Double-Gaming It -- CIA and ISI

David I. hints at what we have been saying for awhile.  Things between Pak and US intel (at least at the highest levels) aren't really as dire as advertized. 


Also, FOX News really pushing it.  (From a few days ago, see last video in the article.  LMAO) The narrative is so audacious it is brilliant. They really do know their audience. The framing of Murdoch as victim will resonate with their viewers various complexes about persecution, etc.


Gotta split for a few weeks.

Ahmed Wali Karzai’s Killer Taliban Foe

Can you imagine what this would look like to President Karzai if he was a conspirato​rially-ori​ented nutjob? ;-)

Ahmed Wali Karzai’s killer had been a Taliban foe

Mohammad also met with U.S. and British military officials, and would be introduced to the new commanders when they rotated into Kandahar, the relatives said. Two of Mohammad’s brothers-in-law said they work as guards at a Central Intelligence Agency base in Kandahar — situated on a hillside at the former home of Taliban leader Mohammad Omar — as part of the agency-run paramilitary group called the Kandahar Strike Force.

These relatives, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Mohammad was not a member of the strike force, which Karzai helped recruit to fight the Taliban, but that he shared intelligence with U.S. officials and arrested hundreds of insurgents over the years.

“If there was something Sardar could do that the Americans couldn’t, they would ask him to do it,” Malik said. “If American forces were suspicious of someone, they were asking Sardar to make the arrest.”

(Thank goodness Hamid Karzai is a solid citizen, or else we might just have more problems with him than we do already.)

Not Trying To Be Droll: Kerry -- Next SecState

Sunday's NYT magazine is running a long feature piece on the next SecState - John Kerry.  Lots of inadvertently funny bits.

Kerry insists that Assad’s true interests require him to shift to the West, which in turn require him to make peace with Israel. But was Assad really prepared to pursue his interests if they required a break with Iran and an acceptance of Israel? The fact that he never did so, and that he ultimately turned on his own people rather than permitting measured dissent, may show that he lives in a more Darwinian world than do those who seek to entice him out of it. Kerry also maintains that Benjamin Netanyahu is prepared to make real sacrifices for peace. But there’s scant evidence that this is so. Relationships are very important to diplomacy, but it’s possible to set too much store by them.

Article goes to great pains to maintain fiction that Pakistan at a high level did not know about Bin Laden raid beforehand (even embellishing a contentious Kerry dinner meeting with two of the Pakistanis who very likely had been informed).

Practically everything is an uphill battle in Congress these days. The Foreign Relations Committee has attracted some of the most wild-eyed members of the G.O.P.; during the immensely protracted, though ultimately successful, negotiations over the treaty with Russia on nuclear reductions last fall, Kerry needed even more forbearance than he had lavished on Karzai.

The Unbearable Lightness of Iraq

NYT is preparing a piece for tomorrow's print edition about the Iraq clusterfuck that states that the PR war is crucial to success (or lack therof) of the US endeavor.

To make this palatable to the citizenry in Iraq and the United States, the public relations game is to draft language that is politically acceptable yet obscures the reality that American soldiers will continue to face an enemy, will need to defend themselves and will almost certainly continue to die.

Also, article says that a US col. got pissed off and went off the narrative by issuing his own press release about a probably routine miscarriage of justice there. Embassy wants him to STFU. LMAO.

The fact that we have enabled an Iraqi regime to come to power that is antithetical to US interests is lost on the "we won the Iraq War" crowd.

Serious Business -- RDX/HMX Implants

Body Bombs Added to America’s Air Security Concerns

If this were true, then NFW would we be seeing this:

Representatives for several European airlines said that they had learned about the new security recommendations only from a reporter’s inquiry.

[We're talking about Air France, KLM, Lufthansa and British Airways - not just some random fly-by-night commuter lines - as well as BAA, which operates Heathrow Airport, and Airports Council International Europe being in the dark about this threat.]

Although some slippage in the timely dissemination of warnings is not unheard of in the intel business, the smart money here is that bullshittery is afoot.

Of course, this all could just be water-softener.
 
Can't help suspecting that they are also paving the way for more contractor boondoggling. Money seems to expand to fill any gaps in coverage of the most lunatic terror threat fantasy that the most cracked mountebank can pull out of his yuck-pasty ass.

They are starting to credit "chatter" (see SMC Maxim) from AQAP for the "warning". Serious business. LMAO

My Chicago -- Flying Long In and Longer Over

There's something powerful about flying in to America from long abroad.

Take Chicago -- minutes upon minutes approaching half hour of warehouses, suburbs, saturated infrastracture, more suburbs, more warehouses, blue-specky backyard swimming pools, and then a landing still far delayed beyond what any wonderful anticipation could reasonably inflict.This is my home (not 'Homeland')

We're supposed to shit our pants and protectively devour 'selves because a few clustering and persisting mofos dropped a speck of our buildings decade ago. Anyone bother to take measure of how many buildings we still have in reserve?

Alas, too much estrogen in our tap water.

Back to brave and composed, for no other reason than that we reasonably owe taciturn composure to our grandmothers' fallen neighbors and to those quietest of surviving persisters -- both then and now.

Sudden, silent, and violent burial upon our foreign enemies. Calamitous devastation upon our wailing domestic alarmists.

What are the stars but points in the body of God where we insert the healing needles of our terror and longing? --Gravity's Rainbow

Sodom Hussein -- An Ailes Product?

Roger Ailes’ Secret Nixon-Era Blueprint for Fox News.

Story based on docs from Nixon and GHW Bush Libraries.
 
Incomplete files from Bush I admin, but I'm beginning to think that GHW Bush's curious new pronunciation of Saddam as "Sodom" immediately post-Kuwait invasion of 1990 - after years of saying it correctly - was not a helpful suggestion from the boyz (as I have always assumed), but was from Ailes.

Who's The Smelliest Dude In The Iraqi Homeless Shelter -- Taking On Iran

<>Fresh off a glorious day of hot dogs, water fights, and fireworks, they go and get us all grumpy again. This bullshittery is orchestrated as usual. (see SMC Maxim)

Iran's elite military unit, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has transferred lethal new munitions to its allies in Iraq and Afghanistan in recent months, according to senior U.S. officials, in a bid to accelerate the U.S. withdrawals from these countries

The Revolutionary Guard has smuggled rocket-assisted exploding projectiles to its militia allies in Iraq, weapons that have already resulted in the deaths of American troops, defense officials said. They said Iranians have also given long-range rockets to the Taliban in Afghanistan, increasing the insurgents' ability to hit U.S. and other coalition positions from a safer distance.

Such arms shipments would escalate the shadow competition for influence playing out between Tehran and Washington across the Middle East and North Africa, fueled by U.S. preparations to draw down forces from two wars and the political rebellions that are sweeping the region

The narrative is that Shiite militias are attacking U.S. forces - with the requisite help from Iran - as we pull out in order to get a leg up on other "anti-government Shiite militias" for the big sorting out that will occur when we draw down.

Apparently some tard in the IC predicted this would happen, so they think this is serious business. But of course it is bullshit. Reason: we have already succeeded in enabling a very pro-Iranian regime to take power there. The idea that there is a competition for being the smelliest dude in the homeless shelter is kinda exaggerated.

They hope that enough repetitions of the the now-revived "Iran is arming our enemies in Iraq" narrative and they will have the American public eating out of their hands.

But with 6 active interventions going at the moment (and counting), their goal of taking on Iran ain't gonna be in the cards any time soon. So they will settle for an extension of our commitment in Iraq