Antiwar.com Blog

October 18th’s suicide bombing in Iran near the Pakistan border was the subject of the top three articles in October 20th’s Asia Times.
 
“Conventional wisdom suggests that the terrorist strike by Jundallah in southeastern Iran on Sunday might have had the backing of the United States or Britain,” M K Bhadrakumar opens the first.  Yet “clearly,” he concludes, Obama would have to be “out of his mind to have his intelligence agencies mount a terrorist attack on Iran which would torpedo his own gameplan to address the Iran nuclear file at the present sensitive juncture” (Saudi-Iranian hostility hits boiling point). 
 
In the second, Pepe Escobar cautions “but one thing is the Obama administration’s priorities; another is the agenda of ‘full spectrum dominance’ types at the Pentagon and the CIA…Chaos in Iranian Balochistan derails the [Iran-Pakistan] pipeline – something that is an absolute priority for full spectrum dominance: Washington wants its horse, the Trans-Afghan (TAP) pipeline, to win at all costs. A ‘victory’ of the IP pipeline means Gwadar port in [Pakistani] Balochistan falling into China’s orbit, not the US’s”  (Jundallah versus the mullahtariat). 
 
In the third, Kaveh L Afrasiabi quotes a Tehran professor, “‘There is now a serious crisis of Iranian confidence in Mr Obama and many people are asking: is he really in charge and who calls the shots on US policy in the region? Did Mossad pull this off without notifying the White House, or in cahoots with them [the US]?'” (Iran’s nuclear talks also hit)
 
Here at Antiwar, in Our Two-Faced Iran Policy, Justin Raimondo raises the possibility that the U.S.’s “terrorism” complements its “talk,” the idea being “to keep the Iranian regime off-balance, and make them more amenable to compromise…In any case, we are walking a tightrope” and the presence of “the very powerful Israel lobby” is a major reason why “military conflict with Iran may be unavoidable.”         
 
With the suicide bombing in Iran occurring as the Pakistan situation degenerates (and now, Baghdad blasts echo far and wide), Reuters blogger Myra MacDonald is almost reduced to prayer:  “In my 25 years of journalism, I’ve rarely seen a situation move so quickly.  I’d like to think there is someone in power who is not only keeping pace, but keeping ahead”  (Afganistan, Pakistan … and all the other countries involved).
 
“Someone?”  I don’t think she has in mind Osama bin Laden, so, if it’s not the Obama administration and/or a CIA-Pentagon cabal and/or the Mossad, that leaves—The Duchy of Grand Fenwick!
 
Leaving aside the question of who, if anyone, is driving, to where is the train hurtling? What humongous wreck awaits?
 
The U.S. falling off the “tightrope” into an Iranian “quagmire” is one possibility, but even as I write, the words “unprecedented” and “spin out of control” appear in a Reuters article, the subject of which is “India-China tensions” (Afghanistan in focus at trilateral meet in India).  For a bigger dip into an “electrified” atmosphere, with a similar warning that “an accidental slip or go-off at the border would erode into war,” see M K Bhadrakumar’s The dragon spews fire at the elephant.  For a treatise on how “the wider struggle between the powers of Eurasia and the nations of the Periphery, led by the United States,” could manifest itself in a nuclear war, there’s Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya’s Geo-Strategic Chessboard: War Between India and China?

Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan gave an interview to the Guardian today, and the throw-away final sentence is causing a small stir. Quote:

He insisted that the Turkey-Israel strategic alliance – which some AKP insiders have said privately is over – remains alive but chided the Israeli foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, who he said had threatened to use nuclear weapons against Gaza.

Which has led the Israeli press to fly into speculation about how it would impact Israeli-Turkish relations, and led Lieberman’s office to mock it as “nonsense.”

A shrewd political operator as well as a war enthusiast, Lieberman obviously would not have made blatant mention to Israel’s “secret” nuclear arsenal. But Erdogan didn’t just make up this claim either.

At the tail end of the Gaza War, Lieberman was harshly critical of ending the war, declaring instead “we must continue to fight Hamas just like the United States did with the Japanese in World War II” and going into detail about how the US nuclear strikes had “broken the will” of Japan.

Lieberman’s comments came in the context of an opposition figure capitalizing on the Israeli public’s enthusiasm for continuing the war, which killed over 1,400 Palestinians, a political move which swept him into power months later. Technically not a “threat” since he wasn’t in power at the time, yet also far from “nonsense” that Erdogan made up on the spot.

Two major bomb blasts ripped through Baghdad Sunday, killing an estimated 130 147 men, women and children and wounded some 520 721, according to reports.

Twin car bombs targeted two government buildings in downtown Baghdad Sunday, wrecking pillars of the state’s authority and cutting like a scythe through snarled traffic during the morning rush hour. The government said at least 132 people were killed and 520 wounded in one of the worst attacks in Baghdad.

The first bomb struck an intersection near the Justice Ministry and the Ministry of Municipalities and Public Works at around 10:15 a.m. on the first day of the Iraqi work week, when streets are always more crowded. Less than a minute later, a second blast targeted the Baghdad provincial headquarters, draped in a sign heralding its renovation. (snip)

Bodies were hurled into the air,” said Mohammed Fadhil, a 19-year-old bystander. “I saw women and children cut in half.” He looked down at a curb smeared with blood. “What’s the sin that those people commited? They are so innocent.”

Ali Hassan, an employee at the provincial headquarters, said the building was filled with women with their children seeking compensation for past terrorist actions.

“Now they’ve become the victims again,” he said.

American lawmakers and bloviating think tankers among the Washington establishment have long since shelved Iraq like a neat little box, cross-posted under the categories of “Model COIN Operations” and “Why George Bush Was Right.” That basic services are still lacking,  violence remains a threat, ethnic tensions are flaring and there is still no political reconciliation, seems to bother no one, anymore. Like trees falling in a forest.

So what am I missing in Afghanistan?

Isn’t this like a really dumb bank robber being caught in the act (stealing almost a million votes) – and then – instead of booking him on charges, being given another chance to rob the same bank?

The U.S. government and NATO are going to let Karzai take another swing at the ballot boxes. Why? To see if he became a smarter vote thief since August?

Military.com has done a story on Sibel Edmonds’s allegations of widespread espionage in the U.S. by the Israeli and Turkish governments and their allies in the U.S. government. For the first time, Richard Perle and Douglas Feith have gone on record to deny her allegations.

BradBlog.com has more coverage here.

Seems like President Barack Obama — Nobel Peace Laureate Obama — has taken his predecessor’s predator drone program and jacked it up with steroids. The New Yorker’s Jane Mayer reports this week that the number of Obama-authorized strikes in Pakistan equals the sum launched by the Bush Administration — in the last three years of his tenure. Wow. And the Republicans were worried that he wouldn’t be man enough. Mayer’s article goes on to detail two predator drone programs — one publicly acknowledged by the U.S Military, the other directed by the C.I.A:

From Mayer: The U.S. government runs two drone programs. The military’s version, which is publicly acknowledged, operates in the recognized war zones of Afghanistan and Iraq, and targets combatants in support of U.S. troops stationed there. The C.I.A.’s program is aimed at terror suspects around the world, including in places where U.S. troops are not based. The program is classified as covert, and the C.I.A. declines to provide any information to the public about where it operates, how it selects targets, who is in charge, or how many people have been killed. Nevertheless, reports of fatal air strikes in Pakistan emerge every few days. According to a new study by the New America Foundation, the number of drone strikes has gone up dramatically since Obama became President. General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, the defense contractor that manufactures the Predator and its more heavily armed sibling, the Reaper, can barely keep up with the government’s demand. With public disenchantment mounting over the U.S. troop deployment in Afghanistan, many in Washington support an even greater reliance on Predator strikes. And because of the program’s secrecy, there is no visible system of accountability in place. Peter W. Singer, the author of “Wired for War,” a recent book about the robotics revolution in modern combat, argues that the drone program is worryingly “seductive,” because it creates the perception that war can be “costless.” Cut off from the realities of the bombings in Pakistan, Americans have been insulated from the human toll, as well as the political and moral consequences.