RAND paper: Washington, grow up and admit Pakistani regime won't stop supporting terrorist groups (UPDATED)

UPDATE June 22, 7:30 AM EDT
It turned out the RAND paper was stuck in the carrot-and-stick groove. Disappointing, although it's still worth reading.
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Meanwhile, countless anti-government riots are breaking out everywhere in Pakistan ....

Last weekend it was Matt Waldman's paper for the Crisis States Research Center at the London School of Economics which concluded that Pakistan's ISI supported Taliban terrorist organizations as a matter of official policy. Now comes a paper from the RAND think tank that harps on the same theme but broadens it to include the entire Pakistani government. According to an AP report filed by Anne Gearan around midnight EDT:

WASHINGTON — Pakistan hasn't quit its habit of courting insurgents, and extremist networks with current or former ties to the government pose a significant risk to the United States and Pakistan's elected government itself, a new study concludes.

A rising number of terrorist plots in the United States with roots in Pakistan stems in part from an unsuccessful strategy by the U.S.-backed government in Pakistan to blunt the influence of militant groups in the country, the report by the RAND Corp. said.

The report, to be issued Monday, says the May 1 failed car bombing in New York's Times Square is an example of how militant groups, some with shadowy government backing, can increasingly export terrorism far beyond the country's borders.

The United States isn't getting its money's worth for all the billions in aid pledged to the strategically located, nuclear-armed nation, the report concludes. The U.S. should withhold some aid until Pakistan makes "discernible progress," authors Seth Jones of RAND and C. Christine Fair of Georgetown University wrote.
[...]

Matt Waldman had somehow arrived at the idea that 'solving' Kashmir would make a tiger change its stripes. From the rest of the AP report it seems the RAND recommendations are more in line with the ones I made in January, which amount to carefully disengaging from Pakistan as much as possible.

The Pakistanis really don't like being treated like donkeys, so the civilian government and military have not responded well to Washington's carrot-and-stick approach. And I suspect President Asif Ali Zardari's view of President Obama is, 'If you're so smart why aren't you rich?'

Zardari is worth $1.8 billion; he's the second richest Pakistani, and that figure is just what he's declared, not what his fortune is actually worth. Now one may argue and many have that no small part of his wealth comes from corrupt deals but in that part of the world how one got the money is nowhere near as important as having it. I think that attitude explains at least in part why whatever Obama and his envoys tell Zardari goes in one ear and out the other.

As to the tactic of putting more pressure on Pakistan's military, which controls the ISI, that strikes me as naive. From a 2008 report titled, Pakistan Tries To Clean Up ISI Image By Shutting Down Political Wing

In his latest book, "Descent Into Chaos," [Ahmed] Rashid argues that the ISI has set up a series of private organizations in order to put more distance into the relationship between its military leadership and extremist fighters. He says the private organizations are staffed by retired ISI officers and funded through the budget of Pakistan's Frontier Corps.

So that's what tough love gets you in Pakistan: more Three Card Monte.

I think the same observation applies to the effort by Washington to refurbish Pakistan's Intelligence Bureau, which has a domestic focus in the manner of Britain's MI5. Writing in April for Rediff, Indian intelligence analyst B. Raman reported:

The US has also been encouraging the demilitarisation of the IB and the process of the restoration of civilian preeminence in the internal intelligence and security setup of Pakistan. It has increased the allocation of funds for the IB and has been helping it in other ways too for making it once again a professional intelligence organisation run by civilians as it used to be before 1971. The US sees in the strengthening of the IB one way of reducing the negative role of the ISI in Pakistan.[...]

There is some urgency, unrelated to the NATO campaign in Afghanistan, for the ISAF and Washington in particular to straighten out their thinking on Pakistan. Of course it would be the leftists at Canada's Global Research who came up with news about Pakistan that's has been kept out of the American press. The country is beginning to resemble China in that countless anti-government riots are breaking out everywhere:

(July 19) “The military is the muscle that protects the ruling elite from the wrath of the people,” says Pakistani political analyst Dr. Mubashir Hassan. “Right now, people are out on the street; blocking roads, attacking railway stations, etc. If you read the papers, it seems as though a general uprising has started all over Pakistan.”

Dr. Hassan says that sporadic outbursts of anger in Pakistan won’t coalesce into a people’s revolution anytime soon. The demonstrators are too disorganized. But, the sheer volume of daily protests shows that many sectors of Pakistani society have pressing needs and priorities that do not include enlistment as foot soldiers in a proxy force for the United States’ War on Terror.

Dr. Hassan, a co-founder of the People’s Party of Pakistan, is a respected scholar and statesman. Last year, when we met with him, he had just returned from a visit, in the U.S., with Professors Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn, his contemporaries in seeking to build just and fair social structures. Last month, in Lahore, he spoke with us about U.S. interference in the region and changing dynamics in Pakistan.

A snapshot of unrest in Pakistan offers a framework for outsiders to understand why it is unfair to insist that Pakistan “do more” to fulfill the United States’ vision for fighting extremism. It may also suggest why strong anti-American sentiments prevail, in Pakistan, among the peasantry, the middle class, religious and secular groups, and the highly educated and privileged classes.

Throughout the past several months, demonstrators burned tires nearly every day in the streets of Karachi, Rawalpindi, Lahore and other population centers as they voiced their opposition to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and it’s insistence on the implementation of a Value Added Tax (VAT) along with a proposed 11.3 billion dollar bailout package.

In a special meeting convened by the Farmers Association of Pakistan, (FAP), participants said that the VAT would “totally kill the farmers and cause irreparable damage to the agriculture sector by making inputs more expensive. This would, in turn, increase the prices of agriculture produce, adding to the miseries of both the farmer and consumer, who are already facing extreme economic depression.”

Ashraf Javed, writing for [Pakistan's] The Nation, reported that economic experts estimated that the IMF and the Pakistani government’s original plan for the VAT would increase the prices of over 122 major categories of items, including food, by at least 15 percent.

These proposed policies led to protests by the All Pakistan Organization of Small Traders and Cottage Industries, the Pakistan Muslim League, Jamaat-e-Islami, textile workers, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, and even spawned a nationwide mobile phone boycott.

Because of the immense pressure put on the government to reject the VAT, Pakistan decided to postpone implementation of the tax from July to October. The government, under the leadership of the People’s Party of Pakistan, has also come up with plans to incorporate many of the IMF’s demands for the VAT into the General Sales Tax (GST), which already sits at about 16 percent.

In response, the IMF has threatened to freeze future disbursements coming to Pakistan if the VAT is not implemented by July 1st along with a “power tariff,” or 6 percent increase in electricity rates.

As the IMF and World Bank are insisting on a 6 percent hike in electricity rates, there has been nationwide upheaval over increased “load shedding,” the term for scheduled power outages in Pakistan, which sometimes last for 10-12 hours per day. Protests against the power cuts, often quite militant, have consistently erupted in major cities like Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad. Demonstrators in other provinces and cities including Hyderabad, Multan, Quetta, Bahawalnagar, Sukkur, Badin, Mirpur Khas, Larkana, Thatta and Ghotki, Dera Ismail Khan, Hangu, Kurk, Swat and Muzaffarabad have also registered their outrage.

Textile mills, manufacturers, the agricultural sector and traders are among the hardest hit by load shedding which limits the hours of operation, disrupting production and interfering with worker schedules. Protesters have created roadblocks, burned tires, gone on strike and organized massive sit-ins.

In Punjab, Pakistan’s most densely populated province, the Tenants Association of Punjab, (AMP), demands “Ownership or Death.” Involving 1 million landless tenants, based in villages stretching over 15 districts, AMP is one of Pakistan’s largest political movements. For ten years, the AMP has struggled to secure ownership rights for poor families that have tilled their land for over four generations. [...]

If the IMF carries through with its threat, you could see another 'Burma' because in Karachi, the country's largest city, the poor already have their backs to the wall. Because of the 'water mafia,' they're forced to pay exorbitant amounts for water. From Alex Rodriguez's heartbreaking report for the Los Angeles Times titled, Karachi 'water mafia' leaves Pakistanis parched and broke:

Corrupt politicians allow businessmen to siphon off as much as 41% of the city's water supply and turn around and sell it at exorbitant rates to residents, generating an estimated $43 million a year. [Pundita note: for context, $1 = about 85 Pakistani rupees]

(KARACHI) Name a cash cow in this sprawling city of ragged slums and glass-walled office buildings and it's almost certain there's an organized crime syndicate behind it. The illegal operations, routinely referred to as mafias, are everywhere. There's a land mafia that commandeers prime real estate, a sugar mafia that conspires to control sugar prices, and even a railway mafia that forges train tickets and pilfers locomotive parts.

For those on the city's bottom rung, however, the underworld entity they revile the most is the water tanker mafia, a network of trucking firms that teams up with corrupt bureaucrats to turn water into liquid gold worth tens of millions of dollars each year.

The water tanker mafia's prey can be found in slums like Karachi's Gulshan-Sikanderabad neighborhood, where every morning people buy water from the tankers, lug the plastic jugs back to their homes on wooden carts, then come back three or four more times in the afternoon and evening to buy more.

A family that makes $100 a month can spend as much as a quarter of that on water, which, elsewhere in Pakistan, costs pennies and flows out of household taps.

Water scarcity isn't the cause. Karachi has a steady water supply, and it has the network of pipes to pump ample water into every neighborhood, rich and poor.

But Karachi is also a city of opportunists forever on the prowl for under-the-table wealth. As municipal officials look the other way, businessmen illegally tap water mains, and use the makeshift hydrants to supply fleets of tankers that then sell water to businesses, factories and neighborhoods at inflated prices. As many as 272 million gallons a day are siphoned off by the trucks.[...]

Unlike the way Burmese see their military, the vast majority (around 86 percent) of Pakistanis greatly admire their military. But if the military has to quell riots by millions of desperate people, the respect would vanish very quickly.

The Burma protests were touched off because Burma's junta, following IMF orders, jacked up the price of fuel more than 100 percent; like falling dominoes that skyrocketed the cost of food and transportation. People were starving and they couldn't afford the increased fares for buses, etc. to get to work The street protests that followed ended in a military crackdown that set off a bloodbath.

However, the junta did not depend on Western largesse for support so they could afford to shrug off world opinion. That wouldn't be the case for Pakistan's military, which could find itself in a vise.

The authors of the Global Research report (Josh Brollier and Kathy Kelly) observed:

With 60 million people living in poverty and many more living just above the poverty line, the people of Pakistan have priorities that do not include acting as a proxy to fight U.S. wars against purported terrorists.

For many people, including those like Muhammad Akbar, a desperate rickshaw driver who committed suicide on Wednesday due to prolonged financial hardships, these priorities may be simply to put food on the table and to provide for their families. [...] People in the United States wishing to show solidarity with Pakistanis struggling to make ends meet should try to dialogue with Pakistani-led grassroots movements.[...]

The United States government has been doing just the opposite: funneling aid to government administrations in Pakistan that are corrupt when they're not being wasteful. The U.S. did it again this weekend:

ISLAMABAD, Jun 19 (Associated Press Pakistan)

United States on Saturday announced to increase humanitarian assistance for affected areas in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhawa Province and Federally Administered Tribal Areas(FATA). Ambassador Richard Holbrooke, the Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, who is on a three-day visit to Pakistan pledged an additional $11.1 million in humanitarian assistance for Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and FATA.

According to US embassy, out of the total pledge, $4 million will be directed through the World Health Organization for provision of life-saving health services [...]
The United States has contributed $173.9 million in humanitarian assistance to Pakistan in 2010.

And yet the more aid Washington gives to Pakistan, the more U.S. intentions are met with suspicion and hatred. It's gotten to the point where Pakistanis are blaming everything wrong in their country on the USA. That's a tinder-box situation, which could explode this summer under severe economic pressures.

Meanwhile, the United States has a war to fight. The RAND paper is arriving on the heels of five pieces of bad news from last week:

1. June 15

Militant Group Expands Attacks in Afghanistan

By Alissa J. Rubin, New York Times

(KABUL, Afghanistan) — A Pakistani-based militant group identified with attacks on Indian targets has expanded its operations in Afghanistan, inflicting casualties on Afghans and Indians alike, setting up training camps, and adding new volatility to relations between India and Pakistan.

The group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, is believed to have planned or executed three major attacks against Indian government employees and private workers in Afghanistan in recent months, according to Afghan and international intelligence officers and diplomats here. It continues to track Indian development workers and others for possible attack, they said.

Lashkar was behind the synchronized attacks on several civilian targets in Mumbai, India, in 2008, in which at least 163 people were killed. Its inroads in Afghanistan provide a fresh indication of its growing ambitions to confront India even beyond the disputed territory of Kashmir, for which Pakistan’s military and intelligence services created the group as a proxy force decades ago.

Officially, Pakistan says it no longer supports or finances the group. But Lashkar’s expanded activities in Afghanistan, particularly against Indian targets, prompt suspicions that it has become one of Pakistan’s proxies to counteract India’s influence in the country.

They provide yet another indicator of the extent to which Pakistani militants are working to shape the outcome of the Afghan war as the July 2011 deadline approaches to begin withdrawing American troops.
[...]

2. June 16

Pakistan funds Lashkar-e-Taiba in Punjab

By Bill Roggio, Long War Journal

Here is an excellent reason why upping Pakistan's aid from about $500 million a year to $1.5 billion a year was and still is a terrible idea. Last year, the provincial government of Punjab handed over $951,000 to Jamaat-ud-Dawa, the thinly veiled front group for Hafiz Saeed's Lashkar-e-Taiba. This is the same group that launched the Mumbai assault in November 2008 and has participated in numerous raids against US forces in eastern Afghanistan. [...]

Note the financial backing for the LeT front organization is not coming from the ISI.

3. June 16

U.S. showed Pakistan evidence on militant faction

(Reuters) - The United States has presented evidence to Pakistan about the growing threat and reach of a militant faction which Washington suspects has ties to Pakistani intelligence, U.S. officials said on Wednesday.
World

In the presentations, U.S. military leaders provided Pakistan's army chief with information detailing the role of the Haqqani network in a string of increasingly brazen bombings, including one last month targeting the main NATO air base at Bagram in Afghanistan.

Washington has long pressed Islamabad to crack down on the Haqqanis in the North Waziristan tribal zone bordering Afghanistan, who are closely aligned with the Taliban, but U.S. officials acknowledge it is a hard sell because of resistance within Pakistani intelligence.

General David Petraeus, who oversees the Afghan war as head of U.S. Central Command, told a congressional hearing the Haqqanis had "transnational" ambitions, suggesting they could try to strike beyond Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Washington has issued similar warnings about the growing reach of the Pakistani Taliban, which investigators blame for a botched May 1 car bomb in New York's Time Square.

There are strategic reasons for Pakistan's hesitancy to attack the Haqqanis, a faction which some in Islamabad see as a strategic asset that will give them influence in any eventual settlement to the war in neighboring Afghanistan.
[...]

4. News that the Pakistani-American Times Square Bomber, Faisal Shahzad, was paid $12,000 by the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan's (TTP) to carry out the plot. India's Hindustan Times noted archly:

It is worth mentioning here that the US officials and analysts had initially brushed off the TTP's claim of a connection to the May 1 botched terror attempt, as it did not consider it a 'trans-national group', however, the growing evidence showcased the lengthening reach of Pakistan-based militants.

5. In public, at least, General David Petraeus hedged about the findings of the LSE paper. June 20, Sify:

[...] Speaking during a congressional hearing earlier this week, General David Petraeus, the CENTCOM commander overseeing America's war efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, said he doesn't approve the conclusion of the LSE's report "in all respects".

"Well, first of all, I don't want to imply that I would accept the London School of Economics study or the individual who wrote that for them, his conclusions in all respects," General Petraeus said.

The LSE's report had claimed that supporting the Afghan Taliban was the "official policy" of the ISI.

Although General Petraeus acknowledged that "some of those ties continue in various forms", he said that such links were useful too.

"Some of them, by the way, gathering intelligence ... you have to have contact with bad guys to get intelligence on bad guys. And so it's very important, I think, again, to try to have this kind of nuance feel for what is really going on," The Dawn quoted General Petraeus, as saying.

"I do believe that the Pakistanis - the people, the leaders, the clerics, and the military - all recognise that you cannot allow poisonous snakes to have a nest in your backyard. Even if the tacit agreement is that they're going to bite the neighbour's kids instead of yours, eventually they turn around and bite you and your kids," he added.

According to the LSE's report, which is said to be based on interviews with nine Afghan Taliban commanders, the ISI is providing funds, training and sanctuary to the Taliban on a scale much larger than previously thought. [...]

Sahib Sebastian Gorka instructs John Batchelor's WABC radio audience on Afghanistan and irregular warfare

On June 11 Sebastian Gorka made his second appearance on John Batchelor's nationally syndicated radio show on 77 WABC-AM. According to attenuated résumés posted at websites for three of the many organizations Gorka is associated with (The Atlantic Council, College of International Affairs, and Foundation for Defense of Democracies -- all based in Washington) he is an internationally recognized expert on defense reform, international terrorism, national security, and democratization.

Gorka first discussed irregular warfare, which he termed war conducted by non-state actors, and how it differed from Clausewitzian war theory, which is based on the Westphalian concept of the nation state and its attendant view of sovereignty and the mating habits of pandas; just checking, you need to stay awake for this.

I raise an eyebrow at Gorka's definition of irregular warfare; although the term is used in the way he described it, a glance through this Wikipedia article on Irregular warfare indicates that the more generally accepted term is that it's a standing military's use of forces that are not 'regular.' (Think a military's covert operations, etc.) However, I'm going to let that pass because there are so many terms now in use to denote the kind of warfare conducted by non-state actors that it's getting into the weeds to attempt to nail down precise terminology.

Batchelor asked Gorka to apply his explanation about irregular warfare to the NATO mission in Afghanistan and to dealing with types Batchelor called a "mixture of tribal logic and medieval rivalry" ranged along the Afghanistan border with Pakistan.

Below are my notes on Gorka's lecture and my replies; his remarks are shown in boldface. I've numbered his remarks for reference although the numbers don't necessarily reflect the order of his remarks. You might want to listen to the WABC podcast of the interview and peruse Gorka's résumé before proceeding.

1. Gorka: We have to see there's a gulf between understanding war in the Westphalian sense of war between states and this kind of warfare, irregular -- when it's not a state you're fighting but armed bands.

Pundita: The tribal bumpkins replete with beards and baggy pants are theater. They're a carefully constructed illusion meant to mask and implement a battle plan that was faithfully copied from the Pakistan military's irregular war against India's government in Indian Kashmir.

Every detail of the Afghanistan battle plan and its rationale is found in accounts of the Kashmir 'insurgency.' The detail is the very same at every single level -- right down to the recent assassinations of key government officials in Kandahar.

There are numerous books available on the topic but those who know nothing about Pakistan's proxy war in Indian Kashmir can read Rajeev Srinivasan's 2002 two-part article for Rediff. Here is Part I and Part II. The article is not a history of the Kashmir insurgency but it will put readers in the ballpark about what's really been going on in Afghanistan. And while Srinivasan freely admits he stretches a point by arguing that Kashmir "colonized" the rest of India, he uses the stretch to good effect.

2. Gorka: We talk about cooperation (between the U.S. and Afghanistan) but do we have a functioning state to deal with when Kabul does not exercise its power across the putative nation-state of Afghanistan?

Pundita: You remember President Hamid Karzai, eh? He's the fellow who was driven mad trying to understand how Washington thinks. For years he was under the impression that because NATO was occupying his country and all, it was their job to exercise power across his putative nation state.

When he learned otherwise he blurted, 'But I'm not Genghis Khan.' When the reply cabled back, 'Better learn how to be,' he began talking to himself. When last seen he was weaving baskets and stringing beads for therapy.

3. Gorka: We're dealing with a populace that doesn't necessarily think of itself as Afghan but rather thinks in terms of tribal affiliation.

Pundita: A survey taken a few years ago found that 70 percent of Afghans identified first with their nation and second with their ethnic heritage.

The majority of the other 30 percent, I maintain, would also see themselves as Afghans first if not for Pakistan's machinations in the country, which were supported by the United States of America during the Cold War, and which continue to this day.

While it's true that the British demarcated Pakistan and Afghanistan territories in such way that there are Pashtuns who can "lunch in Pakistan and go to the loo in Afghanistan," as one analyst put it, most of Afghanistan's Pashtuns intelligently prefer to be Afghans rather than a mouse that roared.

Reference the Pakistan regime's transparent attempt to sow yet more trouble among Afghanistan's Pasthuns by rushing through (this April) the renaming of NWFP (Northwest Frontier Province to "Khyber Pakhtunkhwa."

As to the 'Pashtun majority' in Afghanistan, which feeds into the Fox News Cable-CNN view of Afghans as AK-47 toting warlords, the majority is deceptive.

Yes, the Pashtuns are in the majority, but by such a slim margin over the Tajiks that one can fairly say Afghanistan's present ethnic demographic makeup has much in common with Canada at its founding. The French and British were the majority ethnic groups in Canada, with the indigenous or 'natives' a significant minority.

The big difference is that while there are ethnic minorities in Afghanistan, the two majority groups have more in common linguistically and in their heritage than the British and French. The Pashtuns and Tajiks are Iranic peoples and Dari (a dialect of 'Persian' or Farsi), is the lingua franca of the country. The 2009 CIA World Factbook estimates that over 50% of people in Afghanistan speak in Dari as their first language but only 35% of the population speak Pashto as their first language.

In any event Pashto, the language of the Pastuns, is also derived from the Iranic linguistic tree.

4. Gorka: The Westphalian order has failed in Afghanistan because a key aspect of sovereignty is the ability of the nation-state to defend its borders and Afghanistan has been unable to do this.

Pundita: Reference my reply to #2.

5. Gorka: We still haven't established what we want to achieve in Afghanistan. First we wanted to rout al Qaeda and now we want to create a functioning Westphalian state in Central Asia where there has never been one. America has to define concrete objectives in Afghanistan and we still haven't done so.

(Gorka was clearly including Afghanistan in Central Asia even though the country is also considered to be located in South-Central Asia.)

General David Petraeus was carrying out a plan in Iraq that was a straightforward version of what's called 'population-centric' counterinsurgency tactics -- which, because there was no functioning central government to speak of at the time in Iraq, skirted Baghdad and worked directly with provincial leaders.

That's what McChrystal has been trying to replicate in Afghanistan -- although there could be a conflict in goals between the United Nations, other ISAF commands and their respective governments, and possibly factions at the U.S. Department of State. There are an awful lot of chefs in the kitchen and maybe too few line cooks.

However, the biggest problem has been that they're up against a battle plan that's invisible to them. ISAF has been on the defensive in a proxy war it's confused with an insurgency. Reference #1.

6. Gorka: We're not fighting a military band with superior fighting power but a global ideology that is not constrained by rational cost-benefit analysis, and there is no limit to the [human] resources that can be deployed against us by followers of the ideology.

Pundita: The Pakistani military is solely guided by rational cost-benefit analysis. Yes there are hare-brains hopping around Afghanistan shooting people and themselves in foot in the name of ideology. But first thin the forest, then see how many of those ideologues are left.

6. When John asked Gorka whether he thought General McChrystal had learned the lessons of Afghanistan, Gorka hedged so much it's likely he was reluctant to criticize McChrystal in public. But Gorka did say that the irregular war McChrystal was being asked to fight in Afghanistan wasn't the war he was trained for. He also said that McChrystal had to answer to his masters in Washington.

As readers of this blog know I've had my issues with General Stan regarding his prosecution of the Afghanistan campaign. But I hope Gorka knows that Stanley McChrystal is a master of irregular warfare and a card-carrying COINdinista.

In summary, Sebastian Gorka is out of his depth when he talks about Afghanistan.

Just call them cockeyed optimists. And a few words about the work ethic

Here are some words of encouragement in response to Sunday's news that Afghanistan is sitting on a trillion dollars in natural resources:

The Economist: "Oh great, another Congo"

The New Yorker: "Curse of Kabul"

AP: "Huge obstacles seen in exploiting Afghan minerals"

Luke Popovich, U.S. National Mining Assn: "Sudan will host the Winter Olympics before these guys get a trillion dollars out of the ground."

Granted it's not going to be a walk in the park to transform Afghanistan's natural resources into a trillion dollars. But where there's a will and Chinese businessmen there's a way. If you had described today's Pearl River Delta to people in 1975 who didn't know the Han Chinese character, they would have called you crazy.

Of course, Chinese are a very different people than the Afghans, but the solution is for the Afghans to become a little more like the Han Chinese.

One of the comments I came across about Afghanistan's untapped wealth is that the most the country could hope for was to become like Saudi Arabia. If that happens Afghans will never be at peace, no matter how rich they become, because the building up of their country will have been done for them by foreign contractors.

But China and other East Asian societies that venerate hard work are a long way from the land ruled by the Saudi family, whereas China borders Afghanistan. So Afghans have a fighting chance to learn a work ethic that creates tremendous self confidence and an unshakable sense of accomplishment.

I recount with laughter that I nearly killed myself demonstrating to Japanese co-workers that an American could work harder than any Japanese. I saw it as defending America's honor.

That was at a time when the American answer to the challenge from Japan's industry was to pile Japanese electronic equipment on the floor of the U.S. Senate (or maybe it was the House; I no longer remember) while members of Congress took turns smashing the equipment with sledgehammers and hatchets.

At our parting the Japanese co-workers gave me a traditional token gift and a card that read, "To hardest working person in entire Pacific Rim."

I saved the card for decades, until I faced the fact that mainstream society in America no longer placed a high value on hard work. Rights came to hold the highest value; it happened with the rise of the huge political campaign industry.

No politician has ever gotten elected in America by telling voters their rights needed to take a back seat to hard work; instead, politicians must keep finding more and more rights to be defended.

The Chinese thought they knew what to expect when they accumulated enough money to fund development projects in countries that were much worse off than theirs; that's because enough Chinese had worked for international development banks to know the drill backwards and forwards in the 'third world.' But when they actually began doing the projects themselves in such countries they couldn't take the crummy work ethic they often encountered.

If the Chinese can't get their idea of a decent day's work out of the locals in a foreign country, they'll do it themselves. That's caused them a lot of problems in those countries. It angers the locals when they're deprived of work at Chinese projects. It angers them even more when they hear the Chinese call them lazy.

In one way the predicament for the Chinese is funny because they're are always trying to put on a big show of solidarity with the world's poorest. They draw the line at laziness, and they don't want to hear excuses like 'It's hard to put in a good day's work when you're starving.'

Even the Indians have come in for criticism. "Fifteen minutes work then tea break," snapped one Chinese about Indian co-workers.

Actually, the poorest Indians work as hard as any Chinese. But the higher up the totem pole you go in Indian society, the more you can still run into the pasha mentality, particularly in the vast bureaucracies and state-supported enterprises. It's even worse in Pakistan. Drives the Chinese nuts.

Afghans, at least the Pashtun males in the tribal areas, are reportedly also big tea drinkers. But I'm told the women are very hard workers. So we'll see. If the Chinese want to pay enough baksheesh to the males they might be able to put the women to work.

The women would have to work harder for the Chinese than sled dogs running the Iditarod; however, they'd be exposed to the concept that there are societies where hard work is highly prized, and they could pass along this concept to their children.

The harder you work in a society that admires the pasha mindset, the more contempt is heaped on you -- for only slaves, servants, and pack animals work hard. Yet meritocracy is a society's rainy-day money; the kind of thinking and work ethic a meritocracy engenders can weather any storm.

According to The New York Times, the bidding for rights to explore Afghanistan's mineral reserves could begin in as little as six months. We'll learn more about the bidding when Afghanistan's Mines Ministry holds a press conference, which reportedly will be this Thursday.

James Risen wrote up a report summarizing the history and intrigue surrounding the discovery of Afghanistan's incredible storehouse of natural wealth, which I find interesting enough to feature here. From today's Sydney Morning Herald:

Soviet charts held clues to hidden wealth

Like much of the recent history of the country, the story of the discovery of Afghanistan's mineral wealth is one of missed opportunities and the distractions of war.

In 2004 American geologists, sent to Afghanistan as part of a broader reconstruction effort, stumbled across an intriguing series of old charts and data at the library of the Afghan Geological Survey in Kabul that hinted at major mineral deposits in the country. They soon learnt that the data had been collected by Soviet mining experts during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, but cast aside when the Soviets withdrew in 1989.

During the chaos of the 1990s, when Afghanistan was mired in civil war and later ruled by the Taliban, a small group of Afghan geologists protected the charts by taking them home, and returned them to the Geological Survey's library only after the American invasion and the ouster of the Taliban in 2001.

''There were maps, but the development did not take place, because you had 30 to 35 years of war,'' said Ahmad Hujabre, an Afghan engineer who worked for the Ministry of Mines in the 1970s.

Armed with the old Russian charts, the US Geological Survey began a series of aerial surveys of Afghanistan's mineral resources in 2006, using advanced gravity and magnetic measuring equipment attached to an old Orion P-3 aircraft that flew over about 70 per cent of the country.

The data was so promising that the geologists returned in 2007 for an even more sophisticated aerial study, using instruments that offer a three-dimensional profile of mineral deposits below the surface. It was the most comprehensive geological survey of Afghanistan ever conducted.

The handful of American geologists who pored over the new data said the results were astonishing.

But the results gathered dust for two more years, ignored by officials in both the American and Afghan governments. In 2009 a Pentagon task force that had created business development programs in Iraq was transferred to Afghanistan and came upon the geological data. Until then, no one besides the geologists had bothered to look at the information, and no one had sought to translate the technical data to measure the potential economic value of the mineral deposits.

Soon, the Pentagon task force brought in teams of American mining experts to validate the survey's findings, and then briefed US and Afghan leaders.

Afghanistan's vast natural wealth: Treating an old story as if it's news (Updated 2:00 PM EDT)

Watch carefully, don't blink:

June 13, 2010, The New York Times:

The United States has discovered nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits in Afghanistan, far beyond any previously known reserves and enough to fundamentally alter the Afghan economy and perhaps the Afghan war itself, according to senior American government officials.

The previously unknown deposits — including huge veins of iron, copper, cobalt, gold and critical industrial metals like lithium — are so big and include so many minerals that are essential to modern industry that Afghanistan could eventually be transformed into one of the most important mining centers in the world, the United States officials believe.

An internal Pentagon memo, for example, states that Afghanistan could become the “Saudi Arabia of lithium,” a key raw material in the manufacture of batteries for laptops and BlackBerrys.

The vast scale of Afghanistan’s mineral wealth was discovered by a small team of Pentagon officials and American geologists. The Afghan government and President Hamid Karzai were recently briefed, American officials said.[...]

March 16, 2009, Reuters

Afghanistan holds mineral treasure: minister
Afghanistan sits on one of the largest mineral deposits in the region, the country's mines minister said, urging foreign firms to invest in oil, gas and iron ore sectors.

A U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) had shown that the war-torn nation may hold far higher amounts of minerals than previously thought, Mohammad Ibrahim Adel said.

"In the field of minerals, Afghanistan is the richest country in the region, much more, hundreds of times more. Except for diamond, you have all the other minerals that you find in nature, in Afghanistan," Adel told Reuters in an interview late on Sunday.

Based on the USGS survey, he said, Afghanistan's north is estimated to hold between 600 to 700 billion cubic meters of natural gas and the country has some 25 million tonnes of oil in four basins.

"We are a people who don't have money, food or clothes. But we are sleeping on gold," he said. The country's iron deposits were estimated at between five to six billion tonnes, he added.

Adel will travel next week to Dubai, Britain, the United States and Singapore to drum up foreign interest in the country's oil, gas and iron ore sectors.[...]

So I guess the "recent briefing" of Afghani officials means "the most recent briefing."

I found the Reuters report last spring after a reader alerted me that U.S. soldiers were guarding a Chinese company's copper interest in Afghanistan. I returned to the report in January 2010 while giving a prescription for tamping down the Taliban uprising in Afghanistan; i.e., getting the Pakistani military to stop machinating in the country:

[...] 3. Behind closed doors, tell the truth. Explain to Pakistan's military command that since the discovery that Afghanistan is filthy rich in key natural resources, and given that every government on the planet will make a beeline for the resources once the global economy picks up, the United States plans to stay on in Afghanistan for the next thousand years to help play traffic cop.

A rhetorical flourish would be to add that given the long-term U.S. commitment to Afghanistan, there's no need for Pakistan's military to worry anymore that India will invade Afghanistan. That is not a real worry but it's one the Pak military has been trotting out to rationalize their continued support for tribes that attack ISAF troops. [...]

Of course the news about Afghanistan's natural resources never made it into the American mainstream media -- until this weekend.

Why now? Stay tuned.

UPDATE 2:00 PM EDT

The Atlantic's political editor made the same observation I did about the June 13 New York Times article (print edition dated today) although he went further back on the timeline than the 2009 Reuters report to illustrate his point. (H/T The Jawa Report):

The Mineral Miracle? Or a Massive Information Operation?
by Marc Ambinder
Jun 14 2010, 9:05 AM ET

Were it not for the byline of James Risen, a New York Times reporter currently in a legal battle with the Obama administration over the identity of his sources, a second read of his blockbuster A1 story this morning, U.S. Identifies Vast Riches of Minerals in Afghanistan, would engender some fairly acute skepticism. For one, a simple Google search identifies any number of previous stories with similar details.

The Bush Administration concluded in 2007 that Afghanistan was potentially sitting on a goldmine of mineral resources and that this fact ought to become a central point of U.S. policy in bolstering the government.

The Soviets knew this in 1985, as a 2002 history of the region's economy shows:

"Afghanistan has reserves of a wide variety of nonenergy mineral resources, including iron, chrome, copper, silver, gold barite sulfur, talc, magnesium, mica, marble, and lapis lazuli. By 1985 Soviet surveys had also revealed potentially useful deposits of asbestos, nickel, mercury, lead, zinc, bauxite, lithium, and rubies. The Afghan government in the mid-1980s was preparing to develop a number of these resources on a large scale with Soviet technical assistance. These efforts were directed primarily at the country's large iron and copper reserves. The iron ore deposits contained an estimated 1.7 billion tons of mixed hematite and magnetite, averaging 62 percent iron. These reserves, among the world's largest, arelocated at Hajji Gak, almost 4,000 meters up in the Hindu Kush, northwest of Kabul in Bamian Province. Development started in 1983, and because the Afghan authorities had put forth no plan to establish an iron and steel industry, the output appeared destined for the Soviet steel mills in Tashkent."

A former senior State Department official said that regular discussions between the U.S. and the Karzai government over how to best exploit the resources for potential future use were ongoing when he was privy to those discussions around 2006.

By 2009, the government had already begun to solicit bids for various mining opportunities.

Jonathan Landay of McClatchy was on to the geopolitical importance of Afghanistan's mineral reserves in 2009, writing that China's thirst for coal might be the key to regional stabilization.

Already, there are accusations that the REAL reason the US is in Afghanistan is because WE want to exploit those mines. That's a passable but facile interpretation of what's going on here.

The way in which the [New York Times] story was presented -- with on-the-record quotations from the Commander in Chief of CENTCOM, no less -- and the weird promotion of a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense to Undersecretary of Defense suggest a broad and deliberate information operation designed to influence public opinion on the course of the war. Indeed, as every reader of Jared Diamond's popular works of geographic determinism knows well, a country rich in mineral resources will tend toward stability over time, assuming it has a strong, central, and stable government.

Risen's story notes that the minerals discovery comes at a propitious time. He focuses on lithium, a critical component of electronics. One official tells him that Afghanistan could become the "Saudi Arabia of lithium" -- a comparison to oil. (I can see it now: "We must wean ourselves off our dependence on foreign lithium!")

The general perception about the war here and overseas is that the counterinsurgency strategy has failed to prop up Hamid Karzai's government in critical areas, and is destined to ultimately fail. This is not how the war was supposed to be going, according to the theorists and policy planners in the Pentagon's policy shop.

What better way to remind people about the country's potential bright future -- and by people I mean the Chinese, the Russians, the Pakistanis, and the Americans -- than by publicizing or re-publicizing valid (but already public) information about the region's potential wealth?

The Obama administration and the military know that a page-one, throat-clearing New York Times story will get instant worldwide attention. The story is accurate, but the news is not that new; let's think a bit harder about the context.

See the column at the Atlantic website for reference links to the old articles about the mineral finds, etc.

Is Ambinder's analysis correct about why such an old story was dressed up as news? Close but still missing by a mile. The news about Afghanistan's wealth in natural resources could have been promoted by the USG any time this year or last "to remind people about the country's potential bright future."

What else was going on yesterday (when the Times story was published on the internet)? Let me see -- oh yes, the news broke about Matt Waldman's paper on Pakistan's ISI official involvement in Taliban terrorism in Afghanistan.

I'll give you another clue by adding here the rest of the #3 point in my prescription:

[...] As to what to tell the Americans who still believe the 2011 withdrawal date that Obama gave -- there's no need to tell them anything. Oil, natural gas, copper, iron, you name it; it's there, in Afghanistan, waiting to be developed. China's government is already mining a copper lode. So just start leaking reports to The New York Times and Washington Post that Afghanistan is the world's Cinderella nation. The American public will get the picture, which is already known to Islamabad, New Delhi, Moscow, Tehran, Riyadh -- and, of course, Kabul.

(If Afghanistan can rather quickly develop its natural resources, does this mean they could afford to buy themselves an off-the-shelf bureaucracy manned by foreign contractors? Yes, but that's getting ahead of things.)

So what does it all mean? Stay tuned.

Pakistani-American Headley fingers ISI involvement in terror attacks on Mumbai. Why was this big news ignored by American mainstream media?

I note the Waldman paper (see earlier Pundita post), which is about the official involvement of Pakistan's ISI in terrorism in Afghanistan, was published three days after the news broke that David Coleman Headley had told Indian investigators the ISI was behind the 26/11/08 terror attacks in Mumbai, India.

Yet despite the importance of the news to Americans it doesn't seem it got much if any coverage in the American mainstream media. The report didn't even show up on the Google News front page; it appears only on Google News after entering keywords such as Pakistan, ISI or Headley. In short, Americans would have to know what to look for, to find it on Google News. Here's a report on Headley's remarks from The Times of India:

'ISI guided LeT at every step for 26/11'
by Diwakar & Vishwa Mohan, TNN, Jun 10, 2010, 02.40am IST

Pakistani-American terrorist David Headley has confirmed that Lashkar-e-Taiba [LeT] terrorists carried out the Mumbai attack under the "guidance" of Pakistan's ISI.

Headley, who is being interrogated in the US by a team of NIA officials, has said that the notorious ISI was engaged with the Lashkar commanders responsible for the 26/11 carnage at "each and every stage of the plot".

The account of the terrorist, who receed targets for Lashkar terrorists across the country, corroborates India's stand about the involvement of Pakistani state actors in terrorism, trains the spotlight on LeT-ISI tandem, and explains Pakistan's unwillingness to clamp down on the Lashkar leadership.

Headley has mentioned serving officers of Pakistan army — Major Sameer Ali, Major Iqbal and Major Haroon — as those who collaborated with the Lashkar terrorists. Major Sameer and Major Iqbal figured in the dossier India gave to Pakistani foreign secretary Salman Bashir.

NIA's sessions with Headley tally with what he is learnt to have told the FBI, including the crucial bit about Hafiz Saeed being in the loop through the plot.

Whether the disclosures that undercut its denial will lead Pakistan to step up its cooperation with the 26/11 probe remains unclear.

Home minister P Chidambaram is to demand voice samples of seven Lashkar commanders including Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi, Zarar Shah, Abu Al Qama and others when he meets his Pakistani counterpart Rehman Malik during his visit to Islamabad for the conference of home ministers from SAARC region. Pakistan has so far refused to give voice samples which could help investigators ascertain the identity of those who instructed the 26/11 attackers as they went about their deadly assignment.

Headley has also spoken of how post-26/11, ISI wanted Lashkar to disown the Mumbai attack to turn the global attention away from the terror outfit that Pakistan considers to be an important strategic asset to be used against India. With Ajmal Kasab snared, and investigations by India and FBI homing in its nexus with Lashkar, ISI planned to blame the carnage on al-Qaida. It even prepared a list of 4-5 al-Qaida figures who were to be projected as the conspirators.

Significantly, the ploy did not work because of resitance from Lashkar leaders, particularly Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi, one of the 26/11 masterminds. Lashkar leaders who have proclaimed themselves to be innocent and have accused India of levelling baseless charges, felt that the increased notoriety after 26/11 had raised the terror profile of the group and was going to help them with recruitment and funds.

Headley also admitted that while he had started off as a Lashkar recruit, he started drifting towards Al Qaida under the influence of Major Abdul Rahman Saeed. Saeed, who served with 6 Baloch Regiment of Pakistan army, took voluntary retirement in 2002 to devote himself full time to Al Qaida's cause. Headley, who respected Saeed for his "sacrifice", went high in the retired major's esteem because of precise inputs he provided for the 26/11 attack.

Saeed, with the help of Ilyas Kashmiri, drafted him for the plan to attack Danish newspaper Jylland Posten which published controversial cartoons of Prophet Mohammad. This, when Headley's original handler Sajid Mir wanted him to focus on Lashkar's anti-India mission.

During his Pakistan visit, Chidambaram will also ask Islamabad to locate and arrest 13 absconders found guilty by Indian courts.

Zenpundit Mark Safranski interviewed by Steven Pressfield

This is a turnabout for Mark, who usually does the interviewing. His discussion with novelist, screenwriter, and military historian Steven Pressfield wasn't about war or history, as one might assume, but about creativity and writing. Well worth the read.

British report exposes Pakistani regime's support for Taliban terrorism (UPDATED 2 X)

10:50 AM EDT UPDATE
A huge thanks to reader Akash for finding the link to the "London School of Economics" paper mentioned in the following Reuters report and the London Sunday Times report. Many people, including this blogger, had been trying without success to find the link when the story first broke.

The paper, by Matt Waldman of the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, is titled THE SUN IN THE SKY: THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN PAKISTAN’S ISI AND AFGHAN INSURGENTS.

Akash found the link at al Jazeera. The paper is in PDF format. I'm trying to understand how the LSE got involved in the paper but right now I'm just happy to have the link. Thanks, again, Akash!

3:35 PM EDT UPDATE
Huh. I still can't find anything beyond the early news reports on the Waldman paper (Reuters, Times Online) that connects it to the London School of Economics. All I can see so far is that it's from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, which is notoriously a U.S. government propaganda outlet. Well, maybe the LSE connection will emerge in the next few hours or days.

However, after I finally got to read Waldman's paper I noticed that his conclusion repeats the canard that if only the Indian Kashmir problem could be solved, this would go a long way to tamping down the Pakistan regime's murderous rampages. In other words, he's saying that India bears a big responsibility for the Pakistani regime's murder and mayhem against NATO troops in Afghanistan.

Readers may recall the New York Times reporting in 2008 that the CIA station chief in Kabul accused his counterpart in Islamabad of Going Native; i.e., sympathizing far too much with the Pakistani regime's view of things.

Even Hamid Karzai's brother noted recently that the CIA had a strange habit of trusting no one but America's enemies; he was speaking of Pakistan.

So -- and pardon my thinking aloud -- I'm wondering whether Waldman's stressing of the Kashmir issue indicates that certain factions in the CIA and/or at State are still hell bent on placating Pakistan's military/ISI.

But that's just me and my deeply suspicious nature, which developed after decades of watching my dear government in action.

For the record, Kashmir is not a factor, much less a significant one, in the ISI-instigated murder of NATO troops in Afghanistan -- and it is outright murder, not warfare, because the U.S. military and the CIA extended way too much trust to Pakistan's military and ISI.
**************************************
From Reuters:

Report slams Pakistan for meddling in Afghanistan

by Jonathon Burch
Sat Jun 12, 2010 10:20pm EDT

(Kabul) Pakistani military intelligence not only funds and trains Taliban fighters in Afghanistan but is officially represented on the movement's leadership council, giving in significant influence over operations, a report said.

The report, published by the London School of Economics, a leading British institution, on Sunday, said research strongly suggested support for the Taliban was the "official policy" of Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI).

Although links between the ISI and Islamist militants have been widely suspected for a long time, the report's findings, which it said were corroborated by two senior Western security officials, could raise more concerns in the West over Pakistan's commitment to help end the war in Afghanistan.

The report also said Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari was reported to have visited senior Taliban prisoners in Pakistan earlier this year, where he is believed to have promised their release and help for militant operations, suggesting support for the Taliban "is approved at the highest level of Pakistan's civilian government."

A Pakistani diplomatic source described that report as "naive," and also said any talks with the Taliban were up to the Afghan government.

Pakistan appears to be playing a double-game of astonishing magnitude," said the report, based on interviews with Taliban commanders and former senior Taliban ministers as well as Western and Afghan security officials.

"DUPLICITY"

In March 2009, Admiral Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, and General David Petraeus, head of U.S. Central Command, said they had indications elements in the ISI supported the Taliban and al Qaeda and said the agency must end such activities.

Nevertheless, senior Western officials have been reluctant to talk publicly on the subject for fear of damaging possible cooperation from Pakistan, a nuclear-armed state Washington has propped up with billions of dollars in military and economic aid.

"The Pakistan government's apparent duplicity -- and awareness of it among the American public and political establishment -- could have enormous geo-political implications," said the report's author, Matt Waldman, a fellow at Harvard University.

"Without a change in Pakistani behavior it will be difficult if not impossible for international forces and the Afghan government to make progress against the insurgency," Waldman said in the report.

The report comes at the end of one of the bloodiest weeks for foreign troops in Afghanistan -- more than 21 have been killed this week -- and at a time when the insurgency is at its most violent.

More than 1,800 foreign troops, including some 1,100 Americans, have died in Afghanistan since U.S.-backed Afghan forces overthrew the Taliban in late 2001. The war has already cost the United States around $300 billion and now costs more than $70 billion a year, the report said, citing 2009 U.S. Congressional research figures.

VIOLENT REGIONS

The report said interviews with Taliban commanders in some of the most violent regions in Afghanistan "suggest that Pakistan continues to give extensive support to the insurgency in terms of funding, munitions and supplies."

"These accounts were corroborated by former Taliban ministers, a Western analyst and a senior U.N. official based in Kabul, who said the Taliban largely depend on funding from the ISI and groups in Gulf countries," the report said.

Almost all of the Taliban commanders interviewed in the report also believed the ISI was represented on the Quetta Shura, the Taliban's supreme leadership council based in Pakistan.

"Interviews strongly suggest that the ISI has representatives on the (Quetta) Shura, either as participants or observers, and the agency is thus involved at the highest level of the movement," the report said.

The report also stated that Pakistani President Zardari, along with a senior ISI official, allegedly visited some 50 senior Taliban prisoners at a secret location in Pakistan where he told them they had been arrested only because he was under pressure from the United States.

"(This) suggests that the policy is approved at the highest level of Pakistan's civilian government," the report said.

Afghanistan has also been highly critical of Pakistan's ISI involvement in the conflict in Afghanistan. Last week, the former director of Afghanistan's intelligence service, Amrullah Saleh, resigned saying he had become an obstacle to President Hamid Karzai's plans to negotiate with the insurgents.

In an exclusive interview with Reuters at his home a day after he resigned, Saleh said the ISI was "part of the landscape of destruction in this country."

"It will be a waste of time to provide evidence of ISI involvement. They are a part of it. The Pakistani army of which ISI is a part, they know where the Taliban leaders are -- in their safe houses," he told Reuters.

(Editing by David Fox and Alex Richardson)

I'm trying to scare up the link to the London School of Economics report, which I can't find at their website. The link provided by the Times Online in their article on the LSE only loops back to the Times.

This entry is linked to with comments at Riehl World View, The Jawa Report, and Zenpundit.

Regarding Rusty's quoting from Long War Journal's Bill Roggio, the issue isn't why "a bear shits in the woods" but that the bear shit on the highway twice in one weekend. Twice this weekend, news that was really an old story (ISI's involvement in Taliban terrorism in Afghanistan and Afghanistan's vast mineral wealth) suddenly burst into the mainstream media. See my post today about the latter story.

Speaking of The Jawa Report, Rusty and the other counter-jihadis at his blog have done it again with their investigation of Ohio Homeland Security official Omar Alomari, which brought Alomari's activities to the attention of U.S. authorities. My joke is that this endless war would have an end if Rusty ran homeland security but it's not entirely a joke.

All fall down: Rolling Stone chronicles horrifying complicity of Obama, MMA and NOAA in BP's negligence and ineptness

The blows keep falling, as more and more journalists dig into the events leading up to the oil rig explosion and the aftermath. The June 9 AP investigative report (BP spill response plans severely flawed) I linked to yesterday has made big waves in Washington and the media. Anderson Cooper quoted from it on his AC-360 news show last night. The report will surely serve as the basis for several questions BP CEO Tony Hayward will be asked by a congressional subcommittee on June 17.

Another investigative report that's having a big impact is Tim Dickinson's June 8 The Spill, The Scandal and the President published in Rolling Stone magazine.

The report chronicles "How Obama failed to crack down on the corruption of the Bush years – and let the world's most dangerous oil company get away with murder." Anderson Cooper mentioned the report last night as did John Batchelor's far-reaching radio show.

The two reports called to my mind the exposé of the Vietnam War Pentagon Papers, which helped define a generation. Taken together the AP report and Dickinson's reveal that one of the world's largest companies, a number of government agencies, and an American President greatly misled the public and did so with deliberation. If the oil spill disaster continues to worsen, the duplicity that created it could well define a generation in a way that not even 9/11 did.

The AP report leaves the horror of the facts to speak for themselves. Dickinson's report lapses into polemics several times. But even if he's nursing a grievance toward Obama that many on the Left now share the facts he marshals are so disturbing I think he can be forgiven for see-sawing between reportage and pounding the lectern.

As with the AP report I'm only providing the link for Dickinson's. I think I'm reluctant to quote from the reports out of concern this would risk downplaying their importance by highlighting only a few of the facts they present.

BP Gulf Oil Spill Crisis: Updates, and Associated Press investigative report on BP comes out with guns blazing

Wow. AP has put together a great investigative report on BP's negligent contingency planning for oil spill accidents. The report, filed today (June 9), is titled AP IMPACT: BP spill response plans severely flawed and grimly details all the ways that BP planners screwed up. Unpleasant reading but there's also something satisfying about it, seeing it all down in black and white and giving BP no wiggle room.

AP's eye-opener was published just in time to prepare U.S. legislators for the grilling that BP CEO Tony Hayward is to receive June 17 in Washington from the energy and commerce subcommittee on oversight and investigations.

The AP report is lengthy so I'm just going to provide the link to it, with the reminder that AP reports don't stay long on the internet.

AP also reported last night:

Gulf oil leak may be bigger than BP says
By RAY HENRY, HARRY R. WEBER and SETH BORENSTEIN (AP)

NEW ORLEANS — While BP is capturing more oil from its blown-out well with every passing day, scientists on a team analyzing the flow said Tuesday that the amount of crude still escaping into the Gulf of Mexico may be considerably greater than what the government and the company have claimed.

Their assertions — combined with BP's rush to build a bigger cap and its apparent difficulty in immediately processing all the oil being collected — have only added to the impression that the company is still floundering in dealing with the catastrophe.

The cap that was put on the ruptured well last week collected about 620,000 gallons of oil on Monday and another 330,000 from midnight to noon on Tuesday and funneled it to a ship at the surface, said Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen, the government's point man on the crisis. That would mean the cap is capturing better than half of the oil, based on the government's estimate that around 600,000 to 1.2 million gallons a day are leaking from the bottom of the sea.
[...]
A team of researchers and government officials assembled by the Coast Guard and run by the director of the U.S. Geological Survey is studying the flow rate and hopes to present its latest findings in the coming days on what is already the biggest oil spill in U.S. history.

In an interview with The Associated Press, team member and Purdue University engineering professor Steve Wereley said it was a "reasonable conclusion" but not the team's final one to say that the daily flow rate is, in fact, somewhere between 798,000 gallons and 1.8 million gallons.

"BP is claiming they're capturing the majority of the flow, which I think is going to be proven wrong in short order," Wereley said. "Why don't they show the American public the before-and-after shots?"

He added: "It's strictly an estimation, and they are portraying it as fact."

Other members of the team also told AP they expect their findings to show higher numbers than the current government estimate, but they weren't ready to say how much higher.[...]

The same AP report also brings some good news:

The debate over the flow rate came as workers in bulldozers piled sand 6 feet high along barrier islands bordering Louisiana to protect the environmentally fragile areas from the spill, which has already coated islands and pelican rookeries in thick, brown, sticky crude.

"This is finally something that can help," fishing guide Dave Marino said of the sand barrier effort. "It looks like this is something that may work."

Attempts to skim the oil progressed as well. Boats fanned out across the Gulf, dragging boom in their wake in an attempt to corral the oil. But it's an enormous task.

In some spots, the oil is several inches thick and forms a brown taffy-like goo that sticks to everything it touches.

John Young, chairman of Louisiana's Jefferson Parish Council, said additional equipment has been ordered and more dredgers will be moving into the area soon, along with barges that will help block the passes.

"It's nice that BP has put up the money, but they need to ramp up not only the manpower but the equipment out there because we're losing the battle," Young said. "Unfortunately, we're on day 50 and it's too little too late, but I guess it's better late than never."[...]

BP's negligence about planning for the consequences of an oil rig explosion in the Gulf of Mexico doesn't let the U.S. government off the hook. This morning McClatchy News Service reported:

A decade ago, U.S. government regulators warned that a major deepwater oil spill could start with a fire on a drilling rig, prove hard to stop and cause extensive damage to fish eggs and wetlands because there were few good ways to capture oil underwater.

The disaster scenario -- contained in a May 2000 offshore drilling plan for the Shell oil company that McClatchy has obtained -- is now a grim reality in the Gulf of Mexico. Less predictably, perhaps, the author of the document was the Interior Department's Minerals Management Service, the regulatory agency that's come under withering criticism in the wake of the BP spill for being too cozy with industries it was supposed to be regulating.

The 2000 warning, however, indicates that some federal regulators were well aware of the potential hazards of deepwater oil production in its early years, experts and former MMS officials told McClatchy.[...]

AP also reports today on Admiral Thad Allen's turnaround on the issue of BP claims processing:

Coast Guard Adm. Thad Allen has written to BP CEO Tony Hayward demanding "more detail and openness" about how the company is handling mounting damage claims in the wake of the Gulf Coast oil spill.

Allen reminded Hayward in the letter dated Tuesday that the company "is accountable to the American public for the economic loss caused by the oil spill" and said he recognized Hayward has "accepted responsibility" for it.

At the same time, the man that President Barack Obama named as national incident commander in the wake of the April 20 oil rig explosion and fire told Hayward that BP is failing to provide "information we need to meet our responsibilities to our citizens."

Allen had said earlier this week at a news conference that he felt BP was struggling to efficiently process relief claims from individuals and businesses in the stricken area, attributing that to the company's lack of experience in the area.

In the letter made public Wednesday, Allen said that "the NIC and our state counterparts have made several requests for additional information which we have not received."

He noted that officials had asked the company for access to its claims database, "with personally identifiable information removed."

"Access to this level of detail is critical to informing the public as to how BP is meeting its obligations as a responsible corporation," Allen said. "I expect a response from BP on this critical issue as soon as possible."

Allen noted a meeting scheduled to take place with BP executives later Wednesday, at which the issue of claims processing was to be discussed.

"We need complete, ongoing transparency into BP's claims process including detailed information on how claims are being evaluated, how payment amounts are being calculated and how quickly claims are being processed," Allen told Hayward in the letter.

Unprecedented attack on Nato convoy depot near Islamabad. Where were the guards? (Updated 7:35 PM EDT)

(AFP photo)
7:35 PM EDT UPDATE
This is still a fog-of-war situation, with various news organizations providing different versions of the number of casualties, the distance of the depot from Islamabad, etc.

The attack occurred in the Tarnol police jurisdiction on Tuesday night; times given for the attack range from about 11:00pm to midnight local time.

According to AFP, the depot is located 15 kilometres (10 miles) "outside the Pakistani capital on the road to the northwestern city of Peshawar and in turn towards the main NATO supply route into neighbouring Afghanistan."

The first report from Pakistan's The Nation (see below) places the depot 50 km (31 miles) southwest of Islamabad.

The Times of India places the depot "around three kilometers from Islamabad."

The discrepancies in the distance might stem from how reporters are figuring the boundaries of the capital city, where the depot is located in the Tarnol jurisdiction, etc. In any event the depot is close to the outskirts of Islamabad, which means it's also close to the garrison city of Rawalpindi, Islamabad's 'sister' city. What's unprecendented about the attack on the Nato convoy depot is that it's the first to occur so close to those cities.

According to the first report from The Nation (see my original post, below), the attack resulted in the torching of at least 50 Nato oil tankers, supply trucks, armored vehicles, and heavy equipment. The Nation's latest report (below) is that the majority of torched vehicles were 30 oil tankers, which seem to have been the main target of the attackers.

The depot was guarded by a private company, which isn't named in any of the reports I've seen.

Here's the latest version of The Nation's report on the attack this one was filed by Kashif Abbasi; no time stamp is provided (photo from The Nation):

ISLAMABAD - More than 30 NATO vehicles, mostly oil tankers, were destroyed completely when terrorists attacked them near Islamabad Toll Plaza on late Tuesday night, while some five persons died and 11 others got injured in the attack.

Police sources informed that the death toll might rise. The sources revealed that a group of around 20 terrorists riding on two double cabins vehicles and motorbikes was involved in this incident.

According to details, the NATO containers were parked near an oil depot when some terrorists at first sprinkled oil and later opened indiscriminate fire on them. The sources revealed that owing to intense firing, trucks caught fire.

The incident took place at Sangjani area, a suburb area of the Federal Capital falling in the jurisdiction of Tarnol Police Station. Police sources informed that 63 NATO trucks loaded with goods and oil were parked on the site of attack. After the attack, thousands of litres of fuel spilled over the road.

Soon after the attack, heavy contingent of police rushed towards the site and launched a massive search operation in nearby areas.

The vehicles of Rescue 115 and CDA fire brigade rushed towards the spot and started rescue operation. Rescue operation was underway till filing of this report.

Pakistan's GEO-tv website report "Updated at 0445 PST" recounts several tactical aspects of the attack as described by a police source. (H/T Long War Journal). From the report, and contrary to my original guess that the victims were sleeping in the trucks, the convoy was readying to pull out of the depot when it was attacked.

The Long War Journal also linked to a June 4 report from Pakistan's Daily News that the Punjab government had decided to close down all unauthorized NATO supply terminals in the province over security fears.

[..] Official sources reveal the decision has been taken after intelligence agencies warned that terrorists are planning to attack NATO supply terminals in several areas of Punjab, including Attock and Mianwali. Security agencies have also warned the Punjab government that most of these miscreants are now present in these areas, and have already carried out a number of attacks. In one such attack on April 24 near Chakwal, terrorists set fire to 12 NATO tankers, and killed four policemen who were on guard duty. The attackers have still not been traced and are believed to be planning more attacks.

After receiving the intelligence report, the Punjab government has decided to close down all NATO terminals in the province that have been set up without the authorisation of the provincial government and the Interior Ministry. The Punjab government has issued instructions to all district police officers in this regard.

This suggests the "authorized" Nato depot that came under attack last night would have been on high alert. Yet according to the GEO.tv report cited above:

Inspector General of Islamabad Police Syed Kaleem Imam told Geo news [...] that the suppliers of Nato had very poor security in goods loading yard, which caused this attack on their supplies.

“They had their own security system in place and we (Islamabad Police) were not approached for providing them any protection,” Kaleem Imam said.

I'll end this update by noting that the first report from The Nation is the only one that quotes eyewitnesses, who estimated the number of attackers at more than 40. All other reports I've seen so far (including two subsequent ones from The Nation) quote police estimates ranging from 10-20 attackers.
********************
There have been so many attacks on Nato convoys in Pakistan's northwest and southwest that they're routine. But this is the first time such an attack has occurred near Pakistan's capital. So in addition to the intent to inflict damage, it seems the attackers were sending a message to the ISAF.

It's still a fog-of-war situation; there are conflicting details on the number of attackers and casualties. According to the first report from The Nation about the attack, the casualties were "the drivers of the trucks, their helpers or local people." The victims were probably sleeping in the trucks. If the account holds up, where were the guards? Taking a tea break? Or did they flee when they saw the attackers approach?

The first report has been superseded by an updated one (same url). The first report gave two versions of the number of attackers: Eyewitnesses put the number at more than 40 "armed with rocket launchers, hand grenades and automatic guns." And the police chief's version: "some 10 armed men, who came in vehicles and riding motorcycles."

The updated report omits the eyewitness descriptions and quotes only the police chief's slightly altered version: "10 to 12 attackers riding motorbikes and a pickup truck."

It seems to me that 40+ attackers would have a hard time keeping a low profile, even late at might. Which again might raise questions about where the guards were -- and perhaps the police, as well. While you're running for your life, you still might think to ring up the nearest police station on your cell. Hi. Just wanted to let you to know a small army with rocket launchers has appeared at the Nato depot a few miles from where you are.

Alright, Pundita; that's enough.

The second version also mentions that an inquiry has been launched and that the interior minister wants a report on the inquiry on his desk in three days, and that "Tehrik-e-Taliban Punjab has accepted the responsibility of the attack through calls made to several media representatives and said that such attacks would continue in the future."

Here is the first version of the report from The Nation:

Fire fighters have succeeded to extinguish the fire set on NATO supplies trucks by suspected militants at a terminal near Islamabad on late Tuesday night.

Fire fighters were called from Islamabad and the garrison city of Rawalpindi to control the fire and they succeeded to control blaze after five-hour efforts, officials said.

Islamabad police chief Kalim Imam said that six people were killed while six others injured when a group of gunmen fired and then torched tankers and containers carrying supplies and oil for NATO forces in Afghanistan.

"Seven deaths have been confirmed. Four are injured. There is no information about any arrests," said police official Gustasab Khan. The casualties were the drivers of the trucks, their helpers or local people, he said.

The attack took place in a parking lot at Tarnol area, some 50 kilometers southwest of Islamabad, at around 11:30 p.m. local time.

Doctors at the Islamabad's Institute of Medical Sciences said that eight bodies were brought to the hospital. They were drivers and helpers who died from burn injures. Six people were injured and two of them in critical condition, hospital sources said.

Police said that some 50 oil tankers and supplies trucks with armored vehicles and heavy machinery were attacked.

Suspected militants regularly launch attacks on NATO supplies tankers in Pakistan's northwest and southwest but it is the first time that supplies trucks came under attack near Islamabad.

Kalim Imam said that some 10 armed men, who came in vehicles and riding motorcycles, arrived at a terminal for NATO supplies trucks at Sangjani, a small town some 50 kilometers southwest to Islamabad, and opened fire and torched the vehicles.

Witnesses said that there were over 40 attackers, armed with rocket launchers, hand grenades and automatic guns.

The attackers fled after the incident, police said. A search operation was launched in the area shortly after the attack and 26 suspects were arrested, the police chief said.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack but Taliban militants had regularly taken responsibility for such attacks.

The attack in the outskirts of the capital raised concerns over the security situation and also highlighted the capability of the suspected militants to launch attacks despite high security.

Interior Minister Rehman Malik took serious note of the attack near Islamabad and ordered inquiry into the incident, the Interior Ministry said. He asked the police chief to submit a report within three days.

A senior police officer Hakim Khan was suspended for security lapse, police sources said.

Sources in the Interior Ministry say that NATO is responsible for the security of its vehicles, adding that the terminal was run by a private company.

Officials say that some 70 percent supplies are transported through Pakistan for over 100,000 NATO troops in Afghanistan.

Sources say that oil and other supplies for NATO forces are brought to Sangjani from Karachi, which are dispatched to Afghanistan from there.

Pakistan had been a short route to transport oil and other supplies to NATO forces in Afghanistan under an agreement between the U.S. and Pakistan. But the route had never been completely secure as trucks usually come under attack.

The U.S. has already struck agreements with Russia and some Central Asia states for alternate supply route but analysts say the Russian route is long.[...]

Reported Indian government leak: 26/11 conspirator David Coleman Headley singing like a bird to Indian interrogators. If so are his warbles selective?

The crystal ball is in the repair shop again. And given that my Ouija board is fixated these days on channeling the ghost of an alcoholic Prussian general whose opinions on world events frankly don't have much application beyond the year 1867, I've been reduced to checking B Raman's Strategic Analysis blog every four minutes; this in the effort to scrounge a hint about how the interrogation of Headley has been going.

The Indian press has shared my impatience; yesterday reporters descended on Robert Blake, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia, demanding a clue.

"I mean, these are very sensitive matters, that we wanted to make sure that Headley would be willing to talk, and so a number of things had to be worked out," he said, waving a Taser in the direction of the press gaggle as he nervously eyed the nearest exit.

I have interpreted Raman's silence about the course of the interrogation as a hopeful sign, even as rumors flew in India that Headley had taken the Fifth. A completely uncooperative Headley would be read by Indians as another sign that their government had gotten nothing of substance from its part in last week's strategic dialogue with Obama's administration. So it seems that Manmohan Singh's administration leaked a few details of the interrogation. Unless today's Indian Express is blowing smoke Headley has been a fountain of information:

Lashkar-e-Toiba [LeT] operative and 26/11 attack-accused David Coleman Headley has told his Indian interrogators about his handlers, including terror suspects Sajjid Mir, Syed Abdur Rehman Syed, intelligence agents Major Iqbal and Major Sameer Ali.

He has also talked about the involvement of Mohammed Illyas Kashmiri in planning the Mumbai attacks and the larger Lashkar aim to target India.

Top government sources said Headley has given National Investigation Agency (NIA) interrogators, led by 1985-batch Kerala cadre IG-rank officer Lokanath Behera, considerable insight into Lashkar operations in India and the specific planning of the Mumbai attacks.

Headley shared details after he was assured that his revelations would not be used against him. “Contrary to reports, Headley has been cooperating with Indian investigators and is coming out with detailed insights into the terror network in Pakistan,” said a senior official.

Sources said Headley was questioned in the presence of FBI agents and his lawyers by three NIA investigators and a lawyer on June 1 and 2 in Chicago. After setting the ground rules, the Indian team was left alone from June 3. The team has got considerable information from Headley about his visits to India during 2006-2009 and his surveillance of targets, including those attacked during 26/11 and the Chabad houses.

The Indian team plans to complete his questioning on June 9 and return to New Delhi after briefing Indian Ambassador to US Meera Shanker. Sources said Headley has been questioned about the roles of LeT founder Hafiz Saeed, Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, Yusuf Muzammil and other operational commanders.

I note there's nothing in the details that hint whether Headley gave an answer to the question that Indian intelligence is keen on asking; namely, whether he was employed by the CIA as a double agent while he was working as double agent for the DEA on a plea-bargain agreement.

An affirmative reply could indicate the CIA withheld vital information from their Indian counterpart about Headley's movements in India, including his visits to locations that were targets during the 26/11 attack.

The CIA has denied they ever employed Headley; Indian intelligence is glad to hear it, but then wonders why the U.S. government sewed up Headley in such a way that he couldn't be extradited to India to stand trial for the Mumbai massacre.

Pardon my cynicism but I doubt Headley would be at liberty to talk about his work for the DEA or any other U.S. agency if such occurred. It could be that one of the "many things to be worked out" before the U.S. Department of Justice would allow Indian investigators to speak with him was an agreement that the question was off limits.

If Americans should think that removing the question from the table is in the best interests of the USA -- not if it's helping Pakistan's military cover up ISI involvement in the 26/11 attack on Mumbai.

Obama's administration is so fixed on making their confused strategy in Afghanistan work they've yet to confront that placating Pakistan's intelligence agency is counterproductive. On that thought, perhaps I should consult Ouija because even a dead Prussian general could tell me how smart it is to throw jelly beans at a tiger.

BP Gulf Crisis: Anderson Cooper and Billy Nungesser discuss success at using simple vacuum to clean heavy oil. Meanwhile, spill threat changes.

The following exchange is from a 'rush' transcript from the June 7 AC-360 show on CNN. Most of the first part of the conversation is between show host Anderson Cooper and Plaquemines Parish President Billy Nungesser, with Douglas Brinkley joining in toward the end. Plaquemines Parish (county), in suburban New Orleans, Louisiana, has been hit hard by the oil spill.

The last part of the discussion I've excerpted is between Anderson and CNN anchor Tom Foreman, who summarizes new evidence that there's a second large underwater oil plume. BP has been denying the existence of the underwater plumes.

Of course you can choose to watch the podcast of the show. But for readers overseas who still don't understand why Americans are so very angry at BP, here's just one part of the transcript, which I've put in more readable form:

[...]

BILLY NUNGESSER: But we've ordered skimmers. We've got vacuum trucks.

ANDERSON COOPER: And you actually went out -- you know, that's been the big thing, what to do with these [oil filled] marshes, and you've been saying all along, 'Look, putting down absorbent pads isn't enough.' You actually went out this weekend with vacuums?

BILLY: We took a truck that vacuums out --

ANDERSON: Like port-a-potties?

BILLY; Right; put a truck on a barge, drove it out to the island [marsh] and sucked up several miles of that black [heavy oil] guck.

ANDERSON: You actually took a truck that's used like port-a-johns --

BILLY: Went out there and showed it works. Hopefully tomorrow we'll get approval from BP to put more suction equipment out there. We've made a proposal for the Kevin Costner-type machines as well as some other machines.

[See this Bloomberg report for more information on the KC machine.]

ANDERSON: We went out there today and saw oil all over -- [Billy?] saw it firsthand.

BILLY: We didn't see one skimmer.

ANDERSON: That's unacceptable.

BILLY: We've still got a lot of work to do.

[...]

The kind of vacuum that Billy was talking about is an ordinary industrial 'wet vacuum.' All the while BP has been stonewalling the most simple requests for the most simple measures and equipment to deal with the oil spill.

It took Billy Nungesser and other Louisiana officials appearing nightly on AC-30 for weeks, voicing their complaints, to get any noteworthy action from BP with regard to cleaning up the oil spill. But by now the spill has become far more difficult to deal with than in earlier weeks. From RTT News, June 7:

British Petroleum and Obama Administration officials responding to the ongoing gush of oil into the Gulf of Mexico are facing a new challenge as an oil slick 50 miles off the coast begins to break up.

Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen, the top federal official overseeing the response, said Monday that the oil slick appears to be disaggregating itself.

"We're no longer dealing with a large, monolithic spill," he said at a White House briefing. "We're dealing with an aggregation of hundreds or thousands of patches of oil that are going a lot of different directions."

He added, "We've had to adapt and we need to adapt to be able to meet that threat."

Allen said the Coast Guard is shifting some of its skimming assets, boats equipped to scoop up the oil from the surface, from Louisiana to Alabama in an effort to deal with the patches of oil while they remain roughly 50 miles from the shore.

"This is an adaptation to the changing characteristics of the spill, which is no longer a single spill but a massive collection of smaller spills moving forward," he said. "What is becoming critical, in the near future we'll be able to get skimming capability offshore and be able to work those small patches."

The good news, Allen said, is that such smaller patches are allowing for the expanded use of "vessels of opportunity" - local fishing and work boats whose crews have been trained and equipped to assist in the skimming operations.

"Between Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida, right now we have about 1,500 vessels of opportunities where we've certified the crews and put them out there," he said. "What we now have is an opportunity to match vessels of opportunity with skimmers."

"We have over 100 large vessels that are skimming offshore in and around the surface area above the well," he said. "What we want to do is take this down to a slightly lower level -- smaller skimmers and smaller vessels that can work in the harbors and the bays up to 50 miles offshore."

However, the newly separated oil patches make it more difficult for the Coast Guard to deploy booms to prevent the oil from coming ashore, on top of weather conditions that can defeat their efforts.

"Boom is not a silver bullet against oil," he said. "I think we have to deal with the reality that no matter how much boom we have out there, that this aggregation of this slick is going to cause oil to come ashore from time to time."

He added, "The question for us and the challenge for us is get quicker and agile where smaller units can get to back-bay shallow areas, and work offshore to find smaller patches of oil and deal with them as quickly as we can moving forward." [...]

Okay; here are more excerpts from the 'raw' transcript; the transcript website has more of the show's interviews regarding the oil spill, including the interview with Edward James Olmos and survivor(s) of the BP oil rig explosion:
[...]

There's a group called america's wetland.

00:03:31 And people are wondering, when will bp give money to the wetlands?

00:03:34 We're looking for $1 billion, not six berms from the fourth largest company in the world.

00:03:40 $1 Billion to refix the wetlands that are being destroyed by the oil.

00:03:44 And when you heard president obama today, how could he not erupt like that?

00:03:51 Because the more you learn the facts about this company just cutting corners on environmental safety and allowing this to happen, your impatience can't be there anymore, but you are starting to see bp even this many days later getting a little bit into stride and doing some of the symbolic and important things like you just heard in the gulf south.

In terms of bp, if they lifted this liability cap, there's some who say, look, this is not a good idea because it's going to make it difficult for oil companies, give them incentive to leave.

But in terms of this bill, getting bp to, under law, pay more than $75 billion to be a huge thing.

Absolutely.

00:04:30 It should be done.

00:04:34 The president's doing a right thing.

00:04:37 This is going to cost a lot more than $75 million.

00:04:40 Today was a big move.

[Skip part of transcript featured above]

00:05:26 More with billy and doug in just a moment.

00:05:30 We've got to take a quick break.

00:05:31 The live chat and up and running at ac360.com.

00:05:34 >>> Also, my day with edward james olmos out on the water.

00:05:36 His opinion.

00:05:37 Also new evidence to show you about those underwater plumes, the one that bp doubted for weeks.

[Ad Break]
00:09:52 >>> We're back talking about bp accountability, the white house and the breaking news tonight.

00:09:55 The administration fully supporting legislation removing that $75 million cap on liability payments for oil spills.

00:09:59 Joining me again, billy nungesser here with me and douglas brinkley in austin.

00:10:02 Billy, you met with bob dudley today, basically the new face of bp trying to confront this spill.

00:10:06 And you said to him that you needed more skimmers out there on the water.

00:10:09 And you put in basically a lot of requests to them.

00:10:12 >> We told them -- we put a lot of requests in for the suction equipment.

00:10:16 We showed it works.

00:10:18 The skimmers, we saw none out there today.

00:10:20 He saw the miles and miles of oil.

00:10:23 The thick stuff.

00:10:26 He saw the stuff that was in patches, tar balls, all over the water.

00:10:30 And we looked around, and there were no skimmers.

00:10:33 So we ordered 100 skimmers, and we turned in the request to put those skimmers on shrimp boats and let them go out and start attacking this oil.

00:10:41 >> You also said there's not enough resources being deployed to pick up these birds, pick up these animals covered in oil.

00:10:51 >> We've asked bp to make the contractor they hired, train 20 of our boat captains tomorrow.

00:10:58 >> So they have a contractor who they're paying, and only that contractor -- >> absolutely.

00:11:03 >> -- Can go out with wildlife people to pick them up.

00:11:06 >> Exactly.

00:11:07 We need to give them a course.

00:11:08 We had, last night, one of the boat captains brought in two pelicans, held them in his arms, while his wife drove him down there to turn these pelicans in.

00:11:15 He said, billy, I couldn't leave them out there.

00:11:17 They were dying.

00:11:18 The boats we saw coming back with pelicans in dog cages today, they put their hands up and said, billy, get us some help.

00:11:24 We're leaving birds out there that we should be bringing in.

00:11:26 We shouldn't let them wait till tomorrow.

00:11:28 They won't live.

00:11:29 So we've got to have more people out rescuing these animals.

00:11:31 >> It's pretty basic training, too.

00:11:33 I mean, I've seen them go out there withs and stuff.

00:11:36 They're basically grabbing birds.

00:11:38 >> Most of them can't fly, can't get away.

00:11:40 The ones we're talking about, if you don't get them in right away, they're going to die.

00:11:43 So we'd rather have someone untrained take that bird and give it a chance of living than say we can't do it because we have professionals doing it, that's absurd.

00:11:49 >> Doug, this bizarre situation, this entire disaster, I've never been in one in which a private company is essentially, I mean, government says they're the ones calling the shots.

00:11:56 A private company is sort of the -- I don't know, the sieve through which all this has to go.

00:12:01 So if you want to get more people out on the water rescuing birds, you can't just do it because there's a contractor who's being paid by bp.

00:12:08 That's what's been so frustrating, and I think the president's starting to change that paradigm.

00:12:14 He's making it very clear that the united states is in charge of this, that bp's going to do what we tell them to do, that they're going to pay.

00:12:21 And I think it's been -- the reason is that the president keeps getting information, and everywhere he works, whether it's from congressman markey, information coming in, or whether it's reports in "the wall street journal" or "new york times," this company seems to have lied numerous times to their safety record was a disaster coming into this.

00:12:42 And the obama administration, rightfully, did a couple of quick things that they probably haven't got enough credit for, the moratorium.

00:12:48 You cannot start doing well digging while this is going to be gushing for the next three or four months.

00:12:57 And number two, be cleaning house at MMS.

00:13:00 Now once he sent eric holder down to new orleans and the president made his third visit, you're starting to feel now that the administration is ready to really go after bp here.

00:13:10 They're getting enough information to realize what this company has done to that region.

00:13:16 And, again, it's not about getting a little bit of things.

00:13:20 People begging to bp for something.

00:13:24 This company should be paying $1 billion to refurbish louisiana's wetlands in the coming years.

00:13:28 And we don't need to sue them.

00:13:29 It doesn't have to wait for courts.

00:13:30 The "exxon valdez" took about a decade or 15 years.

00:13:32 That louisiana wetlands can't wait for that.

00:13:35 If this company wants to spend money on commercials, nobody's going to pay attention.

00:13:37 $1 Billion, people will feel that the company is feeling sorry for what they've done to this region.

00:13:59 >> Obviously, the moratorium on offshore drilling is very controversial down here.

00:14:03 A lot of people very concerned.

00:14:05 The governor wrote a letter to the president, concerned of the impact it's going to have on jobs.

00:14:11 What are you hearing from fishermen in terms of payment?

00:14:16 They said they've sent out a second round of these $5,000 checks.

00:14:20 There seems to be a disconnect of what I've been hearing from fishermen who, say, I can make $5,000 in a good shrimping day, it's now been two months and, you know -- >> bp has said they'll get that second check this week or next week.

00:14:34 And then they will have claims people on the ground to make everybody whole before the next monthly check is due.

00:14:40 And we've got to hold their feet to the fire.

00:14:44 And as he was saying a minute ago, the president did say in the last visit that he doesn't care who the contractor is.

00:14:52 If we've got equipment that can go to working, he wants it in the water working.

00:14:54 And so I think that's why we're turning all this -- we're finding equipment all over that we didn't know was available.

00:14:58 We're putting it in.

00:14:59 We want bp to pay for it.

00:15:03 We don't care who it works for.

00:15:04 We want it getting oil out of the marsh.

00:15:08 >> Billy nungesser.

00:15:10 Billy has oil-covered boots.

00:15:11 You've been out on the water all day, haven't you?

00:15:12 >> Yes, sir.

00:15:13 >> Appreciate it.

00:15:13 Talk to you again tomorrow night.
[Begin discussion with tom Foreman]

00:15:14 >>> The oil coming ashore, the oil droplets suspended in water, traveling these vast undersea plumes.

00:15:21 Now, until recently, bp wanted to see evidence that they even existed.

00:15:26 They denied that they existed.

00:15:27 Tonight the evidence is coming in.

00:15:30 And tom foreman has it.

00:15:31 Tom?

00:15:31 >> Hey, anderson.

00:15:32 A university of south florida researcher now says he has smoking-gun proof a chemical match between these plumes and the bp spill.

00:15:40 After extensive testing all around the gulf, taking about 130 water samples with these robots, all the way from the top down to two miles below, those researchers say this middle part of the water here, in some places, is filled with microscopic drops of oil.

00:15:54 Can't see them, but they can be chemically detected.

00:15:58 And as those robots passed through, they picked up this signature.

00:16:05 These droplets are believed to be the remnants of the oil that bp pounded with dispersants.

00:16:07 So yes, many, many barrels of oil were dispersed.

00:16:10 But they did not go away.

00:16:11 And bp now says it's looking into this information, anderson.

00:16:16 >> So where are these plumes, and how big are they?

00:16:21 >> Well, that's a good question, anderson.

00:16:25 The simple truth is, when they first found them here, let me move this one aside, the first was last month.

00:16:31 They found it generally in this area.

00:16:34 Now they found another one over in this area.

00:16:39 It's kind of hard for them to put a handle on exactly how big they are because these things, as I say, can only be detected chemically.

00:16:59 One of the concerns is this, the loop current.

00:17:05 You see it running right through here?

00:17:07 This little current right here, one of the concerns is that it will pick this up and carry it all the way up here into the east coast.

00:17:14 Both the surface spill and the subsurface spill.

00:17:16 But there's also some deepwater currents here.

00:17:17 And there's a concern about that because that could carry it this way, particularly those deep clouds of oil over here into this.

00:17:21 Remember, they're invisible clouds.

00:17:23 You can't see them.

00:17:24 But all these microfine droplets, these are all undersea, very deepsea coral colonies, anderson.

00:17:30 So a lot of concern about that.

00:17:33 >> [ANDERSON] Let me inject a note of skepticism.

00:17:37 If we're talking about oil drops so fine you can't even see them, how much danger do they pose?

00:17:41 >> Researchers, anderson, say this really is a case of uncharted water.

00:17:43 They've never dealt with anything quite like this.

00:17:44 In the worst case, what you're talking about is something where these clouds kill off microscopic organisms that feed crabs and they feed shrimp, and that filters up into grouper and amber jack and all the way into the sea birds up above.

00:17:50 So the whole food chain gets affected in the worst-case scenario.

00:17:52 In the best case, bacteria keeps eating these fine droplets until they are gone, maybe not so much damage.

00:17:58 But with no real handle with how much oil is in this cloudlike state, because we've never had a street read from bp on exactly how much oil is coming out, the danger level is anyone's guess.

00:18:11 >> All right.

00:18:12 Tom, appreciate it.

00:18:13 As always.

00:18:14 Should point out, we invited bp executives to come on the program again tonight.

00:18:19 They, of course, said no.

[...]