David J. Williams

Alright! Hard Lessons:  The Iraqi Reconstruction Experience is now available online, with the inspector general himself, Stewart Bowen, testifying pretty much as I write this. The big conclusion, of course, is that enormous amounts were wasted in Iraqi reconstruction, and—hold on to your hats—can’t be accounted for.  But is “wasted” really the right word? After all, the $ went to line the pockets of the very folks it was supposed to all along:  the same contractors who ended up making (and continue to make) millions of dollars a day for every day we stay in Iraq. Perhaps that’s the grease necessary to make the wheels of empire turn, but all that dough would have been a lot better spent on the Iraqis themselves. Which was, of course, the central missed opportunity back in 2003.  Repeat after me:  Rule #1 in taking over a third world country is . . . Get Everybody On the Payroll. As opposed to say, dismissing them from duty and letting them keep their guns.

My novel, Mirrored Heavens, is available in mass-market on Amazon.

Yeah, THAT A.Q. Khan. The guy who masterminded Pakistan’s nuclear program, and then sold nuclear technology to North Korea and Iran with the blessing of the Pakistani government.  (Check out the book Nuclear Deception by Sunday Times reporters Levy and Scott-Clark, which is about the best account I’ve read.)

Anyway, turns out he’s got himself a website.  (hat tip:  Arms Control Wonk)

“You oughta take those fists down to parliament”—so said John Lydon (aka Johnnie Rotten) at one of the first PiL shows as he surveyed the chaos going down in the audience. But why bother when the legislators are already at it? Check out at these awesome videos of rumbles/fistfights breaking out in various national legislatures/congresses/parliaments. India’s is probably the best, but they’re all pretty good.

And now my cat is making a beeline for the keyboard, so I have to run some interference of my own.  Later. . .

As if Obama didn’t have enough to worry about, Russia is finalizing the sale of top-of-the-line air defense systems to Iran. This will be one more issue that will be thrown into the U.S.-Russia negotiations mix, on top of missile defense, the Ukraine, Georgia, etc. Russia may/may not have any intention of actually going ahead with this, but Iran undoubtedly can’t wait to get its hands on the S-300s ground-to-air missiles that comprise the core of the hardware.

Meanwhile, I suspect that once we get past Inauguration Day, we’re going to learn a lot more about the Bush administration’s attempt to embroil the U.S. in a conflict with Tehran; Seymour Hersh has already written about brainstorming meetings in Cheney’s office dedicated to coming up with a casus belli, and additional revelations are almost certainly in store.  The irony is that they’ll be surfacing even as Obama faces growing pressure to launch strikes, particularly if the situation in Iraq deteriorates. (Which it almost certainly will.)

Amidst all the uproar over my cat last week, I’m only just now getting to the long-awaited report by Congress on weapons of mass destruction. The key soundbite: “unless the world community acts decisively and with great urgency, it is more likely than not that a weapon of mass destruction will be used in a terrorist attack somewhere in the world by the end of 2013.” The report goes on to say that the most likely source of any nuclear device would be Pakistan, given that they’ve been peddling their nukes in every Central Asian bazaar they can find. If this sounds depressing to you, just imagine how I feel about it:  I live in Washington D.C. (why, I’m not so sure).  My cat remains blissfully unaware of all this, though he would probably welcome any scenario in which mice start to glow.

At least, that’s what they called the war in Afghanistan up until this year, when it started to become brutally apparent that the situation has turned to shit while we were focused on Iraq.

At any rate, here’s two incredible sets of photos. One is of U.S. soldiers in the Korengal Valley, right up alongside the Pakistani border.  Looking at the terrain (which is so hostile, supplies get flown in), you can see why empires throughout history have found Afghanistan to be a graveyard.

And speaking of . . . here’s photos of Soviet soldiers during their attempt to tame the place. Makes me think of the ending to The Living Daylights, when Timothy Dalton teamed up with the mujahideen to kick some Red Army ass. Now *there’s* a movie that failed to age gracefully. . .

The Mumbai attacks demonstrate just how much damage can be done by striking high-profile civilian targets even if you don’t have heavy weapons. Last year, U.S. intel warned of potential Al-Qaeda attacks on U.S. shopping malls; even a single gunman could do some pretty nasty damage. Attacks don’t have to be imaginative or sophisticated to get results: watching that get proved in India has increased the likelihood it will happen elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the international repercussions of Mumbai are only just beginning. It seems almost certain now that the attacks emanated from inside Pakistan, and that they had some kind of government backing (even if that just means that someone in govt turned a blind eye); the problem is that “government” in Pakistan is a very amorphous term, as the country’s split into a myriad factions—which doesn’t bode well for crisis decision-making if India start rattling its nuclear saber. Pakistan is already under enormous pressure from the Americans on its Afghan border; now it’s going to be caught in the proverbial nutcracker. Already halfway to a failed state, the Islamic Republic may complete the rest of the journey all too quickly.

At least, apparently that’s what Putin wanted to do to Georgian leader Saakashvili, according to one of French president Sarkozy’s advisers.

With Russian tanks only 30 miles from Tbilisi on August 12, Mr Sarkozy told Mr Putin that the world would not accept the overthrow of Georgia, Mr Levitte said.

“I am going to hang Saakashvili by the balls,” Mr Putin replied.

Mr Sarkozy responded: “Hang him?”

“Why not? The Americans hanged Saddam Hussein,” said Mr Putin.

Mr Sarkozy replied, using the familiar “tu”: “Yes but do you want to end up like (President) Bush?”

Mr Putin was briefly lost for words, then said: “Ah, you have scored a point there.”

Is Russia ever in a good mood? World leaders everywhere sent the U.S. president-elect their congratulations, but all he got from Russia was just a bit of sabre-rattling: Medvedev’s announcement that Russia would put short-range missiles near the Polish border if U.S. ballistic missile defense construction goes ahead there. Even so-called left-wing blogs have been taken in by this, chiding Russia for getting its relationship with Obama off to such a bad start.

As usual, they’re missing the point. The Russians are signaling that they’re going to bring a hard line to the negotiating table; they are, however, signaling that they are quite willing to negotiate.  And the overall terms of a modus vivendi are reasonably clear at this point.  We trade off missile defense and agree to give Russia substantial leeway within the former Soviet Union, with the exception of the Baltic States.  In return for this we get guarantees they won’t fuck with Eastern Europe/members of NATO, and we get their cooperation with Iran.

Some will call this appeasement.  I call it common sense.  Because (and this is the bit that the hardliners just can’t get through their heads)  . . . we’re fucking BROKE.  We don’t have the MONEY to get involved in a giant smackdown with Russia.  We used it all up on Iraq, which the same folks who wanted WWIII with Russia over Georgia were so excited about at the time (some people never saw a war they didn’t like).  Now we’re in the worst economic crisis in decades, and it’s about time we started cutting some deals.  And Russia’s a great place to start.

More news on the Resurgent Bear: lost amidst the financial/campaigning chaos of last week was the item that Russia is laying the groundwork to help Cuba build its own space center. This is a deft move by Putin; in a stroke he simultaneously continues to put more pressure on the Americans while giving Russia a potential alternative to Central Asia’s Baikonur, which is too far north to be ideal for space launch purposes. We can start to see in all this glimpses of the world of the MIRRORED HEAVENS, in which considerations of launch real-estate drive geopolitics.

But only glimpses.  From a space hardware perspective, Russia would be advised not to place too many eggs into the Cuban basket; Baikonur may be less-than-perfect, but it’s still a damn sight easier to defend credibly than something within ten minutes of Miami.  Though proximity offers opportunities too, as witnessed by Moscow’s mulling over the explosive possibility of putting nuclear bombers into Cuba too.  And the larger pattern is clear, as Russia continues to make inroads on the U.S.’s privileged position in the western hemisphere.  I talked about Iceland yesterday; the Cuban move is linked to the already-in-progress Venezuelan one.

And all of it links right back to Europe, of course.  At the end of the day, Russia isn’t interested in playing puppetmaster in the U.S. backyard because it’s trying to invade New York or any of the other RED DAWN bullshit that the mainstream media seems to buy into.  These are just more cards to play as the U.S. continues to build missile defense facilities in Eastern Europe while supporting no-hopers like Saakashvili in the Caucasus and urging NATO membership for every nation in #$# Eurasia.  Ultimately this is a game of realpolitik, and it’s about time we stopped with the endless moralizing/attempt to define the entire planet as our sphere of influence (something only nations with unlimited treasuries can indulge in) and started conducting our international relations like professionals do.  Because right now the pros are running rings around us.