Summary here and here and here and here.

The cat’s not just out of the bag; the bag has rotted to dust and the cat has gone through all nine lives.

…This administration has been orchestrating a foreign policy disaster of epic proportions… Article

Editorial du jour:

Bush talks nonsense about situation in Iraq
His pronouncements now bear no resemblance to reality. Article

Related:

…as the summit meeting between President Bush and Prime Minister Kamal Nuri al-Maliki of Iraq concluded Thursday morning, the Arab world was left dumbfounded that nothing had come of it.

“I am baffled by what I saw,” said Abdel Moneim Said, director of the Ahram Center for Strategic Studies in Cairo. “This was an expression of the Americans in deep trouble, but Bush’s approach to dealing with the Iraqi problem also bore the signs of someone out of touch with what is going on.” Article

Also:

Even if Sana al-Nabhani had cared about the summit meeting in Jordan on Thursday between Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and President Bush, she would not have been able to watch the news. As usual, Iraqis went without electricity from the national grid for most of the day and she could not find any gasoline to run her personal generator.

Told by a reporter later in the day about the meeting’s outcome, Ms. Nabhani, a 34-year-old homemaker, scoffed: “Is that all? Was that even worth the fuel consumed by their airplanes?” Article

Until such time (hint: never) the woebegone G. Walker administration learns and internalizes the difference between negotiations and ultimatums and adopts and promulgates that vital lesson, even elementray and incremental progress is ineffably stymied.

The Bush administration is deliberating whether to abandon U.S. reconciliation efforts with Sunni insurgents and instead give priority to Shiites and Kurds, who won elections and now dominate the government, according to U.S. officials.

The proposal, put forward by the State Department as part of a crash White House review of Iraq policy, follows an assessment that the ambitious U.S. outreach to Sunni dissidents has failed. U.S. officials are increasingly concerned that their reconciliation efforts may even have backfired, alienating the Shiite majority and leaving the United States vulnerable to having no allies in Iraq, according to sources familiar with the State Department proposal. Article

Granted, the full report has not yet been released. However, the harbingers are less and less propitious, indeed even indicative of a descent into the toothless shallows of vagueness and lickspittle doublespeak, kicking the can down the road yet further.

Even before its release, a high-profile advisory panel’s report on U.S. policy alternatives in Iraq is generating much excitement but some worry that its main recommendations will fall short of expectations and may be ignored by President George W. Bush. Article

Look, attempting to “compromise solutions” for one party in a hot war is ludicrous.

Either it is going down the drain (and it is) or it is not. There is no splitting the difference. Tinkering ’round the edges and taking a wait and see posture is indistinguishable from current, harmful policy and Tinkerbell caveats. There is no partiality of outcome. The earth is not planted with the partially dead nor with any expired by consensus as a result of the horror and errors compounded upon errors of the woebegone G. Walker administration.

The cold slap of candor.

A senior American official has spoken of “the myth of the special relationship” between the United States and Britain, arguing that Tony Blair got “nothing, no payback” for supporting President George W Bush in Iraq.

[snip]

In candid comments that will embarrass Mr Bush and Mr Blair, the veteran official said America “ignored” Britain, and he urged Britain to decouple itself from the US.

He asserted that the “special relationship”, a term coined by Sir Winston Churchill in 1946, gave Britain little or nothing.

“It has been, from the very beginning, very one-sided. There never really has been a special relationship, or at least not one we’ve noticed.”

[snip]

The Bush administration took little account of what Britain said, Mr Myers said. “We typically ignore them and take no notice. We say, ‘There are the Brits coming to tell us how to run our empire. Let’s park them’. It is a sad business and I don’t think it does them justice.”

[snip]

Mr Myers, a senior analyst with the State Department’s Bureau of Analysis and Research, was speaking in a lecture in Washington at the School of Advanced International Studies, part of Johns Hopkins University. Article

Related:

The State Department repudiated on Thursday comments by a veteran department analyst who said that British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s relationship with the United States was “totally one-sided” in Washington’s favor.

Deputy spokesman Tom Casey said that Kendall Myers, the official who made the off-message remarks, was summoned by his superiors at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research to a meeting to explain his remarks. Article

Summary here and here.

…pharmacist Gul Mohammad is part of a growing group of Afghans that question who is ultimately winning in these parts.

Just days ago, six Taliban fighters stormed into his clinic located just a kilometre from a police checkpoint in Panjwaii. The clinic helps treat sick Afghans in the area, and is run by the Afghan Health and Development Services, an international-funded aid organization.

“They called me a son of George Bush and a helper of infidels,” said Mohammad. “I said no, I am just helping Afghans.”

The fighters then ordered Mohammad into the agency’s car, and drove him into the desert.

“They threatened to shoot me in the legs and leave me in the desert to die,” Mohammad said. “But one of the Taliban said ‘no, let him go’.”

After pleading for his life, Mohammad was abandoned in the desert. He made his way to a village, and eventually back into Kandahar City.

“I’m so relieved to be alive,” he said. “But I will quit my job, I will never go back to the Panjwai.”

NATO commanders call such videos propaganda from a desperate group that is fast losing its support in the region.

Such incidents have been repeated hundreds of times this year throughout Afghanistan. An estimated 300 schools, have been burned or torched by militants. And several school teachers assassinated.

That was the fate of three men in the latest Taliban DVD.… Article

Mogging.

62 months on.

MP and journalist Shukria Barikzai said her country had to seek more non-military means to end the insurgency which has paralysed the government. “We hoped that the international community, having five years’ experience in Afghanistan and learning from the repeated mistakes they have made, would suggest a very clear way out of Afghan’s problem,” she said. “The results are good, but there should have been more focus on reconstruction, more focus on supporting the government, more focus on training and equipping Afghan security forces, which is the long-term solution for the problem,” she added. Article

Like unto the Dark Ages.

Pakistan’s Supreme Court has ordered the arrest of an ex-minister of its southern Balochistan province for allegedly attempting to force two underage girls into marriage and torturing their relatives, media reports said Friday.

[snip]

The case came to light after relatives of the girls, aged seven and nine, refused to accept his decision that they be wed. In retaliation, the accused kidnapped five male members of the family and subjected them to torture at an illegal jail run under his supervision.

[snip]

He previously evaded arrest due to his status and the influence of his wife, who is a sitting minister in Balochistan. Article

Sometimes it sounds like a broken record, but, one more time: all the threads always lead back to Pakistan.

President Bush promoted Pakistan in 2004 to MNNA, the same status enjoyed by close allies Israel, Japan, South Korea, New Zealand, Egypt and Jordan. Major Non-NATO allies get priority in defense purchases. They have no North Atlantic Treaty obligations, but club rules preclude undermining NATO.

Pakistan has been violating club rules — big time. President Pervez Musharraf presumably knows about his Inter-Services Intelligence agency’s major operations. Official fiction holds that Pakistan is not assisting Taliban’s comeback insurgency in Afghanistan.

Yet the interrogation of Taliban prisoners and suspected agents reported to Hamid Karzai’s intelligence service — a total of about 1,500 so far — shows that every single one (not even one exception) had come from Pakistan, many of them former pupils in madrassas (Koranic schools).

[snip]

The British, Canadian, Dutch and German NATO allies fighting in Afghanistan know the score on ISI’s assistance to the Taliban. Now fighting with battalion-size units, the Taliban enjoys ISI-protected privileged sanctuaries on the Pakistani side of the border. But Musharraf’s hanky-panky diplomacy is running out of hokey-pokey disinformation. Article

Related:

the Taliban leadership is still banking on asymmetrical tactics founded on historical precedent to oust NATO forces. Two successful, low-intensity campaigns against the British in the 19th century and the Soviets in the 1980s have kept geographical advantages fresh in mind. And the lawless Afghan-Pakistani borderlands that have been a sanctuary to the hardline movement and al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden to this day serve as a rear base par excellence.

[snip]

Pakistan’s underhanded support of the Taliban to destabilize its neighbor is no secret in the Western intelligence community, nor is the deep-seated corruption of an Afghan government that includes warlords and other officials with connections to the booming narcotics industry. Afghanistan watchers say all of these factors are interconnected and must be dealt with in unison to rebuild a country shattered by 30 years of war.

But as the United States leads the call for more NATO troops and firepower, critics counter that the Bush administration’s overemphasis on military spending versus reconstruction aid has hamstrung efforts to win hearts and minds. By some estimates, military operations have cost US$82.5 billion since 2002, compared with $7.3 billion spent on development - a 900% disparity.

“In Afghanistan, military force, understandably a vital part of a counter-insurgency strategy, has for too long been the only strategy and one that will lose any utility if it is reduced to fighting for ‘business as usual’,” says the latest report from the International Crisis Group. “The desire for a quick, cheap war followed by a quick, cheap peace is what has brought Afghanistan to the present increasingly dangerous situation.” Article

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Noted FYI: A nuclear-capable missile test.

Recall that her primary area of background expertise is in Russian relations.

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice signaled Thursday that the United States is willing to risk a breach with Russia if the Russians do not soon sign on to a U.N. Security Council resolution to punish Iran for its nuclear activities. Article

But then, rose-colored forked tongue dissembling is her forte.

Before marching off into the minority, Congressional Republicans give one last swift kick in the gonads to the government and to the people.

With few options remaining, leaders are discussing whether to extend the CR until March 1 to give the incoming Democrats time to put the fiscal 2007 bills together — or something shorter. A full-year CR is a long shot, as GOP leaders would have a tough time rounding up the votes.

But considering the relative ease with which Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., and his allies blocked further action this year on appropriations, government agencies are already drawing up worst-case scenarios. The Social Security Administration has told congressional staff it might have to furlough every employee.

Housing and Urban Development Department funding would not keep pace with demand for low-income housing vouchers, meaning “literally thousands of people would be out in the street,” one source said. School breakfast and lunch programs would face a $1 billion shortfall, cutting off 1.2 million participants. The Veterans Health Administration would have to absorb the $3 billion increase to meet this year’s requirements. Article

Dollars to doughnuts that any such consequences occurring in 2007 will immediately be blamed by the outgoing Republicans on the incoming Democratic majority. And that may be the saddest thing of all — that such childishness and negligence, at the expense of the country and the populace, is paramount, that the playbook has become more important to them than the job.

…and it didn’t turn out well.

Yesterday, posted stories about the re-militarization of Japan. Today:

After years of heated debate, the German Bundestag agreed Friday on the creation of a new anti-terror bill that is designed to promote communication and sharing of information between federal and state security services. It will also include the creation of a controversial national security database and increased surveillance powers for the police and intelligence agencies.

The proposal cleared the lower house of parliament with the support of Chancellor Angela Merkel’s grand coalition of Christian and Social Democrats. If the bill is approved by Germany’s upper house, the Bundesrat, in discussions on Dec. 15, it will become law effective Jan. 1.

[snip]

The idea is that all police and intelligence agencies, both at the federal and national level, would gather information about terror suspects and terrorist organizations in a central database that would be accessible to all crime-fighting agencies.

At present, Germany’s 37 agencies do that separately. The central anti-terrorism database would also contain information about banking, telecommunication and Internet information regarding the suspects.

[snip]

Some members of the Social Democrats as well as members of the opposition Greens and the Left Party have expressed concerns that easily accessible information on terrorism suspects could be misused as well as create legal problems given the differing information-gathering methods of the police and intelligence agencies are allowed to employ.

Giving both police and intelligence services equal access to personal information about suspects is a sensitive issue in Germany, given abuses under both the Nazis and by communist East Germany.

There have also been fears that innocent people may become wrongly labeled as terrorists once they are included in the database as part of an investigation. “Whoever gets entered into that database will become a terrorist suspect,” Greens politician Wolfgang Wieland said.

[snip]

The existing laws, which went into effect in early 2002, allow police and secret services to use telephone communications, e-mails, faxes, bank accounts and travel data as sources of information. Under the proposed revisions, access to the same would be expanded. In addition, Germany’s foreign intelligence service, BND, would have wider access to domestic police databases. Article

Gives a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘track and field.’

…After just a few weeks of tinkering, the four researchers discovered that the Nike+ iPod is, as Kohno put it, “an easy surveillance device.”

The first problem is that the RFID in the shoe sensor contains its own on-board power source, essentially turning your running shoe into a small radio station capable of being received from up to 60 feet away, with a signal powerful enough to be picked up from a passing car.

[snip]

Electronic Frontier Foundation staff attorney Lee Tien says the Nike+ iPod is a harbinger of things to come. “We’re going to see more devices like this in the next few years,” he said. “This isn’t just a problem with the Nike+ iPod per se — it’s a cautionary tale about what happens when companies unwittingly build a surveillance capacity into their products.”

UC Berkeley RFID researcher David Molnar agreed with Tien, adding, “This shows a need for independent oversight and investigation of these technologies before they go to market. These things happen because the people building devices don’t think about privacy implications.” Article

Felicitations to Messrs. Halls and Gibbs, and to George.