Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Militantly superior in their own minds…

Lighten up, Francis.

The revolution will be supervised.

I’m going back to the respite thread.

Everybody saw this coming.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

I swear, each month of 2020 will have its own history degree.

I thought we were promised Infrastructure Week.

It’s not even safe to go out and pick up 2 days worth of poop anymore.

Historically it is a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Sadly, there is no cure for stupid.

Shocking, but not surprising

A last alliance of elves and men. also pet photos.

Wetsuit optional.

Dinky Hocker shoots smack!

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Impressively dumb. Congratulations.

Almost as fun as hiking the Appalachian Trail

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Shelter in place is one thing. Shelter in pants is quite another.

Trump is going to draw a dick on that dog with a sharpie, isn’t he?

Not all heroes wear capes.

Screw the Judean People’s Front. Splitters.

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Rofer on International Relations

William Burns To CIA Director

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President-elect Joe Biden’s nomination of William Burns to be director of the CIA is an inspired choice.

Burns is the most senior and most respected diplomat in the US today. He is currently president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, one of the think tanks to which experts go when they are out of government. It’s also the sponsor of the Carnegie Conference on Nuclear Policy, which I’ve attended for the past decade or so, also known as #nukefest. It’s THE gathering for experts on international nuclear issues. The next one will be virtual, in June.

Burns has been ambassador to Jordan and to Russia and has held a number of high posts in the State Department. He and Jake Sullivan (who is to be Biden’s National Security Advisor) laid the groundwork for the JCPOA agreement with Iran.

Why CIA? Many people expected Biden to name him as Secretary of State, but Antony Blinken will serve there. The head of the CIA is usually chosen from within the organization.

Gina Haspel is currently the director of the CIA. She is one of the few Trump appointees who actually has a background in and commitment to her agency. But she also was chief of a black site in Thailand during the Bush 43 administration. It’s time to repudiate the role of torture in intelligence gathering.

Diplomats are not strangers to the world of intelligence. Every embassy abroad includes CIA employees along with those from the State Department, the Russian embassy more than most. The State Department uses intelligence generated by the CIA, its internal agency, and other government intelligence agencies.

Burns is one of the best analysts of foreign affairs the country has. Here’s what he had to say about Russia in 2017. He’s also written a series of articles for The Atlantic.

We can read a number of messages into Burns’s nomination:

  • Competence is back (This is a general message across Biden’s nominations)
  • No more torture
  • Tilt toward State Department as maker and executor of foreign policy
  • Russia, we’ve got your number
  • Allies, you can begin to trust our intelligence services again.

Photo: The Guardian

Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner

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Pwned!

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Alexei Navalny is a Russian critic of the Putin government. He was nearly killed by a Novichok nerve agent in August. Yesterday, he talked to the FSB agent who poisoned his underwear and got a full confession.

Bellingcat is an investigative organization that developed out of Eliot Higgins’s investigations of Syrian munitions, particularly nerve agent munitions, when he blogged as Brown Moses. They worked with CNN and Navalny in this operation.

Bellingcat uses open source information in their investigations. They exposed the two FSB poisoners of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia and have uncovered large amounts of information about nerve agent use in Syria.

[Disclosure: I consult with Bellingcat and occasionally write for them.]

The Bellingcat folks do a good job of telling their own story, with CNN’s help. So I’ll let them give the details. Here’s their full report on the Navalny investigation. The report on the phonecall, with a recording and transcript. The transcript is in English, and the phonecall video has English translation. CNN report.

Navalny called several FSB officers with no luck, then decided to pretend that he was an FSB higher-up who wanted a readout of the operation. It worked stunningly.

Why did they poison his underwear?

Bellingcat has been wildly successful in using open-source information to scoop conventional news sources and, probably, national intelligence services. National intelligence services have been reluctant to admit that open source information can be as useful as their classified sources. Bellingcat is not the only non-governmental organization doing this kind of work. The James A. Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at Middlebury’s Monterey campus is also excellent. Datayo is a newcomer and much quieter than I think they should be. The New York Times has recently acquired a visualization unit who use overhead photos.

Bellingcat, with its Skripal and Navalny investigations, have shown that the Russian intelligence services are sloppy in their execution, dropping clues everywhere and leaving far too many things, like telephone numbers out in the open.

Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner

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Assassination Attempt On Iran’s “Father Of Nuclear Program”

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There has just been an assassination attempt on Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, Iran’s leading nuclear scientist. He is seen within Iran in a role much like that of Robert Oppenheimer in the United States.

Israel has assassinated other Iranian nuclear scientists and is thus the prime suspect. Bibi Netanyahu has mentioned Fakhrizadeh by name.

Israel, and the Trump administration, have been trying to break the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) so that it cannot be revived. The JCPOA froze and even pushed back Iran’s nuclear weapons program, putting it under greater international scrutiny than any nuclear program in the world.

But war with Iran is what Mike Pompeo and other Trump advisors have wanted. It is also what Netanyahu wants, as long as the losses are primarily America’s.

On top of the devastation of the Iraq War, a war with Iran would tear the Middle East apart. Those desiring war imagine that it would destroy Iran without extreme damage to themselves. Pompeo has mentioned the Rapture, which requires such a war to ensure his personal salvation.

But the warmongers have been unsuccessful in provoking Iran into leaving the JCPOA. After the US left the agreement, Iran has taken reversible steps toward a more robust nuclear program and has made clear that these are in response to US actions. The other participants in the JCPOA have held firm.

The attack on Fakhrizadeh is an enormous provocation, most likely an escalation by those who want Iran to leave the JCPOA so that there is justification for war. As usual, early reports are confused. Current tweets follow.

Update: Official sources now say Fakhrizadeh is dead.

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Biden Foreign Policy Picks

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It looks like Joe Biden will announce Anthony Blinken as Secretary of State, Jake Sullivan as National Security Advisor, and Linda Thomas-Greenfield as Ambassador to the United Nations. I think CNN was first with the scoop, other outlets are confirming it, and well-connected foreign policy people are tweeting as if this is the case.

It is a joy to hear the names of people who have long experience in these areas. All three will be able to hit the ground running. They have big jobs to do. The State Department will need to be rebuilt and alliances mended. Thomas-Greenfield is a career State Department official, so her appointment will be a signal to the department that competence is once again prized.

Some reactions:

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Trump Wanted To Bomb Iran

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Donald Trump and his toadies are trying to wreck as much as they can on the way out.

President Trump asked senior advisers in an Oval Office meeting on Thursday whether he had options to take action against Iran’s main nuclear site in the coming weeks. The meeting occurred a day after international inspectors reported a significant increase in the country’s stockpile of nuclear material, four current and former U.S. officials said on Monday. (New York Times)

This is, of course, what a number of people have been driving for in pressing Trump to break out of the nuclear agreement (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, JCPOA) and keep adding sanctions in their “maximum pressure”. They have hoped that Iran would behave in a way that would give them an excuse to bomb.

Iran, however, seems to be fine with the JCPOA and would prefer to have the US back in the agreement. What they have been doing is taking reversible steps to indicate that they have a say in this matter too. That increase in the stockpile of nuclear material can easily be given up or diluted down.

So the brilliant plans for a war haven’t been working. But hey, why not on the way out?

At the same time, Trump’s new Acting Alternative Maybe Secretary of Defense is saying words about withdrawing from Afghanistan.

What these people don’t understand is that war isn’t as action comix portray it. You need to move planes and ships and land vehicles and people to do these operations. You can’t bomb Iran tomorrow.

You could send a few missiles in, but they aren’t enough to damage Iran’s underground facilities, which most of them are now. And Iran has air defense, which might shoot down those missiles. So you might want to take out that air defense first. And that takes more planes and crews.

Likewise, you don’t just say “Withdraw the troops.” Controlled withdrawal is one of the most difficult of maneuvers. There are only a few routes for US troops in and out of Afghanistan, with many unfriendly people around. And is it really cool that there’s a good chance that a full civil war will break out if the Americans and Europeans leave? Oh yes – we might just let the Europeans know we’re leaving so they can plan.

In short, more ignorance and potentially death from the Trump clown squad. They can’t withdraw from the White House fast enough for me.

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Mike Pompeo’s War On Iran

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One of the many damages Donald Trump inflicts on the country is the inability to focus on events elsewhere in the world. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo uses Trump’s distractions to move closer to war with Iran.

Pompeo’s diplomacy begins by presenting a list of impossible demands to establish leverage for his next moves. In the case of arms control, the next move has been to pick up his marbles and go home. The US believes that Russia has been violating treaties. Instead of using the treaties’ mechanisms to bring Russia back into compliance, the US representative insisted that Russia publicly admit to its violations. When it didn’t, the US withdrew from the intermediate-range missile treaty and shot off a missile that would have violated the treaty. They are using the same strategy now to allow the New START Treaty, the last of the big arms control treaties, to lapse.

In May 2018, Pompeo presented a list of twelve demands to Iran. Iran has ignored those demands, which amount to Iran’s giving up its sovereignty. Pompeo and a number of allies, including Republican legislators, have long wanted a war with Iran. In addition to the twelve demands, they pressed Trump to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the carefully negotiated agreement that contains Iran’s nuclear program. Explicitly in response to that withdrawal, Iran has taken a number of steps in violation of the JCPOA which can be reversed if the United States returns to compliance.

Pompeo has used those Iranian violations an excuse to argue to the United Nations that “snapback sanctions,” a part of the JCPOA, should be imposed on Iran. The other members of the agreement correctly rejected this proposal by a non-party to the agreement.

Earlier this year in Iraq, the United States assassinated Qasim Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Quds Force. In response, Iranian militias in Iraq have targeted Americans. I have not kept up fully with the back and forth except to note the absurdity of the phrase “restoring deterrence,” which is what Pompeo says he would like to do. Deterrence is a state in which action is not taken because of fear of retribution. Clearly the Iranian militias lack that fear. A reciprocal attack is probably within their calculations; “restoring deterrence” would require more and is a recipe for escalation.

But now Pompeo has found another path the could lead to war. He is pressuring the Iraqi government to get the Iranian militias under control. Yes, that is Iraq with a “q”. He says that the US will withdraw its embassy from Baghdad, possibly to Erbil in northern Iraq. Some American troops were recently withdrawn. A complete American withdrawal from Iraq would be a major victory for Iran.

After the 2003 US war against Iraq, the government crumbled, and it’s been difficult to build it back. Saddam Hussein was an enemy of Iran – Iraq and Iran fought a war through most of the 1980s. Removing the government of Iraq disrupted that power balance and allowed Iran to infiltrate its sympathizers into the new Iraq government.

Withdrawing the American embassy from Baghdad would not be a total withdrawal from Iraq, but it would make interactions with the Iraqi government more difficult. It would be a vote of no confidence in that government, weakening it among the Iraqi people. The Trump government has declared it will nearly halve its troops in Iraq to 3000 by the end of October.

Iran would flow into this vacuum. It’s possible that Pompeo’s threat is empty and he will not carry through, but empty threats indicate weakness and invite intervention. Iran has declared its desire to remove the United States from the region, and Pompeo may do that for them.

Today additional sanctions go into effect on Iran, in defiance of European allies protests. These sanctions are likely to limit Iran’s access to medical supplies, and other necessities to deal with the pandemic. Previous US sanctions on Iran have devastated its, but Iran has not budged on American demands.

Also today, Trump threatened Iran with nuclear war once again.

Iran responded to the US withdrawal from the JCPOA in measured and reversible fashion, giving little basis for war. Now that it looks like the Trump administration will be voted out of office in November, Pompeo is stepping up the actions he hopes will provoke Iran into a move that can be responded to with war.

A cause for Pompeo’s longed-for war is unlikely to show up in the next month. If Trump wins, Pompeo can continue his destruction and perhaps get that war in another year or two. If Joe Biden wins, he will attempt to mend the damage and bring the United States back into the JCPOA.

 

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Where We Are – 36 Days Out

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The New York Times now has Donald Trump’s income tax returns “extending over two decades”. They say that the returns come from a person who had legal access to them. The Times’s first article provides eighteen takeaways. They promise more to come. Each takeaway is a string that other news organizations can pull.

Trump runs through money and then manages to find yet another source to bankroll him. At this point, he owes $421 million to unknown parties. There are hints and guesses about connections to a hotel deal in Azerbaijan that appears to have laundered money for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and to Deutsche Bank through Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy’s son.

Dicey connections and unknown sources of money point to possible influence over Trump. We don’t know enough about them. At one time, there seems to have been an FBI counterintelligence investigation into these influences. Then, it was said, that investigation (or those investigations) were folded into the special counsel investigation led by Robert Mueller. We have learned, however, that Mueller deliberately avoided the counterintelligence implications.

Was there ever a counterintelligence investigation? Is there one now? This goes back to that New York Times October Surprise in 2016: Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia. The Times has never apologized for or explained this article, nor its concurrent fascination with Hillary Clinton’s emails. If there was an investigation, what happened to its materials? Rod Rosenstein seems like a person who might know.

Shortly after the Times article on Trump’s taxes appeared, Brad Parscale was taken to a hospital by police officers called by his wife. He was threatening suicide after beating his wife. Since he’s a white guy, he wasn’t shot by police as so many Black people are. Demonstrations for Breona Taylor and Black Lives Matter continued through the week after no charges were brought against the police for her death.

Covid-19 continues to kill more than 200,000 people as Trump spreads disinformation. Trump has largely pushed Anthony Fauci and Deborah Birx out of his planning circle, if such still exists. Trump’s preference is clearly to pretend that there is no problem, that people are not dying. Republican governors eager to toady up to him are allowing bars and restaurants, major spreading sites, to open up. Trump, of course, has been having close-spaced, no-mask rallies, although he has conceded to the need for air circulation by holding many of them outdoors or in airport hangers. People infected now will by dying shortly before the election. Seems like a bad strategy.

Fauci and Birx have been replaced by Scott Atlas, a Fox commentator who actually is a doctor, but in radiology, a specialty far removed from infectious disease. Like a lot of armchair epidemiologists (largely financially well-off white men), he believes that it’s best to infect the population and see who survives. The total death toll for that, by a number of estimates, would be in the range of two million. Even Robert Redfield, another Trump creature, is concerned about Atlas’s advice. Trump is going in this direction as experts point out that a vaccine will not be ready before the election.cov

Trump also continues his disinformation campaign against the election. Although Russia in particular, and to a smaller degree, China and Iran are spreading disinformation, the largest and loudest source of disinformation is Trump’s tweets. Voting by mail is safe, although it is wise to do it as early as possible because of Postmaster General Louis De Joy’s vandalism. Trump seems to have subsided from his refusal to endorse a peaceful succession. He is unlikely ever to do that, but he is a coward.

Weekend polls show Joe Biden in the lead by 7 or so percentage points. Those polls were taken before the news of Trump’s tax returns broke. Biden continues to pick up endorsements – from almost 500 former military and national security officials, Tom Ridge, and Dwayne Johnson (“The Rock”). Senatorial races are moving well for Democrats also; Jaime Harrison has been getting a steady stream of money while Lindsey Graham has had to beg for money on Fox. The first debate between Trump and Biden is Tuesday night, and Trump is raving about drug tests. Nancy Pelosi is urging supporters to look at races that will tilt state representation Democratic in preparation for Trump funny business that throws the election into the House.

In other news, the administration is trying to run out the time to renew the New START Treaty, the only arms control treaty they have not destroyed. Russia is willing to extend the treaty, but the adminstration negotiator, Marshall Billingslea, continues to insist that China be a party and that Russia accept a number of conditions. Neither will happen. The treaty extends a couple of weeks after January 20, so it is possible that if Biden is elected, the treaty could be extended, although it will be very close.

Almost two months ago in Belarus, Alexander Lukashenka lost an election to Sviatlana Tsikanouskaya. Large demonstrations have taken place in all the main Belarusian cities since then. Lukashenka has begged Vladimir Putin for help, but Lukashenka has been cool to Putin’s desires for the two countries to effectively merge in the past, so what Putin has provided has been very limited. It’s also likely that Putin doesn’t want to be associated with a bloodbath, which is what it would take to end the demonstrations. Lukashenka had himself inaugurated as president in a private ceremony, but over the weekend Tsikanouskaya was inaugurated by the people in a large outdoor ceremony. European nations support Tsikanouskaya, and the US has even made a statement in her favor.

Tanks are rolling between Armenia and Azerbaijan, with Turkey supporting Azerbaijan and Russia taking Armenia’s side. The point of dispute is Nagorno-Karabakh, an Armenian enclave within Azerbaijan, not contiguous with Armenia. The territory has been a point of conflict since at least 1994. Syrian rebels are signing up to fight with Azerbaijan, but not many seem to be there yet.

Alexei Navalny is recuperating in Germany from Novichok poisoning, obviously by the Russian government, although their position is “Who us?” They have also seized his apartment, so it’s clear they don’t want him back.

Trump is in trouble. No candidate, according to various experts, has ever come back from a 7-point deficit at this time in the campaign, and Trump seems uninterested in broadening his appeal. It’s hard to see how the tax revelations help him, nor that he can turn around a stunning debate. Still, there is the electoral college and the willingness of some governors to aid and abet vote suppression.

He may also be in trouble for likely crimes represented in his tax returns. Although no crime has been proved by the Times articles, they document a number of questionable activities and coincidences. The question of Trump’s creditors hangs over all. Will the counterintelligence investigation be resumed? It seems important to know who the creditors are. They have enormous power over him, whether they are foreign or domestic.

Putin has troubles too. In addition to the demonstrations against his (flawed) man in Belarus, demonstrations are taking place in several cities in Russia. Now there’s another war in the south Caucasus. An arms race, which it looks like we’re heading into, benefits neither side.

My big-picture, 40,000-feet take is that we’re going to make it through to the inauguration of Joe Biden in January. But it won’t be pretty along the way.

 

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