High-stakes Hilarity (the ongoing progression of)

NYT says PAK Taliban in talks with gov.

WaPo says PAK Taliban not in talks with gov.

While we are dealing with the region, Crocker articulates the tailored narrative regarding last week's attack against Shiites in Kabul.  Says we have no idea who did it.  But it wasn't the group claiming responsibility.  And that the attack won't spawn sectarian violence.  Ambassador psychic?  Wishful thinking?  Something else?

PS Scuttlebutt months ago was that a RQ-170 (equipped with science modules) was flown over Fukushima from a base in S. Korea.

Loved the ZH quip re the Iran flap: "The good news is we will all be able to buy a personal drone at Wal Mart in 6-9 months."

#Dude -- Amusing US Policy T'wards PAK et al

Needless to say, dude's regurgitating conventional wisdom.  To dude's credit, dude does touch on the intel cooperation angle. Barely.

Amusing that US policy towards PAK has gotten so entangled in a wilderness of lies.

Just like US Iran policy.  And US Iraq policy.  And US policy toward all the others.

Sometimes being sneaky just doesn't pay.


PS: What could be more retarded than the public explanations of the recent PAK ambassador secret message controversy?

We are supposed to think that there are no channels more secure than a dodgy hedge fund type for the PAK ambassador to convey a very pro-American scheme to US officials.

Would only make sense if the ambassador wanted to avoid the institutional partiality of the most likely channel.  Meaning that he knows about some special reason to avoid using said channel.

If so, he picked the wrong dude to deal with.

Also, the way this played out would indicate that existing political arrangements with PAK are adequate.

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.  ;-)

Overclassification Clusterf*ck

A piece on the overclassification clusterfuck readied for today's NYT.

No wonder nobody - some exceptions notwithstanding ;-)  - can predict shit when it comes to international and national security matters.

Everything has devolved into overclassification, bullshittery and related shortcomings. The proof is in the pudding.

Maybe our technology will come to our rescue and make policy decisions for us.  Cant do much worse.

Adm. Mullen’s Words On PAK Under Scrutiny -- SMC Avenged

After the UBL raid, we've been almost alone re the US-PAK cooperation angle. For SMC, the UBL raid itself was the big tell (amongst several others).

Just recently Dexter Filkins (he of the flawed piece from two weeks ago) checked in aping the narrative we've been hearing so much of lately. (ref SMC tweet)

Then the dying Christopher Hitchens hopped aboard for a ride on the shall we attack PAK? bandwagon.(ref SMC tweet)

PAK ain't a "loyal ally" - given, but are more helpful than dudes know. (ref SMC tweet) The usual tards have morphed the necessary operational obfuscation into passionate political run-amokism that hasn't been helping matters

Happy me waking up to this piece in today's Post  SMC, thou art avenged!

(High-levels falling all over themselves trying to deal with the "chatter" bullshittery, too.)

Adultz realized that the tards were digging a big hOle for USA if their BS narrative was gonna be carried to its logical conclusion.

It don't get much better than this. (Though they are only walking back the story as much as they can without losing much of what remains of their dwindling credibility)

"U.S. officials said Mullen was unaware of the cellphones until after he testified."

Ho ho ho.  He would have been briefed if it was true.  More accurate would be to say "Mullen was unaware that amateur hour was gonna involve 'chatter' bullshittery."

Its not like we haven't tried to educate them about this sort of thing.

Mullen's key involvement in amateur hour frolics here cannot be good sign.  The level of deception may have gotten out of control.  Subterfuge in furthering an op like we discussed elsewhere a few days ago is one thing, but feeding into the media circus/political spectatorism to the degree that they did is quite another.

Crucial Piece Re Our Slow-Motion Nightmare Just Hit The Wire

The Journalist and the Spies: The murder of a reporter who exposed Pakistan’s secrets

Dexter Filkins has presented a piece which is just chock full of institutional imperative (from several angles).

The circumstances surrounding Syed Shahzad's murder were so special that we kinda figured the history books would have to deal with it. Too frickin sensitive for any shorter time frame. We were overly optimistic. When narrative can be furthered, sensitivities go out the window.

His work was sometimes inaccurate, but it held up often enough so that other journalists followed his leads. At other times, he seemed to spare the intelligence services from the most damning details in his notebooks.
Ho ho ho. (Not really funny at all, just reminds us of several people.)


Islamabad was full of conspiracy theories about the Abbottabad raid: ... [that] Kiyani and Pasha had secretly helped the Americans with the raid.

[J]ust after the Abbottabad raid, Shahzad published a report claiming that the Pakistani leadership had known that the Americans were planning a raid of some sort, and had even helped. What the Pakistanis didn’t know, Shahzad wrote, was that the person the Americans were looking for was bin Laden.

Hadn't seen his story [which gets an important detail wrong], but can add some color. There were two separate raids. Two separate targets. Conducted within a fortnight or so of each other (UBL second). That's why we asserted immediately after UBL raid that we have done this before in PAK. PAK command knew all about the deepest incursions ahead of time. Not to mention that there were certain arrangements in place since around 2001 that PAK would assist in any UBL raid. And full deniability was to be enforced.

Now shit gets serious (as if the previous was chopped liver) ...


Shahzad’s journalism may not have been the sole reason that he was targeted. I.S.I. officials may have become convinced that Shahzad was working for a foreign intelligence agency. This could have elevated him in the eyes of the military from a troublesome reporter who deserved a beating to a foreign agent who needed to be killed.
...

There is no evidence that Shahzad was working for any foreign intelligence agency, but mere suspicion on this front could have imperilled him. “What is the final thing that earns Shahzad a red card—the final thing that tips him over from being a nuisance to an enemy?” a Western researcher in Islamabad said to me. “If someone concluded that he was a foreign agent, and that the stories he was putting out were part of a deliberate effort to defame the I.S.I. and undermine the I.S.I.’s carefully crafted information strategy—if anyone in the I.S.I. concluded that, then Saleem would be in grave danger.”
...

Given the brief time that passed between Shahzad’s death and Kashmiri’s, a question inevitably arose: Did the Americans find Kashmiri on their own? Or did they benefit from information obtained by the I.S.I. during its detention of Shahzad? If so, Shahzad’s death would be not just a terrible example of Pakistani state brutality; it would be a terrible example of the collateral damage sustained in America’s war on terror.

If the C.I.A. killed Kashmiri using information extracted from Shahzad, it would not be the first time that the agency had made use of a brutal interrogation. In 2002, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, an Al Qaeda operative held by the Egyptian government, made statements, under torture, suggesting links between Saddam Hussein and bin Laden; this information was used to help justify the invasion of Iraq.
...

On May 27th, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton visited Islamabad, and she presented to Pakistani leaders a list of high-value targets. According to ABC News, Kashmiri was on the list. That morning, Shahzad had published the article naming Kashmiri as the perpetrator of the attack on the Mehran base—broadcasting, once again, his connection to the militant leader.

As if to make amends for this rather inflammatory suggestion, Filkins then forwards what is clearly institutional spin from the IC (ours this time):

As with nearly all drone strikes, the precise number and nature of the casualties were impossible to verify. The high-level American official told me that the “tribal elders” were actually insurgent leaders. But he offered another reason that the Pakistani officials were so inflamed: “It turns out there were some I.S.I. guys who were there with the insurgent leaders. We killed them, too.” (The I.S.I. denied that its agents were present.)

What were I.S.I. agents doing at a meeting of insurgent commanders? The American official said that he did not know. [That last bit cinched it as a community info product. LMAO]

Lots of other interesting stuff in this long article, including a glimpse of a metanarrative involving the wider regional conflict.

Our business has always been to poke at metanarratives, just (usually) not explicitly identifying who are the targets or even which metanarrative is in play.

Insufferably In The Lead (And Duly Embarrassed By It)

Good piece.

We seem to be perpetually a good couple of months ahead of everyone else on the US/PAK story. (Certainly no good reason for such antics.)

Back before UBL raid (and during the Davis incident), we were nearly alone on the tensions angle, expulsion threats,etc.

After the UBL raid, now we are alone on the cooperation angle.

It is clear that the whole PAKs didn't know about the raid narrative is the cover story intended to save PAK govt face. The usual tards have morphed the necessary operational obfuscation into passionate political run-amokism that cannot help matters.

Everybody who knows the truth is covering his/her ass.

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.

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.

Clusterfuck Grim

That Afghan clusterfuck is getting grim. (Just talking about the political stuff, Karzai's openly daring us to GTFO, knowing full well that he would be dead within a week.

That is if he stayed - which he wouldn't.


This means that he knows we ain't going nowhere.

General Dostum is a non-starter. (A worse war criminal than even the U.S. can get away w/ backing. And our boy, Abdullah, is from the wrong tribe.)

Alas.

(I do love tweakin' the gurlz & boyz. Muzt be eazily amuzed.)

PS

So now, -- just how the Devil tastes this particular flavo[u]r of the Victorian? Artifact? [sic, recte artefact] ;)

Trying to sound reasonable (but fails due to avoidable errors)

Kinda ignoring some basics here, but what can we expect (government-defined reality and all).

See The Heimat Formulation in XXXXXXXXXXXX and Influence Operations [S/NF]

And while we're checked in here at the shack of ill repute, a tribute: Robert Morris, Pioneer in Computer Security, Dies at 78

His son's case was all over the media, I'm sure y'all recall.

Indicators List For Instability Auteurs

Thought we'd spring a truncated 101 indicators list as aid to plebs wanting to establish a makeshift baseline for tracking events & developments in NatSec investment properties. This framework could be applied more universally than just to today's problem areas. Remember it's only child's play so have fun with it while always brushing any and all worries aside.

-Quality of leadership/organizational capabilities
-Responsiveness to popular demands
-Ability to deliver basic goods and services
-Internal security capabilities
-Effectiveness of civil/criminal justice systems
-Breadth and depth of political corruption
-Human rights violations
-Weakness of civil society
-Pervasiveness of transnational criminal organizations
-External support for government
-Ethnic/religious discontent
-Military discontent with civilian government
-Popular demonstrations/strikes/riots
-Insurgent/seperatist/terrorist group activity
-External support for opposition
-Threat of conflict with or in neighboring state
-Weakness of domestic economy/unemployment/inflation
-Degree of income disparity
-Capital flight
-Decreased access to foreign funds
-Reduced trade openess
-Extent of environmental degradation
-Food/energy shortages
-Ability to respond to natural disasters
-Contested elections
-Unpopular changes in food/energy prices
-Sudden imposition of unpopular policies
-Coup plotting
-Government mismanagement of natural disaster or national emergency
-Death of key figure

Counterinsurgency Scorecard: New RAND study on Afghanistan

The failure to disrupt the insurgents' tangible support needs was identified as a biggie. The lack of "good governance" and legitimacy of Karzai government are also bothersome to RAND.

Oh, and about that "scorecard", Afghanistan is given a 3.5, which is lower than the lowest-scoring COIN win [a 5], but higher than the highest-scoring loss [a 0].

So there you have it.

Counterinsurgency Scorecard: Afghanistan in Early 2011 Relative to the Insurgencies of the Past 30 Years [27-page PDF]

The previously published RAND monograph, Victory Has a Thousand Fathers: Sources of Success in Counterinsurgency, used detailed case studies of the 30 insurgencies worldwide begun and completed between 1978 and 2008 to analyze correlates of success in counterinsurgency (COIN). A core finding was that a case's score on a scorecard of 15 equally weighted good and 12 equally weighted bad COIN factors and practices perfectly predicted the outcome of those 30 insurgencies. That is, the balance of good and bad factors and practices correlated with either a COIN win (insurgency loss) or a COIN loss (insurgency win) in the overall case. Using the scorecard approach as its foundation, a RAND project sought to extend the findings to the case of Afghanistan in early 2011. The effort involved an expert elicitation, or Delphi, exercise in which experts were asked to make "worst-case" assessments of the factors to complete the scorecard for ongoing operations in Afghanistan. The consensus results revealed that early 2011 Afghanistan scores in the middle of the historical record in terms of COIN wins and losses: Its score was lower than that in the lowest-scoring historical COIN win but higher than that in the highest-scoring COIN loss. This suggests an uncertain outcome in Afghanistan, but the findings may help provide additional guidance as operations continue.

DOMEX, And The Hard & Fast Of BS-Detection

Absurd -- Now they expect us to believe that the SEALs could have "fought their way out of Pakistan."

WaPo is running with the same story. We are covering for our helper(s) high up in Pak mil.  Anyone with access to Jane's ain't gonna buy it.

Also, the more they trumpet the DOMEX narrative the more it looks like we didn't get shit from the compound.

The formula that deals with the (inverse) ratio of bullshit to actionable intel is another hard and fast rule.

We warned them a week ago. They used to listen. Thinking of (at least) one Iraq war IO narrative that met its deserved early end after we shot it down. Seems the DOMEX BS is being handled at the political level (the pros know better).

Double-Crossed Into Lending That Promised Hand

Paks were involved, but were double-crossed as to target. (BTW, the media is saying how brave it was for Obama to have ordered the SOF assault instead of dropping bombs. They do not know that there have been other similar raids.)

Pak-based terrorist groups know Pakistan was involved in op, and shit's about to get real over there. You can understand them for asking just what the Pak mil was up to during the "40 minute firefight" and exfil when they had their "West Point" right next door?

The emphasis on DOCEX narrative is clearly to spook AQ associates - good move, but they are laying it on way too think. When dingbat local radio announcers are proclaiming expertise in the matter, time to tone it down. Transparent as hell.

Noteworthy is the hilarious walking back of more and more details. Particularly Brennan's shameless bullshittery about UBL hiding behind a woman. Amateur hour at the PSYOP shop? Also, the "living in luxury" theme. I've seen auto repair shops in Alhambra that were more luxurious than the Abbottabad blockhouse. Real deal is that UBL probably was bedridden and hooked up to a dialysis machine.

Pressing issue now (h/t ZH) is whether the currents will take the body close enough to the East coast of Japan for the radiation to revive him - thus making him unkillable, and twice as pissed off. Oh, and the courier business is just the cover story. UBL was tracked down from his PSN account information. ;-)

Seriously though, we are gonna have to see an asset issue -- an official edict that burials at sea are OK for Muslims. Apparently it is only kosher when the believer dies at sea too far from land to hygienically keep the body for later land burial. Under no circumstances is someone to be taken from land out to sea to be dumped.

I personally couldn't care less if the body was ritually washed by the piss of US servicemen, but there is trouble brewing if OGA strat PSYOP boyz don't get on the job ASAP. 

So, if it is true that Pakistani intelligence was abetting (even if double-crossed to such aid) in offing bin Laden, and kept that matter secret, then we can begin to sort out our fraught relationship with that troubled country on a more equitable, trusting basis. If that turns out not to be the case, then there will be a dreadful reckoning to come.

And it looks like someone has to be cutting his honeymoon short.

The Old "Black Market Uniform" Misdirect

I've been meaning to mention this for awhile. This morning's NYT reminded me.

Remember how many of the suicide attacks against American and Iraqi forces in Iraq were attributed to terrorists "wearing Iraqi military uniforms", implying that enemies were simply putting on military or police uniforms to gain access to conduct their attacks?

We did a piece on SMC in 2006 expressing our skepticism about such representations.

We have since received confirmation of our suspicions, follow up investigations nearly always ID'ed the perp[s] as real members of the security forces.

The media have been regurgitating the same narrative in Afghanistan:

It was the latest in a string of attacks targeting Afghan government and military officials in what the Taliban have called the beginning of their spring offensive. On Saturday, a suicide bomber killed five NATO service members in eastern Afghanistan A day earlier, a suicide bomber killed the police chief of Kandahar Province. In both attacks, the bombers were dressed in Afghan army or police uniforms.

The same motive for the media manipulation is in play. To acknowledge that enemies have infiltrated our only hope for a decent exit from the war (such as it is) would cast some doubt about the strategy we are hanging our hats upon.

This is far from our only problem in Afghanistan. Pak sanctuaries, Afghan gov incompetence (and corruption), challenges in getting enough warm bodies to join Afghan mil and police, and dwindling options to address all of these issues are certainly more serious obstacles.

But deluding ourselves is rarely a recipe for success in any endeavor.

WaPo, Laying It On Thick

WaPo has really been laying it on thick lately.

A few days ago they had the nerve to dispute the SMC and NYT story about the 300+ folks getting their walking papers from Pakistan:

The official also dismissed reports that Pasha had demanded a reduction in the number of CIA officers deployed to Pakistan, saying, “That did not come up.”

Maybe it didn't come up in the Langley meeting between Panetta and Gen Pasha, but it sure as shit was raised a couple of weeks ago. The implication in the WaPo was that the NYT got burned.

And the same "reporter" Karen DeYoung also had the temerity - on the same day - to claim that Saudi Arabia was our main intel fulcrum in Mid-East (Jordan and Izzy might beg to differ):

Saudi Arabia, in addition to being the world’s largest oil exporter and the site of the Muslim world’s holiest sites, is the leading U.S. regional partner on counterterrorism matters.

Keeping people in the dark (or worse, misinforming them) seems to be the in-thing these days.

We have no problem with them keeping their mouths shut, but heaping BS kinda irks us.

Perfect PSYOP (if that's what we have here)

Interesting NYT piece. Classic strategy, as you well know.

Get these fuckers killing each other just makes everything a bit easier.

Losses in Pakistani Haven Strain Afghan Taliban

The Afghan Taliban are showing signs of increasing strain after a number of killings, arrests and internal disputes that have reached them even in their haven in Pakistan, Afghan security officials and Afghans with contacts in the Taliban say.

The killings, coming just as the insurgents are mobilizing for the new fighting season in Afghanistan, have unnerved many in the Taliban and have spread a climate of paranoia and distrust within the insurgent movement, the Afghans said.

...

While the arrests have been conducted by Pakistan security forces, it is not clear who is behind the killings. Members of the Taliban attribute them to American spies, running Pakistani and Afghan agents, in an extension of the American campaigns that have used night raids to track down and kill scores of midlevel Taliban commanders in Afghanistan and drone strikes to kill militants with links to Al Qaeda in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

Others, including Pakistani and Afghan Parliament members from the region, say that the Pakistani intelligence agencies have long used threats, arrests and killings to control the Taliban and that they could be doing so again to maintain their influence over the insurgents.

In The Wake Of Davis -- Horseshit (Non-Starter) ROE

ROE like this would clearly be a non-starter. Probably just horseshit to advance Davis' release

An important aspect of the settlement, for the U.S., was that the principal of diplomatic immunity was never formally challenged in Pakistani courts. The Pakistani High Court refused to rule on the question and the trial court didn’t make a finding, either. That was crucial for the U.S., which feared that a legal challenge to its claim of immunity for Davis would expose hundreds of other undercover agents around the world who rely on the legal protection of their formal status as “diplomats.”

The final piece of the settlement may be the most complicated. Pakistani officials say discussions will begin soon with the CIA about the “rules of engagement” in Pakistan. “If it’s a CIA operation, the ISI needs to know,” explained one Pakistani official. The CIA has a roughly similar policy of “declaring” its personnel and operations with some other countries with which it has close intelligence ties, such as Britain, France, Israel and Jordan..

Davis: A Little Too Close For (Someone's) Comfort -- Or "Hose 'Em Double-Crossing Sanctuary-Paks"

The Urdu-speaking American diplomat who is being held in Pak didn't grease robbers.

He offed a Pak intel motorbike-mounted surveillance team.

Not conjecture.

Looks like our boy Davis may have gotten a little too close to a high-value AQ target - the Paks tried to intervene - and he had to hose 'em.

Whaa?! Davis was a SOF/ODA type? ;)

Anyways, we expect nothing short of a full court press to get D out. Leeway for massive & extreme prejudice must be allotted (and this at any early sign of bilking Pak-intransigence).Go Reagan on 'em on a whim.We'll pick up the tab (Our OEX Feb Calls have been good to us -- so far.)