Sometimes I Feel Like 'A Last Standing Hetero-Hero'

A really shitty piece from David Sanger (NYT). Quds force plots "from Yemen to Latin America." And this:

“The Saudi plot was clumsy, and we got lucky,” another American official who has reviewed the intelligence carefully said recently. “But we are seeing increasingly sophisticated Iranian activity like it, all around the world.” Much of this resembles the worst days of the cold war, when Americans and Soviets were plotting against each other — and killing each other — in a now hazy attempt to preserve an upper hand.

Unless he is talking about the proxy wars like Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan, he is way off base.  Killing each other's intelligence officers was off the table to avoid snowballing reciprocation.  That's why the lobby at CIA had relatively few stars on the wall until quite recently.

And this is just really special:

To many members of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government — and, by the accounts of his former colleagues, to the Israeli leader himself — the Iran problem is 1939 all over again, an “existential threat.” 
 
“WHEN Bibi talks about an existential threat,” one senior Israeli official said of Mr. Netanyahu recently, “he means the kind of threat the United States believed it faced when you believed the Nazis could get the bomb.”


On another subject, was funny seeing coverage of the "Vengeful Librarians."  (If they were really vengeful, we would have been toast for exposing way back when that bit about how they deal with bloggers - sending requests for info to embassies, etc.)

Finally, this smells a lot like one of those cases of emailed disinfo that spreads urban legends for metric marking.  (Or aren't we supposed to mention these?)

PS: Now we know why Herman Cain instituted his policy of not allowing his campaign staffers to speak to him unless spoken to.  ;-)

The Intel Biz Is Changing As Never Before (Or Should Be)

A few seem to be missing a prime point of WL.

It actually enhances global (and arguably US) security.

That's why Russia and China have among the most to fear from the new dispensation.

The intel biz is changed as never before.

Some think that the problem is one leaker of historic proportion.  The problem for the security states is the ability for able users of the WL media to leverage prior knowledge into confirmed hypotheses.

The revelations are not the story, though.

It is in the increased ability within the larger intel community (incl OSI) to be able to think about these things in a new way.  (Very opaque intentionally - were talking man's original software).  Secrets are no longer - even if locked away from all but the most qualified eyes - safe.  Nobody's secrets.

Just part of the battle for the unconscious mind.

Those with a vested interest in keeping up the scam - for the money - are really going to be hurting.  But this may take awhile.  The obvious takes forever sometimes.

PS WARNING! Today's blandishment d'easter egg takes us to one of the documents in Aftenposten's cache of WL State cables. Our usual disclaimer applies -- as do the following excerpts and screwy commentary:

"Allies differed over whether the Special Committee should focus its efforts only on traditional subjects, such as the threat to NATO from Russian intelligence services, or should expand its reach to look at issues such as the threat to NATO forces in Afghanistan from Al Qaeda."

Yikes, this in 2009?  And NATO?  No wonder NATO Intelligence Reform is a pressing concern.

"The French PermRep argued that the Special Committee should not engage in an assessment of the threat from Russian security services, stating that these proposed topics appeared to have been drafted with a "Cold War" viewpoint -- despite the fact that NATO recently expelled two Russian diplomats for activities inconsistent with their status."

Score one for the Frogs there.

and

"XXXXXXXXXXXX also said that the Committee needed guidance from the NAC to help it pare down a list of 12 possible "normal" threat assessments to the five that the Committee would produce during 2010. The list of twelve included:

-- Al Qaeda and Taliban capability in Pakistan and its impact on NATO operations in Afghanistan;

-- Afghanistan: Provision of Logistical Support and Know-How to ISAFs Adversaries;

-- Threat to NATO Operations in Afghanistan from Iranian Intelligence Services;

-- North Koreans U-turn on NBRC: What will be the Strategic Impact of the North Korean Decision to Enhance their Programme?

-- Al Qaeda Presence in Yemen: Threats and Risks to NATO Countries;

-- Somalia: Impact of the Deterioration of the Security Situation in Somalia on NATO Nations;

-- Kosovo: Links between Organized Crime and Political Figures and Subsequent Risks for KFOR;

-- Modus Operandi of Civilian Cover GRU Officers targeting the Advanced Technology Field and What Types of Advanced Technology they are attempting to Acquire;

-- FSB Overseas Operational Activity using International Counter-Terrorism and Law Enforcement Liaison. Consequent Threats to NATO Countries;

-- Initiatives by Subversive/Antagonist Circles towards NATO Targets;

-- Decision-making Process of Extremist Cells: the Role played by Veterans and Religious Leaders; and

-- The Fight against Imperialism, Militarism, and Security Policies: Shared Battlefronts of the NATO Countries Antagonist Mobilisation Front."

SMC readers who need the answers to any of these Qs - classified at the NATO XXXXXXXXXXXX level - can choose one of two options. Those with appropriate NATO clearances may obtain a copy from their NATO registry or sub-registry - or else wait for us to post them when we feel like getting around to it.

Our Game - Diplo-Blowback at Pearl Harbor

SIXTY-EIGHT years ago tomorrow, Japan attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor. In the brutal Pacific war that would follow, millions of soldiers and civilians were killed. My father — one of the famous flag raisers on Iwo Jima — was among the young men who went off to the Pacific to fight for his country. So the war naturally fascinated me. But I always wondered, why did we fight in the Pacific? Yes, there was Pearl Harbor, but why did the Japanese attack us in the first place?

In search of an answer, I read deeply into the diplomatic history of the 1930s, about President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s policy on Asia, and his preparation — or lack thereof — for a major conflict there. But I discovered that I was studying the wrong President Roosevelt. The one who had the greater effect on Japan’s behavior was Theodore Roosevelt — whose efforts to end the war between Japan and Russia earned him the Nobel Peace Prize.

When Theodore Roosevelt was president, three decades before World War II, the world was focused on the bloody Russo-Japanese War, a contest for control of North Asia. President Roosevelt was no fan of the Russians: “No human beings, black, yellow or white, could be quite as untruthful, as insincere, as arrogant — in short, as untrustworthy in every way — as the Russians,” he wrote in August 1905, near the end of the Russo-Japanese War. The Japanese, on the other hand, were “a wonderful and civilized people,” Roosevelt wrote, “entitled to stand on an absolute equality with all the other peoples of the civilized world.”

Roosevelt knew that Japan coveted the Korean Peninsula as a springboard to its Asian expansion. Back in 1900, when he was still vice president, Roosevelt had written, “I should like to see Japan have Korea.” When, in February 1904, Japan broke off relations with Russia, President Roosevelt said publicly that he would “maintain the strictest neutrality,” but privately he wrote, “The sympathies of the United States are entirely on Japan’s side.”

In June 1905, Roosevelt made world headlines when — apparently on his own initiative — he invited the two nations to negotiate an end to their war. Roosevelt’s private letter to his son told another story: “I have of course concealed from everyone — literally everyone — the fact that I acted in the first place on Japan’s suggestion ... . Remember that you are to let no one know that in this matter of the peace negotiations I have acted at the request of Japan and that each step has been taken with Japan’s foreknowledge, and not merely with her approval but with her expressed desire.”

Years later, a Japanese emissary to Roosevelt paraphrased the president’s comments to him: “All the Asiatic nations are now faced with the urgent necessity of adjusting themselves to the present age. Japan should be their natural leader in that process, and their protector during the transition stage, much as the United States assumed the leadership of the American continent many years ago, and by means of the Monroe Doctrine, preserved the Latin American nations from European interference. The future policy of Japan towards Asiatic countries should be similar to that of the United States towards their neighbors on the American continent.”

In a secret presidential cable to Tokyo, in July 1905, Roosevelt approved the Japanese annexation of Korea and agreed to an “understanding or alliance” among Japan, the United States and Britain “as if the United States were under treaty obligations.” The “as if” was key: Congress was much less interested in North Asia than Roosevelt was, so he came to his agreement with Japan in secret, an unconstitutional act.

(...)

Roosevelt had assumed that the Japanese would stop at Korea and leave the rest of North Asia to the Americans and the British. But such a wish clashed with his notion that the Japanese should base their foreign policy on the American model of expansion across North America and, with the taking of Hawaii and the Philippines, into the Pacific. It did not take long for the Japanese to tire of the territorial restrictions placed upon them by their Anglo-American partners.

Japan’s declaration of war, in December 1941, explained its position quite clearly: “It is a fact of history that the countries of East Asia for the past hundred years or more have been compelled to observe the status quo under the Anglo-American policy of imperialistic exploitation and to sacrifice themselves to the prosperity of the two nations. The Japanese government cannot tolerate the perpetuation of such a situation.”

In planning the attack on Pearl Harbor, Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto was specifically thinking of how, 37 years earlier, the Japanese had surprised the Russian Navy at Port Arthur in Manchuria and, as he wrote, “favorable opportunities were gained by opening the war with a sudden attack on the main enemy fleet.” At the time, the indignant Russians called it a violation of international law. But Theodore Roosevelt, confident that he could influence events in North Asia from afar, wrote to his son, “I was thoroughly well pleased with the Japanese victory, for Japan is playing our game.”

It was for his efforts to broker the peace deal between Russia and Japan that a year and a half later Roosevelt became the first American to win the Nobel Peace Prize — and one of only three presidents to do so while in office (the other two are Woodrow Wilson and President Obama, who will accept his prize this week). No one in Oslo, or in the United States Congress, knew the truth then.

But the Japanese did. And the American president’s support emboldened them to increase their military might — and their imperial ambitions. In December 1941, the consequence of Theodore Roosevelt’s recklessness would become clear to those few who knew of the secret dealings. No one else — including my dad on Iwo Jima — realized just how well Japan had indeed played “our game.”

-NYT

Jong Il, Remy, Kautilya, Hotties, and Errant Nukes

Has mercurial fantasist and Hollywood buff Kim Jong Il sacked Remy Martin and enlisted the services of Kautilya?

Kim Jong Il has ordered soldiers to stay away from drinking, sex and money, calling them "poison" that spoils socialist faith, a South Korea-based group of defectors from North Korea claimed Thursday.

Kim issued the order in March, saying alcohol, sex and money would make soldiers more vulnerable to the "psychological warfare of enemies," according to the Committee for Democratization of North Korea.

And now for a taste of Kautilya c/o Roger Boesche. (If by some freak chance you've missed Kautilya then have a shot at this short primer from which the excerpts below have been jacked. Machiavelli wasn't the first cat to get his pandering game on with web-toed royals)

Kautilya often advocated using women as weapons of war. He certainly regarded women as a source of satisfaction for troops at war, writing that when setting up camp for the army, "courtesans (should be encamped) along the highways." And Kautilya certainly saw women as an addictive source of pleasure, worse than wine or gambling, that a good king must enjoy only in moderation: "Deliverance is possible in gambling, without deliverance is addiction to women. Failure to show himself, aversion from work, absence of material good and loss of spiritual good by allowing the right time to pass, weakness in administration and addiction to drink (result from addiction to women)."

Precisely because women are such a powerful addiction, a king can use them against an enemy; for example, if a king is trying to undermine a ruling oligarchy, he "should make chiefs of the ruling council infatuated with women possessed of great beauty and youth. When passion is roused in them, they should start quarrels by creating belief (about their love) in one and by going to another." A woman supposedly in love with one leader should go to another, profess her love for him, urge him to murder the first leader, and "then she should proclaim, 'My lover has been killed by so and so.' Obviously such tactics create mistrust among leaders of an oligarchy and also bring about the death of key enemies.

In the chapters about how a weak king can stave off disastrous conquest by a stronger king, Kautilya again turned, as just one possible tactic among many, to women as weapons of war, stating that "keepers of prostitutes should make the (enemy's) army chiefs infatuated with women possessed of great beauty and youth. When many or two of the chiefs feel passion for one woman, assassins should create quarrels among them." Secret agents can destroy high officers in the enemy army either with poison or with "love-winning medicines."

There is much else of relevance in the primer: especially when trying to figure out wtf's up with prodromals like this. (Hint: The affairs of one, who cannot maintain secrecy, . . . undoubtedly perish, like a broken boat in the ocean." In Kautilya's foreign policy, even during a time of diplomacy and negotiated peace, a king should still be "striking again and again" in secrecy. Was that writ too large?)

Business Is Business

Three months after the United States successfully pressed the United Nations to impose strict sanctions on North Korea because of the country's nuclear test, Bush administration officials allowed Ethiopia to complete a secret arms purchase from the North, in what appears to be a violation of the restrictions, according to senior American officials.

The United States allowed the arms delivery to go through in January in part because Ethiopia was in the midst of a military offensive against Islamic militias inside Somalia, a campaign that aided the American policy of combating religious extremists in the Horn of Africa. ...

It is also not the first time that the Bush administration has made an exception for allies in their dealings with North Korea. In 2002, Spain intercepted a ship carrying Scud missiles from North Korea to Yemen. At the time, Yemen was working with the United States to hunt members of Al Qaeda operating within its borders, and after its government protested, the United States asked that the freighter be released. Yemen said at the time that it was the last shipment from an earlier missile purchase and would not be repeated.

American officials from a number of agencies described details of the Ethiopian episode on the condition of anonymity because they were discussing internal Bush administration deliberations. ...

Several officials said they first learned that Ethiopia planned to receive a delivery of military cargo from North Korea when the country’s government alerted the American Embassy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia's capital, after the adoption on Oct. 14 of the United Nations Security Council measure imposing sanctions.

"The Ethiopians came back to us and said, 'Look, we know we need to transition to different customers, but we just can’t do that overnight,' " said one American official, who added that the issue had been handled properly. "They pledged to work with us at the most senior levels."

American intelligence agencies in late January reported that an Ethiopian cargo ship that was probably carrying tank parts and other military equipment had left a North Korean port.

The value of the shipment is unclear, but Ethiopia purchased $20 million worth of arms from North Korea in 2001, according to American estimates, a pattern that officials said had continued. The United States gives Ethiopia millions of dollars of foreign aid and some nonlethal military equipment.

After a brief debate in Washington, the decision was made not to block the arms deal and to press Ethiopia not to make future purchases.