Better News in the Middle East

Possibly good news -- the chances of Israel unilaterally attacking Iran may have just lessened:

According to the media reports, Netanyahu forged an agreement with opposition leader Shaul Mofaz of Kadima shortly before parliament was set to vote to disperse.

Parliament Speaker Reuven Rivlin, a veteran of Israeli politics, said he had never seen such a last-minute political upheaval. “This is good for Israel because it brings stability, he said on Army Radio as he left parliament before sunrise.

The appointment of Mofaz, a former military chief and defense minister, is significant in Israel’s standoff with Iran, as he has been a vocal critic of Israel striking Iran’s nuclear sites on its own.

In the meantime, that pesky Al-Qaeda has evidently been foiled again:

The CIA and overseas intelligence partners disrupted an al-Qaeda plot to blow up civilian aircraft using an advanced explosive device designed by the terrorist network’s affiliate in Yemen, U.S. officials said Monday.
...

U.S. officials said the FBI is examining the device — modeled on the “underwear bomb” used in an attempt to bring down a Detroit-bound airliner on Christmas Day 2009 — to determine whether airport security systems would have detected it.

U.S. officials said the CIA and other agencies tracked the plot for about a month before moving to seize the device in recent days in the Middle East outside Yemen, where the bomb was built.

Does Obama have another foreign policy or anti-terrorism success to achieve before the November election?

Al-Qaeda say what?

Look who's throwing around the racial stuff now:

In al-Qaida's first response to Obama's victory, al-Zawahri also called the president-elect—along with secretaries of state Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice—"house negroes."

Speaking in Arabic, al-Zawahri uses the term "abeed al-beit," which literally translates as "house slaves." But al-Qaida supplied English subtitles of his speech that included the translation as "house negroes."

The message also includes old footage of speeches by Malcolm X in which he explains the term, saying black slaves who worked in their white masters' house were more servile than those who worked in the fields. Malcolm X used the term to criticize black leaders he accused of not standing up to whites.

Could President-Elect Obama have received a kinder gift from the mother of all assholes?

I'm reminded of a few other moments when such language was used about Barack. There's Ralph Nader's career-curtaining "whether he’s going to be Uncle Sam for the people of this country, or Uncle Tom for the giant corporations" moment, gracious words following the election. Then there's Jesse Jackson's unfortunate, "I wanna cut his nuts off," for, in his view, "talking down to black people."

Who do they think they're insulting? Ask Hillary Clinton or John McCain -- his cool will make you panic, and your panic will be your undoing.

Richard Clarke on the al-Zawahri statement:

"Obama's election has taken the wind out of al Qaeda's sails in much of the Islamic world because it demonstrates America's renewed commitment to multiculturalism, human rights, and international law. It also proves to many that democracy can work and overcome ethnic, sectarian, or racial barriers.

"Obama's commitment to withdraw from Iraq also takes away an al Qaeda propaganda tenet: that the U.S. seeks to occupy oil rich Arab lands. His commitment to defeat al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan also challenges their plans. Most of all, by returning to American values the world admires, Obama sets al Qaeda back enormously in the battle of ideas, the ideological struggle which determines whether al Qaeda will continue to have significant support in the Islamic world."

Exactly. With posters of Obama reportedly replacing those of Osama on the Third World streets and America now the first white nation to elect a black Chief Executive, this is our "America, Fuck Yeah" moment. Per Joe Klein:

The Zawahiri letter is one of the first real indications we have of the new international state of affairs (the Ahmadinejad letter of congratulations may also have been a good sign, but was leavened by the author's lack of real power and the fact that he's running for reelection). The terrorists are now exposed as racists, on top of everything else. We have many miles to go in Afghanistan and the northern and western precincts of Pakistan, and more blood to shed--and innumerable ways to screw up, since no one has ever gotten Afghanistan right--but the wind seems to have shifted slightly and is now at our back.

The terrorists are exposed as racists. But of course. And I have no doubt that there will be a moment, possibly within his first year of office, where Obama strikes or counterstrikes, some sort of targeted violence, that establishes his military aptitude and willingness to use it as provoked, most likely with an exactitude missing from the misadventures and squanderings of the past eight years.

Many on the left will protest or despair, as if they never heard him say, "I'm not opposed to all wars, I'm opposed to dumb wars." But even a majority of liberals will think he made the right decision and executed as cleanly as possible.

And with that our enemies will be put on notice and he will glide back into the White House in 2012.

Surgeless

Here's the fruits of our efforts in Iraq:

More than 1,000 Iraqi soldiers and policemen either refused to fight or simply abandoned their posts during the inconclusive assault against Shiite militias in Basra last week, a senior Iraqi government official said Thursday. Iraqi military officials said the group included dozens of officers, including at least two senior field commanders in the battle.

The desertions in the heat of a major battle cast fresh doubt on the effectiveness of the American-trained Iraqi security forces.

Y'think?

Meanwhile, Al Qaeda adds more talent:

On the night of July 10, 2005, an obscure militant preacher named Abu Yahya al-Libi escaped from an American prison in Afghanistan and rocketed to fame in the world of jihadists...

...Mr. Libi, a Libyan believed to be in his late 30s, is now considered to be a top strategist for Al Qaeda, as well as one of its most effective promoters of global jihad, appearing in a dozen videos on militant Web sites in the past year, counterterrorism officials said. At a time when Al Qaeda seems more inspirational than operational, Mr. Libi stands out as a formidable star whose rise to prominence tracks the group’s growing emphasis on information in its war with the West.

“I call him a man for all seasons for A.Q.,” said Jarret Brachman, a former analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency who is now research director of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. “He’s a warrior. He’s a poet. He’s a scholar. He’s a pundit. He’s a military commander. And he’s a very charismatic, young, brash rising star within A.Q., and I think he has become the heir apparent to Osama bin Laden in terms of taking over the entire global jihadist movement.”

Comforting, eh? Thank goodness the Republicans were in charge on 9/11. Thank goodness we have an intelligent, attentive, patient, focused President:

Enough is enough, it seems. With the NATO summit meetings consistently running two hours over schedule most of the day, President Bush abruptly got up and left the last formal session of the day, not bothering to wait for an official summit photograph of all the leaders.

Bush is no fan of windy meetings and evidently had had his fill. He left behind Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates to represent him for the rest of the session, which concerned NATO operations in Afghanistan, but his departure was so sudden and unexpected that he left some of his motorcade behind, inculding his press pool, when he got into his car and headed back to his hotel.

Yes. He's still el Presidente.

For another 290 days.

More Traitorous Behavior

While the manic U.S. rightwing continues to howl and cry that somehow anti-War Americans are traitors to our country, there's that Republican Bush/Cheney Administration leaking willy-nilly for political gain, no matter the damage to our country's anti-terrorist intelligence efforts:

A small private intelligence company that monitors Islamic terrorist groups obtained a new Osama bin Laden video ahead of its official release last month, and around 10 a.m. on Sept. 7, it notified the Bush administration of its secret acquisition. It gave two senior officials access on the condition that the officials not reveal they had it until the al-Qaeda release.

Within 20 minutes, a range of intelligence agencies had begun downloading it from the company's Web site. By midafternoon that day, the video and a transcript of its audio track had been leaked from within the Bush administration to cable television news and broadcast worldwide.

The founder of the company, the SITE Intelligence Group, says this premature disclosure tipped al-Qaeda to a security breach and destroyed a years-long surveillance operation that the company has used to intercept and pass along secret messages, videos and advance warnings of suicide bombings from the terrorist group's communications network.

Leading to White House spin fury. Remember Scooter Libby getting off for leaking the identity of Valerie Plame? Or their 2004 election campaign leak regarding Mohammed Naeem Noor Khan?

Putting the safety of America after their dreams of political domination has been their m.o. all along.

Will anyone ever bring them to justice?