"It's my job to protect you!"

New intelligence report: Al Qaeda stronger than ever
Fear Focus on Pakistan
Back in 2002, US forces allowed BinLaden to escape from Afghanistan to Northwest Pakistan. Had we caught him, it would have been difficult to use a "War on Terror" as a cover for an occupation of Iraq. The opportunity to take over Iraq in the wake of 9/11 trumped getting BinLaden and Zawahiri and the rest and ending the story there.
BinLaden's coterie has been holed up in NW Pakistan ever since, protected from US raids by the Pakistani government, and from Pakistani raids by the widespread support he enjoys in that 'lawless' region.
Now, Pakistan teeters on the brink... BinLadenism is spreading out from the northwest territories, and with the revolt of the lawyers and the siege of the Red Mosque Musharref is losing support on both sides of the secular/Islamist divide.
And thus the nightmare scenario: A coup by Pakistani security elements is a non-zero possibility. Some elements of the military and intelligence services are Islamist. Pakistan has a nuclear warfare capability, with delivery systems including missiles and F16 bombers. Fill in the rest.
Latest: Wave of bombings and attacks on soldiers follows siege of Red Mosque;
McClatchey: U.S. threatens action in Pakistan
AlQaeda in Pakistan was the subject of several interviews on Charlie Rose on July 18: Brian Ross, David Sanger
recent background: "Violence intensifies in Pakistan" and "Pakistan Truce Appears Defunct" and "Pakistan's Top Judge to Lead Anti-Musharraf Rally"

The successful building of an Al Qaeda franchise in Iraq, the resurgence in Afghanistan, the strategic progress in Pakistan, the radicalization of the Palestinians and the Lebanese, are all driven by the US occupation of Iraq.
That occupation has invented it's own novel horrors, but is also an enormous outrage-amplifier of the long-festering Israeli occupation of the West Bank. Unlike Israel in the West Bank however, US forces cannot even hope to control Iraq, it's just too big. And so Iraq has become, as predicted here and elsewhere, an ideal training ground for would be fighters, right in their own neighborhood, where they can learn skills and tactics, and get some battle experience. What fired-up islamist militant wouldn't want to go fight the American Crusaders in Arab Babylon? Afterwards, they go home, organize cells, share information over the net, plan their own missions. Al Queda is metastasizing. This is one of the many 'opportunity costs' of the mad venture in Iraq.

Pakistan: see above for latest Pakistan developments
The Brits have knighted Salmon Rushdie... In response, Pakistan's clerics 'knight' Osama bin Laden, giving him the honorific title "The Sword of Allah". and put an 11 million dollar bounty on Rushdie's head. In response, the US Senate doubled the bounty on Bin Laden to 50 million. Musharref's grip is looking more and more shaky... See "Some in U.S. Intelligence See Musharraf on His Way Out"
July 1: "A document from the Interior Ministry warned Pakistan's security forces in North-west Frontier Province abutting the tribal areas were outgunned and outnumbered and had forfeited authority to the Taliban and their allies." (read "Musharraf is Warned Taliban Militancy Could Engulf Pakistan")
Maybe Bin Laden and Zawahiri had a plan all along: while America is distracted in Iraq, they've been busy in Pakistan, with a cold eye on it's nuclear arsenal...

Afghanistan:
In a desperate attempt to avert the re-Talibanisation of Afghanistan, US and Allied Forces are responding to perceived militants with massive firepower, long-range artillery, and aerial bombing, often of villages and mixed populations; in addition to recent frequent massacres of civilians carried out by jittery troops as suicide bombings Iraqi-style make their appearance, the rising toll on Afghan civilians is straining the political foundation of the occupation; Karzai is furious: "Our innocent people are becoming victims of careless operations of NATO and international forces...Afghan life is not cheap and it should not be treated as such" (latest)
Update July 2: "Afghanistan's president, Hamid Karzai, has called for an investigation into reports that 45 innocent Afghans were killed in a Nato-led air assault in the south of the country, the latest in a series of attacks which an incensed public is calling 'civilian massacres'"... (story)
Note that Afghanistan, which was conquered in a CIA-led operation, now accounts for 90% of the world's opium.

Palestine: With US troops killing Arabs in Iraq, the administration somehow thought the Palestinians wouldn't notice, and that in the elections we pushed as part of the "democracy" cover story, they would confirm the same corrupt and discredited crew preferred by Washington and Tel Aviv. They didn't - they voted for Hamas, and so we armed Fatah to wage a proxy war on the legitimate government, succeeded in splitting off Gaza, and embraced - and funded- an unelected regime in the West Bank. Way to go!
July 15 update: Bush has cancelled Secretary Rice's July mideast peace tour; she will instead go to the region in August accompanied by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates. Gates is the Iraq Study Group's man; maybe the adults are belatedly taking over her mess too?

Iraq: A Hot Summer in Hell
Iraq's parliament is taking the summer off; it reaches 130 degrees in Baghdad in August. Meanwhile US forces patrol the streets in full combat gear. Maliki says the US forces can leave any time they want. But we know they'll stay- at least until the 'Oil Law' is passed, the measure which gives multinational corporations 70% of future Iraqi oil revenues.
Report: Half of the foreign fighters in Iraq are Saudis (not Iranians, Syrians etc) Saudis responsible for most suicide bombings...(story LAT)
Full circle
The US is now financing and providing arms to Sunni Baathist militias, supposedly to fight Al Queda in Iraq. Note that Bush invaded Iraq to destroy the Baathist regime, which had successfully kept Al Queda out of Iraq. Having succeeded in that, and opened up Iraq to Al Queda, we are now supporting the Baathist insurgents to fight them. Unsaid is the fact that in this strategy we are also strengthening the Sunnis vis a vis the Shiia government. And the Shia leaders know they will be fighting these Sunnis sooner or later. Shades of the Iraq-Iran War of the eighties, when the US supported Saddam against Iran, and secretly sold weapons to Iran. Moreover, the Bush push failed to get the Shiia government to disband or at least control the the Shiia militias; Sadr's Mahdi Army stood down for a while, but the outcry over many murderous bombings of the Shia by the Sunni has brought the Shia militias back to the fore. This latest US strategy looks sure to accelerate the approach of full scale civil war in Iraq.
latest: "Mistrust as Iraqi Troops Encounter New U.S. Allies" (NYTimes)
Earlier: "U.S. Arming Sunnis in Iraq To Battle Old Qaeda Allies" (story)
(also: "Qaeda group in Iraq threatens to attack Iranians"
Peter Galbraith, NY Review of Books: The 'war' is lost... what next?"
July 1: "The Americans can leave anytime they want. We can handle it."-Iraqi PM Maliki (story)
"The Other War: Iraq Veterans Speak Out on Shocking Accounts of Attacks on Iraqi Civilians" must-read at The Nation and covered on Democracy Now

Lebanon: The US is supporting a Lebanese Army assault on a Sunni Salafist group, Fatah-al-Islam, indiscriminately shelling a Palestinian refugee camp in Tripoli where the fighters are holed up. US is supplying weapons and military help. The White House is trying to blame Syria, but this is nonsense- Syria is not going to be supporting Sunni Salafis; on the other hand, it does seem to be true that it was the US together with Saudi Arabia which was funding these Salafists, as a sort of black ops network in the wings in case of a Shiia Hezbollah take-over attempt, and that this is a case of blow-back. (Seymour Hersh, New Yorker) Democracy Now coverage)

Somalia: The US Navy is shelling targets in Somalia. (ref) With the US-backed Ethiopian overthrow of the Islamic Courts in Somalia, "anarchy, murder and piracy have returned". "Since the start of this year, there has been a sharp increase in piracy attacks off the Somali coast. Piracy had been brought under control until Ethiopian and Somali troops [backed by the US] ousted the Union of Islamic Courts." (story)

Syria: We learn that Cheney's men (esp Elliott Abrahms) tried to get Israel to attack Syria during the Lebanon War of last summer.

Israel... Under Siege, Or?
Amnesty International Report: In 2006, Israel killed more than 650 Palestinians of whom 320 were civilians and 120 children. In the same period, Palestinians killed 21 Israelis. Amnesty also accused soldiers and settlers of committing "serious human rights abuses, including unlawful killings against Palestinians mostly with impunity". (story)

Egypt Fatwa- mixed sex working places only if the men suckle on the women's breasts first.
Cairo. May 21. Ezzat Attia is president of Al Azhar university's Hadith department which studies traditions based on the Prophet Mohammed's words and deeds. His edict, which sparked an uproar in the media, stated that a woman can only be alone with a man to whom she is not related - such as an office colleague - if she nurses him "directly from her breast" at least five times. The edict caused a furor in the Egyptian press, and was retracted within days. (story)

Turkey's prime minister, under pressure from the secularist Turkish Army for his Islamist support, warns of a Turkish attack on Kurdish areas of northern Iraq. (story) Update July 15: Responding to press reports, US Defense Secretary Gates says Turks are not massing troops on the border. (story)
Counterpunch, July 19: "The Next Invasion of Iraq"

Iran
Military solution back in favour as Rice loses out. President "not prepared to leave conflict unresolved." -Guardian July 17: The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favour of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months..."
-ABC: Bush Authorizes Covert Effort To Destabilize Iran
"The CIA has received secret presidential approval to mount a covert operation to destabilize the Iranian government, current and former officials in the intelligence community tell the Blotter on ABCNews.com." (story)
-Not surprisingly, Iran has arrested two Iranian-Americans working for the Woodrow Wilson Institute and the George Soros Open Society Institute as being part of these intelligence operations.
-US Conducting Covert Industrial Sabotage Against Iran
CBS Reports: "Sources in several countries involved told CBS News that the intelligence operatives involved include former Russian nuclear scientists and Iranians living abroad. Operatives have sold Iran components with flaws that are difficult to detect, making them unstable or unusable.
-Nine US warships in Gulf for show of force. (story)
-IAEA reports that Iran is defying the Security Council and continuing development of nuclear enrichment programs. (story)
-It has come out that Cheney was pushing for an attack on Iran earlier this year. "Vice President Cheney helped to lead the side favoring a military strike" said former CIA official Riedel (ABCNews, the Blotter)
More Iran files