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.  ;-)

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.

Disgruntled CP Officials with Access to Secret Docs Posting on Chinese Wikileaks-type Sites

We have been informed that in China disgruntled CP officials and others with access to secret docs have been posting them on myriad Chinese Wikileaks-type sites. Just like the theory predicts. Perfect.

Also that Chinese officials' hands have been forced and they have had to address problems revealed by docs.

And USG thinks they will just bluff, threaten, and punish their way through this.

Gov truly doesn't grasp what is at hand here (even though they have had decades of warning). Although the USA is in a much better position than other security states, given the (ostensibly) open nature of our wider society. The problem for the USG is that with so much bread buttered by the secret state, there will always be pissed off (or suddenly awakened/radicalized) people with access who will take matters into their own hands. Live by big numbers, ...

Speaking of that, some want to know why we haven't let LTC Coombs (BM's atty) in on the specifics of what we (and SMC readers) know. Might be helpful, might not. Not a priority of ours, I answered. Sometimes a US Senator will suffice. (Although the BS about "aiding the enemy" (in the indictment) was kinda special.)

They are trying to send the most serious message to acolytes by the treatment of BM.

It ain't gonna work.

The theory says so.

PS: NSA assumes that they are compromised. Saw it in a doc that was in the HBGary email dump.

The theory would predict that type of OPSEC approach would be a good one (even if they are not in fact compromised).

Also, Russia has its hands full with copycat WLs too - but this has been widely reported, unlike AFAIK the China news

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.

Kremlinology WL.0

A Stockholm Conspiracy - The Underbelly of Ukrainian Gas Dealings

There can be no other conclusion: Viktor Yanukovich, the president of Ukraine, served the commercial interests of an oligarch with whom he has close ties -- at the expense of his own country. And, in doing so, he also did Moscow a favor.


And we learn from WikiL that V. Putin "the richest man in Europe" probably has billions stashed in CH.


Other classified cables referred repeatedly to the "secretive Swiss-based oil trading firm Gunvor" as an alleged source of Putin's undisclosed wealth. The US ambassador in Moscow, John Beyrle, described the company as being closely connected to the Kremlin, and said its "secretive ownership is rumoured to include prime minister Putin".

A Pull Too Far

Greetings old Thai hands! You've probably seen this:

But on Tuesday it appeared that Thailand had whisked Mr. Bout to the airport without informing the Russians. 

“This information did not arrive at the embassy officially,” the chief of the Russian Embassy’s consular service, Andrei Dvornikov, told the Interfax news agency. “There were neither notes nor telephone calls.” 


Mr. Bout’s Thai lawyer said that the Thai authorities had not informed him; Mr. Bout’s wife, Alla; or the Russian Embassy in Bangkok about the move. 


Pretty good service from the locals there.  I'm sure you'll agree, however, an op like this - in which a sensitive-type Russkie is handed over to the US while keeping the Russian govt in the dark - requires a level of pull in both DC and Bangkok that probably exceeds that of DEA.

Bout apparently felt safe everywhere outside USA (though he should have known about our client states, like Thailand).  Kinda' cool that Ivan got no notice. Spookishly choreographed.

(Thanks B!)

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

Comrade Cell & Hurricane Nikita - About a Wall

...figured that the Cold War story might be of some interest. Always assumed that it had been a Sov decision -- as you know, that's not the kind of action that the client state would have wanted to conduct sans instructions or endorsement.

Who Ordered the Construction of the Berlin Wall?

Historians have long argued over whether East German leader Walter Ulbricht or his Soviet counterpart Nikita Khrushchev was ultimately responsible for the construction of the Berlin Wall. A newly discovered Russian document from August 1961 provides some answers.

(...)

For years, historians have been trying to clear this contradiction, and now an answer may be in the offing. It appears in a Soviet document that Matthias Uhl of the German Historical Institute in Moscow has discovered: a previously unknown record of a conversation that took place between the two leaders on Aug. 1, 1961.

By that time, the preparations for building the Wall were well underway, and the initiative apparently came from Khrushchev, as he said himself in the August meeting with his East German counterpart. A short time earlier, according to the document, Khrushchev had sent the Soviet ambassador in East Berlin to Ulbricht in order to "explain to him my idea of taking advantage of the current tensions with the West and laying an iron ring around Berlin." In the conversation, Khrushchev pointed out that "many engineers" had already left East Germany, and that something "had to be done."

(...)

Khrushchev wanted to convince the East German population that the wall being built would protect them from Western spies, and he said that the Germans would understand.

But even Khrushchev didn't appear to totally believe his own propaganda. When Ulbricht told him, during the August meeting, that he wanted to bring his economic experts into the loop, Khrushchev advised him otherwise. "You should not explain anything before the introduction of the new border regime," he said. "It would only strengthen the flow of people leaving."

If word got out about the wall construction, the Kremlin director recognized correctly, there could be "traffic jams" on Berlin's access roads. Such forms of traffic obstruction would constitute "a certain demonstration," he said.

Jacked & Hacked Spiegel Online

Swine Before Pearls: A Nastier Ivan Squandered In the Flu

In the nick of time - if but a bit upstaged by that wetback bug brouhaha.


[Russian] Andrei recalled that his men had detained a suspect who had several videos of [Chechnyan] militants torturing Russian hostages. One showed him laughing as his comrades raped a 12-year-old girl and then shot off three of her fingers.

“We all went berserk after watching this,” said Andrei, who had begun to beat the suspect. “He fell to the ground. I ordered him to get up but he couldn’t because of his handcuffs. I ordered the cuffs off but something was wrong with the lock. I became angrier and ordered one of my sergeants to get them off no matter what.

“So he took an axe and chopped his arms off. The prisoner screamed in agony. Clearly it would have been impossible to interrogate him further so I shot him in the head.”

(...)

Vladimir and his men referred to their prey as “zaichik” - a term of endearment used by lovers that means “little hare”.

“Only a very small circle of my men took part in this work. Some of those we abducted were tougher than others but eventually everyone talks when you give them the right treatment.

“We used several methods. We’d beat them to a pulp with our bare hands and with sticks. One very effective method is ‘the grand piano’ - when one by one we’d smash the captive’s fingers with a hammer. It’s dirty and difficult work. You would not be human if you enjoyed it but it was the only way to get this filth to talk.”

A hammer would also be used to smash a captive’s kneecaps and militants would be forced to perform sexual acts. The scenes would occasionally be filmed and circulated among enemy combatants in psychological warfare.

(...)

Andrei added: “What mattered most was to carry out this work professionally, not to leave evidence which could be traced back to us. Our bosses knew about such methods but there was a clear understanding that we should cover our tracks. We knew we'd be hung out to dry if we got caught.

“We are not murderers. We are officers engaged in a war against brutal terrorists who will stop at nothing, not even at killing children. They are animals and the only way to deal with them is to destroy them. There is no room for legal niceties in a war like this. Only those who were there can truly understand. I have no regrets. My conscience is clear.”


(...)


The account is one of a series given to The Sunday Times by two special forces officers who fought the militants in Chechnya over a period of 10 years. Their testimony, the first of its kind to a foreign journalist, provides startling insights into the operation of secret Russian death squads during one of the most brutal conflicts since the second world war

The men, decorated veterans of more than 40 tours of duty in Chechnya, said not only suspected rebels but also people close to them were systematically tracked, abducted, tortured and killed. Intelligence was often extracted by breaking their limbs with a hammer, administering electric shocks and forcing men to perform sexual acts on each other. The bodies were either buried in unmarked pits or pulverised.

Far from being the work of a few ruthless mavericks, such methods were widely used among special forces, the men said. They were backed by their superiors on the understanding that operations were to be carried out covertly and that any officers who were caught risked prosecution: the Russian government publicly condemns torture and extrajudicial killings and denies that its army committed war crimes in Chechnya.

In practice, said Andrei and Vladimir, the second officer, the Kremlin turned a blind eye. “Anyone in power who took the slightest interest in the war knows this was going on,” Andrei said. “Our only aim was to wipe out the terrorists.”

The two officers expressed pride in their contribution to the special forces’ “success” in containing the terrorist threat. But they spoke on condition they would not be named.

A hacked & jacked Sunday Times via TimesOnline.

Ivan The Slicker

Though we'd be reluctant to call this kind of herding Information Warfare (admittedly, it does ring sexier than a plodding public diplomacy initiative), it is definitely an improvement over the running dog hind leg lackey of American imperialism pontifications by indignant people's spokesmen of old.

TSKHINVALI -- Under the standards of information warfare, it was an easy job by all accounts.

The Kremlin only had to charter a plane, take about 60 foreign and Russian reporters to Beslan, bus them through the nearby Roksky Tunnel to South Ossetia, and stand back.

The journalists did the rest. They were free to speak to whomever they wanted and ask any questions.

The comments that they heard on all sides -- from South Ossetia leader Eduard Kokoity, local officials and ordinary residents -- matched the Kremlin's official line perfectly. Everyone said they had waited for years for Russia to recognize the breakaway Georgian republic of 70,000 people as independent and hoped for a future together.

"We've been waiting for this for 18 years," said Tsiala Gergaulova, a Tskhinvali resident whose 24-year-old son was injured in the Russian-Georgian war last month. "I would like for us to be part of Russia. I believe everybody wants this."

Boris Bagayev, an 85-year-old artist and official with the local administration, said he was more than happy that Moscow had recognized his republic last week. "It gives meaning to my life," he said.

Two weeks after the short but intense war, life in the South Ossetian capital appears to be coming back together. On Monday, damaged government buildings, ruined neighborhoods and a statue with a missing head in a central square stood as grim reminders of the fighting. But the streets were being patched up, reconstruction was being planned, and most children attended their first day of the school year -- just like their peers in Russia.

For the situation to improve further, Kokoity said, the world should recognize South Ossetia and another breakaway Georgian region, Abkhazia, as independent.

"The recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia will stabilize the situation in the Caucasus," the South Ossetian leader told reporters, standing in front of green netting covering the remains of the local parliament building. Russia so far has been the only country to recognize the breakaway republics, although Belarus and Venezuela have expressed support. Western powers have denounced the decision.

Kokoity said the immediate task for his government was to strengthen South Ossetia's independence and then to officially become part of Russia. He urged foreign reporters to ignore criticism from their governments and "listen to the voice of people and common sense."

A Kremlin official supervising the journalists on the trip, Vladislav Petrushin, said the main purpose of the visit was to give the foreign reporters access to the administration led by Kokoity. "We've provided an opportunity to talk. It's not like we've given him a cheat sheet. He said the truth," Petrushin said.

The trip also indicates how far the Kremlin has evolved in communicating with the outside world. When the fighting broke out Aug. 8, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and other senior officials made their case in interviews with major Western media outlets. Top Russian officials, meanwhile, were shown on state television holding meetings. As international sentiment grew in Tbilisi's favor, the Kremlin mounted its own campaign of informational warfare. President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin have offered a series of interviews in recent days.

"They've understood they can't neglect communications," said Anthony Orliange, a television reporter with Capa, a production company, on the Kremlin trip to South Ossetia.

"The whole point of me being here is that the Kremlin wants to communicate," said Orliange, who came with a colleague from Paris after receiving their Russian visas in record time. "I didn't have a visa three days ago," he said.

During the war, access to the conflict zone was tightly controlled for foreign reporters. While Monday's visit was vastly different from seeing the war itself, it was still helpful, Orliange said. "I am getting the vibe of this place," he said. "It will change my perspective."

A hacked & jacked The Moscow Times via Johnson's Russia List

Revolutions In Revolutions

Indeed, posting has been tardy despite dubious ambitions of saturation flaunting. No apologies, to be sure - we've been aggressing on other time-devouring and invoice-able fronts, as well as hermetically delving into arising revolutions within significant ongoing revolutions; much creeping decisiveness is in motion and much of this tip-toeing choreography has been afforded our selfish attention afore hacked 'n jacked scribblings in this our admitted forum of narcissistic relief.

Pegging of the dollar - to what now?

Iran so more now than ever.

A perfect and kinetically laced IO aimed at Western Europe. Thanks Georgia's Poor Villy: God save a NATO embedded amidst an aspiringly recalcitrant EU.

IO Meister Petraeus to CENTCOM.

Pakistan - graft up for grabs. (Are we the best of bidders?)

Things are coalescing out there in the night - radiation from countless stars with the radar emissions of FAA regulated flight control towers. All the while everything important relentlessly expands.

Brewskies For A Georgia Downed

Anti-Georgian Cyber war - a twinge of the oxymoronic for sure given a Georgian internet penetration per capita rivaling that continent of promesse de la Chine (Ahfrika, of course) for last place in the Paralympic bathtubs per capita square off. Whatever that doesn't mean, some interesting points from the strong and free of the True Boring North; a modicum of heed, perhaps - and near certainly seed for rigorous Molsonic brainstorming.

As Russian troops stormed into Georgia this month, they had some novel help from cyber-savvy countrymen who unleashed an assault of their own - hacking into government and commercial websites.

NATO calls it iWar, and it has the potential to disrupt lives and wreck economies, particularly in Internet-dependent countries like Canada.

The Russian hackers were spectacularly successful to the point that some experts are now predicting that Internet-based attacks could be just as innovative to warfare as the advent of gunpowder.

(...)

Russia denies its military was behind last week's three-stage cyber attacks, claiming that "patriotic" civilian hackers were simply joining the fray unprompted in taking down Georgian websites.

The denial of service attacks on Georgian government Web sites started just before Russian troops started to move Aug. 8 and were quickly followed much bigger assaults on commercial institutions, including media outlets, using zombie servers. The final stage involved hacking into government Web sites, tampering with them and redirecting traffic to other some times nefarious sites.

An expert in information warfare says it's the first time cyber attacks have been sewn so tightly into a military campaign and used with such overwhelming effect.

"The question that remains is: was it planned or was it something that happened by coincidence - or was it a bit of both?" asked Rafal Rohozinski, of the Information Warfare Monitor, a Canadian group that studies iWars.

The patriotic hacker explanation is the most troubling because it represents a "riot in cyberspace" - a kind of chaos governments and militaries would have a tough time anticipating, said Rohozinski. [The meat that caught our eye]

But the timing of the cyber assaults makes him suspicious. [Party poopin' Canucks]

That the Russians would not admit it was part of their Georgian battle plan isn't surprising because attacks across cyberspace travel through servers in a number of countries, exposing Moscow to possible retaliation, principally from NATO, Rohozinski said.

[Warning - Yawn & Sigh section follows.]

Chris Corrigan, a retired colonel Canadian tank commander, said Western militaries have faced this kind of threat since the days of radar jamming.

"What makes this different is that the targets are no longer strictly military communications infrastructure and we're now talking about destroying civilian (Internet) sites," said Corrigan, who watched the attack on Georgia while training officers in the nearby Ukraine.

Rohozinski describes it as a rapidly evolving field, where even definitions are being refined.

Cyber war refers specifically to assaults on virtual military targets and communications, while iWar is the 21st Century equivalent to the concept of total war, where nothing is off-limits.

The flattening of heavy industries was a key pillar of the Allied strategy to defeat Germany and Japan during the Second World War.

The same kind of economic devastation may no longer require waves of heavy bombers. It might be wrought through targeted virtual attacks on a country's financial system, media and government institutions.

Such attacks are cheap and relatively easy to mount.

Developed nations, especially Canada, face the greatest risk because so much business is conducted and information exchanged online, said Appathurai.

Corrigan, who was the Canadian Forces point man on the Y2K glitch, said militaries and businesses have a lot of "built-in redundancy" to withstand attacks, but added the threat is real and geography cannot isolate a nation the way it did in past wars.

Western commanders, who once trained almost exclusively to turn back tanks, troops and bombers, have added repelling Internet assaults to their training regimes.

NATO recently created its own real-world crisis response team to handle calamities in the virtual world.

And not a moment too soon.

Estonia and Lithuania - two former Soviet republics - suffered through repeated hacker attacks, which may or may not have been state-sponsored. The latest blitz took place just a few weeks ago and shut down the Lithuanian tax registry office.

The centrepiece of the North Atlantic Alliance is the common defence clause of the NATO charter - known as Article 5.

It stipulates that an attack on one member is an attack on all members and alliance countries are obligated to respond.

Does that extend to cyber attacks? [We hope not]

Appathurai conceded that Article 5 is "vaguely worded" and future interpretations could encompass Internet warfare. [Mon Dieu, non!]

Last word here heard on matters of worthy & classic bear-probing pokes & jabs of diagnostic intent...and prankish electioneering gambits.

Last word, kinda'.

Beautiful Little War

Such a sweet little war as substrate for introductory level IO study.; a set piece battle garnished with IO condiments.

Today - a few tenuous observations teetering on speculative commentary followed up with a background briefing by a friend (friend as in; we pitched in a few PayPal bucks to help stave off the demise of a rag he oft wrote for - itself victim of brutish public diplomacy of sorts.)

Vladimir Putin nomenclatured Georgia's artillery strikes on Tschinvali as downright genocidal, Russian sources claiming some 2K South Ossetians being killed. (Human Rights Watch -among others- proposed the Russians were exaggerating the numbers of killed and displaced.) Micheil Saakasjvili shot back with claims that Ivan was up to ethnic cleansing. Yet not even the International Red Cross seems to know if the number of injured and displaced on each side of the skirmish is 15K or 30K. "We're seeing different numbers and they're changing all the time", according to a spokeswoman we caught a chatting with the BBC.

On reporting own successes and enemy losses, the differences between each side's claims has Baghdad Bob looking not quite so goofy. The other day Saakasjivilli claimed Georgian forces had killed hundreds of Russian troops and shot down over 80 Russian birds. Russian General Staffer Anatolij Nogovitsyn admitted only to 18 KIA and 4 lost planes. Of course it's militarily impossible for Georgia to shoot down 80 planes.

At best, the skirmishing parties' media aren't always the most reliable sources of actionable information in calmer times but it would appear that Russian media now have had the edge on truthiness over the state run Georgian media outlets in the heat of battle. Nontheless, reports have been surfacing recently that the Russian English language television channel Russia Today has been tweaking reports from the field not lining up neatly with what government officials prefer reported.

Cyberattacks have been perpetrated against both Russian media and Georgian authorities who themselves in turn have shut down Russian television channels at home in Georgia.

Journalists are coming under fire and it would appear that somewhere in the vicinity of a dozen journalists have been killed in clashes. For the journalists left standing it remains problematic keeping wits and getting things close enough to right.

Gavin Hewitt of the BBC reported the other day how his crew was attacked by a Russian jet [Youtube video] on the outskirts of Gori. Footage shows the plane attempting to attack the crew's car and Hewitt recapitulates, "...although Georgian troops have pulled back, Russian planes are still conducting bombing raids - flying in very low, and on that occasion directly targeting our vehicle".

Now it just so happens that the plane in question was a Frogfoot (Sukhoi 25), a plane deployed by both Russia and the Georgia. In the video it appears that the jet flew alone and fired rather mundane munitions - hardly the typical behavioral profile of such Russian birds. At that, there seem to be some lingering suspicions from UN folks that the Georgians are not completely adverse to, if only occasionally, putting their own citizens in harms way to score points in the propaganda game. Was it a Georgian Su-25 strafing the Brits and their own? Who knows. Hey, last fall the Russians denied a missile attack against Georgia yet international experts concluded that such was indeed the case. Deception abounds.

Before I break to promised jacked & hacked other, here's a link to a package of great tips for tracking Russian language news from South Ossetia without reading Russian. Now to the beef:

This is the war of my dreams—both sides using air forces! How often do you see that these days?—so I’ll skip the history. Just remember that South Ossetia is a little apple-shaped blob dangling from Russian territory down into Georgia, and most of it has been under control of South Ossetian irregulars backed by Russian “peacekeepers” for the last few years. The Georgians didn’t like that. You don’t give up territory in that part of the world, ever. The Georgians have always been fierce people, good fighters, not the forgiving type.

So: hard people on every side in that part of the world. No quarter asked or given. No good guys. Especially not the Georgians. They have a rep as good people, one-on-one, but you don’t want to mess with them and you especially don’t want to try to take land from them.

The Georgians bided their time, then went on the offensive, Caucasian style, by pretending to make peace and all the time planning a sneak attack on South Ossetia. They just signed a treaty granting autonomy to South Ossetia this week, and then they attacked, Corleone style. Georgian MLRS units barraged Tskhinvali, the capital city of South Ossetia; Georgian troops swarmed over Ossetian roadblocks; and all in all, it was a great, whiz-bang start, but like Petraeus asked about Iraq way back in 2003, what’s the ending to this story? As in: how do you invade territory that the Russians have staked out for protection without thinking about how they’ll react?

Saakashvili just didn’t think it through. One reason he overplayed his hand is that he got lucky the last time he had to deal with a breakaway region: Ajara, a tiny little strip of Black Sea coast in southern Georgia. This is a place smaller than some incorporated Central Valley towns, but it declared itself an “autonomous” republic, preserving its sacred basket-weaving traditions or whatever. You just have to accept that people in the Caucasus are insane that way; they’d die to keep from saying hello to the people over the next hill, and they’re never going to change. The Ajarans aren’t even ethnically different from Georgians; they’re Georgian too. But they’re Muslims, which means they have to have their own Lego parliament and Tonka-Toy army and all the rest of that Victorian crap, and their leader, a whack job named Abashidze (Goddamn Georgian names!) volunteered them to fight to the death for their worthless independence. Except he was such a nut, and so corrupt, and the Ajarans were so similar to the Georgians, and their little “country” was so tiny and ridiculous, that for once sanity prevailed and the Ajarans refused to fight, let themselves get reabsorbed by that Colussus to the North, mighty Georgia.

Well, like I’ve said before, there’s nothing as dangerous as victory. Makes people crazy. Saakashvili started thinking he could gobble up any secessionist region—like, say, South Ossetia. But there are big differences he was forgetting—like the fact that South Ossetia isn’t Georgian, has a border with Russia, and is linked up with North Ossetia just across that border. The road from Russia to South Ossetia is pretty fragile as a line of supply; it goes through the Roki Tunnel, a mountain tunnel at an altitude of 10,000 feet. I have to wonder why the Georgian air force—and it’s a good one by all accounts—didn’t have as its first mission in the war the total zapping of the South Ossetian exit of that tunnel.

Most likely the Georgians just thought the Russians wouldn’t react. They were doing something they learned from Bush and Cheney: sticking to best-case scenarios, positive thinking. The Georgian plan was classic shock’n’awe with no hard, grown-up thinking about the long term. Their shiny new army would go in, zap the South Ossetians while they were on a peace hangover (the worst kind), and then…uh, they’d be welcomed as liberators? Sure, just like we were in Iraq. Man, you pay a price for believing in Bush. The Georgians did. They thought he’d help.

[T]he more he shrinks, the more you pay for believing in him. The Georgians were naïve because they were so happy to get out from the Soviets, the Russians’ old enemy, the US, must be paradise. So they did their apple-polishing best to be the perfect obedient little ally. Then we’d let them into NATO and carpet-bomb them with SUVs and ipods.

Their part of the deal was simple: they sent troops to Iraq. First a contingent of 850, then a surprisingly huge 2000 men. When you consider the population of Georgia is less than five million, that’s a lot of troops. In fact, Georgia is the third-biggest contributor to the “Coalition of the Willing,” after the US and Britain.

You might be thinking, Wow, not a good time to have so many of your best troops in Iraq, huh? Well, that’s true and it goes for a lot of countries—like us, for instance—but at least we’re not facing a Russian invasion. The Georgians are so panicked they just announced they’re sending half their Iraqi force home, and could the USAF please give’em a lift?

We’ll probably give them a ride, but that’s about all we can do. We’ve already done plenty, not because we love Georgians but to counterbalance the Russian influence down where the new oil pipeline’s staked out. The biggest American aid project was the GTEP, “Georgia Train and Equip” project ($64 million). It featured 200 Special Forces instructors teaching fine Georgia boys all the lessons the US Army’s learned recently.

Now here’s the joke—and military history is just one long series of mean jokes. We were stressing counterinsurgency skills: small-unit cohesion, marksmanship, intelligence. The idea was to keep Georgia safe from Chechens or other Muslim loonies infiltrating through the Pankisi Gorge in NE Georgia. And we did a good job. The Georgian Army pacified the Pankisi in classic Green-Beret style. The punch line is, the Georgians got so cocky from that success, and from their lovefest with the Bushies in DC, that they thought they could take on anybody. What they’re in the process of finding out is that a light-infantry CI force like the one we gave them isn’t much use when a gigantic Russian armored force has just rolled across your border.

The American military’s response so far has been all talk, and pretty damn stupid talk at that. A Pentagon spokes-thingy called Russia’s response “disproportionate.” What the Hell are they talking about? They’ve been watching too many cop shows. Cops have this doctrine of “minimum necessary force,” not that they actually operate that way unless there are video cameras around. Armies never, ever had that policy, because it’s a good way to get your troops killed needlessly. The whole idea in war is to fight as unfairly and disproportionately as possible. If you’ve got it, you use it. Thank God we never fought “proportionately” in Viet Nam. The French tried that, because they never had much of an air force, and got wiped out. By the time the French withdrew from Indochina, their Lefty Prime Minister, Mendes-France, made a big show of promising peace withing 30 days of taking office—and his commanders in Indochina said privately, “I don’t think we can hold out that long.” That’s what fighting “proportionately” gets you: Dien Bien Phu.

If you want a translation, luckily I speak fluent Pentagon. So what “disproportionate” means is—well, imagine that you’re watching some little hanger-on who tags along with you get his ass whipped by a bully, and you say, “That’s inappropriate!” I mean, instead of actually helping him. That’s what “disproportionate” means from the Pentagon: “We’re not going to lift a finger to help you, but hey, we’re with you in spirit, little buddy!”

The quickest way to see who’s winning in any war is to see who asks first for a ceasefire. And this time it was the Georgians. Once it was clear the Russians were going to back the South Ossetians, the war was over. Even Georgians were saying, “To fight Russia by ourselves is insane.” Which means they thought Russia wouldn’t back its allies. Not a bad bet; Russia has a long, unpredictable history of screwing its allies—but not all the time. The Georgians should know better than anybody that once in a while, the Russians actually come through, because it was Russian troops who saved Georgia from a Persian invasion in 1805, at the battle of Zagam. Of course the Russians had let the Persians sack Tbilisi just ten years earlier without helping. That’s the thing: the bastards are unpredictable. You can’t even count on them to betray their friends (though it’s the safer bet, most of the time, sort of like 6:5 odds).

This time, the Russians came through. For lots of reasons, starting with the fact that Bush is weak and they know it; that the US is all tied up in that crap Iraq war and can’t do shit; and most of all, because Kosovo just declared independence from Serbia, an old Russian ally. It’s tit for tat time, with Kosovo as the tit and South Ossetia as the tat. The way Putin sees it, if we can mess with his allies and let little ethnic enclaves like Kosovo declare independence, then the Russians can do the same with our allies, especially naïve idiotic allies like Georgia.

Luckily, South Ossetia doesn’t matter that much. I’m just being honest here. In a year nobody will care much who runs that little glob of territory. What’s more serious is that another, bigger and more strategic chunk of Georgia called Abkhazia, on the Black Sea, is taking the opportunity to boot out the last Georgian troops on its territory. Georgia may lose almost all its coastline, but then the Georgians were always an inland people anyway, living along river valleys, not great sailors.

What’s happening to Georgia here is like the teeny-tiny version of Germany in the twentieth century: overplay your hand and you lose everything. So if you’re a Georgian nationalist, this war is a tragedy; if you’re a Russian or Ossetian nationalist, it’s a triumph, a victory for justice, whatever. To the rest of us, it’s just kind of fun to watch. And damn, this one has been a LOT of fun! The videos that came out of it! You know, DVD is the best thing to happen to war in a long time. All the fun, none of the screaming agony—it’s war as Diet Coke.

See, this is the war that I used to see in the paintings commissioned by Defense contractors in Aviation Week and AFJ: a war between two conventional armies, both using air forces and armored columns, in pine-forested terrain. That was what those pictures showed every time, with a highlighted closeup of the weapon they were selling homing in on a Warsaw Pact convoy coming through a German pine forest. Of course, a real NATO/Warsaw Pact war would never, ever have happened that way. It would have gone nuclear in an hour or less, which both sides knew, which is why it never happened. So all that beautiful weaponry was kind of a farce, if it was only going to be used in the Fulda Gap. But damn, God is good, because here it all is, in the same kind of terrain, all your favorite old images: Russian-made tanks burning, a Soviet-model fighter-bomber falling from the sky in pieces, troops in Russian camo fighting other troops, also in Russian camo, in a skirmish by some dilapidated country shack.

No racial overtones to get bummed out by—everybody on both sides is white! And white from places you don’t know or care about!

The fretting and fussing and sky-is-falling crap about this war is going to die down fast, and the bottom line will be simple: the Georgians overplayed their hand and got slapped, and we caught a little of the follow-through, which is what happens when you waste your best troops—and Georgia’s, for that matter—on a dumb war in the wrong place. We detatched Kosovo from a Russian ally; they detached South Ossetia from an American ally. It’s a pawn exchange, if that. If it signals anything bigger, it’s the fact that the US is weaker than it was ten years ago and Russia is much, much stronger than it was in Yeltsin’s time. But anybody with sense knew all that already.

What will last is those beautiful videos, like some NATO-era dream, like God giving me one last chance to see the weapons I spent my twenties dreaming about in action. Even the wounded-civilian videos are interesting because a lot of the wounded are fat and old, which you didn’t see much in classic Korean or Normandy or Nam footage.

We’re the new normal, but damn, we sure are ugly casualties. Skinny people just look better sitting in rubble with bloody faces, I can’t lie.

As the war fades out—and it will; countries don’t fight to the death these days—there’ll be time to see how the various weapons systems played. I’m especially interested to see how well the Georgian air defense missiles, some very good recent Russian models, worked. But there’s plenty of time to debrief later. For now, just go to LiveLeak or YouTube (LiveLeak has better stuff right now) and enjoy yourself. This is when us war nerds get all the free porn we can handle. Call in sick, take your comp time, whatever—just don’t miss those videos.

Tasseography - Fistfull of Polls

40 years ago, the US invasion of South Vietnam was in its fourth year and the surge of that day was about to add another 100,000 troops to the 175,000 already there, while South Vietnam was being bombed at triple the level of the bombing of the north and the war was expanding to the rest of Indochina. Still, the war would not go well, so the hawks were shifting towards doubts, among them the distinguished historian and Kennedy adviser Arthur Schlesinger. He and Kennedy -other Kennedy liberals had already begun - reluctantly began to shift from a dedication to victory to a more dovish position.

Schlesinger explained the reasons. I’ll quote him now:

“Of course, we all pray that the hawks are right in thinking that the surge of that day will work. And if it does, we may all be saluting the wisdom and statesmanship of the American government in winning a victory in a land that we have turned to wreck and ruin. But the surge probably won’t work, at an acceptable cost to us, so perhaps strategy should be rethought.”

Well, the reasoning and the underlying attitudes carry over with almost no change to the critical commentary on the US invasion of Iraq today. And it is a land of wreck and ruin. The British polling agency, Opinion Research Business, has recently updated its estimate of deaths. Their new estimate is 1.3 million, excluding two of the most violent provinces, Karbala and Anbar. On the side, it’s kind of intriguing to observe the ferocity of the debate over the actual number of deaths. There’s an assumption on the part of hawks that if we only killed a couple hundred thousand people, it might not be so bad, so we shouldn’t accept the higher estimates. You can go along with that if you like.

Uncontroversially, there are over two million displaced within Iraq. Thanks to Jordan and Syria, the millions of refugees who have fled the wreckage of Iraq aren’t totally wiped out. That includes most of the professional classes. But that welcome is fading, because Jordan and Syria receive no support from Washington and London, and therefore they cannot accept that huge burden for very long. It’s going to leave those two-and-a-half million refugees who fled in even more desperate straits.

The post-invasion sectarian warfare has devastated the country, as you know. Much of the country has been subjected to rather brutal ethnic cleansing and left in the hands of warlords and militias. That’s the primary thrust of the current counterinsurgency strategy that’s developed by Petraeus. He won considerable fame pacifying Mosul a couple of years ago. It’s now, perhaps only coincidentally so, the scene of some of the most extreme violence in the country.

A bleeding-heart journalist immersed in the ongoing messiness, Nir Rosen, recently wrote an epitaph entitled “The Death of Iraq” [5-page pdf]in the somewhat mainstream-ish journal Current History . He writes that “Iraq has been killed, never to rise again. The American occupation has been more disastrous than that of the Mongols, who sacked Baghdad in the thirteenth century,” which has been the perception of many Iraqis, as well. “Only fools talk of ‘solutions’ now,” he went on. “There is no solution. The only hope is that perhaps the damage can be contained.” This is what I hear from my friends in place - they don't speak of winning, they speak of how now to administrate a failure.

But Iraq is, in fact, now a marginal(ized) issue, and the reasons are the traditional ones, the traditional reasoning and attitudes of the liberal doves who all pray now, as they did forty years ago, that the hawks will be right and that the US will win a victory in this land of wreck and ruin. And they’re either encouraged or silenced by the good news about Iraq.

And there is good news. The Multi-National Force–Iraq, (I think three Poles are still battling it out in there somewhere) carries out extensive studies of popular attitudes. It’s an important part of counterinsurgency or any form of domination - you want to know what your subjects are thinking. It released a report last December. It was a study of focus groups, and it was uncharacteristically upbeat. The report concluded—I’ll quote it—that the survey of focus groups “provides very strong evidence” that national reconciliation is possible and anticipated, contrary to what’s being claimed. The survey found that a sense of “optimistic possibility permeated all focus groups…and far more commonalities than differences are found among these seemingly diverse groups of Iraqis” from all over the country and all walks of life. This discovery of “shared beliefs” among Iraqis throughout the country is “good news, according to a military analysis of the results," Karen de Young reported in the Washington Post.

Well, the “shared beliefs” are identified in the report. I’ll quote de Young: "Iraqis of all sectarian and ethnic groups believe that the US military invasion is the primary root of the violent differences among them, and see the departure of [what they call] ‘occupying forces’ as the key to national reconciliation.” So those are the “shared beliefs.” According to the Iraqis then, there’s hope of national reconciliation if the invaders, who are responsible for the internal violence and the other atrocities, withdraw and leave Iraq to Iraqis. That’s pretty much the same as what’s been found in earlier polls, so it’s not all that surprising. Well, that’s the good news: “shared beliefs.”

There was a recent poll which found that 75 percent of Americans believe that US foreign policy is driving the dissatisfaction with America abroad, and more than 60 percent believe that dislike of American values and of the American people are also to blame. Dissatisfaction is a kind of an understatement. The United States has become increasingly the most feared and often hated country in the world. Well, that perception is in fact incorrect. It’s fed by propaganda. There’s very little dislike of Americans in the world, shown by repeated polls, and the dissatisfaction—that is, the hatred and the anger—they come from acceptance of American values, not a rejection of them, and recognition that they’re perceived to be rejected by the US government, which does indeed seem to rile some fickle folks up.

There’s other good news that was reported by General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker during the extravaganza staged last September 11th. ("September 11th?", you might ask. "Why that timing?" ;) ) Petraeus and Crocker provided figures to explain the good news. The figures they provided showed that the Iraqi government was greatly accelerating spending on reconstruction, which is good news indeed and remained so until it was investigated by the Government Accountability Office [17-page pdf], which found that the actual figure was one-sixth of what Petraeus and Crocker reported and, in fact, a 50 percent decline from the previous year.

Well, more good news is the decline in sectarian violence; that’s attributable in part to the ethnic cleansing that Iraqis blame on the invasion. There are fewer people to kill, so sectarian violence declines. It’s also attributable to the new counterinsurgency doctrine, Washington’s decision to support the tribal groups that had already organized to drive out Iraqi al-Qaeda, to an increase in US troops, and to the decision of the Sadr’s Mahdi army to consolidate its gains to stop direct fighting. (That’s what the press calls “halting aggression” by the Mahdi army.)

Well, it’s possible that Petraeus’s strategy may approach the success of the Russians in Chechnya, where—I’ll quote the New York Times from last September — Chechnya, the fighting is now “limited and sporadic, and Grozny is in the midst of a building boom” after having been reduced to rubble by the Russian attack. Well, maybe some day Baghdad and Fallujah also will enjoy, to continue the quote, “electricity restored in many neighborhoods, new businesses opening and the city’s main streets repaved,” as in booming Grozny. Possible, but dubious, in the light of the likely consequence of creating warlord armies that may be the seeds of even greater sectarian violence. Well, if Russians share the beliefs and attitudes of elite liberal intellectuals in the West, then they must be praising Putin’s “wisdom and statesmanship” for his achievements in Chechnya. "High five, Putin!"

Washington has expectations for Iraq, and they’re explicit. They're outlined in a Declaration of Principles that was agreed upon between the United States and that Iraqi government we installed under our occupation. These two parties issued the Declaration of Principles. It allows US forces to remain indefinitely in Iraq in order to “deter foreign aggression”—and also to facilitate and encourage “the flow of foreign investments [to] Iraq, especially American investments.” I’m quoting. Not exactly an unbrazen expression of intent.

Such expectations were bulwark'd when POTUS issued a signing statement declaring that he will reject crucial provisions of congressional legislation that he had just signed, including the provision that forbids spending taxpayer money—I’m quoting—“to establish any military installation or base for the purpose of providing for the permanent stationing of [United States] Armed Forces in Iraq” or “to exercise [United States] control of the oil resources of Iraq." OK? Shortly after, the New York Times reported that Washington “insists that the Baghdad government give the United States broad authority to conduct combat operations,” a demand that “faces a potential buzz saw of opposition from Iraq, with its…deep sensitivities about being seen as a dependent state.” It’s supposed to be more third world irrationality.

So, in brief, the United States is now insisting that Iraq must agree to allow permanent US military installations, provide the United - whoops, grant the United States the right to conduct combat operations freely, and to guarantee US control over the oil resources of Iraq. OK? It’s all very explicit, on the table. It’s kind of interesting that these reports do not elicit any reflection on the reasons why we invaded Iraq. You’ve heard those reasons offered, but they were dismissed with ridicule. Now they’re openly conceded to be accurate, but not eliciting any retraction or even any reflection.

Well, there’s a lot more to say about good news when I should just shut up and revere our Lord of COIN so I will just say that thinking about these things perhaps gives some insight into the famous “clash of civilizations” and its actual substance, topics that ought occasionally to be foremost in the minds of those serious about wanting to win this effing bastard of a thing.

DNI's 2008 Threat Assessment (version: Baby Talk)

A week of windy and format-challenged posts it would seem.

The Annual Threat Assessment of the Director of National Intelligence for the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (unclassified version) [47-pages pdf} was released earlier this week. Baby talk aside, passages of sufficient noteworthiness were nonetheless not completely in the lacking. Chosen for reasons undulating between the cynical and the significant, here are excerpts we found almost worth the excerpting effort:

Meddled East

• The brutal attacks against Muslim civilians unleashed by AQI and AQIM and the conflicting demands of the various extremist agendas are tarnishing al-Qa’ida’s self-styled image as the extremist vanguard. Over the past year, a number of religious leaders and fellow extremists who once had significant influence with al-Qa’ida have publicly criticized it and its affiliates for the use of violent tactics. [A claim as a picture perfect expression of a Strategic PSYOP in play]

• Many Sunnis who participate in local security initiatives retain a hostile attitude toward Shia parties that dominate the government, and some Shia leaders still view many anti-AQI Sunni groups as thinly disguised insurgents who are plotting to reverse the political process that brought the Shia to power. Security in southern Iraq probably will remain fragile in the coming months as rival Shia groups continue to compete violently for political power and economic resources. In Al Basrah, security remains tenuous. Security also is a problem in northern Iraq. Violence has increased in Mosul, Iraq’s third largest city, as both Sunni resistance elements and AQI increasingly focus their activities in the area. The Iraqi government will have to address Sunni Arab concerns over representation on the provincial councils, defeat AQI and the insurgents, and address Kurdish expansionism to improve security in northern Iraq .[Filed under Significant]

• Approximately 90 percent of all suicide attacks in Iraq are conducted by foreign terrorists [Oh? and Really?]

• Negotiations on hydrocarbon laws continue to be stalled by disagreements between the central government and the Kurds over control of resources and revenue sharing. [We keep meaning to write a Mosul for Dummies Like Us]

• Although Riyadh also has made strides against key supporters and facilitators of extremist attacks in Iraq, Saudi Arabia remains a source of recruits and finances for Iraq and Levant-based militants and Saudi extremists constitute the largest share of foreign fighters and suicide bombers in Iraq.

Pakistan

• We judge the ongoing political uncertainty in Pakistan has not seriously threatened the military’s control of the nuclear arsenal, but vulnerabilities exist. The Pakistan Army oversees nuclear programs, including security responsibilities, and we judge that the Army’s management of nuclear policy issues—to include physical security—has not been degraded by Pakistan’s political crisis. [Filed under Significant; 5-page pdf]
  

Russia

• ...we will be alert for signs of systemic changes such as an indication that [Russian] presidential powers are being weakened in favor of a stronger prime minister.
  

• Russia is positioning to control an energy supply and transportation network spanning from Europe to East Asia. Aggressive Russian efforts to control, restrict or block the transit of hydrocarbons from the Caspian to the West—and to ensure that East-West energy corridors remain subject to Russian control

• [Russian] demographic, health problems, and conscription deferments erode available manpower [in the military].

Balkans

• We judge that the Balkans will remain unsettled in 2008 as Kosovo’s drive for independence from Serbia comes to a head and inter-ethnic relations in Bosnia worsen. [Filed under - Definitely not sexy]
  

China

• China’s global engagement is not driven by Communist ideology or military expansionism, but instead by a need for access to markets, resources, technology and expertise...

• Beijing is seeking a constructive relationship with the US and the rest of the world, which will allow China to fully capitalize on a favorable strategic environment. Indeed, Chinese officials consistently emphasize the need to seek cooperative relations with Washington, because conflict with the United States would risk derailing China’s economic development. They also seek to alleviate international concerns about China’s strategic intentions.
  

Ahfriiica

• Persistent insecurity in Nigeria’s oil producing region, the Niger Delta, poses a direct threat to US strategic interests in sub-Saharan Africa. Ongoing instability and conflict in other parts of Africa pose less direct though still significant threats to US interests because of their high humanitarian and peacekeeping costs...

• Tensions between longtime enemies Ethiopia and Eritrea have increased over the past year, with both sides seemingly preparing for a new war. The last war killed about 80,000 soldiers on both sides. If conflict reignites, Ethiopian President Meles’s own hold on power could be put in jeopardy if the war went badly for him.

Resources

• With about 70 percent of global oil reserves inaccessible or of limited accessibility to outside oil companies, competition between international oil companies to secure stakes in the few countries open to foreign investment is likely to intensify. [Filed under Darfur et al]
  

• Global food prices also have been rising steadily over the past two years driven by higher energy prices...The double impact of high energy and food prices is increasing the risk of social and political instability in vulnerable countries.
  

Germs

• The most direct threat to the US is the spread of infectious pathogens to our shores, or within areas where US personnel are deployed.

Who Says The U.S. Can't Keep A Secret?

Especially when it is "embarrassing."

He had all-American cover: born in Iowa, college in Manhattan, Army buddies with whom he played baseball.

George Koval also had a secret. During World War II, he was a top Soviet spy, code named Delmar and trained by Stalin’s ruthless bureau of military intelligence.

Atomic spies are old stuff. But historians say Dr. Koval, who died in his 90s last year in Moscow and whose name is just coming to light publicly, was probably one of the most important spies of the 20th century.

On Nov. 2, the Kremlin startled Western scholars by announcing that President Vladimir V. Putin had posthumously given the highest Russian award to a Soviet agent who penetrated the Manhattan Project to build the atom bomb.

The announcement hailed Dr. Koval as “the only Soviet intelligence officer” to infiltrate the project’s secret plants, saying his work “helped speed up considerably the time it took for the Soviet Union to develop an atomic bomb of its own.”

Since then, historians, scientists, federal officials and old friends have raced to tell Dr. Koval’s story — the athlete, the guy everyone liked, the genius at technical studies. American intelligence agencies have known of his betrayal at least since the early 1950s, when investigators interviewed his fellow scientists and swore them to secrecy.

(...)

Over the years, scholars and federal agents have identified a half-dozen individuals who spied on the bomb project for the Soviets, especially at Los Alamos in New Mexico. All were “walk ins,” spies by impulse and sympathetic leaning rather than rigorous training.

By contrast, Dr. Koval was a mole groomed in the Soviet Union by the feared G.R.U., the military intelligence agency. Moreover, he gained wide access to America’s atomic plants, a feat unknown for any other Soviet spy. Nuclear experts say the secrets of bomb manufacturing can be more important than those of design.

(...)

Washington has known about Dr. Koval’s spying since he fled the United States shortly after the war but kept it secret.

“It would have been highly embarrassing for the U.S. government to have had this divulged,” said Robert S. Norris, author of “Racing for the Bomb,” a biography of the project’s military leader.

Historians say Mr. Putin may have cited Dr. Koval’s accomplishments as a way to rekindle Russian pride. As shown by a New York Public Library database search, the announcement has prompted detailed reports in the Russian press about Dr. Koval and his clandestine feats.

“It’s very exciting to get this kind of break,” said John Earl Haynes, a Library of Congress historian and an authority on atomic spying. “We know very little about G.R.U. operations in the United States.”