President Obama learns the hard way about Pakistani military mindset

"It was always understood within the Obama administration that any public recognition that Pakistan was committed to supporting the Taliban could be politically dangerous to the war effort. As a result, Obama’s national security team decided early on to deny the complicity of Pakistani Chief of Staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and director of the ISI intelligence agency Shuja Pasha, despite the knowledge that they were fully behind the policy."

Over the years I've had differences with investigative journalist/historian Gareth Porter's opinions on U.S. national security policy, but when he decides to pull together a summary of a situation he can leave many other journalists in the dust. So it is with his review of how President Barack Obama came to realize the folly of attempting to placate Pakistan's military on the matter of its support for the Taliban:

Obama Troop Surge Decision Ignored Pak-Taliban Ties
Inter Press Service
05/23/2011
By Gareth Porter

The unilateral U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden created a spike in mutual recriminations between U.S. and Pakistani politicians, but their fundamental conflict of interest over Afghanistan was already driving the two countries toward serious confrontation.

The pivotal event in relations between the Barack Obama administration and Pakistan was the decision by Obama to escalate the war in Afghanistan in 2009, despite the knowledge that Pakistan was committed to supporting the Taliban insurgents as a strategic policy in its conflict with India.

Obama launched a desperate, last-minute effort to get some kind of commitment from the Pakistanis to reduce their support for the Taliban before the decision to escalate the war. But he did not reconsider the decision after that effort had clearly failed.

It was always understood within the Obama administration that any public recognition that Pakistan was committed to supporting the Taliban could be politically dangerous to the war effort. As a result, Obama’s national security team decided early on to deny the complicity of Pakistani Chief of Staff Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and director of the ISI intelligence agency Shuja Pasha, despite the knowledge that they were fully behind the policy.

On March 26, 2009, a story in the New York Times provided the most detailed news media account up to that date of Pakistani assistance to the Taliban. But the story quoted anonymous U.S. officials as blaming “mid-level ISI operatives” and expressing doubt that top Pakistani officials in Islamabad were directly coordinating the clandestine efforts by ISI operatives to assist the Taliban.

That did not reflect the briefing Obama had gotten from George W. Bush’s director of national intelligence, Mike McConnell, after his election. McConnell had learned from communications intercepts that Kayani considered the Haqqani network, which was being targeted as the most serious threat to U.S. troops in Afghanistan, as a “strategic asset.”

As Obama approached a decision on Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s request for another troop increase of as much as 40,000 troops, the Pakistani military’s determination to use the Taliban and the Haqqani network to advance Pakistani interests in Afghanistan was a major issue in the policy debate.

Opponents of the troop surge request, including Vice President Joe Biden, deputy national security adviser Tom Donilon and Afghanistan War coordinator Douglas Lute, argued that the Pakistanis were not going to change their policy toward Afghanistan, according to Bob Woodward’s account in Obama’s Wars.

Biden argued in a meeting on Sept. 13, 2009, that Pakistan was determined to avoid an Afghan government “led by a Pashtun sympathetic to India”—i.e., Afghan President Hamid Karzai. The conclusion was that the Pakistanis would continue to aid the insurgency the U.S. was trying to defeat.

Despite that argument, as the policy-making process was entering its final weeks, Obama tried to exert high-level pressure on Pakistan.

In a Nov. 11, 2009, letter to Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari, Obama said Pakistan’s use of such “proxy groups” as Haqqani and the Taliban would no longer be tolerated, as Woodward recounts. National Security Adviser James Jones and Counterterrorism adviser John Brennan were sent to Islamabad to deliver the message.

Obama wanted Pakistan to understand that he would take unilateral action against the Taliban and Haqqani safe havens in Pakistan, including accelerated drone strikes and commando raids, unless Pakistani forces attacked them.

That message was clearly received. A Pakistani official told the New York Times, “Jones’s message was if that Pakistani help wasn’t forthcoming, the United States would have to do it themselves.”

The week of Nov. 17, CIA Director Leon Panetta met with Pasha and other top Pakistani officials, and complained about the presence of the Taliban leadership headquarters in Quetta, Baluchistan, according to Woodward’s account. He cited intelligence that bombs were being made there, then “taken across the border and blowing up Americans.”

Panetta proposed joint U.S.-Pakistani operations on the ground aimed at the Quetta Shura, but Kayani refused.

In a response to Obama’s letter late in November, Zardari voiced the Pakistani military’s rationale for Pakistan’s use of Afghan insurgents to protect its interests in Pakistan. He charged that “neighboring intelligence agencies”—meaning India—”are using Afghan soil to perpetuate violence in Pakistan.”

And Zardari did not give a clear response to Obama’s invitation to plan joint operations against those forces.

When Obama met with his national security team for the final time on Nov. 29, he knew that the pressure tactic had failed. Lute, Obama’s Afghanistan coordinator, warned that Pakistani policy was one of four major, interacting risks of a troop surge policy.

But Obama approved a plan for 30,000 additional troops anyway, suggesting that the decision was driven by the political-bureaucratic momentum of the war rather than by a rational assessment of cost, risk, and benefit.

Throughout 2010, the Pakistani military continued to make clear its refusal to compromise on its interests in Afghanistan. In late January, U.S. and Pakistani authorities picked up Mullah Ghani Baradar, the second-ranking official in the Taliban Quetta Shura, in a raid in Karachi—apparently without realizing in advance that Baradar was present.

But when the United States sought to extradite Baradar to Afghanistan, the Pakistanis refused. And Baradar and several other members of the Quetta Shura who had been detained by the Pakistanis were reported in October 2010 to have been released.

In a January 2011 interview with Public Broadcasting System’s Frontline, Gen. David Petraeus, by then the commander in Afghanistan, was asked about Pakistan’s release of top Taliban leaders. “We’ve actually had a conversation on this very recently,” said Petraeus blandly, “and in fact there has been a request for information.”

Two National Intelligence Estimates on Afghanistan and Pakistan in December 2010 pointed once again to the centrality of Pakistani policy to the outcome of the U.S. war effort in Afghanistan.

The NIE on Afghanistan concluded that the United States was unlikely to succeed in Afghanistan unless Pakistan changed its policy to take military action against insurgent sanctuaries in Pakistan. But the estimate on Pakistan made it clear that no such change in Pakistani policy could be expected.

In mid-December, the Obama administration issued a five-page summary of its December 2010 review of the Afghanistan War, which concluded that the “gains” were “fragile and reversible” and that consolidating those gains “will require that we make more progress with Pakistan to eliminate sanctuaries for violent extremist networks.”

Immediately after that review, the New York Times reported a military proposal for cross-border raids into Pakistan aimed at capturing Taliban commanders for interrogation back in Afghanistan.

Beginning in late 2010, moreover, the U.S. infiltrated hundreds of unilateral intelligence agents into Pakistan, suggesting an intention to carry out further cross-border raids.

Those moves had already alarmed Pakistan’s military leaders well before the U.S. raid against bin Laden’s compound in Abbottabad.

And in a classified report sent to Congress in early April, the Obama administration strongly criticized Pakistan’s failure to attack insurgent safe havens in Mohmand in northwest Pakistan for three straight years, as reported by the New York Times April 5.

Moeed Yusuf, director of the South Asia program at the U.S. Institute of Peace, who has been leading a study of Pakistani elite opinion on relations with the United States, believes the crisis in U.S.-Pakistan relations can be blamed on a failure of both governments to acknowledge explicitly the existence of a fundamental conflict of interests.

“If there is a strategic divergence of interests, I think Pakistan needs to put it on the table,” said Yusuf. Pakistani leaders “need to be very candid about why it’s not in their interests” to do what Washington wants, he said.

If the interests at stake are not brought into the open, Yusuf suggested, “A rupture is possible.”

Obama's advice for Pakistan is a tough sell

The advice is good in principle but it overlooks Pakistan's bottom line: the military needs a dragon to fight if it's to justify its size and the hold it maintains on Pakistan's economy.

May 22; PTI via Live Mint:

Pakistan’s India obsession a mistake: Obama

London: Pakistan’s obsession with India that makes it look at its neighbour as an “existential threat” is a mistake and it would do well to shed this contest mentality, US President Barack Obama has said.

Speaking to BBC on the eve of his visit to Britain, Obama said both he and British Prime Minister David Cameron understood that Pakistan had been “very obsessed” with India.

He said the US wants Pakistan to realize that the biggest threat to it does not come from outside but is “homegrown”.

He said: “They see that as their existential threat. I think that’s a mistake. I think that peace between India and Pakistan would serve Pakistan very well.”

He said Pakistan needs to do shed its orientation of looking at every issue through the India lens to be able to make full economic progress.

“It would free up resources and capacity for them to engage in trade and commerce, and make enormous strides that you’re seeing India make. But that’s their orientation.”

Obama added: “It’s been that orientation for a long time. And so they look at issues like Afghanistan. Or the border region in the FATA (Federally Administered Tribal Areas) through the lens of what does this mean for our contest with India.”

Obama said the US is currently trying to bring about a reorientation in Pakistan’s attitude towards India and make it recognize that the main threat is from terrorists operating from Pakistan soil.

He said: “Well, part of what we’re trying to do is to talk to them about how they can reorient their strategy so that they understand that the biggest threat to Pakistan and its stability is homegrown.”

“And that if we don’t go after these networks that are willing to blow up police stations, blow up crowds of people assassinate Pakistani elected officials with impunity - if they don’t get a handle on that then they’re gonna see a significant destabilization of the country,” Obama added.

CNN Breaking News: 116 confirmed dead in Joplin, Missouri from Sunday evening mega-tornado

5:07 PM ET: I give up trying to keep up with changing reports from CNN -- there's a still a fog of war situation in the city.
5:15: USA Today article on how to help the tornado victims.
***********
> Tornado tied for second worst in U.S. history; fourth worst tornando since record keeping began in 1950.

> Tornado path was a half-mile wide. 5:06 PM update CNN report is that tornado cut path four miles wide through Joplin.

> Driving rain, lightning, 60 mph winds and two-inch hailstones in the morning have been hampering search and rescue efforts all day; CNN's reporting tent was blown away even though four people were struggling to hold it down.

> About 500 Joplin residents reported missing so far; death toll expected to rise.

> I'm hearing conflicting reports about the tornado's path. One CNN report I heard when I turned on the TV about 15 minutes ago is that the tornado swath virtually cut the city in half -- only building left standing on one side of the city is a hospital; the other half of the city is virtually untouched. Report just now is that "a quarter" of the buildings in one part of the city were destroyed and that one of the hardest hit is a hospital. (Might be more than one hospital, of course.) 5:07 -- yes, there are two hospitals; at least one was hit hard.

> Footage of the devastation makes it amazing that the death toll is so low; CNN reporting just now that residents had 24 minutes notice of the tornado strike, so while not everyone got the warning that early it helps explain the relatively low death toll. Again, the devastation is so horrific it's hard to see how anyone survived. As far as the eye can see in much footage, buildings smashed to smithereens.

> More bad weather expected tomorrow with possibility of several tornadoes in 'tornado alley' in the midwest but the hope is that these will spare population centers.

Rana Case: Today the United States of America goes on trial along with a man whose identity is unknown to many Americans

Great power attracts evil to it like iron filings to a magnet, so one shouldn't be surprised at the number of people in Washington who over the course of a half century have used every justification to entangle the world's most beneficent democracy with a society where brutality is considered the defining badge of manhood and the cruelest cunning is admired as a governing principle.

So here we are today, waiting for the opening statements in the Chicago trial of Pakistani-Canadian Tahawwur Hussein Rana along with six Pakistanis being tried in absentia for their alleged roles in the 2008 Mumbai massacre and/or the planning for a terrorist attack on a Danish newspaper. Dr Rana's defense argument was shot down even before the trial began. From Bloomberg's May 16 report:

Rana’s lawyers told prosecutors in January that he planned to assert as a defense that he was acting “pursuant to his actual or believed exercise of public authority on behalf of the government of Pakistan and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency,” and not Lashkar-e-Taiba, U.S. District Judge Harry Leinenweber said in an April 1 ruling.

Prosecutors opposed

Prosecutors opposed Rana’s bid to raise the ISI defense, as well as a bid to subpoena the Federal Bureau of Investigation and Department of State for any cabled messages between the U.S., Pakistani and Indian governments concerning Rana, Headley, the ISI or Major Iqbal.

Supporting his bid, Rana’s lawyers cited Headley’s grand jury testimony in which he’d allegedly testified that Headley told Rana he had met with Major Iqbal, and that Headley had been asked to work for the ISI and to conduct surveillance in Mumbai.

Leinenweber rejected Rana’s bid to defend himself by claiming he believed his actions were in service to the Pakistani government and the ISI.

“Defendant’s proposed defense that Pakistani government and ISI officials sanctioned his violations of U.S. federal law is objectively unreasonable,” Leinenweber ruled. “Regardless of whether defendant believed Headley conducted surveillance on behalf of the ISI or Lashkar in Mumbai, his argument that a non-federal official can have actual or apparent authority to exempt him from violating a federal law fails.”

Subpoena Quashed

The judge then quashed the FBI subpoena, holding his rejection of the ISI defense rendered that evidence irrelevant.

December 16, 2009

Headley may have tipped off US about 26/11
Economic Times (India)

Indian agencies suspect that eagerness of American agencies to protect its mole -- David Coleman Headley, who in all probability was a CIA agent who had successfully infiltrated LeT and managed to tip off the US of an impending sea-borne LeT attack on Mumbai well ahead of 26/11 -- may have made them reticent about sharing specific details of the 26/11 plot with India despite being in the know.

The US — which continued to share intelligence with India regarding LeT's plans to target National Defence College and other targets here, all sourced from Headley, until September this year — may have decided to arrest him only to preempt LeT's plans to target the office of Danish publication Jyllands Posten in Copenhagen, Denmark.

It has now become amply clear that Headley was the source of information behind US agencies' alert to India in September 2008, warning of a LeT attack on Mumbai through the sea route. Investigations into the 26/11 conspiracy have confirmed that the LeT operation was originally planned for September, but had to be aborted twice due to logistical glitches. The 10 gunmen finally set sail from Karachi on November 22, 2008.

December 17, 2009

Mumbai terror suspect David Headley was ‘rogue US secret agent’
by Rhys Blakely in Mumbai
(London) Sunday Times

A key terror suspect who allegedly helped to plan last year’s attacks in Mumbai and plotted to strike Europe was an American secret agent who went rogue, Indian officials believe.

David Headley, 49, who was born in Washington to a Pakistan diplomat father and an American mother, was arrested in Chicago in October. He is accused of reconnoitering targets in India and Europe for Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), the Pakistan-based terror group behind the Mumbai attacks and of having links to al-Qaeda. He has denied the charges.

He came to the attention of the US security services in 1997 when he was arrested in New York for heroin smuggling. He earned a reduced sentence by working for the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) infiltrating Pakistan-linked narcotics gangs.

Indian investigators, who have been denied access to Mr Headley [they have since been given access], suspect that he remained on the payroll of the US security services — possibly working for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) — but switched his allegiance to LeT.

Mr Headley, who changed his name from Daood Gilani, was in Mumbai until two weeks before the attacks on the city, which claimed 166 lives last November. It is alleged that he spent months checking targets in India’s commercial capital, using his Western looks and anglicised name to move in elite social circles, hobnob with Bollywood actors and even to pass himself off as Jewish.

Despite being firmly on the radar of the US intelligence agencies, he was allowed to return to India as recently as March. Indian officials are furious that their American counterparts did not share details of that visit at the time. The Indian media has raised the possibility that Mr Headley was being protected by his American handlers — a theory that experts say is credible.

“The feeling in India is that the US has not been transparent,” said B. Raman, a former counter-terrorism chief in the Indian foreign intelligence service, the Research and Analysis Wing.

“That Headley was an agent for the DEA is known. Whether he was being used by the CIA as well is a matter of speculation, but it is almost certain that the CIA was aware of him and his movements across the subcontinent.”

According to Mr Raman it is probable that Mr Headley, who was arrested when the US authorities learned that he was about to fly to Pakistan, was listed on the main database of the US National Counterterrorism Center, a facility used by the CIA and several other American agencies to track terror suspects.

Indian officials suspect that US agencies declined to share intelligence to avoid compromising other secret operations and to be able to deny any link with Mr Headley.

Analysts believe that the US may also have been anxious to avoid sharing information that could further raise tensions between India and Pakistan, nuclear-armed neighbours who have fought three wars.

According to documents put before a court in Chicago, Mr Headley had links with the Pakistan Army and, through it, with al-Qaeda.

As well as helping to co-ordinate the Mumbai atrocity, Mr Headley is accused of planning attacks on Mumbai’s Bollywood film industry, the Shiv Sena, a Hindu extremist group also based in Mumbai, a major Hindu temple, and a Danish newspaper that had published cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

The US authorities allege that he was close to Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a former Pakistani schoolmate and businessman who is also being charged with planning to attack the Danish newspaper, Jyllands-Posten. Mr Rana is accused of having known about the attack on Mumbai in advance.

The CIA denied that Headley had worked for the organisation.

“Any suggestion that Headley was working for the CIA is complete and utter nonsense. It’s flat-out false,” Paul Gimigliano, from the CIA’s Office of Public Affairs, said.

The Indian Home Secretary, Gopal Krishna Pillai, has said that his Government would seek the extradition of Mr Headley — a request that has so far been stonewalled by US officials.

Extradition is now unlikely given Headley's guilty plea. As to the conjecture that the U.S. government may have been "anxious to avoid sharing information that could further raise tensions between India and Pakistan," that is complete and utter nonsense. Through a fluke, blind luck, or the intervention of God -- however you want to view it -- Indian authorities learned within the first hours of the massacre that LeT and ISI were the masterminds of the attack.

(In December 2009 I detailed the unraveling of the plot in Part 2 of Alden Pyle in Pakistan

What the Indians didn't know at first, what they couldn't understand, was how the U.S. came to warn them of the attack. Was it through information picked up by signals intelligence, through CIA field operatives, or through an informant? It was important to know the answer because if the source was an informant, the question was why the U.S. hadn't allowed Indian intelligence officers to question the informant, given that the Indians were much better able than their American counterparts to prise meaningful clues from an informant about a LeT planned attack on Mumbai.

In other words, Indian authorities were looking at the possibility that the government of the United States had withheld vital information that in the right hands could have averted the massacre.

If any Americans would observe that such things can happen in intelligence work because governments need to protect their secrets, they might think differently if they considered the possibility that it was Americans who were the primary target of the terrorists who laid seige to Mumbai, with the Britons also a primary target.

There is evidence to suggest just such a possibility and moreover evidence to indicate that instead of hunting down the primary targets the terrorists had planned to blow up two hotels frequented by foreigners and well-off Indians. This would have resulted in enormous collateral damage, by the number and amount of unexploded RDX bombs found after the seige, with thousands of Indians and other nationals killed just to kill relatively few Americans and Britons.

It's still a matter for speculation as to why the terrorists didn't detonate most of the bombs.(1) And the scenario that Americans and Britons were the primary targets is based on the account of the lone surviving terrorist, but again there is just enough evidence to make his account plausible.(2)

The point of the above observations, for this writing, is that various sections of America's criminal justice, political, and intelligence-gathering systems still have a lot of explaining to do about some events leading up to the 2008 massacre in Mumbai. How the trial of Tahawwur Rana is conducted by the prosecution will tell volumes about whether representatives of the systems are determined to see justice done, or whether the trial is just another case of rounding up the usual suspects while the biggest perp gets away with murder again.

1) Maximum Carnage; Pundita, October 28, 2010

There is also the speculation, at least with regard to one of the targeted hotels, the Taj Mahal Palace, that the terrorists underestimated how difficult it would be for their bomb material to collapse the foundation of the 105-year old hotel.

2) From Slate, The Fog of Breaking News; December 3, 2008 (see Slate website for links to press articles cited below):

[...]Who were the terrorists targeting?

Azam Amir Kasab, 21, a Pakistani national [the lone surviving terrorist], claimed the terror strikes, which left nearly 200 dead, were intended to kill as many as 5,000 people and that he and his fellow militants were ordered to target whites -- especially Britons and Americans. The claims were made in what a police source said was a transcript of his questioning.
—The Times of London, Dec. 1, 2008

Police believe attacks at the Leopold cafe, popular with tourists, and at CST station, may have been diversions to provide cover as other gang members stormed their two main targets -- Mumbai's two luxury hotels, the Taj Mahal and Trident-Oberoi.
—The Age (Melbourne) Dec. 1, 2008

"It seemed like they were in a hurry," [Leopold Café owner Farhang Jehani] said. "It was as if they wanted to shoot as many people as they could even though this was not their main target. Their motive might have been to divert the police, who have a station across the street, to keep them occupied as they headed to the Taj hotel."
—Washington Post, Dec. 1, 2008

Because it's Friday

[looking at her watch] H'mmmmm. Comradess Uppity will still be laboring in potato field. Hah. I will go steal her blog's latest kitties banner as a prank. [computer keyboard tapping sounds] What the fribbit? Stoned-looking penguins floating in the sky? What kind of blog banner is that?

The “Up All Night Wondering If My Ass Will Be Raptured” thread
Posted on May 20, 2011 by Uppity Woman

Listen, I heard that some crackpot says the Rapture date of tomorrow is wrong and it’s Coming at 6 PM tonight. I assume that’s Eastern Time, so you Californians get a couple of extra hours of depravity. Since The Hour is nearly upon me I am writing really fast to get this post up under the wire, just in case. I hate being rushed!

Well, I’m all dressed, in case I fall asleep tonight and get raptured in the morning before I get a chance to get dressed. I’ve always been conscious of looking right. I always get the sense that if I look too scruffy, my late mother will reach down and smack me upside the head, you know?

As I discussed in my Rapture Preparatory Plan post, I am dressed in warm clothing because it does get rather cold starting at about 15,000 feet and I hate being cold. The problem is, it’s hot as hell here, so I had to crank up the AC. Not that I care how much it costs, since I won’t have to pay the bill anyhow, right?

I also have my carry-on packed and am keeping it attached to my body so if I get raptured, it will automatically come with me. Otherwise, having been swept right out of my shoes, I might not have time to grab my bag. I hate going anywhere without snacks and a bottle of water. I decided that, in addition to some easy-to-carry peanut butter crackers, I am bringing a couple of bananas and apples. Most of those church mooches I’ve known roundly reject fruit and vegetables, preferring greasy high-calorie treats, so I figure I won’t have to share with some lazy, unprepared sponger on the way up. And I can give the crackers to any babbling religious pontificators I run into to shut them up. Let’s face it, peanut butter is great for that.

I also packed a bottle of Pinot Noir. I don’t figure they will let me in with that, but I plan to finish it off before I get up there and drop the empty bottle. Hope I don’t hit anybody down here. I also packed my toothbrush and deodorant. Not sure if we will use that stuff up there, but I always pack those things.

I even put a bra on and I hate those damned things ...

I can't take any more. I keep telling her moonshine from potatoes makes you crazy.

Obama's MENA speech: tick tock tick tock -- ding ding ding! Time's up, Mr Commander-in-Chief

Counting on my fingers and toes several times I think today is the 60 day-deadline for President Obama to ask Congress -- yes, by gum I see from Daily Kos and CNN that today is indeed the day President Barack Obama is supposed to comply with the part of the War Powers Act that says POTUS must receive congressional authorization for committing U.S. troops to a military action that lasts longer than 60 days.

Nuts to that, sez that great European statesman, Senator John McCain. According to CNN's report:

McCain said he doesn't believe the War Powers Act is constitutional and therefore he doesn't believe the president needs congressional authorization to continue the mission.

"I've never recognized the constitutionality of the War Powers Act, nor has any president, either Republican or Democrat," McCain said.

Yes but there are a few stick-in-the-muds among Republicans (see the CNN report) and Democrats (see Daily Kos) who want to bring the matter of continued U.S. military involvement in Libya to a vote.

If you interject, 'So that's what Obama's speech was about yesterday' -- yes. The part of the speech that addressed the Israeli-Palestinian situation was probably Obama's way of putting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the spot ahead of their meeting in Washington today. But the speech would have happened without the visit and Obama's incendiary comments relating to Israel. Obama knew he had to throw together a policy on MENA ahead of the 60-day deadline to rationalize continued U.S. military actions in Libya. He had to do this in the attempt to placate his American Leftist voter base.

The American Leftists -- the real Leftists -- aren't buying Obama's reasons for U.S. military intervention in Libya, as you can see from reading Rep. Mike Honda's op-ed at Daily Kos. Honda (D-CA) is a Senior Democratic Whip and co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus's Taskforce on Peace and Security.

And CNN's report carries a letter to Obama from six Conservative Republican senators who pretty much echo the crux of Honda's argument.

As it so happened just around the time of Obama's speech NATO launched attacks in Libya that were an escalation in their intervention to help the rebels eject Col. Gadhafi from power -- an intervention which for some queer reason NATO leaders portray as designed to protect Libya's civilian population. See this Reuters report for details on the latest NATO strikes. As Rep. Honda points out there were plenty of options NATO and the Obama administration could have taken if civilian protection was their real aim.

So-called Taliban attack on U.S. consulate convoy in Pakistan (Updated 11:00 AM ET)

"Peshawar police chief Liaqat Ali told reporters the booby-trapped car appeared to have been parked at the side of the road and exploded as one consulate vehicle was near, forcing it to slam into an electricity pole."

A Taliban group is claiming responsibility for the bombing but the modus operandi doesn't look like Taliban to me, and I don't think Taliban or al Qaeda in Pakistan have the kind of surveillance capabilities that would allow them to pinpoint when to detonate the booby-trapped car.

From the (U.K.) Daily Mail report, last updated at 1:32 PM [BST] on 20th May 2011:

An American diplomatic convoy was hit by a car bomb in Pakistan this morning in the latest attack in a surge of violence since Osama Bin Laden was killed.

One local resident was killed and another 11 injured in the attack but no Americans were seriously wounded. Two American security guards were slightly hurt.

The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility for detonating the 110-lb car bomb as the convoy from the US consulate passed in an area where many Western diplomats live.

Peshawar has seen many attacks by Taliban militants seeking to topple the U.S.-backed Pakistani government and was home to bin Laden in the 1980s when Islamists were fighting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan.
Al Qaeda and its ally, the Pakistani Taliban, have vowed to avenge the killing of bin Laden by U.S. special forces, and, the group said it would target the Pakistani government and its Western allies.

'The diplomatic staff of all NATO countries are our targets,' said Ehsanullah Ehsan, a Taliban spokesman.

'We will continue such attacks. Pakistan is our first target, and America is our second.'

Peshawar police chief Liaqat Ali told reporters the booby-trapped car appeared to have been parked at the side of the road and exploded as one consulate vehicle was near, forcing it to slam into an electricity pole.

Police superintendent Ijaz said two American security guards were slightly wounded, and were being treated at a U.S. medical facility.

Pakistan has witnessed a jump in violence since bin Laden's death, including a twin suicide bombing last week that killed more than 80 people, most of them paramilitary recruits.

The Taliban have kept up pressure on the government with suicide attacks despite several army offensives on their strongholds in the northwest. [emphasis mine]
[...]

The two photos below of the convoy car are from the Daily Mail; no photographer credit for the second photo. See the Mail's website for more photos:



Update 11:00 AM ET
The (U.K.) Telegraph report on the attack adds additional information:

[...] The passengers were driven away in the second vehicle.

Alberto Rodriguez, spokesman for the US embassy in Islamabad, said the diplomats were travelling in armoured cars.

“The attack was deliberately targeted against consulate vehicles,” he said.

“It was a bomb blast. We are still investigating.” The Pakistani Taliban swiftly claimed responsibility, in a telephone call to the AFP news agency, and threatened further attacks against Western targets.

"Our first enemy is Pakistan, then the United States and after that, other NATO countries,” said spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan.

Police in the city said 11 people were hurt, including two foreigners who were slightly injured.

"A man on a motorbike who was passing by was killed in the blast, which was caused by a car bomb,” said one intelligence official on the scene.

The US maintains a small presence in Peshawar, despite a high security risk — heightened by America’s unilateral raid to kill the al-Qaeda leader.

The city is home to thousands of Afghan refugees and serves as a cross-border smuggling hub for insurgents.

On Wednesday, swarms of militants attacked a police checkpoint just outside the city. Two officers and 15 attackers died in a fire fight that lasted hours through the night.

Is Pakistan's ISI trying to sneak Mullah Omar into Afghanistan?

If the Afghan source isn't blowing smoke this report is a riot. There is no honor among thieves, fer sure. I'm getting such a chuckle from the story I'm lapsing into Valley Girl Speak, fer sure. But hey by any which way getting hold of Omar would be fine with me. See the Examiner website for report's source links.

Pakistan sets Mullah Omar deathtrap to disrupt U.S.-Taliban talks

Michael Hughes
May 18, 2011
The Examiner

An Afghan security official told [Afghanistan's] TOLO news on Tuesday that Pakistan’s spy agency is scheming to move Taliban leader Mullah Omar from Pakistan to Helmand province and then report his whereabouts to U.S. forces.

The Pakistanis hope Omar is killed on Afghan soil because it will prove terrorist leaders are also hiding in Afghanistan, the source claimed. The same Afghan official said Omar received the ISI order to leave Quetta from former Pakistani spy chief Hamid Gul.

Such a development would disrupt the negotiations reportedly underway between the U.S. and the Taliban. According to the Washington Post, a U.S. representative attended at least three meetings in Qatar and Germany within the last eight or nine days with a Taliban official who is close to Mullah Omar.

U.S. officials claim “exploratory” conversations which began in February have advanced significantly in terms of substance and willingness to engage. The commencement of dialogue predated the Osama bin Laden assassination, but the death of the Al Qaeda leader has put more pressure on insurgent leaders to compromise, experts say.

Rumors of the talks have been chastised by critics who believe that such negotiations will compromise Afghan democracy because it appears Kabul and Washington are seriously considering bestowing the Taliban with whatever the insurgents consider an “acceptable share of political power.” This would undermine Afghan self-determination by handing over partial control of Afghanistan to the Taliban without the consent of the governed.

Afghan native Khalil Nouri, co-founder of the New World Strategies Coalition (NWSC) commented today in The Huffington Post that “there can only be one legitimate way to obtain stability in Afghanistan; through an all Afghan national ratification of a reconciliation process”. Afghans like Nouri believe neither the U.S. nor the Karzai administration has the legitimacy or the proper mandate to negotiate a settlement on behalf of the Afghan people.

An American official reported that “the Afghans have been fully briefed” on U.S.-Taliban contacts and “the Pakistanis only partially so” because the Obama administration is now of the mind that negotiation with the Quetta Shura does not require Pakistan’s cooperation. One senior administration official was even quoted as saying:

“Some people who have met with the Taliban say that among the reasons [the insurgents] want to establish their own office is so they can get out from under the Pakistanis”.
[...]

Hughes goes on to talk about the Haqqani Network; worth the read.

Gilani didn't get all he wanted from his China visit but he sure caused more questions about U.S. aid to Pakistan

Drill down in the following report to see why I warned yesterday that Pakistan shouldn't attempt to use China as a wedge against the United States.

China to Speed Up Fighter Jets for Pakistan
[Emphasis throughout mine]

By Jeremy Page
Wall Street Journal
May 19, 2011

BEIJING—China has agreed to provide 50 more JF-17 fighter jets to Pakistan on an "expedited" basis, a spokesman for the Pakistani air force said, one of the most concrete illustrations yet of how China could fill the vacuum if the U.S. scales down its aid to Pakistan following the raid that killed al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.

The agreement to accelerate supply of the jointly developed jets, the first 50 of which are being assembled in Pakistan, came as Pakistan's Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani held talks in Beijing during a visit that he has used to portray China as an alternative source of military and civilian aid.

The air-force spokesman, a high-ranking officer who declined to be identified by name, said the deal had been reached during Mr. Gilani's four-day visit to China, which concludes Friday following a meeting with Chinese President Hu Jintao.

"We're getting the 50 jets, on top of the ones we already have. Something has been agreed in Beijing, so they'll be expedited," he said, declining to give further details.

Mr. Gilani's visit was arranged long before bin Laden's death raised questions about Pakistan's efforts to hunt down the al Qaeda leader, and the trip is ostensibly to mark the 60th anniversary of bilateral relations on Saturday.

But as political pressure mounts in the U.S. for a review of aid to Pakistan, Mr. Gilani has used his visit to highlight his country's long and increasingly close relationship with China, which he described Tuesday as Pakistan's "best friend".

China is Pakistan's biggest arms supplier and its third-biggest trading partner.

The JF-17 is a potent symbol of the two countries' friendship, and a key part of Pakistan's plans to upgrade its aging fleet of American-supplied F-16s and French-made Mirages and to try to match the air power of neighboring India—its arch rival.

The U.S. has repeatedly delayed delivery of F-16s to Pakistan, and has insisted that they not be used against India, with which Washington is now cultivating a strategic partnership to counterbalance Beijing's clout in Asia.

China and Pakistan began developing the relatively cheap multipurpose fighter in 1999 and Pakistan, which has said it wants 250 of them altogether, inducted its first squadron of JF-17s last year, and a second earlier this year.

The air-force spokesman said he did not know whether the second batch of 50 jets would be assembled in Pakistan or delivered whole from China.

He also declined to discuss whether they would be the basic so-called Block I models, like the first batch, or an upgraded Block II version, which military aviation experts say could include radar-evading stealth technology—potentially giving Pakistan that capability for the first time.

Questions also remain over the new jets' engines. The first batch were all fitted with Russian ones, but Russian officials have expressed reservations about supplying more of those engines as Pakistan and China have been marketing the JF-17 in many of Russia's traditional markets.

China has been developing its own engine, but it is still undergoing tests, military aviation experts say.

The Pakistani Embassy declined to provide further details about the deal, and a spokeswoman for Mr. Gilani did not respond to repeated phone calls. China's Foreign and Defense Ministries both declined to comment, as did China's air force and the Chinese company which jointly produces the JF-17 with Pakistan.

China has hailed the strength and longevity of the relationship this week, praising Pakistan's efforts to combat terrorism, and supporting its response to the U.S. raid. Wen Jiabao, the premier, said China and Pakistan would remain friends "forever" when he met Mr. Gilani on Wednesday.

However, Beijing's rhetoric has been more reserved than Pakistan's, reflecting a desire not to antagonize the U.S. or India or to become too entangled in Pakistan's domestic and international problems.

Nonetheless, diplomats and analysts say China sees an opportunity in the aftermath of bin Laden's death to enhance its economic and military influence in Pakistan with a long-term view to containing India's rise, and opening new trade routes to Central Asia and the Middle East.

China and Pakistan are also discussing plans for Pakistan to buy China's more advanced FC-20 fighter, also known as the J-10, Ahmad Mukhtar, Pakistan's defense minister told reporters Wednesday.

Pakistan's efforts to showcase its close ties with China are causing consternation in the U.S.

During a hearing of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Tuesday, Republican Senator Jim Risch of Idaho expressed frustration at Mr. Gilani's statement that China was Pakistan's "best friend" despite billions of dollars of U.S. aid over the last decade.

"It just—it just doesn't make sense...Because, frankly, I'm—I'm getting tired of it, and I think Americans are getting tired of it as far as shoveling money in there [to] people who just flat don't like us," he said, according to a transcript.

At a hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee last week, Congressman Michael McCaul (R) of Texas raised particular concern about whether U.S. military aid had been diverted into the JF-17 program.

With four sentences about Pakistan, Robert Gates shreds his legacy

From US [government] backs aid to Pakistan despite public opposition, May 19, 2011, Times of India

Gates also maintained that Pakistan had been punished sufficiently, saying it had already been "humiliated" by the manner in which US forces had gone in and taken out bin Laden. "If I were in Pakistani shoes, I would say I've already paid a price," Gates said.

"I've been humiliated. I've been shown that the Americans can come in here and do this with impunity. I think we have to recognize that they see a cost in that and a price that has been paid."

Humiliation is not the issue. The issue is that America's Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Commander-in-Chief have yet to demonstrate by their actions that they grasp the enormity of the issue of the U.S. taxpayer being forced to pay for the killing America's own troops. That is in effect what has been going on for years, as U.S. monies paid to Pakistan's military have been diverted by the same military to supporting terrorists who kill Americans in Afghanistan.

The general American public is slowly learning of the atrocity so before the entire truth enters the mainstream media, it would be extremely wise of Gates and all others in the American government to say less in public in the attempt to bolster Pakistan, and do more in private to halt the most fiendish situation in the known history of warfare.

Note to Pakistan's armed forces: President Obama is throwing you a lifeline; better grab it

May 20 Update 12:15 AM: See also my post last night re Gilani's trip to China for more background on the issue of Pakistan-China relations in the post-OBL era.
__________

Victim of May 13 terrorist attack on Frontier Constabulary in Charsadda, Pakistan

Even many Pakistanis believe the ISI was harboring Osama bin Laden, so there's a lot of blame-shifting and finger-pointing going on in the government. And, as B. Raman details in his May 17 post, the armed forces feel humiliated because the U.S. was able to pull off the raid in Abbottabad right under their noses.

However, the military has told so many lies over the years to puff up their efficiency that several Qaeda-friendly jihadi groups in Pakistan don't believe the raid could have been carried off without cooperation from a branch of the military. So those groups are on a rampage against Pakistan's military.

In short, Rawalpindi is getting it from all sides in the wake of the Abbottabad raid. For that reason Raman is concerned that Rawalpindi might try to put a shine back on its tarnished reputation by directing terrorist attack at India. That would be a stupid move because it took everyone outside Syria all of 6 minutes to figure out that Syria's government was behind the Palestinian 'freedom protest' against Israel on May 15 -- 1 minute to realize what the government was up to (Bashy Assad's attempt to deflect world attention from his brutal quashing of Syrian protests) and the remaining 5 minutes to attempt to figure out whether Bashy thought the year was 1990 or 1982. (1)

Yes, in today's world it's not easy for a government to be a sneak. Over at Zenpundit blog, Mark Safranski has written a wondefully practical essay on the difficulties governments face in pulling off clandestine operations in the age of connectivity.

He winds up with the observation, "Being invisible in plain sight is an art that will grow increasingly rare."

That's right. The November 2008 attack on Mumbai was the harbinger, as police honed in on cell phone communications between the terrorists and their handlers -- communications that pointed straight at the ISI.

But the harbinger for the course of Pakistan's relations with the rest of the world was the December 2007 assassination of Benazir Bhutto in Rawalpindi. Benazir had many friends at the United Nations, so by the time the UN wrapped up its investigation of the assassination even the British and American governments found it hard to keep covering for Rawalpindi.

As for Rawalpindi's fallback defensive line -- that it needs to protect Pakistan against India -- that line was frayed when the Jewish outreach center, Chabad House, was attacked during the 2008 massacre in Mumbai. The line snapped when David Coleman Headley, a co-conspirator in the massacre who confessed he'd worked for officers in the ISI, revealed that the Danish newspaper that had published cartoons of the prophet Mohammad had also been marked for a terrorist attack.

The only people in Washington still pushing the line are influence agents in the pay of Pakistan's government and U.S. defense analysts and NATO toadies who are so daffy they couldn't find their hands with a flashlight. Either way, nobody's buying the line anymore that Pakistan carries out atrocities because it's scared of India.

Understand? Humpty Dumpty has fallen off the wall. If Islamabad and Rawalpindi think China can help put Humpty back together they're not only behind the times, they also don't understand the Chinese.(2)

More than they want to see India destabilized, more than they want to see the United States preoccupied with the war on terror, more than anything in the world, the Chinese want China to be a great nation and to be seen as such on the world stage. The Chinese know what it takes to be seen as a great nation. So, only provided the terrorists Rawalpindi nurtured kept it down to a dull roar was Beijing was willing to support Pakistan's bloody-minded machinations against India and the United States. But if Pakistanis think the Chinese will risk everything they've sacrificed for, just to be seen by the world as supporters of a nation of anarchist terrorists, those Pakistanis need their heads examined.

If Rawalpindi doesn't want to believe me, it needs to believe this: At the end of April, China's government published in English) a white paper on the country's planned next phase in its foreign aid policy . The government has more than a $1 trillion to lavish on aid. About half the aid is earmarked for North Korea but a large chunk of the remainder Beijing plans to lavish on investment in U.S. companies.

The plan is not made from the goodness of their hearts; the leaders want concessions from the U.S. government in return for their largesse. But the new policy also indicates that China's government has listened to every criticism that's been voiced about its earlier foreign-aid policy and is adjusting the new policy accordingly.

If you want a ten-minute crash course on the latest evolution in Chinese foreign-aid policy, listen to the podcast of John Batchelor's May 11 discussion with Blair Glencorse. But in short the policy is a clear reflection of China's goal to become a great nation -- and, they hope, the greatest of nations. The Chinese still have a long way to go in that regard, no matter what their economic progress, and they know that. But the new foreign-aid policy demonstrates they have never taken their eyes from the goal. That means they won't allow anything, and certainly not the whines of Pakistan's military, to mess up their climb to the top of the world's heap.

As for Iran -- does Rawalpindi honestly think the country's military will stand by this time around, and watch Pakistan's ghouls-for-hire massacre Afghanistan's Persian-speaking women and children and skin the men alive?

As for Pakistan's BFF Great Britain -- David Cameron served public notice last year on Pakistan during his speech in India that the British defense establishment was tired of being extorted.

As for Pakistan's new friend, Germany -- how does Rawalpindi think Germany's defense establishment has taken the news that Pakistan is harboring German nationals planning to launch terrorist attacks on German soil?

To tie it in a bow, during the space of little more than two years the entire world has seen that Pakistan is Mayhem, Inc. There is no easy way for Pakistan to alter the perception but Senator John Kerry, acting as a personal envoy for President Barack Obama, went to Pakistan to offer Rawalpindi an honorable course of action: Cooperate fully with the U.S. defense establishment in routing terrorist organizations lodged in Pakistan.

The course would be very painful -- there would be many deaths, many killings in retaliation; however, there have already been many massacres in retaliation. Less than a week ago 80 cadets at a Pakistani paramilitary police agency were massacred by terrorist bombs and more than 120 were wounded in the attack.

It is time for Pakistan's military leaders to say, 'Enough,' and tell jihadi sympathizers in their ranks, and the Pakistani public, that God Willing and with America's invited help, the reign of terror is going to end in Pakistan. That is the only way for the nation's military to restore its tarnished reputation and lead Pakistan out of its crisis.

As to fielding complaints in Pakistan that Rawalpindi had completely capitulated to the USA -- well, there is the Pundita way of handling things. I would gather the heads of all Pakistan's major news media in a room and say that I was leaving it to them to decide which of two announcements I would make: I am inviting the U.S. military into Pakistan to help us rout the vipers in our midst OR I am inviting the U.S. military and the Indian military into Pakistan to help us rout the vipers in our midst.

That would be my polite way of explaining to the media that they needed to do their utmost to sell my decision to publicly invite U.S. troops into Pakistan.

And then there's the manly way of handling things: Grit one's teeth and mutter that one might as well be hanged for a sin committed than be tortured to death for a sin omitted.

I'm sure Rawalpindi could come up with other ways of breaking the bad news but no matter what the plan Pakistan's leaders would be wise to take the deal Kerry offered.

Photograph: Arshad Arbab/European Pressphoto Agency

1) From the transcript for CNN's AC360, May 16:

[...] I want to bring in two more voices now. Jill Dougherty at the State Department and professor Fouad Ajami of the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies as well as the Hoover Institution.

Jill, the White House, the State Department both publicly blaming the Syrian government for clashes between Israeli soldiers and unarmed protesters on the border yesterday, Palestinians who were living in Syria. Do they have the evidence to prove that?

JILL DOUGHERTY, CNN FOREIGN AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: You know, what they would say is look at the border and what's happening, or what did happen, because that border along the Golan Heights is actually very quiet. It was famous for being quiet, actually, going way back to 1974.

Then all of a sudden, one day, people are allowed to come up to it as they had never been able to before, and so the State Department is saying that is an indication of what's going on, which is, they would argue, Syria is trying to destabilize the situation and do a couple of things. You know, send a message perhaps that they can create some real mischief if they are attacked and under pressure by the international community and the United States.

COOPER: Fouad, no one seems to be raising any doubts about the Palestinians who were the ones who went up to the border and the reality of their beliefs, but you have no doubt that this was a -- basically a well-orchestrated warning from the Assad regime, allowing these Palestinians to get to the border.

FOUAD AJAMI, PROFESSOR JOHNS HOPKINS SCHOOL OF ADVANCED INTERNATIONAL STUDIES: I have no shred of any doubt about this. If you take a look, Anderson, at this border between Syria and Israel, this is the most quiet border in the Middle East. The terms of disengagement were negotiated many, many years ago by none other than Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in 1974, as Jill already said.

So if you go back and look at this border, this border is as quiet as a tomb. And the Syrians would never allow the Palestinians to come close to the Golan Heights and to come close to the border with Israel. This is completely a transparent ploy by the Syrian regime. They are killing their own people. They're at war with their own people. And I think this is just a very, very transparent action.

2) Two reports on Pakistan's attempts to use China as a wedge against the United States in Afghanistan:

Wall Street Journal, April 29, 2011: Karzai Told to Dump U.S.
Pakistan Urges Afghanistan to Ally With Islamabad, Beijing.

Christian Science Monitor, May 18, 2011 What Pakistan Prime Minister Gilani wants from China
The Pakistan premier may be trying to forge a loose alliance between China, Pakistan, and Afghanistan to undermine US influence in the region.

Was there a way other than opening Morganza Spillway to save Baton Rouge and New Orleans from flooding?

"While levees and floodwalls will continue to make sense in some heavily populated areas, their overuse actually causes flood levels to rise as the river channel is narrowed and water has nowhere to go but up -– making flooding worse for communities downstream."

Mississippi River Flooding in Rena Lara, Mississippi, May 12, 2011

Flooding in Jaffarabad, Balochistan, Pakistan, August 23, 2010

BEIJING, May 18 (Xinhuanet) 11:30 PM ET -- As the Mississippi River continues to rise in the US, land and homes along one of its main tributaries have been completely submerged.

The water level has reached 17.28 meters in the town of Vicksburg, obliterating a record set in 1927.

About 2.1 million acres were inundated in the state of Mississippi's central region, as of Monday evening.

Due to a rainy spring and heavy snow melts, the river has been rampaging across property in the states of Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas. The waterway is still surging, as it moves south through Mississippi and Louisiana.

A few weeks ago Donald Trump hung himself with his tongue at a speech he gave in Las Vegas. He already had several strikes against him; those he might have weathered but his expletive-laden rant ruled him out as a presidential candidate. Maybe he didn't care by then, maybe he didn't want to be president badly enough, but I was sorry to see him dynamite his chances without making a try. That's partly because a Trump campaign would have hammered on a theme he voiced often during the months he showed interest in making a run for the White House: Much of America's infrastructure was in such bad shape that it ranked with that of a third world nation's.

I thought of Trump's observation when I learned that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had decided the only way to save two Louisiana cities from Mississippi River flooding was to divert the floodwaters to thousands of rural acres and many small towns. Then I recalled this report, as Pakistan faced historic floods in 2010:

ISLAMABAD (August 21, 2010) Deputy Chairman Senate Mir Jan Mohammad Khan Jamali on Friday made a stunning statement that an airbase was being saved from floodwaters at the cost of Balochistan and as a result more than 85 percent part of Jaffarabad has been inundated by flood. ...

It turned out that wasn't the only time the floodwaters were diverted; many levees and berms were deliberately broken, either at government order or by individual landowners, to save cities and large swaths of farmland from the worst of the flooding. Yet as I pointed out in a post around that time the British Raj had left Pakistan with a very extensive and reliable floodwater management system; it was just that it wasn't maintained after Independence.

Is the United States of America is on par with Pakistan when it comes to flood management? You decide, after reading today's New York Times report on the spiraling economic disaster emerging from the Mississippi Delta flooding and the following report from the nonprofit organization, American Rivers (see the website for links and more information on the flooding):

Army Corps to open Morganza Spillway
By Shana Udvardy
Director, Flood Management Policy
May 14, 2011

The Army Corps of Engineers announced Saturday that for the first time in 38 years it will open the Morganza Spillway.

The goal is to ease pressure on Mississippi River levees and save New Orleans and Baton Rouge from disastrous flooding.

The decision could impact 25,000 people and 11,000 structures in the spillway, but the consequences would be far worse for the region if Morganza remained closed.

With rivers and flooding in the national spotlight, American Rivers renewed its call to the Obama Administration and Congress to improve flood management and policies that ensure public safety and river health.

"The Corps is making the agonizing but correct decision to open Morganza," said Andrew Fahlund, senior vice president of conservation for American Rivers. "Our hearts go out to all of the victims impacted by the floodwaters."

"These record floods prove that we need better flood protection strategies. Levees provide a false sense of security and should be our last, not our only, line of defense. If we don't restore our natural defenses like healthy floodplains and wetlands, future generations will suffer increasingly disastrous floods."

While levees and floodwalls will continue to make sense in some heavily populated areas, their overuse actually causes flood levels to rise as the river channel is narrowed and water has nowhere to go but up -– making flooding worse for communities downstream. We need to give the river more room to move, and restore the wetlands and floodplains that naturally absorb and store floodwaters.

"American Rivers is dedicated to finding solutions that protect communities and restore river health. This record flood is a wake-up call about the need to protect and restore our rivers," said Fahlund.

Flooding in the Mississippi River Delta: an economic disaster inexorably engulfs more and more of USA

"Economists are only just beginning to assess the potential headwinds of the Mississippi River flooding. ... The flooding has affected other states, including Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky and Missouri."


God. First the financial sector meltdown and burst housing bubble. Then the Gulf oil spill. We haven't recovered from any of those. Now another perfect storm:

Flooding Takes Vast Economic Toll, and It’s Hardly Done
By Christine Hauser for The New York Times
May 17, 2011

The swollen Mississippi River, already spilling over into wide areas of the Mississippi Delta, has dealt the South a heavy economic blow that is seeping into every possible corner of the region’s commercial and agricultural life.

From Tennessee to Louisiana, the arteries and tributaries that normally supply the lifeblood of trade and business to the communities along the river’s banks are now paralyzing them. The engorged river has disrupted waterway commerce, delaying barge traffic and forcing some cargo to be trucked overland. Grain elevators, a crucial link to the nation’s grain exports, have been swamped. Early corn and soybean plantings on delta farms are submerged.

Like the very nature of water, the trickle-down effects of the historic flooding are leaving no corner untouched. Retail gasoline prices, already at two-year highs, and food prices could rise in the region because of supply disruptions. Tens of thousands of people are unemployed, shut out of jobs at establishments that are literally under water. State and local government coffers, strained because of the economic downturn, may lose many millions of dollars in revenue from tourism and taxes.

In about a dozen interviews, economists, farmers and industry officials said they expected hundreds of millions of dollars in damages including crop and infrastructure destruction in communities along the 740 miles of river that meanders from Memphis to New Orleans. But while the final bill has yet to be determined, the costs are already being felt.

In Yazoo County, Miss., John Phillips, a 61-year-old farmer, said thousands of acres of his cotton and corn crops had been destroyed. “In our area in the south delta, it is a widespread and very economically devastating disaster,” he said in a telephone interview, as he tried to run a pump. He said his annual revenue would be reduced by 40 percent because it was too late to replant.

In Louisiana, oyster beds have been flushed with fresh water from the river after spillways were opened. Already, the state’s crucial seafood industry had been reeling from the BP oil spill.

“Oysters are getting crucified,” said Harlon H. Pearce Jr., the executive director of Louisiana Seafood Promotion and Marketing Board. “This water hit at the absolute worst time.”

Along the river, barge operators are weathering the economic turbulence. It costs an operator about $10,000 a day when there is a delay with a tow, which helps the unwieldy barges, sometimes up to 45 of them tied together, navigate.

“One barge has the capacity of 16 rail cars or 70 trucks,” said Anne D. Burns, a spokeswoman at American Waterways Operators. The river’s barge traffic, Ms. Burns added, “is one of the significant building blocks of our economy.”

With the recent flooding, barges are running lighter loads and traveling during the day because navigation markers are submerged. Delays can have ripple effects throughout the economy, like slower coal deliveries to utilities, where costs can be passed on to consumers, or disruptions to the nation’s grain exports that travel down the river, she added.

“All those things are slowing down the delivery of these commodities,” Ms. Burns said.

The flooding has affected other states, including Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky and Missouri. In addition to farming, businesses including catfish farms, hunting and fishing tourism, and casinos up and down the river have been affected.

About 100,000 acres of croplands, some planted with sugar cane and rice, was flooded over the weekend in the Atchafalaya Basin in Louisiana when the Morganza spillway was opened, but the damage assessment has not been completed, said an Army Corps economist, Lee Robinson.

In broad terms, the economic hardships facing the affected areas are traumatic to residents at any time, but they are also taking place when the nation is trying to recover from the 2008 financial crisis.

Economists are only just beginning to assess the potential headwinds of the Mississippi River flooding. An academic study released last week said the cost to the Memphis area, including the city and the 630,000 people in 18 counties that feed into the urban area in jobs or spending, could reach $753 million in damages to crops, residences, and commercial and public infrastructure.

An author of the study, Michael J. Hicks, the director of the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University, said there were losses to the region’s consumer base and trade disruptions in a region that connects the manufacturing heartland of the Midwest with routes traveling between the East and the West.

“I am going to estimate in the $6 billion to $9 billion range for total damages from Memphis southward to the gulf,” Mr. Hicks said.

Between 2.1 million to 2.2 million acres of farmland have so far been affected by the flooding in the delta region, or about 1 percent of all United States cropland, according to estimates from the Army Corps of Engineers.

While acknowledging the regional devastation, however, government economists say they do not expect a national grain shortage because there are plentiful stocks. A lot will depend on whether farmers will be able to replant.

Oil companies have also been affected. In the Memphis area, Valero’s refinery is located on a bluff, and another one west of New Orleans is protected by levees. But with memories still fresh from Hurricane Katrina, Valero moved up its hurricane preparedness plans, securing equipment or moving it to higher ground, said a spokesman, Bill Day.

Exxon Mobil shut the docks at its refinery and petrochemical complex in Baton Rouge, La., and is only using its pipeline for operations. Its second refinery in Chalmette, near New Orleans, was not affected, said Kevin Allexon, a company spokesman.

Mr. Allexon said the company had contingency plans, like outside storage capacity. “We have invested a lot of resources to prepare and plan for this situation,” he said. “If you operate in the Gulf of Mexico region you need to be ready for weather-related events, whether it is flooding or hurricanes or both.”

Memo to Pakistan's ruling class: Wakey wakey

VOA, May 17:

Also Tuesday, Pakistani police say security forces foiled a major suicide attack in Quetta, the capital of southwestern Baluchistan province. Officials say five militants, including three women, were planning to attack an army checkpoint when police intercepted them. The attackers were killed in the resulting exchange of fire. Authorities say the women were Chechen.

Now of course one never knows about claims made by Pakistani "authorities" but if Chechen Black Widows are loose in Pakistan, ya'll got a problem.

Amrullah Saleh: "The amount of pain Pakistan has inflicted upon the United States in the past 12 years is unprecedented."

"I asked a U.S. politician today, I said, 'How do you explain to Americans that we give billions to Pakistan and Pakistan, in return, supports the Taliban and the Taliban, in return, yesterday killed six American soldiers?'" Saleh said.

Asked what the politician said, Saleh told Logan, "His answer was not satisfactory."

"What was it?" Logan asked.

"He said, 'Well we know this,'" Saleh said.

"And no one does anything about it?" Logan asked.

"Exactly," Saleh said.

"While American soldiers come home in body bags?" Logan asked.

"Yes. Yes," he replied.

When we went to the frontlines in eastern Afghanistan last summer, we found U.S. commanders there shared Saleh's concerns about Pakistan.

Over three weeks, the American units we were with were attacked again and again.

At one point, soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division were fighting their way out of an ambush not far from the Pakistani border. They told us that as fast as they kill their enemy, they are replaced with new fighters pouring over the border in a seemingly endless supply.

"Most of the people we are fighting are from Pakistan," Lt. Col. JB Vowell told Logan.

Vowell lost 17 soldiers over the past year. He told us his forces killed hundreds of fighters in constant battles, but you can't defeat an enemy that has safe haven over the border.

"How significant is that to the strength of the enemy?" Logan asked.

"It's very," Vowell said. 'Freedom of movement and maneuver is sacrosanct. Once you have that, all things are possible."

"And that's what they have inside Pakistan?" Logan asked.

"They have a lot of that inside Pakistan," Vowell agreed.
[...]
[U.S. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers] also confirmed what Saleh said about the Taliban's senior leaders operating from Quetta. "No doubt about it. For far too long. It was one of those I think arranged trade-offs for other bits of cooperation," he said.

"So the U.S. knew that and accepted it?" Logan asked.

"Well, they knew that they weren't being aggressive there. It didn't stop CIA's interest in trying to determine exactly who, what, when, where in Quetta, which is -- you've been there, I've been there -- it's a difficult place to operate under any circumstances," Rogers replied.
[...]
"The senior Taliban leaders, we would learn about their locations every day. We would have their telephone numbers," [Saleh] told Logan. [emphasis mine]

He told Logan that those telephone numbers were passed on to the U.S.

Saleh says many of those numbers were traced to Quetta, Pakistan, where the Taliban's senior leaders, known as the Quetta Shura, are based.

Saleh told Logan no action was ever taken against the Quetta Shura.

"The U.S. could have taken action against senior Taliban leadership -- " Logan remarked.

"They can take action tomorrow against -- " Saleh replied.

"They still can?" Logan asked.

"Of course," Saleh said.

"And they don't?" Logan asked.

"They don't," he replied.
______

On Sunday I mentioned the CBS 60 Minutes Lara Logan interview that night with Amrullah Saleh and pulled quotes from advance copy on the show. Yet there were so many crucial points to emerge from the interview that in addition to posting the above quotes from the interview I'm republishing the entire transcript, which also records brief interviews that Logan conducted with people commenting on Saleh's points, and which are interspersed with her interview with Salah.

Those who prefer to watch the video of the interview can do so at the same CBS website that features the transcript. The site also features two video 'extras' -- one about why Amrullah Saleh resigned from his post as the NDS chief and the other about the great value of the intelligence that Saleh gave the "international intelligence community" while he was head of the NDS.

I could say much about the interview but for this post I'll turn over the blog to Lara Logan, with profuse thanks to her and the entire 60 Minutes production team and CBS News for bringing such an important issue to prime-time American national television. And, of course, with my thanks to Amrullah Saleh, who has repeatedly risked his life to speak out.

(CBS News - Produced by Max McClellan) The news that Osama bin Laden had been hiding in plain sight in a Pakistani military town surprised many Americans, but it came as no surprise to the man you'll hear from. His name is Amrullah Saleh and four years ago he told Pakistan's president that bin Laden was living in that very area.

At the time, Saleh was at the height of his power as Afghanistan's top spy, their chief of intelligence. No one worked more closely with the U.S. in the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban. He is also one of Pakistan's fiercest critics and long before bin Laden's death, behind closed doors, he was urging the U.S. to pay attention to the intelligence he was gathering on Pakistan's covert support for America's enemies.

Now he makes that case publicly.

"You have to give Pakistan a title. Is it a friend? What is Pakistan?" Saleh asked Lara Logan.

"It currently has the title of ally," she pointed out.

"Right; deceptive," Saleh replied.

Asked what he thinks the title should be, Saleh told Logan, "It should be a hostile country, a hostile state."

Asked if Pakistan is the enemy of the U.S., Saleh said, "The amount of pain Pakistan has inflicted upon the United States in the past 12 years is unprecedented. No other country has inflicted that amount of pain upon your nation."

"When you say pain, what do you mean specifically?" Logan asked.

"I mean, they generate fear for your country. They take your money. They do not cooperate. They created the Taliban. They are number one in nuclear proliferation, you name it. Every pain (the) U.S. has in that part of the world, the hub of that is Pakistan," Saleh explained.

That may sound harsh, considering what President Obama told Steve Kroft on "60 Minutes" last week: "Pakistan, since 9/11, has been a strong counterterrorism partner with us."

While he acknowledged Pakistan has been helpful in fighting al Qaeda, the president also said the relationship has problems. And according to Saleh, the biggest problem is that Pakistan gives safe haven to Taliban leaders.

"The senior Taliban leaders, we would learn about their locations every day. We would have their telephone numbers," he told Logan.

He told Logan that those telephone numbers were passed on to the U.S.

Saleh says many of those numbers were traced to Quetta, Pakistan, where the Taliban's senior leaders, known as the Quetta Shura, are based.

Saleh told Logan no action was ever taken against the Quetta Shura.

"The U.S. could have taken action against senior Taliban leadership -- " Logan remarked.

"They can take action tomorrow against -- " Saleh replied.

"They still can?" Logan asked.

"Of course," Saleh said.

"And they don't?" Logan asked.

"They don't," he replied. "That's why I say the surge is not addressing the fundamental question. What do you do with sanctuaries in Pakistan?"

Congressman Mike Rogers is chairman of the House Intelligence Committee that helps oversee all of America's intelligence agencies. He echoed what President Obama has said, and told us that Pakistan has arrested hundreds of terrorists in cities across the country over the last ten years.

Rogers also confirmed what Saleh said about the Taliban's senior leaders operating from Quetta. "No doubt about it. For far too long. It was one of those I think arranged trade-offs for other bits of cooperation," he said.

"So the U.S. knew that and accepted it?" Logan asked.

"Well, they knew that they weren't being aggressive there. It didn't stop CIA's interest in trying to determine exactly who, what, when, where in Quetta, which is -- you've been there, I've been there -- it's a difficult place to operate under any circumstances," Rogers replied.

"Why doesn't the U.S. say to Pakistan 'If you don't go after the Afghan Taliban's leadership, the Quetta Shura, we're going to do it'?" Logan asked.

"Well, that's a great point. Many pressed the administration to do just that. And there's been a constant debate, certainly on the intelligence committee about how far we go," Rogers said.

Asked if he considers Pakistan a good, strong ally, Rogers told Logan, "I would say Pakistan is an ally. There are challenges, there's serious challenges there, and ally may be too strong a word. We have yet to clearly define with each other that our national interests coincide."

Saleh says that Pakistan goes after some of America's enemies, while protecting others. It's a problem U.S. military and political leaders have raised repeatedly with their Pakistani counterparts.

There was a time when Saleh and Pakistan fought against a common enemy: the Soviets, who occupied Afghanistan during the 1980s.

Saleh was captured on film in a BBC documentary made some 20 years ago. At the age of 19, he was already a seasoned war veteran, in charge of rebuilding villages bombed in the fighting.

Like many Afghans, Saleh was born into war and grew up dirt poor.

His experience and intellect and hatred for the Taliban's extremist views helped his rapid rise to the powerful position of intelligence chief when he was just 32.

He quit the Afghan government last summer, but his reputation still opens doors for him in Washington today. When we saw him on his last trip, he had just met with some of the most senior people in the U.S. government responsible for Afghan policy.

"I asked a U.S. politician today, I said, 'How do you explain to Americans that we give billions to Pakistan and Pakistan, in return, supports the Taliban and the Taliban, in return, yesterday killed six American soldiers?'" Saleh said.

Asked what the politician said, Saleh told Logan, "His answer was not satisfactory."

"What was it?" Logan asked.

"He said, 'Well we know this,'" Saleh said.

"And no one does anything about it?" Logan asked.

"Exactly," Saleh said.

"While American soldiers come home in body bags?" Logan asked.

"Yes. Yes," he replied.

When we went to the frontlines in eastern Afghanistan last summer, we found U.S. commanders there shared Saleh's concerns about Pakistan.

Over three weeks, the American units we were with were attacked again and again.

At one point, soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division were fighting their way out of an ambush not far from the Pakistani border. They told us that as fast as they kill their enemy, they are replaced with new fighters pouring over the border in a seemingly endless supply.

"Most of the people we are fighting are from Pakistan," Lt. Col. JB Vowell told Logan.

Vowell lost 17 soldiers over the past year. He told us his forces killed hundreds of fighters in constant battles, but you can't defeat an enemy that has safe haven over the border.

"How significant is that to the strength of the enemy?" Logan asked.

"It's very," Vowell said. 'Freedom of movement and maneuver is sacrosanct. Once you have that, all things are possible."

"And that's what they have inside Pakistan?" Logan asked.

"They have a lot of that inside Pakistan," Vowell agreed.

"Do you think the U.S. should be more aggressive with Pakistan?" Logan asked Congressman Rogers.

"I do believe we have to be more aggressive. You can't put soldiers in harm's way and not be aggressive with where the enemies we know are threatening our soldiers and our country reside," he replied.

"What do you think is the most egregious thing the Pakistanis have done in this relationship with the U.S.?" Logan asked.

"I think they have disclosed operations that we have shared with them. I know that to be true. I think they've held back information that they could've possibly given us. We know that to be true. We have to negotiate even now to get access to the to the wives of bin Laden. They've been playing a funny game with us I think for internal political consumption, more so than in reality," Rogers said.

"And even now in the wake of bin Laden's death?" Logan asked.

"Yeah. They haven't been fully cooperative yet. I imagine that they will get there," Rogers said.

It took Pakistan more than a week to get there and so far they've only allowed the U.S. limited access to the wives under the supervision of Pakistan's intelligence service.

Saleh believes Pakistan should now deliver other high-value targets.

Rep. Rogers agrees. "I hope they see this as an opportunity to be more cooperative. To be more open, to help us with other targets that we have in Pakistan that we're very interested in having apprehended and brought to justice."

"Such as Al Qaeda's number two," Logan pointed out.

"Zawahiri is a great example. I believe he's in Pakistan," Rogers agreed.

Al Qaeda's leaders and the Taliban have been trying to kill Saleh for years. And when we first met him at Afghanistan's intelligence headquarters in Kabul in 2009, he was living under constant threat of assassination.

"I am a legitimate target," he told Logan at the time. "And if they kill me, I have told my family and my friends not to complain about anything, because I have killed many of them with pride."

Today, even though he's out of the government, he's still travels across the country campaigning for the defeat of al Qaeda and the Taliban and he's still a marked man.

He told Logan has was ambushed three times after he had resigned from the government. "When I was traveling, I was ambushed. The convoy I was traveling with was ambushed," he explained.

Asked if he's worried about his own survival, Saleh said, "No. No. There is a cause. And in pursuance of that cause I embrace death, it will be a dignified death."

The death of Osama bin Laden deep inside Pakistan didn't surprise Saleh because he had been making that case for years.

Saleh says he confronted former President Pervez Musharraf back in 2007. He told him Afghan intelligence believed bin Laden was in the Pakistani city of Mansehra.

Saleh told us Musharraf was so offended that he lunged at him, and that Afghan President Hamid Karzai had to intervene.

It turns out Mansehra is just 12 miles from where bin Laden was eventually found.

Lara Logan interviews Amrullah Saleh about Pakistan for 60 Minutes tonight, and Sen. John Kerry's hiccup about Pakistan's regime

The interview will air on the CBS television network at 7:00 PM Eastern Time. Senator John Kerry's plane will have already landed in Pakistan by the time the show begins; he will deliver a supposedly "tough" message, according to the Wall Street Journal: "Cooperate more in uprooting terrorists in Pakistan or face losing vital aid."

From this part of the report I have no idea what Kerry considers to be tough:

During his visit to Islamabad, Mr. Kerry is expected to press Pakistani officials to clamp down harder on militant sanctuaries along the Afghanistan border routinely used to stage attacks on U.S. forces.

Mr. Kerry, who took a short trip to the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, said there was "some evidence of Pakistan government knowledge" of militant cross-border attacks that was "very disturbing." Even so, he said he hoped to avoid a counter-productive, "recriminatory, finger-pointing" argument in Islamabad.

"For the moment, I think we want to be both hopeful and optimistic that we can work our way through this, get over this hiccup and find a positive path forward," said Mr. Kerry.

Hiccup? Americans are getting blown up and shot to pieces by forces working for Pakistan's military, and this is a hiccup?

Why would Kerry convey in public to the Pakistani regime that he viewed its atrocities against U.S. and other NATO troops and Osama bin Laden's residence in a Pakistani garrison town as a hiccup?

But if Kerry wanted to avoid a "recriminatory finger-pointing" argument, why did he blab to reporters about how he intended to deliver a tough message in Islamabad? Why didn't he just deliver the message? Why instead did he guarantee that Pakistan's leaders would get nasty with him in order to save face, when he announced to the world he was going to shove them around?

I also don't understand the reasoning of House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R.-Mich.). He told Lara Logan, in the same 60 Minute show that airs tonight, that he now believes al-Qaeda's number-two, Ayman al-Zawahir, has been hiding in Pakistan. And this:

Congressman Rogers says the U.S. has known for years that the Taliban's leaders are living inside Pakistan. "It was one of those, I think, arranged trade offs for other bits of cooperation," says Rogers.

"[The U.S.] knew [Pakistani military] weren't being aggressive there," he says, but did arrest hundreds of terrorists in other places in Pakistan.

Asked whether he thought Pakistan was a good ally of the U.S., the chairman of the committee that oversees U.S. intelligence agencies says, "I would say Pakistan is an ally. There are challenges, there's serious challenges there and 'ally' may be too strong a word," Rogers tells Logan.

Rogers says he knows the Pakistanis have disclosed U.S. operations and held back information, but believes the killing of bin Laden may lead to more cooperation.[...]

What is the sense of ruminating in public about cooperation from the Pakistani military? What is the reason for conjecture in a public forum, which hands advantages to Pakistan's leaders? Why speak in public, unless one is certain and until an objective related war to has been gained in negotiations with the Pakistani regime?

Amrullah Saleh, on the other hand, is certain about what he learned when he headed Afghanistan's security agency and thus when he speaks in public his words have clarity and force:

Pakistan has harbored America's enemies for years, says Saleh. "The senior Taliban leaders, we would learn about their locations every day," he tells Logan. He was even able to get their telephone numbers, which were traced to the Pakistani city of Quetta. The leaders there are known as the Quetta Shura.

Did the U.S. ever move against them? "Not against Quetta Shura, never," says Saleh. While American soldiers fought against an endless stream of enemy fighters staged in Pakistan, their leaders remained protected in Quetta, Saleh says.

Four recent reports from Long War Journal underscore serious threats from Pakistan-assisted terrorism continue to grow

US charges 6 Pakistani Americans, including 2 imams, with aiding Taliban
May 14, 2011

Why was key source on bin Laden's courier freed?
May 14, 2011

The Gitmo Files: Recidivist who targets charity workers deemed 'high risk'
May 11, 2011
" ... The same assessment notes that Hafiz was part of a joint Taliban and Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin (HIG) group that was trained by Pakistani military officers to attack Westerners in Afghanistan. ..."

Business is still booming at Afghan and Pakistani terror camps
May 10, 2011

Immigration and Portable Ghettoization

I wrote the following in October 2010 in reply to a reader's comments about a Pundita post titled "The British don't know who they are, so they can't teach us how to adapt." Then I sat on my reply when I came to suspect that the reader, Iftikhar Ahmad of the London School of Islamics, had sent pre-written remarks he inserted at any blog or media platform that even remotely touched on his agenda. However, after reviewing the discussion I think it's worthy of publication. See the comment section for the above post to read Ahmad's entire comment.

Dear Sir: Thank you for your comments in response to my post about the failures of multiculturalism and the problems of immigrant assimilation in Europe. Yet I do find myself in disagreement with some of your observations. Regarding your remark:

I set up the first Muslim school in 1981 and now there are 166 Muslim schools and only 11 schools are state funded. There are four Sikh state funded schools. Hindu state funded school was set up in Harrow last year and next year a Hindu state funded school would emerge in Leicester. Even Black community is thinking of setting up its own schools for black children with black teachers.

You're to be commended for a solution to an ad hoc problem but don't you see where this solution will lead, if carried to its logical conclusion?

With all due respect what you're proposing, when extended to all faiths and types of cultures, is 'portable ghettoization.' The term is not in the dictionary; I just made it up, in the attempt to describe the gestalt of the ethno-religious schools you describe.

I am sure that major transnational corporations have no problem with the idea of portable ghettoization; they simply want an efficient, docile work force. But portable ghettoization would substitute a highly tribal mindset for the civilizational one.

The desire to be surrounded by the customs of one's homeland runs counter to the most enduring reason for immigration. It's perfectly fine to want to remember one's homeland and its history, but why immigrate if one wants to haul the homeland along to the new land?

If all that one wants from another country is a job or bigger paycheck, or if one is simply fleeing intolerable conditions in one's home country, the impetus is not there to adopt the new country and its culture as one's own. When that impetus is lacking, ghettoization becomes a permanent condition.

New York City, once the major portal city in the USA for European immigrants, used to be carved into 'ghettos' that were formed from the major different immigrant populations. There was the Mittel European-Jewish quarter, the Italian quarter, the Irish quarter, then later the Puerto Rican, Vietnamese, and Korean quarters, and so on. Such quarters also existed in Boston and other major port cities in the USA.

If the children from those ghettos hadn't integrated into the larger American society via the public school system; the rise of the trade unions; the upward mobility provided by a free, pro-capitalist society; and the strong pressure that American Jewish and Christian houses of worship exerted on their flocks to integrate, the great American immigrant experiment, not to mention the American union, would have collapsed.

Another huge factor in the success of America's acceptance of large numbers of immigrants was the slowness with which the immigrants moved into the 'heartland.' The immigrants that arrived in waves in the era before the rise of aviation and cheap air fares generally stayed in the port cities where the ships that brought them to America berthed.

In those days it might have been as long as a generation before immigrant families moved from the port cities to cities and towns in USA that were outside the port regions and their suburbs. This gave the immigrants time to learn about the American society before moving to regions in the USA that were unfamiliar with the immigrants' ethnic/religious backgrounds.

With regard to your statement about segregation in some schools in England -- here I will tread carefully in my reply because I am not familiar with the specific situation you mention. However, based on what I know about the problems of immigration, I venture you're being simplistic to term the segregation you note in various parts of England as 'racism."

This is not to say there isn't racism and other kinds of bigotry in England (and in virtually every other society) but the term "racism" is increasingly being stretched to cover situations that do not arise from racism.

If the segregation you cite wasn't in force during earlier eras in England that saw non-English children going to English schools, as you suggest by noting that the situation is worsening, then one must look to factors other than racism (or religious bigotry) to understand the reasons for the segregation.

I would guess that one problem the English are facing is that while they were used to arrivals from former British colonies (many of whom were fluent English speakers who had great familiarity with the British 'culture' before arriving in England), they have been dealing with increasingly large influxes of people who are not from the former colonies and have no shared history with the British. That, combined with increasingly large refugee populations from former colonies that have repressive regimes and great economic problems, is putting a small island nation in the position of a grain of sugar set near a big ant colony.

At some point the people living in England are going to be overwhelmed by the huge influx of newcomers, and they are feeling this. I think one sign of the feeling is that reportedly many Britons of non-English ancestry have clamored to join the BNP -- a 'racist' political party that excludes people of non-British ancestry! Many U.K. citizens who do not have a English ethnic heritage see themselves as British, and don't want to be overrun by foreigners any more than those of 'native' English (or Scottish, Irish, or Welsh) ancestry do.

The fear of being overrun is not racism. It's a sign that assimilation is not keeping up with the pace of immigration from cultures that are unfamiliar to the citizens of a country. One or two unfamiliar cultures flooding in, okay, but when one is getting it from many regions of the world, it's easy to feel overwhelmed.

It's all very well and good for Americans to act superior about this situation -- the USA covers much of a huge continent! The size of the entire of Europe can be fit two and half times into the United States. So here in the USA we can absorb many more newcomers than a small country.

Another point I would make is that many of the immigrants that Europe is seeing today aren't really a globalized workforce, they're a 'fleeing force.' This force is comprised of people who are fleeing conditions in their own country, and who can only perform the most menial labor when they arrive in the new country. Many such people end up on welfare when they arrive in a country with a large welfare state, which does not contribute to the society; it drains it.

One must also make a clear distinction between a globalized work force and massive immigrations facilitated by ease of travel and immigrant-friendly national policies.

Only a minority of skilled workers is truly globalized; i.e., working in one country while claiming their primary residence and nationality in another. These expats, or nomadic 'internationals' as they're called, can be excused for wanting to live in enclaves, send their children to schools for expats, and not mingle overmuch with the citizens of the country where they're working. That's because they don't plan to put down roots in the country where they're working.

An extreme example of the unwillingness to mingle with the natives is found among Chinese expats working in African countries and several other world regions.

Thus, I am not sure the example you cite about the British in Spain not wanting to learn Spanish is a sign of bigotry although again, I'm not knowledgeable about the specific situation.

Of course there is the opposite problem: the famous 'brain drain,' where the best educated and the most ambitious flee repressive conditions in their country, which only makes conditions in the country worse! This creates a vicious cycle, where the poorest and least educated become a majority force in the country, which leads to an even greater brain drain.

There is also the situation where the wealthier immigrants don't want to mix with the poorer ones and don't want their children educated with them. This isn't racism, any more than President Barack Obama's refusal to send his daughters to a majority black Washington, DC public school is racism on his part.

Obama is not being entirely frank when he cites the lower academic standards in those public schools as his reason for wanting them to attend an exclusive private school. He also doesn't want his daughters to pick up 'gangsta' English lingo, or to be exposed to gangs and the 'drug culture' that is rampant in many Washington, DC public schools. In short, he doesn't want his daughters influenced by the underclass. The desire to protect one's offspring from the influence of the underclass is not bigotry, racism, or snobbery; it's human nature.

ISI-bin Laden links as seen by U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency in 2002. Read it and weep.

They knew. All the way back then, they knew. B. Raman knew, too. But who in the general public was reading Raman in 2003 when he wrote up an analysis of three declassified DIA reports? Everyone's eyes were turned to Iraq. So if you want to ruin your day read the analysis, which Raman republished at his blog on May 11.