Sabotaging Iran's Nukes, Paki Drone Wars

Fareed Zakaria
David Ignatius
Mark Thompson

"I think one of the biggest mistakes that is made in Washington is this notion you have to dumb things down for the public." - Barack Obama

"Dick Cheney sitting down with Fox News is like Mrs. Butterworth sitting down with the Pancake Channel." - Jimmy Kimmel


I can't believe that people are still writing, and talking trash about the recent Obama and Cheney speeches on the closing of Guantanamo. Partisans each say their guy won while the women roll their eyes and sniff, " there's too much testosterone in the room..." I thought that Dick Cheney had been angling for a talk show somewhere, but it turns out that he just wanted a book deal with a $2 million advance, because that's what Laura Bush got for hers and he has to save face... I'll leave the debate with a remark from Josh Marshall at TPM: "Why is Dick Cheney's daughter the only person he can find to go on TV to defend him?"


The US military has already solved most of the interrogation and torture problems, we just let others do it for us... According to the NY Times: "The United States is now relying heavily on foreign intelligence services to capture, interrogate and detain all but the highest-level terrorist suspects seized outside the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to current and former American government officials.
The change represents a significant loosening of the reins for the United States, which has worked closely with allies to combat violent extremism since the 9/11 attacks but is now pushing that cooperation to new limits.
In the past 10 months, for example, about a half-dozen midlevel financiers and logistics experts working with Al Qaeda have been captured and are being held by intelligence services in four Middle Eastern countries after the United States provided information that led to their arrests by local security services, a former American counterterrorism official said.
In addition, Pakistan’s intelligence and security services captured a Saudi suspect and a Yemeni suspect this year with the help of American intelligence and logistical support, Pakistani officials said. The two are the highest-ranking Qaeda operatives captured since President Obama took office, but they are still being held by Pakistan, which has shared information from their interrogations with the United States, the official said." And don't forget the private contractors like Xe, Triple Canopy, or DynCorp who like to perform sadistic acts as private armies...


One of the more sane people writing on foreign relations is Fareed Zakaria, and the topic today is Iran. From Newsweek: "Iranians aren't suicidal. In an interview last week, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the Iranian regime as "a messianic, apocalyptic cult." In fact, Iran has tended to behave in a shrewd, calculating manner, advancing its interests when possible, retreating when necessary. The Iranians allied with the United States and against the Taliban in 2001, assisting in the creation of the Karzai government. They worked against the United States in Iraq, where they feared the creation of a pro-U.S. puppet on their border. Earlier this year, during the Gaza war, Israel warned Hizbullah not to launch rockets against it, and there is much evidence that Iran played a role in reining in their proxies. Iran's ruling elite is obsessed with gathering wealth and maintaining power. The argument made by those—including many Israelis for coercive sanctions against Iran is that many in the regime have been squirreling away money into bank accounts in Dubai and Switzerland for their children and grandchildren. These are not actions associated with people who believe that the world is going to end soon."

David Ignatius follows up on covert operations that may have been carried out against Iran's nuclear program, from the Washington Post: "The rationale for a sabotage program against Iran is obvious enough. Here's how one former CIA officer lays out the case, in theory: "A nuclear program is technically complex, requires a lot of precision materials, a steady flow of technical parts, and is inherently dangerous. Accidental fires, mechanical mishaps with equipment, technical failures, etc. slow the program, and most importantly, at some point will increase counterintelligence concern from within Iran."
The latest story about sabotage appeared May 16 in The Wall Street Journal, in an article by Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman titled "Israel's Secret War With Iran." Bergman reported that when Gen. Meir Dagan was named director of Israel's intelligence service in 2002, then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon told him to build "a Mossad with a knife between its teeth." Dagan's chief target was Iran, according to Bergman, who is a reporter for the Israeli daily Yedioth Ahronoth.
"The results have been tremendous," wrote Bergman. "During the last four years, the uranium enrichment project in Iran was delayed by a series of apparent accidents: the disappearance of an Iranian nuclear scientist, the crash of two planes carrying cargo relating to the project, and two labs that burst into flames."

And here is a report from the current Iranian presidential campaign, with a feminist overtone, from CNN: "On this day, the deafening cheers were not for presidential hopeful Mir Hossein Mousavi, but rather for his wife -- a woman some are calling Iran's Michelle Obama.
The comparisons to the first lady of the United States stem from the role Zahra Rahnavard is playing in her husband's quest for the presidency.
"Never in the history of Iranian presidential elections has a candidate put his wife in the forefront of his campaign. This is the first time after the Revolution we see a lady behind the president," said Farhad Mahmoudi. "And this is why we're so happy because we can have a first lady." The median age of Iranians is 27. I wonder what would happen if they suddenly realized that they were grown up and could stop taking the imported Afghan drugs and start make their own decisions, say, like voting in this upcoming election...

Finally, Mark Thompson talks about the drone wars being fought in the wilds of Pakistan, from Time: "If al-Qaeda and the Taliban could not be eliminated by tanks, gunships and missiles, then perhaps they can be stamped out by CIA-operated unmanned drone aircraft, the Predator and the Reaper.
That was the bet President George W. Bush placed during his final months in office, when the CIA greatly increased drone sorties and strikes in Pakistan. The accelerated attacks have been stepped up under President Barack Obama. Nowadays, the low hum of the drones has become a familiar sound in Waziristan, where tribesmen call them machay, or red bees. Their lethal sting has been felt in villages and hamlets across the Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA). The main objectives of the campaign: to take out al-Qaeda's top tier of leadership, including Osama bin Laden, and deny sanctuary in FATA for the Taliban and those fighters who routinely slip across the border to attack U.S. forces in Afghanistan. Combining high-tech video surveillance with the ability to deliver deadly fire, drones allow joystick-wielding operators on the far side of the world--Creech Air Force Base, near Las Vegas--to track moving targets in real time and destroy them. All this, without spilling American blood and for a small fraction of the cost of conventional battle." Pakistan is receiving their own drones from Washington, and many other countries in the region have drones of their own; it seems to be the hot, new commodity...