassy spokesman Alberto Rodriguez.

“The folks in the car saw a motorcycle drive up and then boom. But maybe this guy (on the bike) was in the wrong place at the wrong time,” said Rodriguez. “Right now, it’s not clear if the bomb was in a vehicle, on a body, or planted.”

I'm honestly surprised it took them this long to start going after American civilian personnel in Pakistan, but there's going to be a lot more of this, I should think.  I wouldn't exactly count on the Pakistan government to be very forthcoming in additional information on militants, either.  We're effectively on our own there for now.  Officials in Punjab, Pakistan's largest province, have already canceled US foreign aid contracts in protest of the operation to get OBL in Abbotabad and are calling on the entire country to follow suit.

"We have canceled six MOUs (memorandums of understanding) with the United States in the fields of health, education and solid waste management," said Rana Sanaullah, Law Minister of Punjab, the country's most populated province and its political nerve center.

"We have conveyed their concerned departments about our decision. This is our protest against the Abbottabad incident."

The Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) opposition party, which rules Punjab, has called for a review of the country's ties with Washington, urging the central government to reduce reliance on foreign aid.

Considering there are plenty of folks in Congress who agree that Pakistan should be getting less or no foreign aid, I'm thinking that a lot of contracts could get "reviewed" to death in short order here.  Keep an eye on this.

Pak-ed With Questions, Part 3

Things between the United States and Pakistan have gotten considerably worse since the raid May 1 that ended OBL, and Pakistan is delivering sharp warnings to President Obama to back off...or else.

Amid a deepening crisis between the two uneasy partners, Washington pressed for access to three of the dead Al-Qaeda chief's widows, who it believes may have valuable information on bin Laden's movements and on the terror group.

In a further sign of tension over last week's daring covert raid in Abbottabad, the New York Times meanwhile reported that Pakistani authorities had retaliated by leaking the name of the CIA chief in Islamabad to the media.

Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, under intense domestic pressure over his country's failure to detect the stealth US special forces raid, earlier hit out at American unilateralism and warned against future US action.

He also insisted Pakistan reserves the right to "retaliate with full force," although he stopped short of spelling out what, if anything, would be done if US President Barack Obama ordered another unilateral anti-terror raid.

But at the White House, spokesman Jay Carney said Obama was convinced he had done the right thing by sending in special forces at the dead of night in a raid in which bin Laden was killed in his Pakistani lair.

"We obviously take the statements and concerns of the Pakistani government seriously, but we also do not apologize for the action that we took, that this president took," Carney said.

Pakistan ratting out the CIA station chief in Islamabad should have been expected, but the rest of the chest beating is clearly a sign that Pakistan expects the status quo to continue, including the country receiving billions in foreign aid from the US as well as military aid.

On the other hand, that's going to be a tough sell unless Pakistan gives us somebody to blame for bin Laden hiding in the country for six years plus while calling us a valuable ally.  The negotiations on the price of the final bill will be interesting, but in the end I don't see how much will change between the US and Pakistan...co-dependent relationships are like that.

Rice-A-Phony, Part 2

Undeterred after her shellacking at the hands of Lawrence O'Donnell on Thursday night, Condi Rice went on CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS on Sunday morning to deliver more "Well we were the ones really responsible for getting bin Laden."

“Now it is absolutely the case that the United States of America has been fighting this war for at least ten years, and really a bit longer,” she said. “And so this is a victory across presidencies. It’s a – it’s a victory for having learned more how to fight the counter terrorism fight. But there’s no doubt that as President Bush had to make some very, very hard calls that frankly helped to set this up, President Obama had to make some very difficult calls to bring it to conclusion.”

Yes, Bush had to make very, very difficult calls to help "set this up" like giving up the search for bin Laden in 2006.   Zakaria doesn't challenge this notion at all, even though he led off the interview by noting that it wasn't a top priority until after President Obama restarted the hunt.  Condi then immediately lies and says it was a top priority, that they spent every minute trying to get bin Laden, and she then even mentions that the CIA had a unit "dedicated" to bin Laden.

This is the same Alec Station unit of bin Laden hunters that Bush shut down in 2006. Zakaria says nothing and lets that massive lie slide.  Bush gave up on the hunt for bin Laden, period.

Astounding.  This was a fastball over the plate and Zakaria won't even swing.  Liberal media my ass.

The Return Of The Nameless One

Someone jump-started Dick Cheney's battery and he emerged to complain about the President picking up after his mess.

Former Vice President Dick Cheney said Sunday that President Barack Obama should put waterboarding back on the table.

Intelligence derived from the Bush-era enhanced interrogation program "probably" contributed to the of death Osama bin Laden, Cheney told Fox News' Chris Wallace.

"Which raises the question, if we were to now capture another new high value target, which is certainly more likely given this apparent trove of information that they recovered in bin Laden's compound, should the president reinstate enhanced interrogation including waterboarding?" Wallace asked.

"Well, I certainly would advocate it," Cheney replied. "I'd be a strong supporter of it."

"We went to a lot of trouble to find out what we could do, how far we could go, what was legal and so forth. Out of that emerged what we called enhanced interrogation. It worked. It provided some absolutely vital pieces of intelligence."

"It was a good program," he continued. "It was a legal program. It was not torture. I would strongly recommend we continue it."

You know, we've established that enhanced interrogation techniques goddamn torture didn't get us the info we needed to get bin Laden but regular interrogation techniques and smart fieldcraft did.  Cheney is flat out lying when he says it helped to capture OBL.  Let me repeat:  he's lying.  He wants us to now restart a program that did not yield any reliable intelligence towards getting bin Laden.

And like anyone at FOX News is going to call him on it.  But after all, this is what FOX News exists for:  the spreading of GOP propaganda, period.  You can tell the entire thing is falling apart at the seams, and the Republicans try desperately to claim total vindication for their sins.

Go home, Dick.  Nobody believes you anymore.

Home Movies Of The Damned

The CIA and Pentagon released a number of home videos taken of Osama bin Laden at his compound in Abbotabad, Pakistan and recovered in the raid that killed him last Sunday.

U.S. officials, who Saturday released five videos, emphasized the recordings and other materials seized at bin Laden's Pakistan compound show the terrorist still had a firm hand atthe tiller, managing strategic and tactical control of his organization, even as he stayed out of sight in Abbottabad.

The undated videos make clear bin Laden "remained active in al Qaeda terrorist propaganda operations, especially in shaping his own image," said a senior intelligence official granted anonymity under the ground rules of a briefing at the Pentagon.

Four of the clips show bin Laden, who was killed along with four others Monday by U.S. commandos, in more formal attire. No audio of the terrorist leader speaking accompanied the images.

The intelligence official said the audio was removed because it would be "inappropriate to spread the words of terrorists and propaganda messages, especially Osama bin Laden."

Besides the missing audio, the videos, according to the intelligence official, were not altered in any other way.

Still, the release of the home movies sends a message to those who doubted bin Laden was killed: Navy SEALs got footage that likely could have been held only by bin Laden at his hideout.

It may also have accomplished something else: diminishing the bin Laden mythology of invincibility.
CNN national security contributor Frances Townsend said U.S. officials "picked these videos pretty deliberately."

Portions are unflattering of bin Laden and reflect his vanity, Townsend said.

And yet as unflattering as the videos are, we still spent trillions of dollars as a direct result of our reaction to his attack on 9/11.  Victory does not get more Pyrrhic than that.

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz estimates that the price tag on the Iraq War alone will surpass $3 trillion. Afghanistan likely amounts to another trillion or two. Add in the build-up in homeland security spending since 9/11 and you’re looking at yet another trillion. And don’t forget the indirect costs of all this turmoil: The Federal Reserve, worried about a fear-induced recession, slashed interest rates after the attack on the World Trade Center, and then kept them low to combat skyrocketing oil prices, a byproduct of the war in Iraq. That decade of loose monetary policy may well have contributed to the credit bubble that crashed the economy in 2007 and 2008.

Then there’s the post-9/11 slowdown in the economy, the time wasted in airports, the foregone returns on investments we didn’t make, the rise in oil prices as a result of the Iraq War, the cost of rebuilding Ground Zero, health care for the first responders and much, much more.

But it isn’t quite right to say bin Laden cost us all that money. We decided to spend more than a trillion dollars on homeland security measures to prevent another attack. We decided to invade Iraq as part of a grand, post-9/11 strategy of Middle Eastern transformation. We decided to pass hundreds of billions of dollars in unpaid-for tax cuts and add an unpaid-for prescription drug benefit in Medicare while we were involved in two wars. And now, partially though not entirely because of these actions, we are deep in debt. Bin Laden didn’t — couldn’t — bankrupt us. He could only provoke us into bankrupting ourselves. And he came pretty close.

Here endeth the lesson.

Another Milepost On The Road To Oblivion

Presented here as is from Josh Marshall:

Andy Card, President Bush's former Chief of Staff, who helped oversee the epic 'Mission Accomplished' victory lap and jet fighter landing, says President Obama has "pounded his chest" too much over the success of the bin Laden raid and shown too much "pride."

Shame is reserved exclusively for Democrats concerned with actual reality, you see.

Rice-A-Phony

Lawrence O'Donnell has been steadily gaining my respect since taking over for Olbermann at MSNBC, and this interview with former Bush adviser Condi Rice on Thursday was amazing, if only in the clear fact that O'Donnell immediately pegged Rice's problem:



Rice refused to answer any of O'Donnell's questions based on what we knew now in 2011 about Iraq and Saddam Hussein, she kept going back to 2002 and 2003 and the pretty sad excuse of "Well at the time we did the right thing."  At one point Rice was so flustered she threatened to walk out of the interview, clearly unused to anyone actually asking her hard questions in the last eight years or so, and she resorted to treating O'Donnell with the tone usually reserved for an errant schoolchild on several occasions.

She spent the entire interview living in 2003, refusing to even consider that taking the focus off bin Laden in order to invade Iraq might have been a bad idea.  But we're supposed to give the lion's share of the credit for OBL's death to the folks that failed to stop bin Laden in the first place and then failed to catch him so we could go after Iraq?

Idiocy at its finest.

[UPDATE]  Steve M. in the comments gives us the FOX Nation headline:

"Condi Rice Manhandles Sputtering NBC News Anchor"

No shame.  No regret.  No remorse.  No goddamn clue.

And you're a terrorist sympathizer if you fail to believe for a millisecond that Bush was the greatest President this nation ever had.

Pak-ed With Questions, Part 2

There's still a number of issues with our relationship with Pakistan right now that need to be answered, and those answers only lead to a ton of additional questions and a whole lot of people are asking them right now.

Amazingly enough, it's Hot Air's Allahpundit who raises a very good point on the "Pakistani Intelligence: Osama's Evil Accomplices or A Bunch Of Giant Morons?" question, arguing that the CIA's months-long safe house operation in Abottabad means the answer is the latter:

Kidding aside, this is the first evidence thus far that the Pakistani government wasn’t hiding Osama. If they knew the CIA team was in town and continued to let them operate, then either they were actively cooperating with us or they were double-dealing on Bin Laden by looking the other way at our spies. If they didn’t know the CIA team was in town, then it’s more plausible that they’re honest-to-goodness imbeciles who might have missed the fact that the world’s most wanted terrorist had been there for, um, five years. (If they were hiding him, wouldn’t they have been closely scrutinizing new arrivals in the neighborhood for fear that they were CIA?) Given the embarrassment OBL’s location has caused Pakistan, I assume there’s no way they would have willingly allowed us to take him out at the compound. Once they knew the CIA was there, either they would have spirited him away to a new location or they would have grabbed him and handed him over on the condition that we would say publicly that he was caught in the tribal areas, not a few blocks away from the national military academy.

Realistically, then, there’s no way that they knew the CIA was there. (In fact, according to a U.S. official, they’re reportedly “stunned” by the CIA’s penetration.) Which makes it slightly, but only slightly, more likely that they didn’t know Bin Laden was there either.

First of all, if the CIA was able to fool both bin Laden and Pakistan with this play, then these guys deserve a hell of a lot of credit.  (Or not, given Allahpundit's argument that the Pakistanis are pretty much the worst secret agents on the planet, maybe it wasn't all that difficult for the CIA to pull off after all)

Second, if we're dealing with morons here, that doesn't exactly fill me with confidence involving the integrity of Pakistan's nuclear program either.

On the other hand, considering Pakistan promptly rounded up a couple hundred people in Abottabad for the crime of knowing the AQ courier that led us to OBL this week, I'm betting we're not going to see any of these people again anytime soon based on what they know...and find out what Pakistan doesn't want us to know in turn.

Your Political Cartoon Of The Moment

Gary McCoy provides some needed perspective: