Why don’t we lay this stuff to rest now, mmkay?

Working against a deadline, so a couple of quick links will have to do for now:

At Foreign Policy, Marc Lynch pours cold water on the rapturous reception of Iraq’s provincial elections, with special emphasis on Anbar.

At Jihadica, Anne Stenersen looks at the lack of a unified strategy by AQ and its affiliates on how to target Germany.

At Boston Globe, Richard Clarke offers a concise explanation of what ‘extraordinary rendition’ actually means.

The Financial Times:

The late Roman republic was once badly defeated by the Parthians, who ruled most of today’s Iraq and Iran. But no historian records that the Romans thereafter declared a global war on the Parthian shot.

My feelings exactly:

Watching this speech reminds me of when I listened to my high school principal speak for the first time after I graduated. He still sounded crazy but no longer scared me.

(Via Spencer.)

In a word, incredible:

[...] The melancholy truth, according to my well placed sources, is that even after the  intelligence disasters of 9/11 and Iraq, President Obama has a better chance of getting up-to-the-minute information on, say, Hamas, from newspapers than he does the PDB – the President’s Daily Brief – served up by the Directorate of National Intelligence and CIA.

‘So,’ I asked a former intelligence agency head over seafood this week, ‘if I’m President Obama, and I call Leon Panetta into the Oval office and ask him to tell me how Hamas leaders are holding up under the Israeli assault, will he be able to tell me?’

The former official shook his head, nearly blushing.

No.  ‘That’s not the kind of information’ they focus on.

‘Well, what do they focus on?’ I asked.

If the viability of Hamas isn’t important right now, what is?

He said the CIA, State Department and Pentagon intelligence agencies do have people specializing on the Palestinians, and even Hamas. But it’s not likely they would have up-to-the-minute information on whether, say, in response to Israeli military pressure, its leaders are fighting among each other, unifying, or even where they are.

They just don’t have that kind of stuff, he said.

Wow.

What about the NSA? I asked. Could the CIA’s Hamas guy call his NSA counterpart and get cell phone intercepts from Gaza to help fill in some holes?

‘They won’t give it to him, because they don’t want their information to help CIA look good.’

In SpyTalk, Jeff Stein quotes intelligence professionals who believe incoming CIA chief Leon Panetta will be in a world of hurt with his deputy, Steve Kappes:

The lionization of Kappes among ops veterans at the CIA still rankles some officials from that era, who think [Porter] Goss got a raw deal.

I would say that if Kappes is kept on,’ said one, still bitter,  ‘Panetta will need to watch out for the first time he crosses him.  There will be more nasty leaks and innuendo and ‘experienced’ officers leaving in a huff.’

‘He should be insisting, if ‘change’ is really what the Obama administration wants at CIA, that he gets to clean house. [...]‘

‘Otherwise, he will be managing and working against cross purposes with those who carried out the very policies they believe to be inhumane and improper.’

If this New York Times story turns out correct, Glenn Greenwald and Scott Horton will wake up to a nasty shock:

President-elect Barack Obama is preparing to scrap the way President Bush oversaw domestic security in the White House and name a former Central Intelligence Agency official to coordinate counterterrorism, people close to the transition said Wednesday.

The plan being discussed would eliminate the independent homeland security adviser’s office and assign those duties to the National Security Council to streamline sometimes overlapping functions. A deputy national security adviser would be charged with overseeing the effort to guard against terrorism and to respond to natural disasters.

Democrats close to the transition said Mr. Obama’s choice for that job was John O. Brennan, a longtime C.I.A. veteran who was the front-runner to head the spy agency until withdrawing in November amid criticism of his views on interrogation and detention policies. His appointment would not require Senate confirmation.

Phew. After the blogger-concocted “Brennan scandal”, it must come as a great relief to Team Obama that the same virtual vetters are wholeheartedly endorsing the president-elect’s choice of Leon Panetta as CIA chief.

Here’s Salon’s Glenn Greenwald recycling his own narrative:

I don’t have any particular thoughts, one way or the other, about Panetta himself, but — particularly in the wake of the Brennan controversy — it does seem clear that the Obama team was serious about avoiding anyone who had any connection at all to the Bush torture, surveillance and detention programs.  Not only did they want to avoid anyone with any formal connection, but also anyone who (like Brennan) advocated or supported those programs.

At Harper’s, Scott Horton calls the choices — Panetta and Blair –”not merely good, but inspired”:

[...] Panetta has one other key trait. When he tells the nation and the world that the torture and mistreatment of prisoners and the program of torture by proxy has ended, people will believe him.

It’s not that I disagree. But here’s the thing: neither Greenwald nor Horton, nor any of the other bloggers who doomed John Brennan’s appointment by cherry-picking stuff out of a couple of googled interviews, ever produced a shred of proof that John Brennan was an advocate of anything more than harsh words. And I’m pretty sure they will be equally selective in taking the rap, should Panetta prove a dismal failure.

UPDATE: Here’s an endorsement that should make Greenwald and Horton’s hair stand on end:

The Panetta choice also makes sense to him, said Philip Zelikow, a former counselor to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice [...]. ‘The issues of presidential trust and clean hands are, at this moment in history, most important,’ Zelikow said by e-mail. ‘And even an ‘intelligence professional’ would have to rely on others in many ways. … So Obama and his team have made a certain kind of tradeoff.’

You may recall that Zelikow is the guy who, at his friend Condi Rice’s request, wrote the overview of Bush’s “preemptive war” and later served as the Bush mole on the 9/11 Commission.

Here’s a new brand name the next U.S. president will have to try and wrap his tongue around: Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Not only did LeT apparently train the Mumbai attackers, but, according to a United Nations document scooped by McClatchy, the group has “sent operatives to attack U.S. troops in Iraq, established a branch in Saudi Arabia and been raising funds in Europe”.

The group may also have received money from al Qaida, suggesting that it has close ties with Osama bin Laden’s terrorist network based along Pakistan’s border with Afghanistan, the document said.

Although Pakistan’s government outlawed LeT in May 2002, it ‘continues to operate and engage in or support terrorist activities abroad,’ the document said.

What makes the Let truly dangerous, writes Raja Karthikeya, is its “resilience and mutability”:

Most terrorist groups do not survive ten years of operation. Lashkar has only grown stronger in its fourteen or so years of existence, despite bans by the US and Pakistan and the pressure on terrorist groups after 9/11. It has successfully adapted itself to the changing political environment in Pakistan (from democracy to dictatorship to democracy) and transformed itself from a largely militant organization to one with extensive philanthropic activities, without losing its capacity to commit terrorist acts outside Pakistan. It has attracted young, urban professionals and enjoys wide support within its constituency.

It has shed the lure of branding just like al-Qaeda and operates under a number of aliases. Its not-so-clandestine charity front and the charity’s vigorous work in post-disaster relief operations have helped it raise millions of rupees which will help it survive international crackdowns. The Mumbai attacks testify to its intelligence gathering and planning capabilities in a hostile environment. Specific tactical details of the standoffs in Mumbai, (such as the blowing up of an elevator in order to take cover inside the elevator shaft) indicate the level of professionalism its cadres have achieved. The very modus operandi of the attack (an amphibious landing) could rank it alongside the Tamil Tigers in terms of innovation.

Last but not least, Lashkar’s leadership is ambitious. Even if their agenda has been impacted by al-Qaeda, they aspire to achieve the status of ‘liberators’ and will not be content to play second fiddle to any larger group. Thus, we must be prepared for more attacks from this group. Mumbai’s tragedy may just have changed the game.

Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald, who has been a leading voice in the echo chamber of Google-based criticism of John Brennan’s CIA candidacy, today goes a step further in his self-righteous offensive and — I can’t believe I’m writing this — in true McCarthyist fashion provides a list of reporters he thinks have erred in “defending” Brennan.

Here’s the funny part:

All of this illustrates the unparalleled power which the ‘intelligence community’ exerts over our political debates, how easy it is for them to manipulate intelligence reporters who depend on cooperation with their intelligence sources and who thus identify with them and happily amplify whatever they are fed, and — most of all — how profoundly unrealistic is the expectation that, now that Democrats are ‘in control,’ they’re just going to blithely proceed to impose all sorts of new restrictions on the CIA and the rest of the Surveillance State — let alone launch probing investigations and impose accountability for past crimes — without much of a major fight.

The way I see it, I ought to be on Glenn’s list, yet not only am I not American but I have absolutely no contact with any intelligence service whatsoever. Unless I’m unaware of secret brainrays, no one has tried to manipulate me, but here I am, making a ruckus anyway.

In case you’re interested, my very own “Brennan defense” is here.