Summaries here and here and here.

Eleven children and two female teachers were wounded when an Iraqi primary school was hit by mortar fire in the city of Diwaniyah on Wednesday, police said.

Three mortar shells landed in a hall while children were attending classes at the school in Diwaniyah, which lies about 180 kilometres (about 110 miles) south of Baghdad. Two bystanders were also wounded.

Security sources took control of Al-Ruwad school after the attack and transported the children to the hospital, police said. Article

Chaos abides.

“A car bomb parked in downtown the city of Tikrit, 170 km north of Baghdad, detonated around midday near the convoy of Colonel Jasim Hussein Jbara, head of the provincial National Security Directorate,” the source told Xinhua on condition of anonymity.

Jbara escaped the attack unhurt, but one of his bodyguards was killed and another wounded, the source said, citing initial police reports. Article

Noted FYI:

Iran will open two consulates in Iraq’s Kurdish Autonomous Region after talks held by officials from the province in Tehran, a Kurdish government spokesman said on Wednesday.

‘The decision by Iran to open consulates in the province comes after talks held by a Kurdish government delegation with Iranian officials,’ Jamal Abdallah, the spokemsan for the Kurdish Autonomous Region told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa.

The consulates will be opened in Arbil and Sulaymanyah to facilitate trade ties and relations between Iran and the Kurdish region, Abdallah said. Article

A raft of information on or related to the tensioning of the Turkish tightrope.

#1:

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan may ask parliament on Thursday to authorise a military incursion into northern Iraq to fight Kurdish rebels using the region as a base.

Erdogan is under pressure to act after rebel attacks that have killed 15 soldiers since Sunday, but political analysts say a major cross-border operation remains unlikely.

“A request for approval for a cross-border operation could be sent to parliament tomorrow,” Erdogan said on Wednesday. “After the holiday (this weekend) we plan to gain authorisation for one year.” Article

#2:

Turkish warplanes and helicopter gunships attacked suspected positions of Kurdish rebels near Iraq on Wednesday, a possible prelude to a cross-border operation that would likely raise tensions with Washington.

The military offensive also reportedly included shelling of Turkish Kurd guerrilla hideouts in northern Iraq, which is predominantly Kurdish. U.S. officials are already preoccupied with efforts to stabilize other areas of Iraq and oppose Turkish intervention in the relatively peaceful north.

[snip]

Top NATO commander Gen. John Craddock, the senior U.S. soldier in Europe, indicated that he could do little to stop a Turkish incursion.

Craddock was asked by reporters in Washington whether he can influence Turkey’s actions in terms of Iraq.

“I won’t say in terms of Iraq,” he said. “I will say that I talk with my counterparts, military leaders in Turkey, frequently, and we discuss issues about their border. And I’ll leave it at that.”

The latest Turkish military activity followed attacks by rebels that have killed 15 soldiers since Sunday.

Turkish troops were blocking rebel escape routes into Iraq while F-16 and F-14 warplanes and Cobra helicopters dropped bombs on possible hideouts, Dogan news agency reported. The military had dispatched tanks to the region to support the operation against the rebel Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, which the U.S. has branded a terrorist organization. Article

#3 (and a wan, almost desultory objection it is):

The United States reiterated on Wednesday its opposition to Turkey’s attempt to launch a unilateral incursion into Iraq in pursuit of separatist ethnic Kurds.

“We do not think that it would be the best place for troops to go into Iraq from Turkey at this time. We think that we can handle this situation without that being necessary,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters. Article

Sidebar: “…70 percent of the air cargo intended for and 30 percent of the fuel consumed by the U.S. forces in Iraq flies through Turkey.” Source

#4 (which boils down to flexing and posing):

Iraq will not allow Turkish military forces to enter into the Iraqi territories to hunt down members of the banned Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) without an official approval from the Iraqi government, the Interior Ministry said on Wednesday.

The government warned Turkey against making an incursion into northern Iraq.

“The security agreement signed between the two countries last month envisages a security border agreement, cooperation in fighting terrorism and the exchange of information,” the Director of the national command center General Abdul Karim Khalaf al-Kenani told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI). Article

#5:

In a surprise move, Turkish firms working in northern Iraq have begun to terminate their activities in anticipation of a major Turkish military incursion.

[snip]

Many companies are said to have evacuated their employees and ended their contracts, according to Ahmad Ajar, head of the Turkish Businessmen Society in Arbil.

“Major companies are ending their work in northern Iraq and on way to return home,” he said.

[snip]

The relative stability of the region has been luring Turkish and Iranian firms but the countries are reported to be reducing their activities in response to political tension.

Turkey’s investments in the region are estimated at $5 billion. Article

Oil-related news: waiting in the wings, the cash-flush majors are not toal fools — they are well able to bide their time and wait for discovery and a dimunition in insecurity, then swoop in and swallow up smaller companies.

The Kurdistan Regional Government is offering the global oil industry its first and, so far, only chance at entering the Iraqi crude sector. Despite anger in Baghdad, the KRG plans to sign even more controversial oil deals and is waving the “For Sale” sign proudly.

“We have many opportunities to excite you,” KRG Natural Resources Minister Ashti Hawrami told United Press International when asked what the “sales pitch” is to international oil firms. “And if you don’t come forward now, you will lose.”

[snip]

“We anticipate more partnerships as companies who have been studying the area for a while make their move,” said Bob Fryklund, vice president of industry relations for the global energy consultants IHS.

“The independents are focused on KRG, while the majors are focused on the existing major fields in the south and central Iraq,” Fryklund said. “Thus, continued signature of new blocks in the north by companies like Perenco and Heritage is not unexpected.

“The independents are looking for a foothold in high-potential exploration plays, and most know that in plays which are immature the first companies usually get the better position. … Big fields are found by the first in,” Fryklund said.

The deals are with Heritage Energy Middle East Ltd., a subsidiary of the Canadian firm Heritage Oil and Gas, and Perenco Kurdistan Ltd., a subsidiary of Perenco S.A. of France. Two more contracts were approved by the regional oil council and will be announced soon, Hawrami said.

[snip]

So far, Hawrami said, the production-sharing contracts give the contractors “15 percent of the profits after the approved cost recoveries.”

The deals include a signing bonus, which Hawrami wouldn’t detail, other than “not very significant, but designed to get ongoing commitments of the contractors.” Article

Also in oil-related occurrences:

The Iraqi Kurds’ oil minister, in contrast to the federal oil minister, says what’s best for Iraq is to embrace the oil unions.

Iraqi Oil Minister Hussain al-Shahristani has ordered the ministry’s companies and departments to cease dealings with the oil unions.

“The trade unions in Iraq now are illegal till the new law is passed by the Parliament,” Shahristani told UPI, referring to a new labor law called for in the Constitution but that has not materialized.

Ashti Hawrami, minister of natural resources for the Kurdistan Regional Government, told UPI his region’s law has incorporated local worker requirements, and unions are key to that.

“Our key objective is maximize returns for Iraq,” Hawrami said, “so we have no problems with unions and professional organizations, because in a democratic society we must be inclusive of all these requirements.”

Iraq’s oil workers were banned from unionizing by Saddam Hussein, one of the few Saddam-era laws kept by the U.S. Coalition Provisional Authority and subsequent Iraqi governments.

Regardless, the workers organized and successfully blocked plans to privatize parts of the oil and other sectors. Article

Pre-emptive damage control?

Austrian gunmaker Glock rejected reports Wednesday which said that the black market in Iraq was flooded with the company’s semi-automatic pistols.

It was “incorrect” that 80,000 pistols, many of them made by Glock, had disappeared in Iraq since 2004, the gunmaker’s lawyers, Quendler, Klaus & Partner, told the Austrian news agency APA.

“As in every army and police unit around the world, a minimal number of weapons may have disappeared within the Iraqi defence forces, but that was a result of criminal acts such as theft or misappropriation or such like,” APA quoted the lawyers’ office as saying.

Nevertheless, given that the Iraqi population numbers around 30 million, the small number of weapons that had been stolen from the army or the police “will not have any substantial effect on the security situation and will certainly not lead to a flooding of the local gun market,” the lawyers were quoted as saying.

[snip]

…in October 2006, senior US official Stuart Bowen compared deliveries carried out by a private American subcontractor and Iraqi stocks and discovered that 13,180 Glocks had vanished.

Nine months later, a US Congressional body established that the American military had lost trace of some 190,000 weapons delivered in 2004 and 2005. That figure included 80,000 pistols — mostly Glocks. Article

Hmm. One suspects that there is more involved in the exchange than just warm bodies.

The Iraqi government is willing to hand over wanted detainees in Iraqi prisons to Saudi Arabia and will not allow “terrorism” to be exported to the kingdom, the Iraqi vice president said on Wednesday.

“The Saudi government submitted to the Iraqi government a list of wanted suspects who had illegally infiltrated into Iraq,” Tareq al-Hashemi said in an interview with the Saudi Okaz newspaper during a visit to the kingdom to perform Omra (Lesser Pilgrimage).

Giving no information about the number of wanted individuals, al-Hashemi said that dozens of Saudi suspects had fled to Iraq to exploit the lack of security and stability in the country. Article

Nah, no civil war unrest (in a pig’s eye). And “protect” from whom?

Iraqi president’s advisor for Yazidi affairs, Ido Babasheikh, called for setting up a brigade to protect the Yazidi community in Iraq, while a minister from the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) said that deliberations are underway to implement the proposal.

“We urged President Jalal al-Talabani on Wednesday to form a brigade to protect the Yazidi community from violence and the president’s office vowed to consider our demand,” Babasheikh told the independent news agency Voices of Iraq (VOI).

Meanwhile, Dakhil Saeed, a Yazidi minister for the region in the KRG, indicated that the regional government is currently considering the proposal and discussions are ongoing to build the brigade of Yazidi men. Article

Contours of chaos: Stripped of houses, land and livelihood and now internally adrift and bereft, a recipe for revolt.

The plight of those who have fled their homes but have not been able to leave the country is dire, says the UN refugee agency.

The head of the Iraq Support Unit, Andrew Harper, told the BBC that an increasing number of provinces were turning the refugees away because they lacked resources to look after them.

He said with so many people in desperate need of shelter and food, Iraq was like a pressure-cooker.

Mr Harper said the UN agency had raised the issue with the central government in Baghdad, but was told that the local authorities had been urged to shelter the fleeing Iraqis.

This means that local governments are in effect ignoring directives from Baghdad.

Steve Simon of the US Council on Foreign Relations told the BBC: “Local authorities are taking ever greater unilateral prerogative in areas that they control because the central state is ineffective, it lacks capacity.”

[snip]

Ghaith Abdul Ahad, an Iraqi journalist, says the areas where displaced Iraqis live have become fertile recruiting-grounds for militants.

“The insurgents in west Baghdad tell me that the hardest fighters are the Sunnis who have been kicked out of their homes by the Shia,” Mr Abdul Ahad told the BBC.

There is a real fear that the temporary ramshackle refugee camps that today dot the Iraqi landscape are festering wounds that may take years to heal.

More ominously, they are a breeding ground for violence as well as social and political turmoil. Article

Will the plug truly be pulled? Unlikely, but change of status or personnel is less and less outside the realm of possibility.

The U.S. State Department may phase out or limit the use of private security firms, including Blackwater USA, in Iraq following a top-to-bottom review of security practices in the country, according to media reports Thursday.

That might mean Blackwater could lose its contract in line with the demand by the Iraqi government.

The reports said such steps would be difficult because the United States is heavily reliant on Blackwater and other contractors for protection.

But according to two senior officials, there are among options being studied as part of the comprehensive review ordered by U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice after a Sept. 16 shooting incident in which Blackwater guards are accused of opening fire without provocation and killing 17 Iraqi civilians. Article

First, the numbers on releases don’t quite gibe with previous reports of actual releases versus promised totals. Second, even if entirely accurate, it is a total wash against incoming numbers.

The US military is holding nearly 25,000 people in its prisons in Iraq, 860 of whom are under the age of 16, the general in charge of their detention said on Wednesday.

[snip]

There are two prisons run by the Americans on Iraqi soil: one at their Camp Cropper base outside Baghdad, the other at Camp Bucca near the southern port of Umm Qasr.

These prison receive an average of 60 news inmates each day, according to Stone, while the average length of time for incarceration of a detainee is 300 days.

Since the beginning of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan in mid-September, the US military has freed around 50 to 60 prisoners every day. Article

Fast heading to openly surpassing $1 billion for G. Walker’s Xanadu-on-the-Tigris. In a word, SNABU.

Three months after the State Department confidently told Congress that the world’s biggest US embassy would be completed on schedule in September 2007, officials are now saying that it would be delayed indefinitely, with one report saying by more than a year.

A multitude of questions have been raised over the safety of the complex, budgeted originally at about 600 million dollars.

Based on inspections conducted days before its scheduled completion, the fire service mains are deficient, there is no reliable automatic fire sprinkler system coverage in any of the compound’s 21 buildings and none of the fire alarm detection systems were ready for testing, a State Department report said.

The “entire installation is not acceptable,” said the report on the embassy’s fire suppression system.

[snip]

To allegations of shoddy construction work, [the State Department spokesman] said they were actually “punch list items,” very common during the inspection of large and complex construction projects that needed correction or modification.

McCormack did not dispute a Washington Post report last week that said that the cost of the embassy project would increase by 144 million dollars from the budgeted 592 million dollars.

“It’s not a cost overrun. It’s an additional contract requirement,” he said, pointing out that it was for additional secure office space for civilian and military personnel, and accommodations for additional civilian personnel.

He could not give a new date of completion for the embassy project.

[snip]

The project has been complicated by a dispute between the US ambassador in Iraq, Ryan Crocker, and the top Washington-based official charged with overseeing the project, the Post reported.

That official, James Golden, had been barred from entering Iraq by Crocker because he allegedly disobeyed embassy orders during an investigation of a worker’s death, it quotes sources as saying. Article

Just a bit more (you’ve already bought it, with our money, Sean):

“We’re not going to buy ourself a turkey here. We’re going to make sure that we get what we paid for,” he said. Soutce

Afghanistan summary here (more) and here.

Pakistan summary here and here.

Chaos abides.

Two people have been killed and at least 10 injured in Afghanistan after gunmen opened fire in a mosque during prayers in a province bordering Kabul.

In a separate incident, also near the capital, a mullah was shot dead.

The mosque shooting took place in Wardak province which borders Kabul. A police chief said around 10 gunmen entered the building in Abad district.

They opened fire, killing two people and injuring others including a boy. Police are trying to find a motive.

[snip]

Assassinations and tactics designed to intimidate local people are being used across Afghanistan and are getting increasingly close to the capital. Article

One incident, but indicative of how indigenous ‘friendlies’ can turn on a dime. 72 months on, frustration (and oft-veiled enmity) simmer like a rumbling volcano.

A Canadian soldier was threatened with summary execution by enraged Afghan National Army troops last winter after being involved in a friendly-fire shooting, military police records show.

The sun had just peeked above an unusually hazy horizon the morning of Feb. 12, 2007, when the gunner on an RG-31 Nyala truck mistakenly opened fire on an Afghan Army pickup truck on a desert road east of Kandahar.

An Afghan platoon commander, 23-year-old Lt. Abdul Hadi, the driver of the vehicle, was badly wounded in the arm and hand. He had missed repeated warning signs that he stop as his truck came on a broken down Canadian logistics convoy.

Within minutes of the shooting a tense standoff developed, as the Afghans demanded the hapless gunner be handed over to them.

From his seat in the heavily armoured truck the soldier who had pulled the trigger “observed one ANA soldier slide his finger across his throat, insinuating he was going to kill him,” says a summary report prepared by the Canadian Forces National Investigative Service.

The report was obtained by The Canadian Press under the Access to Information Act.

After their light truck had been sprayed with 7.62-millimetre machine-gun fire — hitting the truck at least 21 times — Afghan troops “immediately exited their vehicle, took up firing positions.”

Within minutes they were reinforced by a second group of soldiers who aimed their weapons directly at Canadian troops.

“ANA soldiers were very mad and threatened to kill them all if they didn’t hand over the gunner who had fired on them,” said a witness statement taken by police in the days after the incident.

[snip]

The standoff lasted for almost an hour, police records show, and was resolved when one of the Canadians persuaded the angry Afghans that the matter should be handled by superior officers.

The wounded officer was evacuated to a nearby Afghan army camp, then a civilian hospital and finally to the coalition medical facility at Kandahar Airfield. He made a full recovery.

[snip]

In an interview with The Canadian Press days after the incident, a senior Afghan Army commander in Kandahar demanded that the gunner face some form of military justice. Lt.-Gen. Rahmatullah Raoufi said he understood the mistakes that led up to the incident, but said the soldier must be held accountable.

“The incident was a mistake,” Raoufi, the commander of all Afghan forces in the south, said through a translator.

“(But) the Canadian who shot our man must be punished according to Canadian army law.”

Capt. Cindy Tessier, a military spokeswoman, said investigators have decided not to charge the unidentified soldier.

The decision was made even though the soldier conceded in his interview with investigators that he acted on his own.

“He stated he was never ordered by anyone to engage the vehicle and took it upon himself to escalate the rules of engagement,” says a Feb. 26, 2007, summary of the investigation. Article

Two quick initial comments:

1) Interesting that this is being floated just after Marine Gen. Peter Pace was replaced as head of the Joint Chiefs.

2) Recall (because surely Afghans will) the unillustrious and rushed removal of the Marine unit from Afghanistan not all that long ago.

The Marine Corps is pressing to remove its forces from Iraq and to send marines instead to Afghanistan, to take over the leading role in combat there, according to senior military and Pentagon officials.

The idea by the Marine Corps commandant would effectively leave the Iraq war in the hands of the army while giving the Marines a prominent new role in Afghanistan, under overall NATO command. Article

Analysis du jour:

Afghanistan is slipping into more violence and chaos each day, and no wonder: The West has gone to war on the cheap.

If you want an example of what is going wrong in Afghanistan, take a look at “Little Italy.” In the past weeks, an increasing number of armed robberies, suicide bombings and abductions of foreigners have caused widespread concern in the previously secure western Afghan province of Herat, where the Italians have taken the lead. Gen. Fausto Macor commands some 1,800 soldiers, only 270 of whom are allowed to go on patrols — to secure an area roughly half the size of Italy.

“If NATO in the long run wants to operate effectively, it needs more troops,” Benjamin Schreer, security expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, a Berlin-based think tank, told United Press International in a telephone interview Wednesday.

While the Balkans were stabilized by some 60,000 foreign troops, the much larger, much more populated Afghanistan for two years had only 5,000 peacekeepers, all based in Kabul.

Even now, with 35,000 and soon 40,000 NATO troops in the country, it won’t be possible to “stabilize Afghanistan in the long run,” Schreer said.

Security experts say it would need between 100,000 and 300,000 soldiers to really stabilize the entire country, a number that can hardly be provided by NATO alone — especially as its key powers, the United States and Britain, are entangled in another resource-heavy war in Iraq.

Yet the battle in Afghanistan is also becoming increasingly bloody, with heavy fighting between NATO forces and the Taliban in the southern and eastern provinces, and an increasing number of roadside bombs, suicide attacks and abductions in the previously stable northern provinces.

Support may one day come from Afghan security forces — but that’s a dream for the future, mainly because the training of the Afghan military and police is making little progress.

[snip]

In 2003 the RAND Corp. found that in the first two years after both wars ended, Bosnia received $1,390 per capita in aid money, while Afghanistan received only $42 per citizen.

Even as several countries have pledged to increase their development aid — including the United States and Germany — the West still spends only roughly a tenth of what it did in the Balkans.

“I am really asking myself: Are we doing enough? We can’t win this battle only with the military,” Maj. Gen. Bruno Kasdorf, the highest-ranking German officer at ISAF headquarters in Kabul, said in an interview with German news magazine Stern.

Yet while all experts agree that Afghanistan needs more troops and more money, Western governments have so far refused to significantly boost their commitment. Not making bold decisions now may be more costly in the long run, however, experts say.

“We are at a watershed point,” Schreer said. “If we continue with the same old strategy, the whole mission will fail.” Article

No particular comment; just noted.

Aside from the beautiful scenery of luscious green fields and never-ending blue skies, those on a road trip across the southern stretch of South Dakota don’t have much else to see.

Except for the countless signs leading to Wall Drug that beckon to tourists.

Many of the handmade signs read “5¢ coffee” or “free ice water,” and they can be found every few miles.

Those from South Dakota may have become oblivious to the signs, but one that reads “6,964 miles to Wall Drug …” is sure to grab anyone’s attention, as was the case for one airman from Pierre, S.D., who has been deployed to Bagram Airfield for the past five months. Article

Installation of factotums? In an already restive and unstable area, cannot this help but add to the resentment of the Islamabad government?

The provincial assembly in Pakistan’s North West Frontier Province (NWFP) was dissolved on Wednesday, the provincial law department said.

The governor of NWFP Ali Ahmed Jan Orakzai signed the dissolution order and dissolved the assembly on the advice of the Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani, the law department said.

After the dissolution, a caretaker Chief Minister and cabinet would be appointed to temporarily run affairs of the province till the new general elections were held, according to the law department.

The alliance of Islamic groups Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA), an opposition party in the country, started to rule NWFP since 2002.

The MMA had planned to dissolve the assembly before the presidential elections to protest against President General Pervez Musharraf’s re-election bid.

However, Musharraf’s supporters in the NWFP provincial assembly moved a no-trust motion against the Chief Minister to block the assembly’s dissolution. They withdrew the no-trust motion three days ago and then the Chief Minister sent an advice to the governor to dissolve the assembly. Article

Regionally related:

Federal Interior Minister Aftab Ahmad Khan Sherpao has said negotiations are the only way to deal with the Taliban, both in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Addressing a big public meeting in the Jinday Pul area of Tangi, Mr Sherpao said that Islamabad had no option but to start negotiations with the Taliban.

He said the Pakhtuns could never be subdued through use of force. He praised the Pak-Afghan jirga and said that similar moves would help improve the law and order situation both in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Article

Also:

Pakistani artillery bombarded Taliban and al Qaeda positions on Wednesday as villagers buried relatives killed by an air strike during heavy fighting in a tribal area near the Afghan border.

There were no official estimates of the casualties from Tuesday’s air strike, though residents and intelligence officials in the area reckoned up to 50 people had been killed, some of them shopping at a village bazaar.

If true, it would take the tally to about 250 since the fighting escalated on Saturday night after an attack on an army convoy near Mir Ali, a town where al Qaeda tracks have been often found before.

The only people left in Hormuz, one of a cluster of villages near Mir Ali, were holding funerals. Other families fled the conflict zone in the North Waziristan tribal region. Article

This seemingly (at least partially) contradicts that just above.

The army halted attacks on villages near the Afghan border Wednesday to give residents time for funerals after days of fighting that killed as many as 250 people, a local schoolteacher said.

Ten residents went to the army base in Miran Shah, the North Waziristan region’s main town, and military officials “assured us that just for today there would be no action so that the funerals of the locals could be held and the injured treated,” Hafiz Muhammad Wali, the teacher who led the group, told The Associated Press.

He said he was told to announce the pause in hostilities in the nearby town of Mir Ali, where the fighting has been concentrated.

Army spokesman Maj. Gen. Waheed Arshad confirmed that the military had spoken with the locals and said: “There is no cease-fire, but currently there is also nothing untoward happening either.” Article

Monitoring the ‘election’ pressure cooker.

#1:

“Elections would be held in the first part of January,” Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said during an Iftar party at his residence in the capital.

“The national parliament and provincial assemblies will complete their terms on November 15 and elections will be held 60 days after that,” Aziz said.

[snip]

A caretaker government would be in place for the election, he said, the official date of which would be announced later by the Election Commission.

Musharraf has come under mounting pressure from his backers in Washington and the international community for a return to democratic rule.

Meanwhile, increasing clashes fuel opposition to the country’s close alliance with the US.

The killings raise questions about how long this nation can sustain its fight against pro-Taliban and Al Qaeda militants along the Afghan border.

Unknown gunmen yesterday shot dead a prominent politician belonging to the ruling Pakistan Muslim League.

Attackers on a motorbike ambushed the car of Sher Jan Marri, 32, and fled after shooting him in Quetta.

No one has claimed responsibility for the killing. Article

#2:

While last week’s political machinations were under way in Pakistan, the US was providing intelligence to Islamabad about a massive regrouping of the Taliban in the Pakistani tribal areas in preparation for a big campaign against NATO forces in southeast Afghanistan. The US feared that a disruption of the political dialogue would mean a hiatus in Pakistan’s political transition, and delay military operations against the thousands of Taliban and al-Qaeda forces gathering in North Waziristan before launching attacks on the Afghan provinces of Khost, Paktia, Paktika, Gardez and Ghazni, and then Kabul with unending waves of suicide missions. If the Taliban were allowed to hatch their plans unmolested during a political vacuum in Islamabad, Washington believed the Taliban would seize the upper hand in Afghanistan.

That was the situation when a representative of the US spoke to Bhutto and noted her minimum demand for a political deal: “At least a signed letter by General Pervez Musharraf which would document his promises against my demands.” US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice then spoke to Musharraf by telephone, and immediately thereafter, Musharraf’s legal team promulgated the National Reconciliation Ordinance.

In Pakistan, certain circles are immune from ordinary legal recourse. Corruption in the military, for example, can only be probed and punished by the military. Under the new reconciliation ordinance, politicians and parliamentarians can now only be questioned by parliamentary committees and not through ordinary laws, and all past corruption cases against those who have held political positions in the past have been withdrawn. Some analysts have criticized the ordinance as permitting the rise of the rule of political mafias in Pakistan.

As soon as ordinance was issued, Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party separated itself from other opposition parties and did not resign from the assemblies. However, the party remained firm on its “principled stand” that it would abstain in Musharraf’s reelection vote. Musharraf swept the election as there was virtually nobody to oppose him.

Within a day of Musharraf’s victory, Pakistani F-16 aircraft were flying sorties from Kohat Airbase to bomb the North Waziristan town of Mir Ali, acting on intelligence and satellite maps provided by US intelligence. Top al-Qaeda ideologues, reportedly including the group’s number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri, were believed to based in the town. Article

In a word, SNABU.

…the House of Representatives Armed Services Committee [was told in expert testimony] that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, the U.S.-backed army chief who seized power in a 1999 coup, faced rising Islamic militancy in tribal regions bordering Afghanistan while his power had waned.

Teresita Schaffer, a South Asia expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said Musharraf’s “power and ability to control things in Pakistan have significantly diminished in the past six months” and Washington was tainted by association with the military strongman.

“We have set ourselves up to be blamed for all the shortcomings of Pakistan’s government — and have set the stage for a successor government to use anti-Americanism as a rallying cry,” the retired U.S. diplomat told the panel.

Washington must firmly support civilian rule and free elections and “work with the army on military issues, including helping it address its shortcomings in counterinsurgency, but do not build up its political role,” she said.

[snip]

Marvin Weinbaum of the Middle East Institute told the committee that actions by both Musharraf and the United States had alienated Pakistanis from their government and sapped whatever support there was for fighting Islamic militants.

“Because Washington conflates most conflicts across the Middle East and Afghanistan as part of the ‘global war on terrorism,’ Pakistanis see it as a U.S.-led war against Islam, and thus not their war,” he said.

“Actions taken by Musharraf to satisfy his external critics have not only fallen short but have had the double-barreled effect of intensifying opposition to the government in the tribal areas and further eroding Musharraf’s political support throughout the country,” Weinbaum said. Article

Summary here and here.

A car bomb attack [Wednesday] ripped through an Ethiopian army base in Somalia, near a hotel where Prime Minister Ali Mohamed Gedi is staying, but he was unhurt, witnesses said.

“The Ethiopian compound was hit by a suicide car (bomber) who directly drove into the compound,” said an officer in Gedi’s security service, asking not to be named, while Ethiopian troops and Somali forces sealed off the area.

“The blast was so heavy, it shook the hotel but the prime minister and his staff are safe,” said the officer, referring to the Peking Hotel, where Gedi has set up his headquarters.

No details of casualties in the attack were immediately available.

Baidoa, located in central Somalia, is where the transitional parliament is based and Gedi was in the town with aides ahead of a vote of confidence in his government expected in the next few days. Article

Perhaps the most telling is the bit emphasized here in bold:

A U.S. federal judge in Washington blocked the Pentagon from transferring a Guantanamo Bay detainee to Tunisia, where he allegedly faces torture, according to a ruling unsealed Tuesday that marked a milestone in the treatment of detainees.

The order by U.S. District Judge Gladys Kessler was unprecedented as a direct intervention in the case of a prisoner at Guantanamo Bay, where some 330 men accused of links to al-Qaida or the Taliban are held, according to a human rights group and the detainee’s lawyers.

“This is the first time since Congress tried to strip court jurisdiction over detainees that a court stepped in and said to the administration, ‘Hey wait. You can’t do what you say you want to do,’” said Jennifer Daskal, senior counterterrorism counsel for Human Rights Watch.

Kessler said that detainee Mohammed Abdul Rahman, who has a heart condition, was convicted in absentia in Tunisia, sentenced to 20 years in prison and allegedly would face torture there, demonstrating “the devastating and irreparable harm he is likely to face if transferred.”

In her ruling on Oct. 2 that was kept under seal until Tuesday, Kessler granted a preliminary injunction to halt the Defense Department’s move to transfer Rahman to Tunisia. He was captured in Pakistan and allegedly handed over for a bounty. Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England cleared him for transfer after a military panel heard his case in 2005.

[snip]

The Center for Constitutional Rights, a New York group that represents dozens of Guantanamo detainees, applauded the judge’s ruling.

“With nearly 50 detainees facing the possibility of torture if returned to countries with histories of severe human rights abuse, the question of resettlement has moved to the forefront of the issues surrounding Guantanamo,” the center said.

[snip]

In her ruling, Kessler said “it is imperative” that her court “protect its jurisdiction until the Supreme Court issues a definitive ruling.” Article

Definitely in agreement that the woebegone G. Walker administration’s tactic of making it up as they go along is ardently detrimental to justice and to the standing of the country as a whole.

Omar Khadr, the sole Canadian held in the Guantanamo “war on terror” prison, has appealed to a US federal court to avoid facing a military tribunal, his lawyers said Tuesday.

[snip]

If Khadr’s trial “goes forward, it will be just another example of the government driving the train out of the station without making sure the track is in place,” Lieutenant Commander Bill Kuebler, Khadr’s lead military attorney, said in a statement.

“It is simply unbelievable that Canada continues to allow the fate of a Canadian citizen to be decided in such a circus,” he added. Article

One wonders (side from the obvious question of what took so long) whence the instructors come, and whether whatever instruction there may be will be coupled with indoctrination.

The US military said it expects to begin offering English classes soon to select detainees at Guantanamo Bay, where officials are introducing several new privileges for the most compliant prisoners.

To be held inside a new classroom at the US Naval Base prison camp in southeastern Cuba, the lessons respond to “significant” demand among the detainees, Guantanamo Bay spokesman and Navy Cmdr. Rick Haupt said Tuesday.

“The primary objective of the programme is to ease communication and reduce misunderstanding between the detainee population and the guard force,” he said.

The training will be available only to detainees in Camp 4 - a communal living area that houses about 50 of the roughly 330 men held at Guantanamo on suspicion of terrorism or links to Al Qaeda or the Taliban. Most detainees are confined alone in solid-wall cells for as many as 22 hours a day.

In the small classroom adjoining one of the living bays, four metal desks with stools face a white drawing board beneath banners displaying letters of the alphabet in bright colours. Shackles on the floor will restrain one leg of each detainee during lessons.… Article

Noted FYI:

The Yemeni State Prosecutor’s office on Wednesday announced that four Yemenis were released after being detained by the US in Guantanamo.

[snip]

The state prosecutor ordered the four to be released after no evidence was found implicating them to anything illegal according to Yemeni laws. Article

Look, let’s just say it: No one — no one — seeks blanket retroactive immunity unless strongly convinced of involvement in wrongdoing.

A top Democratic leader opened the door Tuesday to granting U.S. telecommunications companies retroactive legal immunity for helping the government conduct electronic surveillance without court orders, but said the Bush administration must first detail what those companies did.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said providing the immunity will likely be the price of getting President Bush to sign into law new legislation extending the government’s surveillance authority. About 40 pending lawsuits name telecommunications companies for alleged violations of wiretapping laws. Democrats introduced a draft version of the new law Tuesday - without the immunity language.

“We have not received documentation as to what in fact was done, for which we’ve been asked to give immunity,” Hoyer said.

In a conference call with reporters, a senior Justice Department official called Hoyer’s offer “encouraging” but would not commit to sharing the data. The official spoke only on condition of anonymity while negotiations with Congress continue. Article

Not surprising, but almost certainly not the case (standing as it does as a gargantuan wart, expressive of the overreach and unfettered assumed omnipotence of the woebegone G. Walker administration) the compromised and politicized Justice Department would have prefrerred.

The Justice Department filed notice yesterday that it will appeal last month’s ruling that portions of the USA Patriot Act pertaining to surveillance of U.S. citizens are unconstitutional.

The ruling came in a suit by Brandon Mayfield, the Portland, Oregon attorney wrongly linked to the March 2004 Madrid train bombing after the FBI misidentified a fingerprint in the investigation.

Mayfield’s home was searched and bugged before the FBI realized they were after the wrong man.

[snip]

On Sept. 16, a federal judge in Portland ruled that using the Patriot Act to gather evidence to build a criminal case against Mayfield instead of merely to gather intelligence violates the 4th Amendment prohibition against unreasonable searches. Article

Considering the source, this is strong stuff:

Former president Jimmy Carter isn’t just suspicious that the US is using torture to extract intelligence from detainees — he’s absolutely convinced.

Asked by CNN’s Wolf Blitzer if, by Carter’s definition of the word, the United States had used torture during the Bush administration, the Nobel Peace Prize winner was adamant:

“I don’t think it, I know it,” he said. “Certainly.”

Pressed by Blitzer on whether that meant that President Bush was lying, Carter was equally clear.

“The president is self-defning what we have done and authorized in the torture of prisoners,” said Carter. “Yes.” Article

Carter knows more than a little about nuts. Thank you, sir.

Torture is to be decried and shunned because … it is wrong. The ‘debate’ is not over who the ‘they’ it is practiced upon may be but rather who we are by espousing, directing or utilizing conduct no human being should inflict upon another.

Draw your own conclusions on ‘dragonfly drones.’

O-o-o-kay. At least it’s not a fragrance or a line of designer clothing.

Osama bin Laden is to team up with sexy Arab singers Hayfa Wehbe and Nancy Ajram in the form of fireworks to light up the skies of Saudi Arabia when it celebrates the end of Ramadan later this week.

The fireworks named after the two Lebanese singers and the Saudi-born chief of Al-Qaeda had to be smuggled into the conservative Muslim kingdom, where the devices are banned on safety grounds, according to local newspapers.

[snip]

Al-Watan newspaper said a Yemeni had smuggled in a truck full of fireworks, including “B-52″ brands named after the massive strategic bomber, into the western region of Jeddah.

“That load could have blown up a whole district,” it said, adding that Saudi civil defence workers had been busy disposing of large quantities of confiscated fireworks. Article

Wow. Squirreled away for 17 centuries.

Archaeologists excavating a site in northeastern Portugal discovered 4,500 ancient Roman coins tucked away inside a wall.

The bundle of 4,526 copper and bronze coins was hidden inside the wall of a 4th century blacksmith’s home, said Antonio Sa Coixao, who is leading the excavation in Coriscada.

The sack holding the coins appeared to have disintegrated, he said.

“It looks like someone was trying to hide them but they never went back to get them,” Sa Coixao said Wednesday. Article

Paging Newton “Vast Wasteland” Minow: greed and sensationalism run amok — so, of course, it is planned for Fox in the U.S.

The hit game show “Nothing But the Truth” has been cancelled after a contestant won $25,000 for admitting she hired someone to kill her husband.

Tuesday was the final day for the show, in which contestants attached to a lie-detector machine answered 21 increasingly invasive questions to win up to $50,000.

A U.S version called “Moment of the Truth” is still expected to be launched on Fox in the coming months, along with spin-offs in England, Australia, Germany, Italy and Spain, according to Howard Schultz, the Los Angeles-based creator of the show.

On the Colombian version, dollar-desperate contestants confessed everything from drug smuggling to homosexual prostitution before a studio audience packed with unsuspecting loved ones.

It drew high ratings and spurred a boom in polygraph usage among private companies trying to screen employees and protect themselves from infiltration by Colombia’s well-organized mafias.

But the show also generated sharp rebukes from U.S. polygraph examiners, family values groups and legal experts who likened the spectacle to a modern-day Roman circus that sanctions criminal behaviour. Complaints of indecency also poured in to Colombia’s national television commission. Article

IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED…

Perhaps the reason there aren’t voluminous records of unrefined or unworkable models is just becuse the were failures.

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STINGY POWER

27 hours on a soda can’s worth of fuel

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BROTHEL, CAN YOU SPARE A DIME?

Positioned on top: Sporting house sponsorship.