Pakistan Powder Keg, Musharraf Impeachment Threat

Pakistan's ruling parliament made the I-word, impeachment, threat to former general President Musharraf implicit. Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi repeated, resign or watch us strip you of what's left of your coalition's power publicly in less than a week. Multi-tiered fascination abounds. Musharraf anointed himself president in a military coup, while the Pakistani army essentially says we do one coup per guy. Musharraf used his freebie already and the army is currently spouting noble words on how this is a civilian situation. Enfeebled President Pervez Musharraf who pinned on his general stars and knife edged ironed his army outfit for the last time six months ago for public consumption, is trying cut a deal with anybody who will listen as the ground erodes beneath his feet, Wyl E. Coyote style. No ability to use hard power renders Musharraf impotent in today's Pakistan, and for the worsening situation in Kashmir, even for protecting sporting events and their players. On cue, Al Qaeda's Zawahari utters his two cents.

However, Mills told The Press newspaper that nothing the taskforce or Lawson said had allayed the players' fears, adding that the situation in Pakistan was changing daily and had worsened even after the delegation had visited New Zealand.

He conceded the security plans were impressive on paper and some of the best he had seen.

"But the fact remains they are untested and we have doubts whether Pakistan could deliver on those plans," he said.

The foreign policy inept Bush Administration ensured the US government had all its chips in the "democratically" elected Musharraf's presidency. They doubled down on Musharraf being able to quell dissent like they did with a fake riot in Florida the US press hyped and hoped that if they just believed Musharraf would just muscle his way through this. The problem is, who exactly has control of Pakistan's nukes now and who exactly will have control after Musharraf has all his possessions eradicated from the halls of power. India and the US are both deeply concerned with a resurgence of al Qaeda in Pakistan, an up tick in religious violence in Kashmir from inside Indian controlled areas over a toilet installation at a sacred shrine and from the border, Afghanistan's paralysis of a surge of Taliban fighters and policies and Pakistan's adroit and powerful intelligence agency, ISI, getting even cozier with covered in US, India & China's money, an ascendant Saudi Arabia. Bush has no friends with real power or diplomatic network in place to work through the issues. Condi Rice gets State Department frequent flyer miles, not progress. (AP photo/Yasmin in Kashmir)

Bajaur, like other tribal district, is believed to provide sanctuaries for al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters launching cross-border attacks on US-led international forces in Afghanistan.

Let's see, Russia is busy slapping around upstart Georgia while Vladimir Putin spit in Bush's eye at every turn after Bush claimed to have seen Pooty-Poot's soul when gazing deeply into his eyes. Notice, Putin was at the Olympics, not the president, but Putin exited after the opening ceremonies to act as Russia's Commander in Chief. President Musharraf suffered a loss of his tattered prestige earlier this year with the assassination of popular political rival Benazir Bhutto, the spectacle of departing the former prime minister, the declaration of Martial law, the firing of the Pakistani Supreme Court and the jailing of dissidents while the middle class's power is out during a heat wave. The kicker is Musharraf was seen as a key voice of settling violence in the Kashmir region. How Bush like as other areas see rise in religious violence as Musharraf plans his next steps.

Local newspapers said that Taliban militants from the neighbouring North Waziristan tribal zone had entered Kurram to back the Sunni tribes involved in the fighting, now in its 12th day.

Residents said Sunni tribesmen torched three villages belonging to Shiite tribes and both sides used rockets, heavy machine guns and mortars in the fierce clashes.

"In today's and yesterday's clashes at least 23 people have been killed on both sides and 28 others were injured," a security official told AFP on condition of anonymity.

Pakistan is a powder keg atop long range nuclear missiles with a shifting alliance three-way internal struggle between secular, fundamentalist religious forces and Sunni and Shi'a fighters for control of rural tribal villages. The fighting won't stop, even if Musharraf became the ex-president in the next five minutes, but somebody who is not a friend of the USA or India will have their hands on nuclear weapons while Bush frets about Iran & Iraq and Saudi Arabia, who don't yet have them. They have something else though, money to buy them or the technology.

Further critical reading can be found from a number of subject matter experts on the tangled ties between America, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and India. The Pakistani Army has never before been chronicled so well in Crossed Swords: Pakistan, Its Army and the Wars Within from the scholarly author, Shuja Nawaz.

Descent into Chaos: The United States and the Failure of A Nation comes from the best selling author expert, Ahmed Rashid, as he painstakingly charts how a dangerous Bush focus in Iraq ignored the larger context in southeast Asia where the real problems exist.

Obama vs McCain: A Dream Nightmare Contrast

Master Sgt. Andy Dunaway/U.S. Air Force via AP

Place your bets. It's the fifth from the bottom of the class son of an admiral versus the magna cum laude son of a goat herder on the world stage. McCain's March trip to Iraq and Obama's July trip were both classified as CODEL or Congressional Delegation trips. Both men were able to speak and spend alone time with Kings or Presidents this week.

~ Could that sign be ANY clearer? ^

John McCain whines he's not Bush-lite, but he greedily and gratefully accepts anything that smacks of Bush leftovers. John McCain's fundraisers are the last of the Bush Easter Island type people. Two president Bushes branded McCain as their teed off man for staying the golf course. Many of John McCain's staffers come directly from the eighth circle of Bushworld. John McCain's take on the Iraq Debacle is straight talk from the Bush Express De-Tour. In a worthy Bush imitation mangling historical fact and substituting cowboy fantasy, John McCain touted his borrowed Bush Decider creds and said Senator Obama should go to Iraq and get schooled by Bush's favorite general and now McCain's too, General Petraeus, before saying what should happen in Iraq. After all, there was no way for Barack to live up to the forgotten images McCain garnered on his Surge & Splurge spring break to sandy Iraq.

Barack Obama needed to prepare for his trip. That involved getting Air Force O ready for the passengers clamoring to go, the notoriously fickle two-timing DC press corps. Germany received a live telecast as the Obama plane landed. Contrast Obama already flying with his new Change We Can Believe In plane. McCain's ride was still being pimped at the beginning of July. It's just now finishing airsickness rehab for the republican presumptive nominee who kinda got the nod in freaking February. Was Johnny Mac N Cheese unsure or something? In a few weeks it's gotta be repainted when he announces his VP who hopefully can provide better optics.

Next, the campaign week got buffalo butt u-g-l-y.

Then there was the comedic stylings of the aide de camps. Mr. McCain quickly fled from his scheduled photo-op atop an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico because Hurricane Dolly had the right of way and a 12 mile oil slick from a Mississippi tug crash would have so undermined his talk about his newfound joy of offshore drilling and the new sexy technology that made spills improbable. McCain's detoured plans landed him in New Hampshire with a press pool of one watching. Count em, one. From the Gulf on to Bethlehem, Penn., on Wednesday where another mishap made ones eyes bulge with camera(s) in tow to film a riveting McCain in front of the only Dairy King he would meet that day, the royalty of dieters, cottage cheese. John upped the ante by having a commemorative photographs taken in front of the only palaces he's been in a while, a local Ohio brat joint and the Fudge Haus. Brilliant moves to stage McCain and his cocktail wiener buddy Lindsay Graham there. I mean it. Especially, after the unscheduled incident with McCain tailing/stalking a grocery shopper, Renee Gould, in the market, asking her questions about the just cleared tomatoes and being (video of aisle disaster) photogged as his aide, unable to appreciate that it was not at all crowded, tripped and knocked over an applesauce display. Of course, the pictures were iconic and the future stuff of comedic genius on behalf of Team McCain. Obama had other developing issues.

Dr. Condi Rice, the all powerful SoS who can decree stuff and negotiate nothing, forbade State Department federal vassals to get extra pillow sweets, monogrammed hand towels or public transportation for the Obama entourage during the trip. O carried his own gear. So, after a sumptuous repast at a real palace, Obama takes up the gracious offer of a ride to Amman's International airport in a Mercedes Benz SL600 piloted by none other than His Majesty, King Abdullah of Jordan. Talk about passing the Commander in Chief test with flying colors, he gets a smart salute as he exits the Osprey.

But John McCain's fabo town hall in Kirby, Pennsylvania had less than a 1000 in a 1600 seat theater. His fans were there, but did not look as hopeful as say these two looked at future President McDreamy, Barack Obama, in Germany after standing for hours. Neither party has held a convention yet, which affords us all another opportunity to see how they manage or mangle the image narrative. McCain won hands glued to his 5,985th draft of the McSurge memo in the mangling contest. Barack will accept the nomination in a 75,000 seat stadium in a city on a Mile High mountain. John McCain will have a non covered pre-existing anxiety cond

ition (Barack announced he won in June at Target Arena while 15,000 stood outside apart from the 20,000 already inside) as he milks his 2% of the nomination speech in front of another Dairy Delights Aisle with his BFF, Captain Nemesis Teleprompter, egging him on a week after Barack.

Guess which one is happy, called a Hunk in Hebrew and forgot to pay Malia her allowance versus the other who just can't wait for the national nightmare to be over because as it is tough being heard when you've been put on a temper tantrum timeout by the era of the big press... One photogenic Cheneyesque completely subservient Ken doll coming right up as the republican VP nominee!

A partial list of what Obama reads, then and now, and listens to on his iPod...Buy his books for a friend or a former McCain supporter.

Green Zone Under Attack - Again

Photo— Tina Susman in Baghdad

KAPOW! Boom! Incoming!!! Those are just a few of the new sounds and shelling coming from Baghdad's supposedly ultra secure Green Zone. The puppet president of Iraq called a truce, ceasefire or invoked the mercy rule to get the violence to stop in Sadr City after he decided to borrow Bush swagger and invade when his newly minted US trained troops went up against Iraq's best armed militia. It was a full on rout for al-Sadr's team. Splurge to surge on protecting the Main Area set aside for American forces, contractors, aid workers, a journalist or two and enough worker bee diplomats to fill the biggest and most grandiose embassy ever built with US tax dollars is an embarrassing failure today after all the mortar fire.


General Petraeus's Surge command was supposed to make his nominal dotted-line boss, W, look good before his long awaited happy talk report was presented before a weak willed Congress. The timing of these attacks in Sadr City and the Green Zone is meant to cast aspersions on the president and his chief Iraq military commander. A more triumphal charm offensive was aimed at Congress with an RPG - Report Progress is Great as directed by the White House that vets his words and Ambassador Ryan Crocker's. Instead, more than thirty people suffered injuries and three American troops lay dead when the smoke cleared Sunday in Baghdad's Green Zone safer sanctuary.

The attacks also came as Iraq’s national security council intensified pressure on the Mahdi Army, the armed wing of the political group led by Moktada Al-Sadr, the powerful anti-American Shiite cleric, to disarm. In a statement, the council declared that all political parties must immediately dissolve their militias and surrender their weapons if they wished to participate in elections. (Wathiq Khuzaie/Getty Images Sadr City)

The timing of the statement was seen as message meant in particular for Mr. Sadr, who represents the biggest political threat to Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki and his associates, and who derives much of his support from Sadr City, the sprawling area of Baghdad that has been encircled by American and Iraqi troops for more than a week.

After the Iraqi soldiers came under attack, American forces, equipped with Abrams tanks, and troop-carrying Strykers and Bradley fighting vehicles rumbled to the scene. An American helicopter fired at least two Hellfire missiles at militia fighters armed with rocket propelled grenades, and blasted one of their vehicles. Later at least one militia-fired rocket hit the Jamilla market, a heavily frequented part of Sadr City, where clashes left at least 20 people dead, Iraqi officials said.

At large whoosh from a nearby rocket disrupted a briefing held by Iraqi and American commanders for a small group of reporters at the lone American Army and Iraqi combat outpost in Sadr City, prompting correspondents and soldiers to duck for their lives. The news conference, given by Gen. Abud Qanbar Hashim, the Iraqi commander for Baghdad, and Maj. Gen. Jeffrey W.Hammond, who leads the American division charged with securing the capital, began as bursts of gunfire rattled nearby streets.

Hidebound leathery Americans still trying to justify that the military is winning a war that shifted a couple of years ago to the political and diplomatic fronts are out of step or shouting Remember the Maine! A spate of unending violence in Mesopotamia screamed for desperate measures. Enter Mr. Bush's last seven-11 Camo Gucci Gulp Surge with his magical thinking heir apparent with a forty ounce of Bush koolaid elixir, John McCain. See John McCain crowing that the Surge is working even though when he was heavily guarded while traipsing around Baghdad, he could not go back to the same market he went to last year when he falsely claimed things were getting better as violence wet out of control. McCain claims the Maliki official Iraq forces did pretty well - oh goodness, that's some might powerful bush league stuff he drinks.

The Republican Party's presumptive nominee for president, Senator John McCain said Sunday Iraq's military performed "pretty well" during its recent assault in the southern Iraqi city of Basra despite mixed results of the battle.

He said such an assault would have been unthinkable just nine months ago.

Check your television again because its a shame if that's how folk's get the latest news on what current tragedy has befallen Iraq during the American invasion, occupation, forced purple finger democracy, re-invasion, reoccupation, assisted executions, political meddling, Surge 1 moving into super-sized Surge-Stay-the-Course. American TV media (MIA) mostly abandoned Iraq because its too expensive to cover full time, to say nothing of the realities of danger. With the lack of representatives for the American populace reporting everyday, many decided the Surge - patent pending - was doing just fine. Not.

There is no progress on the requirements to get some political laws passed on sharing oil revenue. Lately, Iran is showing more clout in Iraq with helping to broker the Shi'a stand down and al-Sadr deciding when to agree fighting against a fellow Shiite. Bush's guy, President Maliki, is being out negotiated too. But hey, Condi's State Department re-approved the Iraq contract for Blackwater services, even after incurring the wrath of Congress and the public's after they allegedly shot first, maimed and killed innocents in Baghdad, then claimed they were fired upon while protecting an American.



Released tomorrow is Patrick Cockburn's latest book which is incredibly timely. Entitled, Muqtada: Muqtada al-Sadr, the Shi'a Revival, and the Struggle for Iraq, offers a perspective that shows insight into the most powerful Shi'a in Iraq with ties Iran.

The United States of Torture

John Yoo has much to be despised for, but the history books are yet to be written cataloging the US's sweeping powers on who could be outside US law, remain a citizen and torture the Hell out of whom they chose. Bybee is the signatory name on the March 14, 2003 doc, but the 81 page memo magically appeared the day after his exit from the DOJ from Yoo. The first drafts of history are replete with the twisted sadistic thinking of someone who is teaching Berkeley law students today while giving the Torturer-in-Chief sweeping powers to launch those tactics against people suspected - not proven - to be Enemies of the American state.

Former aides to John Ashcroft say the then-attorney general privately dubbed Yoo "Dr. Yes" for being so closely aligned with lawyers at the White House.

From one misbegotten masochistic memo, we have senior Bush bums in the administration acting as if they had a Divine legalistic right to torture, based on their personal game of being judge, jury and torturer - that accidentally executed a few folks, guilty or not. The Rule of Law was captured and taken to Guantanamo Bay never to be seen again by Americans until the grumpy clown that is the US head of State, is out of office.

Mr. Yoo’s memorandum is the latest document to illuminate the legal foundation that Bush administration lawyers used after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, to give the White House broad powers to capture, detain and interrogate suspects around the globe.

Some legal scholars said Tuesday that they were amazed at the scope of the memorandum.

“This is a monument to executive supremacy and the imperial presidency,” said Eugene R. Fidell, who teaches military justice at Yale Law School and the Washington College of Law at American University. “It’s also a road map for the Pentagon for fending off any prosecutions.”

The memorandum gave the military broad latitude to use harsh interrogation methods. It reasoned that federal laws prohibiting assault were not applicable to military interrogators dealing with members of Al Qaeda because of White House authority during wartime. It also argued that many American and international laws would not apply to interrogations overseas.

“Even if an interrogation method arguably were to violate a criminal statute, the Justice Department could not bring a prosecution because the statute would be unconstitutional as applied in this context,” it reads.

Bottom line is John Yoo and all of the people that used that legal abomination of a memo as a thin sheet of coverup for their nefarious activities, became what they sought to protect Americans from, terrorists. In order to become a More Perfect Union, a nation cannot turn into what it despises and holds in contempt. It took over nine months before the Department of Defense legal beagles thought to rescind the memo - not the practices. The Bush administration used bad karma, mental midget judo, and how-low-can-you-go legal limbo to justify its squalid behavior as being more Noble than the terrorist activity being hatched by a stupendously wealthy terrorist with a turban, salt and pepper beard, hiding out in a first century cave in Tora Bora that was never apprehended for his self-righteous schemes and ponzi Death crimes against the world's people either.

This (mis)administration still cannot speak clearly with one united voice about keeping to the decades old Geneva Conventions, nor define torture without a long drawn out explanation about how the US does not torture but reserves the right to use certain "enhanced" interrogation techniques against enemy combatants who have no habeas corpus rights because the US said so. Logically, if US trained Iraqis captured an American and cut off their fingers without going through the benefit of the Rule of law, its in the same nebulous ballpark.

While the military has banned the use of waterboarding and other harsh methods considered by some rights advocates to be torture, the U.S. Intelligence community has not. Bush authorized the CIA to use waterboarding after the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001 but has repeatedly insisted that the United States does not torture prisoners.

The loss of humanity within the folks who pen or follow these anti-freedom legal screeds that inhabited this malevolent administration muck below the River Styx to places deep in a murky underworld to guide their actions, will have lasting ramifications, known as blowback, for US international relationships. How does the US in its wheezing asthmatic moral condition advocate from a position of authority for Human Rights elsewhere, when the Monopoly House is full of mold, mildew and rotting legal memos collecting 200 prisoners and jumps straight into penthouse Hell?

In the Office of Legal Council, OLC, there was someone who disagreed with the memo from Hell. Bush's US tax payer paid lackeys/torture, two time failed Defense Secretary Don Rumsfeld & five deferments from military service Dick Cheney oversaw the application of the John Yoo memo into formal US policy and brooked no interference. No senior people were ever indicted in Abu Gharib or the secret US renditions that picked up innocents that were sent to nations where America outsourced its torture. Read all about the legal wars in side the ironic Department of Justice in Jack Goldsmith's book, The Terror Presidency: Law and Judgment Inside the Bush Administration.

Bush Abandons the Troops, Again

President Bush, The Decider, will use his red-ink veto stamp on the Defense appropriation bill, stopping funding on everything because Iraq's government and a few queasy DC insiders have a few qualms that they might get sued, American style over what meager assets (oil revenue) Iraq has remaining. This is all about Saddam Hussein - still - and the USA's terrorist label hung around Iraq's neck. So, is Iraq's litigation status part of the new Decider Jury since the penultimate Decider just gave away a measure of sovereignty to a nation the US invaded and now occupies because the long arm of American jurisprudence may need to engage in the process?

“The new democratic government of Iraq, during this crucial period of reconstruction, cannot afford to have its funds entangled in such lawsuits in the United States,” Scott Stanzel, a White House spokesman, said in a statement.

Mr. Stanzel said the president objects to a section in the National Defense Authorization Act that would permit plaintiffs’ lawyers to freeze Iraqi funds and expose Iraq to “massive liability in lawsuits concerning the misdeeds of the Saddam Hussein regime.” At least one pending lawsuit reportedly seeks $1 billion or more.

Mr. Stanzel said the White House would consult with Congressional leaders to fix the bill “as soon as possible upon Congress’s return in January.” White House aides said Iraqi government officials had called attention to what they saw as problems in the bill, which was approved amid the lawmakers’ mid-December rush to adjourn for the holidays.

Bush should just *heart* the Courts again
like he does Barney, especially the rollover Supremes, after they voted to give him the title, president, but he jilted them right after they put out. My scorecard for the last seven years is just a mess. Congressional Democrats are not going to be accused of adding clarity as they knelt before Bush and gave him everything in the US treasury that wasn't nailed down without requiring a GET OUT OF IRAQ deadline. But give the Democrats points for strenuously objecting to the vacillating Decider's last second veto.

"This bill is important to our men and women in uniform," Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a statement. "It is unfortunate that the Administration failed to identify the concerns upon which this veto is based until after the bill had passed both houses on Congress and was sent to the president for signature. I am deeply disappointed that our troops and veterans may have to pay for their mistake and for the confusion and uncertainty caused by their snafu." Yeah, that's telling him Senator...

So, the decider world according to malware version 2007 Bush is:

• Troop pay raises? Bush -NO,

• Army expansion? Bush - NO,

• Missile defense shield placed in Europe? Bush - NO (Putin, Bush's Pooty-Poot, will most definitely take that belated Christmas gift)

• Increased Veterans benefits? Bush - NO

• Upgraded weapons systems? Bush - NO

And so, a capitulator's dream Congress in 2007 that pushed through the imperial Decider's wish list, shall be forced to do a legislative Groundhog day reprise beginning in 2008. Will Congress be smart enough to get timelines this time so there can be no more last minute mind melts?



There is no better vantage point than Glen Greenwald's perch looking at the ruins left after a bush presidency and examining the why of it all. The book is A Tragic Legacy: How a Good versus Evil mentality Destroyed the Bush Presidency.

Iraq: An Irresistible Invasion Magnet

Iraq has the mysterious magnet to attract sovereign nations to invade to their own peril. Once America invaded it, surged it and now emptied its own treasury and depleted the military to "conquer" Iraq, Turkey decided mulish roving bands of independence-minded PKK rebels was worth crossing their border into Iraq's Kurdish territory. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's gave a television address to announce his military decision after the Turkish cabinet authorized this a month ago. No politician in the US who voted for the Iraq Debacle or championed it with fake vials trotted out to the UN, is in much of a position to say Iraq is a sovereign nation - Turkey cannot invade. International irony on military parade.

Catastrophic failure of diplomacy results from not building any leverage points for negotiations, so really big armored stuff that kills innocents and terrorists alike is seen as the ultimate final solution. Since this is a hot zone right now, the US's fashionista Secretary of State is globetrotting off to Ethiopia, then Brussels next week. That Middle East diplomatic whatever in Annapolis, MD, last week got a collective yawn around the world while Bush tried to make it the new new cornerstone of his crumbled legacy with Rice's able assistance in appointing a new ME envoy with tons of shiny stars from his military career. During Katrina, Dr. Condoleeza Rice was in New York City stocking up on Ferragamos and attending the Broadway play Sir Spamalot! She's not exactly the FedEx of Diplomacy - getting there on time and stuff. But Diplomacy would have to be a premium tool used by the US first and this is a prime example of a loss of America's moral authority. Turkey is a member of NATO and an ally - sheesh, one can imagine just how US enemies are now trembling and cowering in fear. Osama's latest YouTube submission put paid to that.

Soon after, the Turkish government secured parliamentary approval for cross-border military operations into northern Iraq. The United States and the Iraqi government are keen to avert a large scale incursion.

Ankara nevertheless made it clear that it would be keeping its options open and refused to rule out a military response to any PKK activity.

The PKK, listed as a terrorist group by Ankara and much of the international community, has waged a 23-year armed campign for Kurdish self-rule in Turkey's southeast. The conflict has claimed more than 37,000 lives.

"It is an operation against a very precise target and this is not a surprise given that Turkey has said and repeated (sic) that it was going to crack down on terrorists in northern Iraq," Kuloglu told television channel NTV.

Turkey, for right now a moderate Muslim power, invades northern Iraq under the control of Kurds who now have some of the richest oil deposits in the world plus people on both sides of the border that want an independent state; Kurdistan, carved out of both nations. There are 100,000 angry and anxious Turkish troops sitting on the Iraqi border after losing 12 men in rebel sniper attacks and having 8 captured. Last month, George Bush pledged to share the USA's intelligence (er, um, cough, nevermind...) on the PKK rebels with Turkey. The ironic pancake flipside to that is Turkey has a map courtesy of the US to hit the Kurdish rebels with military strikes after instituting a no-fly zone in the 1990's to protect that area from Saddam Hussein.


Blood and Belief: The PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence is from Aliza Markus, an award-winning Boston Globe reporter with 8 years invested in covering the PKK and its origins.