The Spanish elections

Both sides of the debate are missing the point on this one. Spain was not targeted prior to the elections because if it had a center-right government and al-Qaeda believed that center-left governments are easier to defeat. If one takes a look at Iraq al-Jihad, the al-Qaeda strategy document that came to light in the wake of the Madrid bombings, one can very clearly see that the merits or lack thereof regarding the Popular Party versus the Socialist Party were not much considered by the orchestrators of the attack. Certainly al-Qaeda cares little over the various domestic issues that appear to be near and dear to President Zapatero's heart at this particular junction. Rather, the Spanish elections were targeted because the Socialist Party had, on its party platform, a pledge to pull Spanish troops out of Iraq barring a UN mandate. If a Democratic candidate adopted this position (and to the best of my knowledge John Kerry has not), the Republican Party would accuse him of wanting to cut and run - and rightly so, in my view.

Understand, every Spanish soldier that wasn't in Iraq was one less member of the coalition that Abu Musab Zarqawi and his followers didn't have to kill in order to achieve their objectives. Moreover, by influencing a Western election al-Qaeda achieved something that has long been the dream of Arab nationalists across the Middle East since the days of Nasser: influence over a major Western power. Just on account of the perception existing that al-Qaeda was able to influence a Western nation's election, the organization's stock rose sharply among like-minded Islamists.

One other thing I want to make very clear, incidentally, is that Iraq al-Jihad is not about al-Qaeda's plot to topple center-right parties and replace them with their center-left counterparts as a prelude to their conquest of the West. Indeed, a fair portion of the document is spent examining British politics and plotting a fate similar to that suffered by President Aznar for Tony Blair, whom I trust still has reliable center-left domestic credentials if my Tory friends are any source on which to base that position. In short, the lesson that needs to be learned from examining what happened in Spain is that when al-Qaeda seeks to influence elections, it does so strictly in its own interests rather than in those of either the incumbent or the challenging party. If Aznar had been running against a right-wing isolationist in the mold of Pat Buchanan who had also vowed the withdrawl of Spanish troops, Jamal Zougam still would have led the cell that planted those bombs in Madrid and when Zougam entered the courtroom after spending several days in isolation, his first question still would have been, "So who won the elections?"

Who indeed.

So who do we bomb?

I've written about what is in my mind the self-apparent fact that the majority of al-Qaeda's surviving leadership has relocated to Iran. However, it's always nice to have your views reaffirmed in writing, so I was pleasantly surprised the other day when al-Sharq al-Awsat via AFP stated quite up-front that there are over 384 al-Qaeda members, including 18 senior leaders, who are currently living at facilities under the control of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The al-Sharq place doesn't say who these people are, but previous press reports have identified Saif al-Adel, Saad bin Laden, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, Abu Mohammed al-Masri, Abu Khayr, Abu Musab Zarqawi, Amer Azizi, Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, Mahfouz Ould Walid, and Abu Khalid as being among the 18 senior leaders mentioned. There are also a number of credible (in my view and those of people I trust) press reports which have claimed that bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri have taken up residence Iran as well, leaving behind body doubles in northern Pakistan. I do know that at least one al-Zawahiri double, an Uzbek by the name of Thuraya (not to be confused with the satellite phone type of the same name) was killed by Pakistani forces during the spring 2004 offensive in South Waziristan. Whether or not bin Laden is in Iran, however, his military chief al-Adel is and he is going to be the ultimate architect of any future mass casualty attack on the United States.

Now the AFP story is important because it identifies the specific locations where these 300+ folks (and I've heard the number cited as high as 500) are based at, while as specific as we ever got before was a piece in Okaz via Rantburg identifying the Iranian al-Qaeda haven as being located somewhere in the Namak region. AFP got even more specific by naming the two specific locations as being Chalus (Chalous) and Lavizan.

Chalus is a resort town along the Caspian Sea and the lavish villas being referenced here are all owned by members of Qods Force, the elite of the IRGC, which are answerable only to Ayatollah Khamenei. It is perhaps worth noting that Chalus is also quite close to an underground nuclear weapons development facility that has at various times been staffed by Russian, Chinese, and North Korean experts. In case anyone is curious, it is currently being staffed by scientists from the latter nation, which is a fairly clear indication in my view that the individuals at the facility are in all likelihood up to no good.

Lavizan is even more interesting - it's one of the biggest and most heavily-defended IRGC bases in all of Iran. It received a fair amount of press not too long ago when its occupants decided to engage in some creative revisions at the Shiyan Technical Research Center prior to an inspection visit by members of the IAEA. Lavizan, I should also mention, is unfortunately nestled right in the middle of the 8,500,000 or so people who make up the inhabitants of the greater metropolitan area of Tehran. This is where Saif al-Adel in particular is reputed to be based, and Iranian assurances of him being "in custody" to the contrary, I am of the opinion that it's probably not a good idea to have one of the most dangerous terrorists on the planet apparently at the same location as the Iranian nuclear program. Call me paranoid, but there's just something about this that rubs me the wrong way.

Now then, a lot of people are starting to ask questions about Khalid al-Harbi, a member of bin Laden's entourage who can be seen on the videotape in which he's gloating over the 9/11 attacks. Al-Harbi, Iranian assurances to the contrary, was not picked up on the Iranian-Afghan border but was among those senior al-Qaeda leaders who sought shelter with the IRGC and VEVAK following the events of Operation Enduring Freedom and until recently was staying at one of the IRGC villas just outside of Chalus until he was moved first to an IRGC safe house near Qom and then eventually to the Saudi embassy in Tehran, where he returned home to be greeted by a sizeable crowd of admirers.

To understand the more complex rationale as to why al-Harbi was sent home, please stay with me on this one. Saudi statements to the contrary, al-Qaeda has dealt a number of extremely serious blows to the Kingdom in recent months, even to the point of attacking the oil trade. This has caused all manner of concern among both the pragmatists and the hardliners among the princes, leading to the current amnesty offer at the behest of Safar al-Hawali, bin Laden's spiritual advisor and an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 WTC bombing. Al-Hawali has promised the princes that he can work out a deal with al-Qaeda to return to the pre-May 2003 relationship with the two parties, but al-Qaeda has scorned Crown Prince Abdullah's amnesty offer, though neither their punitive replacement for Abdul Aziz al-Muqrin, a former prison sergeant named Saleh Mohammed Awadallah al-Alawi al-Oufi or the true al-Qaeda leader in Saudi Arabia Louis Attiyat Allah have carried out any additional attacks. Al-Harbi was returned to Iran at Saudi request to ensure that, should al-Hawali's bid fail, that the princes still have an ace-in-the-hole to use to rein in al-Qaeda: an associate of bin Laden's with genuine jihadi credentials who has seen the Light™ and is no longer calling for the overthrow of the royal family. One final point to be made about al-Harbi is that while he was a CIA contact in Afghanistan during the 1980s and in Bosnia during the early 1990s, that had nothing to do with why the Iranians or al-Qaeda handed him over to the Kingdom.

But back to Iran. If the US suffers a mass casualty terrorist attack in the immediate future, Iran will be the immediate target of reprisal. Period. The decision by the Iranian government, whether it's as a matter of official state policy or simply the private whims of the hardliners, is currently being shoved under the rug by the majority of US policy-makers. We are quite free to leave well enough alone in this regard, just as we did in the late 1990s with Afghanistan harboring the Taliban. However, leaving Iran to its own devices indefinitely is simply untenable, if for no other reason then that we're going to be pretty much guaranteed the same results - this time from what is very likely to be a nuclear power.

Anybody want to take any chances on that one? Anyone? Bueller?

Please understand, I do not favor a US invasion of Iran at this point, if for no other reason than it is logistically unfeasible at this point in time. However, if there is another mass casualty attack on the United States, I don't think that any US president is going to have the option of that kind of restraint.

Muqtada al-Sadr

I've been getting a fair amount of e-mail concerning the current state of Muqtada al-Sadr, a good portion of it from well-meaning abeit in my view mistaken readers of Professor Juan Cole, who has tied Israel to the violence in Fallujah as well as the Abu Gharib prison scandal and more or less believes that the majority of US claims concerning the presence of foreign fighters inside Iraq are nothing more than an elaborate facade as part of the sinister neocon plot to eventually invade and conquer Syria and Iran. These differences of opinion between myself and Professor Cole aside, the Christian Science Monitor has a pretty good piece up on how Sadr is attempting to recoup his losses in the aftermath of his failed "popular uprising" back in April. According to the CSM account, the Mahdi Army is down to roughly 500 fighters - as compared to the 10,000 that it boasted at its height. Sadr's Iranian-based mentor Ayatollah al-Haeri (who is the real guy to keep your eyes set on in all of this) has already washed his hands clean of his protege's debacle, abeit after Sadr's followers started fleeing or dying in droves at the hands of American and Iraqi forces.

Now, Professor Cole is quite right to point out that there a number of minor theological differences between Sadr and the official religious orthodoxy of Iran as expounded upon by Ayatollah Khamenei and his predecessor. However, just to make a comparison that should hopefully make sense to most of my readers, these differences are fairly minute, especially when compared with that manifested by say, Grand Ayatollah Sistani. Certainly there are greater theological differences between Khamenei and Yemeni Zaidi Shi'ite cleric Hussein Badr Eddin al-Huthi, who also receives a fair amount of Iranian funding and weaponry these days. However, the IRGC and VEVAK are quite capable of backing any number of factions who ideologically or even theologically opposed to the official orthodoxy of the Islamic Republic, just as any number of Western or communist intelligence agencies have during various periods in history. Ayatollah al-Haeri, Sadr's mentor, is part of the ruling class of Shi'ite clerics inside Iran and as open-source reporting alone will tell you, Sadr and the Mahdi Army have received a great deal of money, training, weaponry (abeit the crappy variety, the 57-mm anti-aircraft guns mentioned in the CSM account are ZSU 57-2s ...), and logistical assistance from Iran.

But what about the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), one might ask? Aren't their Badr Brigades militia also funded and trained by the IRGC? Yes, however, SCIRI, which has been used by the Islamic Republic for the last two decades as the opposite number to the Iraqi-backed Mujahideen-e-Khalq (MEK) is loyal to the civilian government of President Mohammed Khatami, not to the IRGC or VEVAK. Khatami, who is often mischaracterized as a "moderate" by the Western and in particular the European press, does share the hardliners' goal of Shi'ite hegemony in Iraq, but he prefers a "one man, one vote, one time" means of accomplishing this versus a direct confrontation with the Americans. Amir Taheri explained a great deal of this prior to the war in one of his columns and extrapolating from that I don't think that it's all that unlikely to say that Iranian domestic politics haven't spilled over into Iraq in a very bloody fashion with the Badr Brigades joining the Ansar al-Sistani (an ad-hoc militia made up of moderate followers of Ayatollah Sistani) and the Polish-Bulgarian contingent in fighting off the Mahdi Army in Karbala, whom SCIRI's handlers likely view quite rationally as the natural outgrowth of their own domestic political opponents.

In short, the question of whether or not Sadr should be classified as an Iranian pawn is a complicated one, but I'd say that at the very least he can be seen as a tool being used by the Iranian hardliners to advance their own political agenda with respect to Iraq and the rest of the Middle East. The reports of Hezbollah (including its operations chief Imad Mugniyeh), Iranian agents, baseeji, and IRGC irregulars disguised as pilgrims fighting alongside the Mahdi Army during their uprising are too credible to ignore and when you combine that with the $80,000,000 or so that Iran paid to bankroll his insurgency, I think that his theological views aside it becomes quite clear whose behest he was working for.

The size and composition of the Iraqi insurgency

There have been a number of recent AP and even one al-Jazeera story on the fact that the figure of 5,000 or so insurgents frequently cited by US officials is probably inaccurate. This is true, but it needs to be understood that the number of insurgents fighting inside Iraq at any given time isn't fixed and varies depending on any number of factors. Back in April, when we had both Sadr and Fallujah erupting simultaneously, there could easily have been anywhere between 10-25,000 insurgents fighting the coalition. The Mahdi Army at its height fielded roughly 10,000 fighters, for example, and the fact that most reliable reporting has put them at between 500-800 should serve as an illustration of just how badly the coalition tore apart Sadr. The reason for the rapid attrition of Sadr's forces doesn't mean that we slaughtered them all to a man (though a good chunk of them did end up dead) so much as it is that many of the Mahdi Army fighters were little more than slum kids who were easily enticed to join Sadr's forces through the offer of easy cash.

Moreover, there appears to be a great deal of confusion about the composition of foreign fighters active inside Iraq. This issue is actually a lot more complex than it is normally explained due to the proclivities of al-Qaeda operatives for having any number of forged documents on their personage at any given time. In the case of the several hundred European Islamists who have been recruited by Zarqawi to fight in Iraq for example, many of them were routed to Syria by Abderrazak al-Mahdjoub (the former head of al-Qaeda's European recruiting network who is now in German custody) where they met an individual who went by the kuniyat or assumed name of Mullah Fuad and received either legitimate or fake Syrian or Iraqi documentation. At least several British and Italian al-Qaeda members are known to have taken part in suicide bombings inside Iraq and at least one Italian al-Qaeda recruit is believed to have helped to mastermind the assassination attempt on Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz in October 2003. However, as in many cases the only means of identifying dead insurgents is by any documents they were carrying upon them, it is quite difficult to determine the exact point of origin for many of these folks.

More to the point, the Iraqi al-Qaeda contingent is, in reflection of the variance reflected within the network, a coalition of several different groups, including a number of reasonably indigeneous Islamist organizations: Ansar al-Islam, Salafist Jihad, and Jaish Mohammed. The first is an Iraqi Kurdish group that I'm sure everyone here remembers from before the war and is now regrouping with help from Iran, while the second consists of Iraqi Sunnis who were recruited to join al-Qaeda after the fall of the Baathist regime, and the third is an alliance between foreign al-Qaeda fighters led by a Saudi national who uses the kuniyat of Abu Abdullah and members of the Iraqi Mukhabarat and Special Security Organization. All of these groups have definite ties and allegiance to the global terror network headed up by Osama bin Laden, yet the majority of their members are native Iraqis. So are these native Iraqi groups or are they homegrown? Here again, that depends on who you ask.

One thing needs to be understand, however: the surviving Baathists have moved beyond fighting for a restoration of the Revolution™, it's moved beyond that by this point. Former Vice Revolutionary Command Council Chairman Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri and at least 2 of his sons have renounced both the tenets of Sufism and the Baathist ideals of infidel socialism, pledged bayat to Zarqawi and folded whatever remains of the former Republican Guard and Special Republican Guard troops into his organization. The sheer number of suicide bombings, gruesome beheadings of hostages intended to mimic the brutal hadd punishments of apostates in Saudi Arabia, and willingness to work across political or even sectarian lines in the interest of fighting both the coalition and the new Iraqi government should be seen as nothing less than an implementation of the strategy articulated in both Iraq al-Jihad as well as in the final work of the late Yousef al-Ayyeri, both of which agree that the formation of a stable democracy inside Iraq must be defeated at any and all cost.

From emails from folks who've actually worked in the National Archives, security procedures for handling classified info are much tighter. And Berger didn't do this only one time.

What we have here, much like we did in the case of John Deutch, wasn't a lack of awareness of security procedures, nor was it negligence; it was contempt. Berger didn't feel like the rules should apply to him, so he stuffed documents in his pants and left. Deutch, as the Director of Central Intelligence, knew full well he wasn't supposed to be keeping Top Secret material on his unsecured home computer (that his family members also had access to), but he did it anyway. For blatant disregard of security procedures, Deutch was let off with a slap on the wrist, and Clinton issued a last-minute pardon for him.

At some point, a senior administration official needs to actually receive the same treatment that a rank and file cleared employee does, when displaying such blatant contempt for our security procedures. I don't care if they're Republicans or Democrats, aside from the damage their security breaches cause, this behavior, if unpunished, will only encourage future officials to behave the same way. For so long as people make excuses for this kind of behavior, it is going to continue, and next time it may not just be a case of removing info that was possibly damaging to their reputation. In my opinion, Berger deserves prison time.

Update: Dave Schuler was kind enough to point out I was spelling Deutch's name like I would the german language. Corrected.

Hong Kong, Taiwan and China

• Richard notes that, as is often the case, the media sometimes has hidden agendas on this issue too. Tom weighs in on the issue including a quote stating this could be the cause of World War 3 and ACB notes the US Congress again backed the Taiwan Relations Act.

• I used to think this was alarmist but I'm more realistic now - the depth of feeling on this issue is difficult to fathom for those outside. On a similar note, ESWN looks at the "Summer Pulse 04" story and the various options for "war" against China and how a bit of simple fact-checking would make the LA Times a better paper. Adam also has links on Summer Pulse, and Gary Farber had a long and detailed round-up back on July 15th.

• ESWN looks at some opinion polls for HK's LegCo elections in September and notes the high undecided vote up for grabs and the lack of platforms for the campaigning parties. He also translates a From 7 student's views on the recent HK march and the crowd estimates.

• Danwei on spin in China. ESWN also notes the perverse effects of Hong Kong's libel laws on reporting stories. ACB notes China is now redubbing stories to prevent news leaking out to English or Japanese speakers.

• Marmot has an article from Foreign Affairs on the rise of Asia and its influence in the shifting sands of international relations. Marmot says the lessons of history need to be heeded on both sides in dealing with this new reality. It's a forward-looking analysis of emerging geo-politics which doesn't get as much airplay as it should because of the focus on the Middle East.

• ESWN translates a chapter of a report on Chinese peasantry and notes that often China's political leadership need to work hard to get around their bureaucrats and effect change. I don't agree with the conclusions reached (at the bottom of the translation) that China needs to solve its problems its own way. A democratic leader is just as likely to visit many of the country's counties as an imposed one - a democratic leader needs votes; the imposed one needs legitimacy.

• Gut Rumbles notes China's "softening up" of Singapore's next PM.

• Chinese Suburbia points to an interesting site called China Elections. The conclusions are obvious: democracy involves far more than just elections. Rule of law, non-arbitrary detention, private property rights and many more elements are needed for a viable democracy. Nothing new there, but important points nonetheless.

• Fumier looks at HK driving and how not to teach it. He also points to the invaluable 30th anniversary Hello Kitty quiz, a must for Hemlock.

• Chris talks about the madness of crowds when a typhoon approaches. Wanbro has an imaginatively-titled post that agrees it was much ado about nothing.

• TR talks about the latest Chinese war on the internet: this time against p0rn.

• The Tapei Kid says fakes are everywhere these days.

• Via Fons comes this summary of a "crisis" in China blogging. Sounds like a case of beal to me.

• As to Fons' description that blogs should maintain strict focus, I completely disagree. Blogs are at the discretion of their author: if they want success then perhaps strict focus is one way to attain it. However there are plenty of different blog styles, just like there are plenty of TV channels or newspapers. It is these differences that make things interesting. Anyway Fons and John both point to this article on a fictitious China expat blogger. It is harsh and not entirely fair and seemingly devoid of a point. Some blogs are written by (mainly) American ESL teachers in China. However much you don't agree with them, they all have interesting insights into life in China from their point of view. And like everything on the internet, if you don't like it or you're not interested you don't have to read it. In all it seems a patronising article towards these bloggers. If the author had a blog himself he might be in a better place to pass judgement.

• Phil Sen (who's blog just turned 1) notes that China is getting quicker at putting up walls.

Korea and Japan

• Korea's ongoing censorship of blogs continues. Kevin has more here, an exchange with Marmot on the issue here, an analysis of the blocking and more here, and finally an interesting post leading on from the whole issue onto the idea of moral equivalence. He's also got a flattering write-up on a Korean news site (via Kimchee GI). FY thought the ban might be over, but it turns out someone was just asleep at the wheel. Blinger has ongoing coverage of the whole fracas.

• Kimchee GI says the North Koreans are no longer pretending about nukes.

• RiK laments the poor state of reporting in Korea's media with a thorough example of how bad (and racist) it can be.

• Adam and Marmot report on a cyber-attack on South Korean networks out of China.

• Marmot has the links on the capture of what looks like South Korea's worst serial killer. He also talks about the importance of names and the history they reflect.

• Jodi points out a double standard in Japan's handling of Bobby Fischer and Robert Jenkins.

• She also thinks Robert Jenkins at least owes the US military an explanation.

SE Asia

• Following up on the pullout of the Philippines from Iraq: Michelle Malkin responds to some mail and has some more links on the issue. The Sassy Lawyer succinctly responds to Jay Leno's quips and the reactions to it. She also summarises the deeper reasons behind the moves. I disagree with her: despite the history of the Philippine/US relationship, a long and complex one, the political reality is this pullout makes Iraq more dangerous for others still there and it is a slap in the face for the US after it's support in helping the Philippines deal with its Muslim insurgents. The other side is nicely presented by Dean Jorge Bocobo who has more here and here. Jodi agrees with Dean.

• Who knew? Andres says Israel helped set up Singapore's armed forces.

• The Swanker points to an Asia Times article on the shifting political sands in Indonesia.

Miscellany

• Jodi talks about culture shock when Western pop culture hits SE Asia.

Sensing says, quite reasonably:

...what does Annie herself actually relate? Only this:

1. My husband and I noticed Arab men boarding the airliner and that made us scared.
   
2. Before and during the flight, the Arabs did some things that made us even more scared, especially their trips to the loo. At least some of the other passengers and crew expressed or displayed concern or fear also. These fears compounded until the plane landed.
   
3. There were federal air marshals aboard, but they didn't do anything.
   
4. The plane landed safely and normally. We all egressed as rapidly as possible.
   
5. Agents from multiple LE organizations met the plane and detained the 14 men. They were investigated and released. FAMS identified them as a band playing a gig in a casino near LA.
   
6. We were interviewed by the FBI and gave sworn statements, then went on our way.

That's pretty much it, folks. That is what is in the text about what actually occurred. Annie does a lot of dot connecting from one TSA alert or warning to another, then connects them all to the 14 men, who were in fact guilty of nothing except stupidity or inexcusable unconcern/arrogance at how their fellow passengers were reacting to them.

But beyond that, here's the rub.

Keith Code, an author and (great) instructor who teaches about motorcycle racing, talks about the notion of limited attention: "Each person has a fixed amount of attention while riding a motorcycle. This is represented as a $10 bill worth of attention. If you spend five dollars of it on one aspect of riding, you have only five dollars left for all the other aspects. Spend nine and you have only one dollar left, and so on."

If we've made up our minds that the terrorist threat is going to be from groups of Arab men, we've spent all of our attention in one place. What's going on elsewhere?

We will have created a single-purpose, brittle defense mechanism that is both going to wear out quickly, as the overwhelming number of false positives drains the resources and credibility of the system, and is going to keep us watching Penn's right hand while Teller picks our pocket.

So let's not do that, OK?

BOLIVIA

• Despite threats of disruption that ultimately didn't materialize, Bolivia's five question referendum regarding the vast reserves of natural gas passed on Sunday, July 18. This certainly seems to strengthen President Carlos Mesa's hand as he presses forward with implementing changes in how Bolivia deals with extracting and selling the second largest reserves of natural gas in the continent.

• You can also depend on Bolivian bloggers Miguel Centellas, Eduardo Avila and Miguel Buitrago for coverage of the natural gas issue as it continues to develop. Centellas has an excellent analysis of the referendum here and Buitrago has more details here.

• In today's New York Times is an interesting profile of Mesa. Eduardo Gamarra, the head of the Latin American Studies program at Miami's Florida International University and a Bolivian said of the task facing President Mesa, "Here you have a guy who has no control over the armed forces, no control over the police . . . He basically controls the palace, and he has the daunting mission of trying to re-found the country."

• I have to agree with Gamarra to the extent that Mesa is hardly out of the woods on this issue. Rumblings of discontent and unwillingness to accept their lot among the indigenous in South America are on the increase and who can blame them? These are the people who globalization has done little to help. If Mesa can convince the indigenous community to trust in him while convincing Congress that he has a strong mandate from the public for the referendum, he will have performed one of history's most impressive balancing acts.

CHILE

• The recent US Senate investigation into Riggs Bank and its flouting of rules designed to prevent money laundering disclosed an interesting fact: former Chilean dictator and accused human rights abuser Augusto Pinochet is a millionaire! The key question is, how did he get this money?

• Although Pinochet left the presidency in 1990 after losing the plebiscite in 1988, he remained a general and head of the armed forces, yet according to the report, the accounts have existed since 1994. Riggs also engaged in several subterfuges to avoid detection of the funds; a maenuver that was most critical when Spanish Judge, Baltazar Garzón was seeking Pinochet's extradition to Spain in 1998-99 and had issued an order to freeze his assets.

• Riggs helped Pinochet set up phony offshore companies; opened accounts in their names and altered names on the accounts to conceal his control of them; conducted transactions through Riggs' own accounts to hide Pinochet's involvement in some cash transactions; hid the existence of his accounts from comptroller's office examiners for two years and initially resisted the regulators' requests for information, much of which happened (including the creation of the phony companies) before Pinochet's arrest in London in October 1998. The bank clearly schemed to hide these assets, including using the general's matronomial name (Ugarte) and his wife's maiden name (Hiriart) to thwart electronic searches for Pinochet's accounts. Now that is some fine personal banking!

• Pinochet's defenders say that the funds (in the neighborhood of US$8 million at Riggs) are legitimate and came from the proceeds of speaking engagements and smart investments in stocks by Pinochet. Nevertheless, this doesn't answer why the scheming to conceal the funds took place.

• Chilean online magazine El Mostrador (Spanish only paid subscription required) quoted current government spokesman, Francisco Vidal as saying that "No one in Chile, absolutely no one in today's Chile could, little by little put together something like this legally." Indeed, Chile is perenially regarded as the most transparent country in Latin America by Transparency International. There was an attempt to mount an investigation into allegations that Pinochet's son, Augusto was receiving kickbacks from military-run businesses, but the military in a maneuver as subtle as a brick wall known as "the Boinazo" on May 28, 1993, intimidated the civilian government into ending the investigation. One hopes that this time the facts will come out.

BRAZIL

• I spent a couple of hours yesterday with my friend Beto and his family as they visited New York. Beto works for US bank in Brazil and had lived in New York working for the same bank for a couple of years. I would be making a grand understatement if I said that he was less than sanguine about Brazil's economy.

• Unemployment dropped .9% in May, but that was from a three year high in and it still remains at a brutal 12.2%. Underemployment still remains a major problem and wages remain stagnant at best. Last weekend thousands marched to protest unemployment and the nation's slow recovery from last year's worst economic performance in eleven years.

• There are some encouraging signs. Industrial capacity is at 82.5%, exports are up (currency weakness may be a factor in this), retail sales are rising and the trade surplus keeps breezing along. Interest rates still remain high compared to US rates. Beto told me that the prime was in the neighborhood of 16%. Brazil, which has one of the major benchmark bonds (denominated in dollars) for emerging economies due to mature in 2040 could be impacted if the US Federal Reserve increases interest rates as The Economist noted here.

• Brazil has nationwide state and municipal elections this October (runoffs in November if necessary). These elections could be the best barometer as to public satisfaction with Lula's handling of the economy, especially if the unemployment drop in May doesn't continue.

MEXICO

• It appears that Mexican President Vicente Fox, if he leaves no other lgeacy after he leaves office, he will at least address some of his country's history of impunity. Part of that effort may very well encompass charges being brought against former President Luis Echevarría. Echevarría, a member of the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party, arguably one of history's great oxymorons), for his alleged involvement in the massacre of twenty-six student protestors in 1971.

• PRI officials are claiming that is political payback, but I'm not convinced. The PRI controlled the Mexican presidency for seventy years. As this online briefing book from the National Security Archives shows, their rule was often quite brutal. Who else could be responsible for Mexico's Dirty War and such horrific incidents that preceded it like the Tlatolelco Massacre?

ARGENTINA

• Last Sunday, July 18, marked the tenth anniversary of the bombing of the AMIA Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires which killed 85 and was probably the work of Hezbollah. While President Kirchner has made a sincere effort to push the case forward (unlike his predecessors, especially Carlos Menem), there is a feeling among some that the investigation is dead in the water.

• This is most unfortunate, but clearly a major portion of the blame for this failure belongs squarely in Menem's shoulders. His efforts to solve this crime were neglible and there have been allegations that he received US$10 million to cover up allegations of Iran's involvement in the bombing. Menem has been able to fight extradition from Chile, his wife's country, to Argentina, for corruption allegations. Menem is 73 and one wonders if he will take whatever knowledge he may have in this case to the grave with him.

FILM RECOMMENDATION

• The only time I can remember seeing Colombians being portrayed in Hollywood films are as one-dimensional drug dealers in such films as Blow, Collateral Damage and Clear And Present Danger.

• I live in a community (Jackson Heights, New York) with a significant Colombian emigre population and I count a number of Colombians as my friends. So you can imagine their interest and mine in the new film, Maria, Full of Grace that shows the complexity of life in the troubled country and its immigrants here in Jackson Heights. It's an independent film, currently showing in Los Angeles and New York and could use your support. It features a performance by Catalina Sandino Moreno in the title role and I can only say that it is one of those truly rare performances where you simply do not feel that the actor is in fact, "acting." Don't miss it.

Randinho's Latin America Briefing will be back next month, including news about Venezuela's referendum. Meanwhile, regular updates concerning Latin American events can be found at Beautiful Horizons.

Global warming has finally been explained: the Earth is getting hotter because the Sun is burning more brightly than at any time during the past 1,000 years, according to new research.

A study by Swiss and German scientists suggests that increasing radiation from the sun is responsible for recent global climate changes.

...

Dr Solanki said that the brighter Sun and higher levels of "greenhouse gases", such as carbon dioxide, both contributed to the change in the Earth's temperature but it was impossible to say which had the greater impact.

[1] Comms is super-important. Every trigger-puller in Afghanistan and Iraq and anywhere else should have, as a minimum, a user-friendly version of Blue Force Tracker and a secure radio that can talk on squad, platoon and company nets. The Army is working on something called Transformational Communication System. Project originally started out at 6 billion, now it's up to 18 billion and no tangible results in the field. This is criminal, we need to fix tactical comms NOW! See Obelus' comment for his "Hummvees & cell phones" story from Iraq.

[2] UAVs. I think Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are great for certain types of defined missions (I would never use them for Close Air Support, for instance, but think they work great for recon and scouting). More and better UAVs, just don't let them turn into the overrun pork festivals that the F/A-22 and F-35 are at the present.

[3] Defensive systems for aircraft. Remember all the helicopters shot down back in the winter? The U.S. Army is scrambling to put Special Operations-level defensive systems on all it's helos. Same goes for the C-130s/C-17s/C-5s used by the US Air force. Having air superiority doesn't mean shit to scattered insurgents using shoulder-fired IR missiles.

[4] Logistics. In this age of computers, I still can't figure out how Americans deployed to a combat theater can be missing things like body armor, ammo, food, gun lube, hell, even water. Something is broken in the logistics system and needs to be addressed quickly. Also, the services apparently didn't realize that things wear out faster in combat ops than in peace-time (duh) and is now scrambling to fix the vehicles and equipment that is being worn to the nub in Iraq and Afghanistan. Again, stuff that should be caught if we're using this computer-centric new model for warfighting.

[5] The Basics. We can't concentrate on turning our soldiers, airmen, sailors and marines into computer-savvy networkers, but let their 'basic skills' slide (ie. discipline, fitness, marksmanship, land navigation, etc). The services should immediately start copying the good things from Marine Corps Recruit Depot training. Segregate the sexes during Basic. More unarmed combat, Close Quarters Battle training and Immediate Action drills. Tougher Physical Training standards. More language/cultural training. And for the love of God, higher standards when it comes to discipline and responsibility. Is it too much to ask that people in the military actually look and act like professional war-fighters? If you hate running and resent people telling you what to do, maybe you need to find another line of work.

You might notice there isn't much here for the Air Force or the Navy. Those two services actually have the luxury of looking ahead to the next crisis and planning accordingly. The biggest danger to the USAF and USN is blowing their money on [stuff] they don't need. The Army and US Marine Corps have a lot of areas they need to fix or modify and they have to do it while fighting the Global War On Terror. Again, I'm all for Tranformation, but it has to be done with an eye to not dropping the ball on your non-tech, basic skills type issues.

Technology & Transformation

The whole discussion on technology reminded me of a quote from Gulf War I (can't remember who said).

"We (the coalition and Iraqis) could have traded equipment and the outcome would have been the same, it just would have taken a little longer."

I think that's the proper attitude to take on military technology. I can't tell you how many times I've lost a SATCOM radio right at the precise time I really, really needed it to work. Same goes for GPS or INS navigation systems, mission computers, defensive systems, terrain-following radars, you name it. Personally, I would rather have a slightly obsolete piece of equipment that works 99.9% of the time than a cutting edge piece of high-tech that works 75% of the time (example: M-16 vs AK-47 during Vietnam War). Reliability will always be a big factor in military equipment and the anecdotes from the field tend to bear that out.

Technolgy is great stuff and saves lives (both ours and theirs) but you can't forget that technology, especially the brand-new high-speed stuff, has a habit of letting you down when you really need it and that's when you have to depend on superior leadership and training.

Same goes for intelligence. Does anyone these days really question the greater need for Human Intelligence (HUMINT)? Increased language skills? Better coordination between the myriad intel agencies? The U.S. has spent the last 25 years emphasizing the 'high-tech' part of intelligence gathering(satellites, signals intercepting stations, super-computers, etc...) Despite all that, 9/11 still happened. Now, leaders are starting to realize that there is no technological replacement for good old-fashioned spycraft. Unlike the Cold War, fighting groups like Al Qaida and Hezbollah is almost impossible without good HUMINT. Whether we can regrow ours in time remains to be seen.

Conclusion

In summary, tranformation is coming and it has great promise for the U.S. military. We just have to be careful and not let our enthusiam for advanced technology blind us to the non-technical qualities that are critical to a military force.

So if Rumsfeld wants to 'transform' the military, fine, great, sounds cool. He can start by 'transforming' his boot into some of the military leader's asses and straighten out the lack of basic military competence that is starting to trip up operations overseas. Does anyone really think the military today is ready to 'transform' when you still have all of these entry-level problems? Computers are great, but computers don't fight wars. People fight wars. Fix the basics and the human element, and that will be enough of a 'transformation' for me.

Final Note: Thanks for giving me the opportunity to post these views here, and thanks again to all who participated in the great discussion here on Winds of Change.NET. If you haven't read what some of my fellow commenters had to say on these subjects, I'd encourage you to do so.

------
The opinions in this article reflect only John Lance's personal understanding and beliefs. They are not intended to reflect or represent the official views of Special Operations Command, The U.S. Army, or any other official agency of the U.S. government.

UPDATE: Slab has some thoughts about the intelligence side of transformation and the coming 9/11 report.

Aides to Mr. Kerry say the campaign is taking the unusual step of setting up a nationwide legal network under its own umbrella, rather than relying, as in the past, on lawyers associated with state Democratic parties. The aides said they were recruiting people based on their skills as litigators and election lawyers, rather than rewarding political connections or big donors.

Lawyers for the campaign are gathering intelligence and preparing litigation over the ballot machines being used and the rules concerning how voters will be registered or their votes disqualified. In some cases, the lawyers are compiling dossiers on the people involved and their track records on enforcing voting rights.

REPORTS FROM THE FIELD

• American forces are moving prisoners through the system far faster than in the past, in a small silver lining to the news of the Abu Ghraib scandal.

• CBFTW of "My War" blogs from his posting in Mosul, and sarcastically describes the joys of sitting in OPs (observation posts). If you want to experience these joys yourself, he even has a full set of directions that will allow you to try this at home! Some equipment required.

IRAQI POLITICS

• Arthur Chrenkoff examines the claims that interim Iraqi government Prime Minister Iyad Allawi killed six prisoners in cold blood prior to his inauguration. Sadly, regardless of the accuracy of the story, it will doubtless end up part of the 'truth' about Iraq as told by many who oppose the war.

• Although Tim Blair notes it may be an intentional plant by Allawi, a political move to bolster his perceived toughness. Politics really is a strange game. Our own Joe Katzman has also been looking into this.

• Prime Minister Allawi allowed Moqtada al-Sadr's controversial newspaper to reopen, presumably as part of moves intended to bring al-Sadr into the political process rather than the private army business.

THE INTERNATIONAL STAGE

• Australia's Foreign Minister speaks out on the dangers of appeasement in the wake of the Philippines craven withdrawal from Iraq (Hat tip: Arthur Chrenkoff.)

• JK: Speaking of the Philippines, some experts contend that the best historical model for America's experience in Iraq may be... the Philippines Insurrection.

• JK: Left-wing independent filmmaker Michael Tucker spent a lot of time on the ground in Iraq, and produced the film "Gunner's Place." But even German broadcasters who thought Tucker’s film was the most vivid available portrait of the American soldiers in Iraq won't show it - because it doesn't cast American GIs in a negative light.

• JK: Davids Medienkritik explains some of the wellsprings for these German political sentiments in Kosovo vs. Iraq.

WMD HUNT

• The controversy that won't die lurches from the grave again: new evidence suggests that President Bush's infamous 'sixteen words' may have been true after all, and that Iraq may well have sought uranium in Africa.

ETCETERA

• The U.S. ambassador to Iraq is keeping a low profile now that the interim government is up and running, a very wise strategy that should help to remove some of the American face of the occupation.

• Phil Carter notes that the U.S. Army may emerge from Iraq stronger than ever, as the experience of war and the Army's learning culture should combine to rebuild an Army even better suited for modern war. Good news for the west, less so for our enemies abroad.

• Sy Hersh is upping the ante at Abu Ghraib, now claiming that Iraqi prisoners were sodomized as part of the Bush administration's interrogation policies. Either Hersh is onto a crime as great (or greater) than My Lai, or he's gone completely over the edge in his hatred of the Bush administration. I certainly hope that it's the latter, but we need to keep a close eye on the continuing Abu Ghraib investigation.

• The troops are still there. So is the Winds of Change.NET consolidated directory of ways you can support the troops: American, Australian, British, Canadian & Polish. Anyone out there with more information, contact us!

• Don't forget Chief Wiggles' Toys for Iraq drive!

Thanks for reading! If you found something here you want to blog about yourself (and we hope you do), all we ask is that you do as we do and offer a Hat Tip hyperlink to today's "Winds of War". If you think we missed something important, use the Comments section to let us know.

From Snopes.com, the Urban Legends Reference site:

"In the wake of Cooper's chicken incident, the rumor flew around he'd torn the head off a live chicken and drunk its blood during a show. Upon hearing it, Frank Zappa placed a call to Alice Cooper:

"Did you really do that?" Zappa asked. "No," replied Cooper. "Well, whatever you do," Zappa said, "don't tell anybody you didn't do it."

UPDATE: Newsweek offers a look at what's going on with Allawi. With the Kurds very much on edge and Shi'ite Ayatollah Sistani firmly insistent on elections, I can't see any way for Allawi to become a dictator - and I don't think he wants to. But I do expect to see martial law powers used, and the death penalty used as well on several high-ranking Ba'athists.

Beyond that... all anyone can really say with any honesty is, "we'll see." As the old military aphorism goes: "the enemy gets a say." Increasingly, so will Iraqis.

A long time ago, I took a one-day writing class from a semi-famous writer through UCLA. We met in Westwood village, in a building that had once house a club I used to go to, and the class was fun and somewhat useful. Most useful - and fun - was the incident that happened right after we regrouped for lunch.

The building entrance was on an alley, and as I walked back with a few others from my burger, I noticed three homeless men, sitting on the steps, eating their lunches. One was daintily eating a yogurt with a plastic spoon, and I remember remarking "What a healthy guy!!" as we went up the elevator.

A few minutes later, one of the women students dashed into the classroom, exclaiming that she'd been confronted by a homeless man with a knife. I moved to the front of the room, and asked her 'did you see the knife? what did he look like? where did this happen?' and was told he'd been in the corridor, she was sure she'd seen the knife, and he was a homeless guy. The teacher locked the door and used the room phone to call the University police.

Then, as I walked to the door and opened it to look and see what was going on, one of the homeless guys - my yogurt-eating guy - was walking by. I stepped in front of him and told him "Hey, man, you can't be in here. You need to leave right now - come on with me and I'll walk you out." Another man from the class stepped out to join me, shouting instructions at the homeless guy - "Show me your hands! Do it!" and generally acting like he had Monster Kody standing in front of him holding a boo-yah. I told him to shut up or leave, so he was silent as we walked the homeless guy out to the elevator, rode down with him, and walked him to the street. I asked him: "So, do you have a knife? Did you show it to a woman wearing a yellow shirt?" "No, man, I don't have a knife. I was eating my lunch and I asked her for some change, and she freaked out."

Then I saw the white plastic handle of a spoon sticking from his back pocket.

Hmmmm. I thought, He probably did have something shiny in his hand...

Homeless people generally don't commit armed robbery on civilians (non-homeless people); they have no where to run to, no means of escape, and they are usually smart enough to know that they'll be busted right away for it (note that this doesn't mean you shouldn't be attentive when walking down a dark alley with one, just that you're more at risk from a bunch of teenage kids). But they are scary, and it's a more logical narrative to me that when one person - already scared by the presence of a homeless man where he wasn't supposed to be - saw a homeless man with a plastic spoon in his hand, she read it as 'knife!!' and reacted appropriately (note that trained police officers have been known to make similar mistakes).

Similarly, there are two competing narratives we can construct out of Jacobsen's story.

On one hand, a dry run or failed mission by a group of terrorists, as she suggests.

On the other, a group of foreign musicians, already somewhat out of place, being bad-vibed beyond belief by the rest of the passengers, and so acting with a less-then affable demeanor, and doing what I've done in the past when flying with large groups of people, which is to walk around and congregate so we can chat.

Which do I think is the case? I have no idea. Would I have prevented them from flying? Probably not. I think that the idea of limiting the number of Arabic men flying together is kinda absurd; no one's taking a plane over and flying it anywhere these days, and if I want to blow a plane up in midair, I don't need 14 men to do it.

So what would I have done? TG wanted to know, and the answer is pretty simple. I'd have walked up to them and chatted. Annoyingly cheerfully. "Hey! How you doing? You waiting for the bathroom, too? Where are you guys from? Where you going? Isn't that cool?" Their responses - both verbal and nonverbal - would have determined what happened next.

I've done things like this in the past - in a parking structure with four thugged-out kids. There are a couple of reasons why it's a good idea. First, because it lets you set the tempo for whatever is going to happen. My parking lot kids may have been would-be muggers (I was once unsuccessfully mugged in a parking structure in Santa Monica), or four honor-roll kids out for a night in the town. By walking up to them and asking a question - "Hey, do you know how to get to the Edwards movie theaters from here?" - I created a situation in which they would react, one way or another, on my timeline, rather than theirs, and in a setting chosen by me, rather than by them. By being cheerful beyond belief, instead of saying something confrontational like "You're creeping me out," I don't unnecessarily start a confrontation, or leave four good kids muttering about racist assholes as I walk away. I'm more sympathetic to women, who use the 'Model Mugging'-approved technique of telling someone "You're making me uncomfortable, please back away," but I still think a more cheerful wording and tone could be used to convey a similar message.

So, in Jacobsen's case, simply walking up to the suspicious characters and introducing yourself would have gone a long way to sort out what was going on - and at no meaningful cost.