Category Archives: CIA

CIA, Culture, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, USA

From America to France to the Middle East: Active Generals and Risky Sex, Catfights and the Federal Religious Police …….………

   

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“The FBI is making a new push to determine how a woman who had an affair with retired Gen. David H. Petraeus when he was CIA director obtained classified files, part of an expanding series of investigations in a scandal that also threatens the career of the United States’ top military commander in Afghanistan. Senior law enforcement officials said that a late-night seizure on Monday of boxes of material from the North Carolina home of Paula Broadwell, a Petraeus biographer whose affair with him led to his resignation last week, marks a renewed focus by investigators on sensitive material found in her possession. “The issue of national security is still on the table,” one U.S. law enforcement official said. Both Petraeus and Broadwell have denied to investigators that he was the source of any classified information…………….”

The Petraeus media reports highlight the cultural differences between various parts of the world. Besides all the strange FBI investigations of a private affair and the house raids (at least one so far), there the broader issues. You’d think the FBI are the American equivalent of the Saudi Commission for the Propagation of Vice (the Religious Police,) the way they have undertaken to dismantle not only the professional lives but also the private lives of the people involved. All for being involved in a relationship that is not against the law. So let’s compare:


  • USA. Freedom of consensual liaisons between adult humans is guaranteed. But the remnants of that old Puritan Ethnic are hard to shake off. The shadow of John Winthrop hangs over many hooked up couples, whether they were in the back of a car in the old days or in a motel or a hotel, or at someone’s home. Americans concede that ‘it’ is part of life, even most Republicans concede that, but it is wise not to get caught doing it. If an aggrieved partner or rival doesn’t bloody you, then there is the brutal schadenfreude, which can and does ruin the ‘afterglow’. Then there is General Allen, who exchanged emails with some other chick. He called her ‘sweetheart’ and the Religious Police apparently interpreted that as tantamount to consensual sex. Shouldn’t these guys be catching terrorists, real or created or encouraged, rather than worry about emails and bedrooms? Then there are the and drug lords and traffickers , etc., etc.
  • France. Sex is a red line in France, even if it often becomes public. It is not haram to have sex before, during, after, inside, outside, and around marriage. It is haram to meddle in it, ban it, moralize about it, or use it in politics. A general can have all the mistresses he wants, all the mistresses who are willing to seduce him, all who accept his “attentions”, all that he can afford, as long as he performs well in the field (field of battle or whatever it is French generals are supposed to do at the office). That is part of French-ness: the French Tea Party and the French Salafis would insist on it. French Evangelicals would insist on it. Even Marine Le Pen would insist on it.
  • Britain. The Brits get really kinky and off the “beaten track” in their sex scandals of high officials. Quite interesting for a people known (perhaps mistakenly) for eschewing public sex. The mildest scandal involves at least hookers (i.e. prostitutes) and progresses to foreign spies, Russians, Chinese, Abominable Snowmen, and it degenerates and gets worse (or is it considered “better” over there). 
  • Middle East. Oh, never mind. Forget about it. In some ways we are more advanced: we have institutionalized it all. You can get thrown in prison or flogged publicly for being alone with a woman in a car or at the beach or even at a cafe in some countries. Yet a General Prince Bin Technocrat Al-Kleptocrat can lead his ‘private’ life as he pleases without, er, interruption. So can a Field Marshal Shaikh Bin Kleptocrat Al-Technocrat. But we also have our public solutions to the natural order of things. Polygamy, temporary marriages, part-time marriages, sex-only no-cohabitation no-responsibility marriages, and other creative “halal”, “kosher” if you prefer, sexual arrangements that take care of it all. We are, after all, more moral and holier than thou (that means you heathens).


Cheers
mhg
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CIA, Espionage, Iran, Israel, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

Iranian Nuclear issue, American Nuclear Issue, Conventional Strategic Issue…..

    

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“Intercepted communications of Iranian officials discussing their nuclear program raised concerns that the country’s leaders had decided to revive efforts to develop a weapon, intelligence officials said. That, along with a stream of other information, set off an intensive review and delayed publication of the 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, a classified report reflecting the consensus of analysts from 16 agencies. But in the end, they deemed the intercepts and other evidence unpersuasive, and they stuck to their longstanding conclusion……… As a result, officials caution that they cannot offer certainty. “I’d say that I have about 75 percent confidence in the assessment that they haven’t restarted the program,”…………….”

““There is not a lot of dispute between the U.S. and Israeli intelligence communities on the facts,” the former official said. The Times reported last month that U.S. intelligence analysts continue to believe there was no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb. The latest assessments by U.S. spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program …….….”


Which deserves a resounding: WTF?
This seems to confirm my long-held suspicions: the noise about Iran has little to do with a nuclear program. It has a lot to do with broader Middle East balance of power. It has to do with pressure from the Israeli/American right-wing (and perhaps the Saudi princes). It is part of a struggle for influence in the Middle East.
The Israelis want Iranian influence in Lebanon and Syria reduced, but without the risk of an Islamist Salafi resurgence (in Syria) that would actively reopen the Golan file. Syria is a focus target, with the potential of a complete break with Iran and an alliance with the Saudis and their  right-wing March 14 proxies in Lebanon. Lebanon can be partly affected, but it would be unrealistic for it to have a complete break with Iran and join the Saudi camp (the demographics are against it).

The Saudi princes want to consolidate their hegemony over the Gulf GCC states and to dominate the Arabs of the eastern Mediterranean. A tough, nay impossible, job. In the process, they want Iranian infrastructure and military power destroyed by the Americans and Israelis. That would open the door for their money to move into the vacuum in Syria and perhaps regain influence in Lebanon. The Saudi princes want to play the same role they tried in the 1980s, when they armed and financed Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Iran and urged the West to do the same. We all know what Saddam did in 1990 right after the West pulled his nuts out of the fire.

Everybody in America is making ‘appropriate’ noises about the “nuclear” issue; even Obama is being pushed to it by both his right-wing opponents and by Democrats in the U.S. Congress. Especially so with the Republican candidates vying to outdo each other in Likud-orchestrated crazy rhetoric, rhetoric that seems to embarrass some past and current Israeli officials (not Netanyahu and Lieberman).
Cheers
mhg


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CIA, Drones, GCC, Iran, Israel, U.S. Congress, US Foreign Policy

New International Band: “Barack Obama and the Drones”………….

 

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“Deep inside these burning buildings
Voices die to be heard
Years we spent teaching a lesson
We ourselves had never learned
And if strength is borne from heartbreak
Many mountains I could move
And if walls could speak I’d pray
That they would tell me what to do
The drones will slave away, they’re working overtime,
They serve a faceless queen, they never question why.….” Drones (by Back Against)

“Given these views, experts fear that Holder’s argument in support of the war on terror could also serve as a rationale for possible future military strikes ordered by Obama. Claus Kress, a Cologne-based professor of international law and an internationally renowned expert on the US’s stance on the laws of war, believes that it is “not inconceivable” that, in justifying the drone war, Obama’s top lawyers may have already set their sights on an altogether different target: Iran. Legally speaking, a military strike against the mullahs’ nuclear program — which Obama believes is conceivable should it become verifiably clear that there is no other way to stop Iran from building a bomb — would only be possible with the permission of the United Nations Security Council. But the Russians and the Chinese would probably veto any such consent. As a result, the United States would have to invoke its “inherent” right of self-defense in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter. Still, this requires that Iran has essentially raised its weapon against Israel or the United States………”

As the old song says: “birds do it, bees do it….”
Everybody is doing it these days, or soon will be. China is building drones. Israel is using drones. Iran is building and using drones. Before you know it, we’ll have most nations building their own drones. Then we’d have various sects in each country building their own drones: we’d have Shi’a drones, Salafi drones, Ikhwan drones, and Sufi drones. Then there will be Coptic drones and Maronite drones and Orthodox drones. Then we’d have tribal drones around the Gulf: Shemmar drones (more than one type), Ajmi drones, Mutairi drones, Comanche drones, Arapaho drones, etc. Then there will be neighborhood drones…….
In the United States, if things go along the current trajectory, there may be Republican drones and Democrat drones. In fact there already are some primitive prototypes: they call them senators and representatives.
Cheers
mhg


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CIA, Iran, United Nations International Organizations, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

From Baghdad to Tehran: Deception, Fear-Mongering, Murky Waters……

 

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“Even as the United Nations’ nuclear watchdog said in a new report Friday that Iran had accelerated its uranium enrichment program, American intelligence analysts continue to believe that there is no hard evidence that Iran has decided to build a nuclear bomb. Recent assessments by American spy agencies are broadly consistent with a 2007 intelligence finding that concluded that Iran had abandoned its nuclear weapons program years earlier, according to current and former American officials. The officials said that assessment was largely reaffirmed in a 2010 National Intelligence Estimate, and that it remains the consensus view of America’s 16 intelligence agencies. ……..At the center of the debate is the murky question of the ultimate ambitions of the leaders in Tehran………..”

It is possible that the Iranians don’t like Western “experts” poking around in their facilities: after all, when was the last time the French or British allowed some Iranian inspectors to poke around in their facilities?
So there is no evidence, no smoking gun, that the mullahs are building a bomb. No Dick Cheney to swear that Saddam had a beer with Bin Laden as they plotted 9/11. Only a judge (George Daniels) in New York or was it DC who seems to believe that Ali Khamenei plotted 9/11 with Bin Laden over a pitcher of Mojito (Islamic no-mojo style). But it all helps in the West Bank, as the settlements keep expanding and the prospect of two states dims into a distant future.
Odd how Western officials and media, especially in the USA, assaulted the IAEA under Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei when they cast doubts about Bush and Cheney and WMD in Iraq, yet they hang onto every word of it about Iran. So what has changed other than the new man doing their bidding?
Cheers
mhg


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CIA, Iran, Islamophobia, MEK, Mujahideen Khalq, Muslims, War on Iran

James Woolsey, a Muslim Adolf Hitler, and Bombing Bill Clinton……….

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“The United States should consider military strikes against not just Iran’s nuclear sites but the entire Iranian Revolutionary Guard infrastructure, argued former CIA director James Woolsey in a radio interview today. Comparing the Guards to Adolph Hitler’s blackshirts, Woolsey named several “fair game” Guard-related targets, including Iran’s space program, ballistic missile program, training facilities and the Guard’s substantial commercial interesta………. The ex-CIA director said the U.S. should consider these military options if Iran blocks the strategic Strait of Hormuz waterway or takes other significant aggressive action…………..”

I know someone is not worth taking seriously when they start comparing others to “Adolf Hitler” and his murderous groups. It is perceived as an easy and cheap way to make a point, except that it doesn’t. Idiotic and dishonest politicians use it a lot. They always compare some Arab or Muslim to Hitler, never a European (not even a fucking German or Austrian), never even an Asian or African. One has to be a Muslim Middle East leader to be compared to Hitler. Now, how stupid is that?


Mr. Woolsey has been advocating a new Middle East war ever since he started showing up on Fox News a few years ago, even at the peak of the war in Iraq. He never volunteers to join, though: they never do, these fattened and comfortable warmongers.
James Woolsey was director of the CIA under Bill Clinton, but briefly. Apparently Clinton was not impressed with Woolsey and stopped seeing him (or maybe he was too boring, probably both). Media reports said (alleged) that he tried desperately to make appointments with the president and that Clinton just refused to see him. There is a famous case in 1994 of a lone pilot who circled the White House and crash landed his airplane on its South Lawn. Some media reports initially claimed it was CIA chief James Woolsey, desperately trying to see Bill Clinton who still refused to grant him an audience.

Cheers
mhg


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CIA, Iran, Middle East, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

The War that Bush Rejected but Obama may Wage: Mrs. Clinton and GOP War Evaders………..

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“President George W. Bush’s administration concluded that a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities would be a bad idea — and would only make it harder to prevent Iran from going nuclear in the future, former CIA and National Security Agency (NSA) chief Gen. Michael Hayden said Thursday. “When we talked about this in the government, the consensus was that [attacking Iran] would guarantee that which we are trying to prevent — an Iran that will spare nothing to build a nuclear weapon and that would build it in secret,” Hayden told a small group of experts and reporters at an event hosted by the Center for the National Interest. Hayden served as director of the NSA from 1999 to 2005 and then served as CIA director from 2006 until February 2009. He also had a 39-year career at the Air Force, which he ended as a four-star general. Without an actual occupation of Iran, which nobody wants to contemplate…………….”

It is all about the goal and the exit plan. See? Even I, who is no military expert or strategist(yet) or eve newspaper columnist, know that.
As for an actual invasion of Iran, with ground troops: oh boy. Iran is at least three times the size of Iraq with more than three times the population with many huge cities and is very rugged territory. It stretches from the Persian-American Gulf deep into Central Asia, from the Arabian Sea-Indian Ocean to the Russian border. There is no flat easy terrain to Tehran or Isfahan or Mashhad or Qum. The Revolutionary Guard IRCG is not likely to run away and hide like the Iraqi Ba’athist army in 2003. Think of it as invading Russia but on a smaller scale, and we all know what happens when Russia gets invaded.
Of course, I can be wrong and the whole Iranian regime could collapse within days. But I doubt it: no doubt they have prepared for such a scenario.
Still, before November, Mr. Obama, prodded by an easily ‘disturbed’ Mrs. Clinton and a taunting Republican mob of draft dodgers and war evaders, may opt for a war that he will not be able to control.
Cheers
mhg


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CIA, Iran, Israel, Mossad, Pakistan, Salafi, Terrorism, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

Legalized Bribery, Western Terrorism vs. Islamic Terrorism, a Most pro-Israeli Administration…………

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“In the peculiar American system of legalized bribery, AIPAC has bought most US congressmen by organizing thousands of Jewish and Christian Zionist groups to give money to Congressional campaigns. AIPAC ought to have to register as an agent of a foreign country, but is allowed to so function without any let or hindrance, by the FBI, which really ought to intervene here. The hypocrisy is so thick you could drown in it. The Israel lobbies have managed to configure the Hizbullah party-militia of Lebanon as a “terrorist” organization, when Hizbullah’s major military operations were defensive, aimed at expelling occupying, aggressive Israeli troops from Lebanese territory on which they had unlawfully squatted. But when Mossad (pretending to be Americans) buys Baluchi agents to blow up innocent worshippers in mosques in Zahedan, that is defined away as not terrorism…………”

Also sprach Juan Cole, not unreasonably; in fact quite reasonably.
All these revelations only reinforce deeply ingrained Iranian suspicions that go back almost six decades. Jundullah have committed some gruesome murders against Iranian civilians, like beheadings and slitting throats, Salafi al-Qaeda style crimes. It is not clear yet if it was the CIA that recruited the Salafi terrorists or the friendly Israelis in American disguise (nice friends, no?). But it all reminds the mullahs and ordinary Iranians of the American-British plot that ended their democracy in August 1953. That plot, Operation Ajax, handed absolute power first to the shah, then it lay the seeds for the 1979 revolution, the embassy hostage-taking, and the ongoing crisis.
As for the Israelis, if they were behind it, they certainly will not be punished, not even reprimanded. Not when they have the American Knesset running the show in Washington DC, and a terrified Democrat administration turning a blind eye in a way George W. Bush would never have allowed. This is truly the most pro-Israeli administration in American history. Unfortunately, pro-Israeli also means extreme pro-right-wing Likud.
Cheers
mhg


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CIA, Espionage, Iran, War on Iran

Iranian American Tit for Tat Continues………….

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“Iran’s state TV broadcast video of a young man Sunday it claimed was a CIA spy who sought to infiltrate Iran’s secret services. The TV identified the man, apparently in his late 20s, as Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, an American-Iranian who received special training and served at U.S. military bases in Iraq and Afghanistan before heading to Iran for his alleged intelligence mission. “Their (US intelligence) plan was to initially burn some valuable information, to give it free so that (Iran’s) Intelligence Ministry would see the good things and then would contact me,” said in a part of the confession that was broadcast. The voice of an unnamed announcer on the video said U.S. intelligence was certain that Iran’s secret services would not ignore the data. Therefore, they provided a mix of correct and false information to mislead Iran’s intelligence but tempt it at the same time..……..”

Whether this young man was truly a CIA agent or just a feint to confuse the Iranians or just an innocent visitor to his homeland, he is now part of an ongoing Iranian-American war. It is a war that is intensifying and getting weirder by the day. It may culminate in the whole field of GOP candidates storming the Iranian border, along with Netanyahu.
Now if Messrs Gingrich and Romney and Santorum take my advice and take a hike along the Iraq-Iran border…..
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Revolutions, CIA, Libya, NATO, North Africa, Racism, US Foreign Policy, WTF

Gallicus Sarkozicus Africanus: Who Said the New Libya is Not Independent?………..

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“Nicolas Sarkozy, of all people, is trying to put to rest the controversy over Abdelhakim Belhadj, the head of Tripoli’s military council. Belhadj rings alarm bells because of his past association with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which fought the Soviets in Afghanistan and later on fought in Iraq and again in Afghanistan. In other words, they had been among Ronald Reagan’s “Freedom Fighters.” Belhadj was captured by the CIA and reportedly turned against terrorism while imprisoned. The CIA helpfully released him to Qaddafi, which is surely a crime of some sort (civilized countries do not send even enemy prisoners to countries where they might be killed or tortured by the government on arrival). Sarkozy has been anything but nice to French Muslims (who mostly voted for a Socialist woman in the last election precisely because Sarkozy he was the alternative), and he has been accused of legitimating the racist anti-Muslim discourse of Marie LePen. So if Sarkozy is vouching for Belhadj, then I’d bet that Belhadj is not a danger to the West. And, of course, the members of the Transitional National Council, the leadership of the new Libya, have been carefully vetted by the US, Britain and France……………”

Libya is, will remain, independent. Its ‘new’ government will have the freedom to make independent decisions. Its ‘new’ government can be relied upon to make the right decisions. Its new government has been carefully “vetted” by the three leading powers of NATO (make that OTAN). The Libyan people have progressed from a repressive dictatorial dynasty to a government “vetted” by the democracies of NATO. It is a testimony to the truly screwed up state of the Arab world that a NATO-vetted government is an improvement. The sad thing is that it is a step forward: an improvement over the Qaddafi dictatorship, and probably an improvement over most other Ara regimes.

Sarkozy (a k a Le Weasel) is now the Western Gauleiter for Libya. As Cole says “Sarkozy has been anything but nice to French Muslims (who mostly voted for a Socialist woman in the last election precisely because Sarkozy he was the alternative), and he has been accused of legitimating the racist anti-Muslim discourse of Marie LePen…………” Gallicus Sarkozicus Africanus, indeed.
Cheers
mhg


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CIA, Espionage, Iran, Middle East Nuclear, Mossad

Another Unsolved Murder in Iran: Mystery of the Indispensable Nuclear Student………

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““Israel is not responding,” Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak said earlier this week when asked if his country had been involved in the latest slaying of an Iranian nuclear scientist. It didn’t exactly sound like a denial, and the smile on his face suggested Israel isn’t too bothered by suspicions that it is responsible for a series of murders of physicists involved in the controversial Iranian nuclear program. There is little doubt in the shadowy world of intelligence agencies that Israel is behind the assassination of Darioush Rezaei. “That was the first serious action taken by the new Mossad chief Tamir Pardo,” an Israeli intelligence source told SPIEGEL ONLINE. On July 23, Rezaei became the latest victim in a mysterious series of attacks over the past 20 months which has seen the virtual decimation of the Islamic republic’s elite physicists. The 35-year-old died after being shot in the throat in front of his daughter’s kindergarten in east Tehran………According to the Associated Press, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna has since confirmed what had already been reported by the Israeli media — namely that the physics student had worked on the development of high-voltage switching systems, a key component that is crucial to setting off the explosions needed to trigger a nuclear warhead…………..”

Barak’s reaction does not necessarily mean the (post-Dubai) Mossad did it. Even the Der Spiegel “contacts” could be, almost certainly are, part of a campaign of misinformation. They Israelis may have been involved, or they may be protecting other Western governments (they have less to lose).
Yet I am not sure about this ‘scientist’. He was reported as an academic, then a scientist, then a student. The latest Iranian report claimed he was a student who was killed by mistake, that they mistook him for a scientist. The Israelis now say he was a student who was crucial for a high-voltage switching system, etc, etc. Maybe he was, maybe not. Both sides, nay all three sides, have an interest in fudging things, misleading everybody else. The Mossad, and the comparable Western services, also have an interest in not looking foolish, killing a student instead of a nuclear scientist (either one would be considered a terrorist action against a civilian in front of his family if committed in Israel or the West).
Cheers
mhg


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