On The Third Hand

D-Day was 60 years ago today. Blackfive has the definitive roundup of blogosphere posts right here.

Tenet's fall shows that spies can't rely on television for intelligence

The good news is that George Tenet has resigned as CIA Director. The bad news is he's two-and-three-quarter years late getting around to it. Tenet is the second longest-serving director, after the 1950s spymaster Allen Dulles, but Dulles's longevity availed him nought after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. By any measure, September 11 was a much bigger fiasco, and Tenet should have gone on Carringtonian grounds: "There has been a British humiliation," said Lord Carrington after the Argies seized the Falklands. "I ought to take responsibility for it."
Instead, he lingered on. Unlike the acres of floundering, speculative "analysis" in Friday's New York Times and Washington Post, I won't pretend to know why Tenet's going now. Will it damage Bush? Only in the very narrow media-perceptive sense that these days everything "damages" Bush. But here's the thing. When you look at all the recent "setbacks", "scandals", "Bush LIES!!!!!!" and other frippery that has plagued the Administration in recent months, one finds that in almost all of them the same three letters recur. From Iraq's WMD to Saddam buying uranium in Africa, from Ahmad Chalabi to Valerie Plame, at heart they are all about what the CIA said or didn't say, advised or didn't advise, leaked or got leaked on.
Scratch around the roots of the war on terror and you keep running into the Saudis. Scratch around the screw-ups in the war on terror and you keep running into the CIA. I wrote in The Spectator last year that Mr Bush has the same relationship with the agency that General Musharraf has with Pakistan's ISI: every time he makes a routine request, he has to figure out whether they are going to use it to set him up. If at any one time half-a-dozen of Tony Blair's biggest political problems arose from MI6, it would not be unreasonable to conclude that it is time to deal with the source rather than the symptoms.

As they say, RTWT.

Lockboxes, Iraqi Loot and a Trail to the Fed

When a United States Army sergeant broke through a false wall in a small building in Baghdad on a Friday afternoon a little over a year ago, he discovered more than three dozen sealed boxes containing about $160 million in neatly bundled $100 bills.
Later that day, soldiers found more cash in other hideaways near the Tigris River, in an exclusive neighborhood that elite members of Saddam Hussein's government once called home. By the end of the evening, they had amassed 164 metal boxes, all riveted shut, that held about $650 million in shrink-wrapped greenbacks. The cash was so heavy, and so valuable, that the Army needed a C-130 Hercules cargo plane to airlift it to a secure location.
Just two days later, on Sunday, April 20, 2003, Thomas C. Baxter, head of the legal unit of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, read a brief news account of the discovery. Most of the money that turned up in Baghdad was new, bore sequential serial numbers and was stored with documents indicating that it had once been held in Iraq's central bank. One fact particularly bothered Mr. Baxter: the money had markings from three Fed banks, including his own in New York.
Iraq, of course, had been subject to more than a decade of trade sanctions by the United States and the United Nations, so large piles of dollars, especially new bills, were not supposed to have found their way to Baghdad.
"How could that happen?" Mr. Baxter thought to himself, as he recalled later in Senate testimony. "Not only with U.S. sanctions, but with U.N. sanctions. How could that happen?"
Mr. Baxter and the New York Fed, along with the Treasury Department and the Customs Service, immediately began an investigation into Baghdad's currency stockpile. The continuing inquiry offers a rudimentary road map of illicit dealings - including lucrative oil smuggling - in Iraq and neighboring countries during the Hussein years, the federal authorities say.
The investigation led quickly to the vaults of four Western banks that were among a select group handling the sensitive task of distributing freshly printed dollars overseas: the Bank of America, the HSBC Group, the Royal Bank of Scotland and UBS. Several other commercial banks and foreign central banks, which the Fed did not name, also served as stopovers along Baghdad's money trail, according to a written account Mr. Baxter provided to the Senate Banking Committee about two weeks ago.
None of the four main banks the Fed scrutinized had sent currency directly to Iraq. But as the inquiry wore on last year, investigators learned that UBS, Switzerland's largest bank, had transferred $4 billion to $5 billion to four other countries that were under sanctions: Libya, Iran, Cuba and the former Yugoslavia. Over an eight-year period, UBS employees had quietly shipped the money to those countries from a vault at the Zurich airport, undetected by Fed auditors who made regular visits to the site.

Interesting stuff, although the headline is a bit misleading. The Fed is only blamed for not catching it.

A Bellow From The Den........

The mullahs and ayatollahs of Iran are now opening a Suicide Terror School. See the article here, complete with an application form.

MB is left speechless!

Via ActivistChat

Mourning in America: Ronald Reagan Dies at 93

Requiescat in pace.

I wish I had a flagpole so I could fly the flag at half-staff. [Edited from 'half-mast' because Misanthropyst,in comments, is right that half-staff is the correct term, and I do prefer to do things correctly at times like this. Even when the incorrect term is more commonly used and understood. ]

Blackfive

The Sixtieth Anniversary of D-Day
This is a not-to-be-missed roundup of D-Day posts from all over the blogoshpere.

Command Post's Op-ed section

Lessons of History by Alan E. Brain
Yes Virginia, there really are parallels between this war and WWII.

Winds of Change

Winds of Discovery is a monthly roundup of science news. There's some fascinating stuff there, and it's a nice break from the usual war and politics news.

The Religious Policeman

Our Saudi blogger has a dream .

Sources: Reagan's health deteriorating

We may, or may not, have sad news soon. I don't trust 'sources' and the White House has made no official statement yet. However, Joe Gandelman, who knows more of this kind of thing than I do, thinks this was an 'official' unofficial release. He may well be correct.

[Update] He was correct.

Washington will prop up the House of Saud - for now

I sometimes wonder what headline writers are thinking. Despite this headline this article in the Guardian is actually an excellent analysis of what is going on in Saudi Arabia politically and religiously. The part mentioning the US is two paragraphs and is more an aside than the thrust of the article. Ignore the headline. Recommended reading.

Guard unit, FBI investigating suspicious calls

Intelligence officers from the 278th Armored Cavalry Regiment and the FBI are looking into a series of suspicious phone calls to family members of local soldiers possibly bound for Iraq.
R. Joe Clark, special agent in charge of the FBI's Knoxville office, said Friday the unusual phone calls are the first to his knowledge made to family members of reserve troops anywhere in the country.
"It's not as much an investigation as it is a threat assessment analysis," Clark said. "We need to separate the fly specks from the pepper."
The probe began earlier this week after a woman identified by WVLT, Channel 8, as the wife of a 278th soldier said her daughter had taken the strange calls from a man with an accent.
Diana Heerdt said the man, who claimed he was calling from Loudon, questioned her daughter about the unit's deployment timeline and when it would return home, the station reported.
Clark confirmed the caller asked about the unit's "itinerary."
A caller ID machine identified the number as originating from New Jersey.
Clark said the Joint Terrorism Task Force offices in Knoxville and Newark, N.J., are cooperating in the analysis. An official from the Joint Terrorism Task Force said the office knows of at least two suspicious phone calls where the caller sought the same type of information.
...
Clark urged anyone else who receives suspicious phone calls to alert the unit's leadership as well as local law enforcement.

I don't know quite what to think of this one but I thought I'd pass it along. There's a good chance it's not just happening in Knoxville. (Knoxville news requires registration but I've pulled out the relevant data.) Anyone with family deploying needs a heads-up on this one.

CIA spies more trouble on the horizon

The resignation of George Tenet, the director of America's Central Intelligence Agency, is just the beginning of what promises to be one of the worst periods in the often troubled history of the service.
Last night the agency announced that James Parvitt, its deputy director for operations, who is in charge of spies abroad, was resigning. While CIA officials insisted that his decision to quit was taken long before Mr Tenet resigned, it will add to the perceived sense of crisis at the agency.

It does look a bit suspicious. I wonder who else will resign.

A Snarl From The Den........

These words from someone who's been there and had that done to her are chilling beyond belief.

As a former political prisoner, I have been asked on many occasions what has kept the mullahs’ regime in power in Iran for twenty five years. After all, the overwhelming majority of Iranians loathe them; their oil-driven economy is in shambles, with a majority of the population below the poverty line or very close to it. Internationally they are condemned as the most active sponsor of terrorism and major proliferators of weapons of mass destruction. So, what is their secret?

The headline above is the headline of the article from which these quotes are taken. She has some information and thoughts about the situation in Iran which are well worth reading.

On their own, the mullahs will never abandon the suppression of Iranians, close down their torture chambers, send away the firing squads, and dismantle the gallows. Therefore, Iran’s democracy movement, which rightly seeks the toppling of this regime as the necessary first step to establish a secular democracy in Iran, must be empowered to tear down this wall of suppression. When that happens, the world would see how fast the mullahs’ regime would crumble.

RTWT, as they say !!

Via Iran va Jahan

The New Defeatism

If this caring world is worried about the injustice of a fence or Islamaphobia, then start slurring nuclear India for its $1 billion fence, which shuts off the entire (impoverished Muslim) country of Bangladesh — a far harsher blow to far more millions than Israel's so-called "Wall" aimed at stopping suicide killing.
If we hate the principle of "occupied lands," then let Europe cease trade with China and hector that dictatorial government about the cultural obliteration of occupied Tibet.
If we are truly worried about violence, then let the U.N. and the EU turn their attention to Nigeria, where thousands are murdered yearly.
If the death of tens of thousands of Muslims and the desecration of mosques bother the Arab League, then let them blast the Arabs of the Sudan, who are systematically and in the most racist fashion butchering black Muslims.

Today's recommended reading.

• China censors CNN over Tiananmen
• Remembering Tiananmen
• Exorcising Tiananmen's ghosts
• Beijing's social contract is starting to fray

Fifteen years ago today.

Pentagon Proposes Troop Reductions in Germany

The Pentagon has put forward a plan to withdraw two Army divisions from Germany and make other changes in its European forces in a sweeping global realignment of the U.S. military, The New York Times reported on Friday.
The aim is to give the U.S. military greater flexibility in sending forces to the Middle East, Central Asia and other potential battlegrounds, the newspaper said, citing Pentagon policymakers.
Some experts and allied officials are concerned the shift would reduce Washington's influence in NATO and weaken diplomatic links with its allies, the Times said.

[snark]Germany is an ally?[/snark] They should have done this a year ago but better late than never.

Giuliani Could Be Waiting In The Wings

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Porter Goss (R-Fla.) has emerged as a leading candidate to head the CIA — but some insiders are also talking up former Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
President Bush appointed George Tenet's deputy, John McLaughlin, as the CIA's interim director yesterday, and officials said the president may wait until after the elections to select a new chief.
Officials said Bush may delay naming a new CIA head because there are a series of investigations and reviews of the CIA's failures now under way in Congress that are likely to result in recommendations for widespread restructuring of U.S. intelligence agencies.
Garnering bipartisan backing, Goss, a popular Republican from Florida, is considered the early leader to replace Tenet, administration officials said.
A former CIA agent and Army Intelligence officer in the 1960s and '70s, Goss played a key role in the investigations of the CIA's recent intelligence failures and would win easy Senate confirmation, sources said.
But there is also a groundswell of support for Giuliani, a tough manager who won widespread praise for his leadership in the wake of the 9/11 attacks.

I don't think so. Guiliani has not got the experience for that job. If I had my choice, I'd put Giuliani in Ashcroft's place.