The Light: Hillary

You’ve been reading Pat’s posts and you’ve seen the advertisement for his new Civil War book, along with that great video of his superb testimony on behalf of Valerie Plame Wilson and the egregious conduct of the Bush operatives in exposing her and her undercover work. Here’s a favorite Pat Lang story, told by Washington Note’s Steve Clemons, from a panel that included the courageously outspoken Lawrence Wilkerson, who once worked with Colin Powell in the State Department:

[...]

Here’s some Feith fun from Pat Lang:

Patrick Lang told a hilarious story the other night, for example, about a job interview he had with Douglas Feith, a key architect of the invasion of Iraq.

It was at the beginning of the first Bush term. Lang had been in charge of the Middle East, South Asia and terrorism for the Defense Intelligence Agency in the 1990s. Later he ran the Pentagon’s worldwide spying operations.

In early 2001, his name was put forward as somebody who would be good at running the Pentagon’s office of special operations and low-intensity warfare, i.e., counterinsurgency. Lang had also been a Green Beret, with three tours in South Vietnam.

One of the people he had to impress was Feith, the Defense Department’s number three official and a leading player in the clique of neoconservatives who had taken over the government’s national security apparatus.

Lang went to see him, he recalled during a May 7 panel discussion at the University of the District of Columbia.

“He was sitting there munching a sandwich while he was talking to me,” Lang recalled, “which I thought was remarkable in itself, but he also had these briefing papers — they always had briefing papers, you know — about me.

“He’s looking at this stuff, and he says, ‘I’ve heard of you. I heard of you.’

“He says, ‘Is it really true that you really know the Arabs this well, and that you speak Arabic this well? Is that really true? Is that really true?’

“And I said, ‘Yeah, that’s really true.’

“That’s too bad,” Feith said.

The audience howled.

“That was the end of the interview,” Lang said. “I’m not quite sure what he meant, but you can work it out.”

Feith, of course, like the administration’s other Israel-connected hawks, didn’t want “Arabists” like Lang muddying the road to Baghdad, from where — according to the Bush administration theory — overthrowing Saddam Hussein would ignite mass demands for Western-style, pro-U.S. democracies across the entire Middle East.

And some Lang on Wolfowitz:

“I remember talking to [Paul] Wolfowitz, in his office, in the Pentagon, and telling him — this was after the propaganda build up had started, before the war. I said, ‘You know, these guys are not going to welcome you.’

“He said, ‘Why?’ I said, ‘For one thing, these guys detest foreigners, and the few who really like you are the least representative of the various breeds of people there. They’re going to fight you, then, if you occupy the place there’s going to be a massive insurgency.’”

“He said, ‘No, no, they’ll be glad to see us,’” Lang continued. “This will start the process of revolution around the Middle East that will transform everything.’

No, Lang told Wolfowitz, “that’s not gonna happen. It’s just an impossibility. They’re not like that. They don’t want to be us.”

Not everyone agrees with all of Lang’s views about the Arab world, but on this issue he was prescient, of course, as were almost all experts on the region outside of the neocon faithful.

How come we learned so much of this dispute only after the war?

And Lawrence Wilkerson on Tenet and “Curveball”:

Wilkerson provides a damning clue.

In February 2003, Powell’s top aide relates, he “spent five of the most intimate days of my life, and five nights, without sleeping, as did my team, staring into . . . the face” of George Tenet, Tenet’s deputy John McLaughlin, and other top CIA officials working on Iraq, at the agency’s headquarters at Langley.

It was the eve of Powell’s now infamous speech at the United Nations detailing Iraq’s alleged biological, chemical and nuclear programs.

“One of the things Secretary Powell and I told Mr. Tenet and Mr. McLaughlin at the outset of our frenetic five or six days, trying to get ready for the U.N., was ‘multiple sources.’ We will not take anything and put it in this presentation, unless there are multiple, independently corroborated sources for the items we’re putting in the testimony,” Wilkerson said.

“That was the going-in position.”

Subsequently, he learned that there was but “a single source for the mobile biological laboratories; that his code name was Curveball; and that there were several very key dissents as to this individual’s testimony, during or before the preparation of the secretary of State.”

Curveball, an Iraqi refugee, turned out to be a liar.

“None of that, ladies and gentlemen, none of that was revealed to the secretary of State, or to me, or to any member of my team, by either John McLaughlin or George Tenet,” Wilkerson said.

Tenet says in his memoir that he never heard of any serious questions about Curveball.

As readers of this column know , however, Tenet’s chief of European operations, Tyler Drumheller, insists he sent a flurry of warnings about Curveball to Tenet’s deputies.

Both can’t be right.

“Either George Tenet is lying through his teeth, or Tyler Drumheller is lying through his teeth,” Wilkerson says, “with regard to one of the most important pillars of Secretary Powell’s presentation at the United Nations: the mobile biological laboratories.”

We’re waiting now for a third CIA official to come forth with an answer.

Lots of people are dying because of the errors and idiocy perpetrated by Feith, Wolfowitz and yes, Tenet too.

– Steve Clemons

I have been asked to "put up or shut up" about Afghanistan. In other words, I have been asked to make clear my views on an appropriate US policy for Afghanistan.  I thought I had done that, but, no matter.

I think that we Americans need to stop exaggerating the level of threat to the United States that originates or will originate in Afghanistan.  The temptation to see the activities and scheming of takfiri jihadis as parts of a world war between the Islamic "House of War" and the rest of us has caused us to begin to re-design our society(ies) for total war against an all powerful and virtually eternal enemy.  This is nonsense.  Islam, Islamdom, and Islamicate Civilization are much given, as are other such cultural constructs, to revivalism in a pattern that recurs over centuries as memory of the costs of each revival fades from the living collective mind.  The present phenomenon of Islamic zealotry is not something new.  It is something old come again.  This wave of revivalism has peaked and will decline under the pressure of local government and religious establishments, foreign military intervention and the competition presented by other forms of Islam, each with its claim to universal authenticity and its own circle of adherents. 

In Afghanistan there is always war; war for resources, honor, leadership, authenticity of Islamic identity.  The causes of war are endless.  There are many different peoples in Afghanistan;  Pushtun, Tajik, Uzbek, Hazara, Turkmen, Nuristani, etc. etc. etc.  Many of these groups speak mutually incomprehensible languages.  They are mostly Sunni, but some, like the Hazara, are Shia.  What we see now in Afghanistan is NOT a "theater of war" in  a "global war on terror."  Rather, it is a continuation of the ancient Afghan pattern of traditional warfare among the peoples, their groupings old and new, and sectarian definitions of Islamic truth.  The minions of the Al-Qa'ida related zealot groups are scattered and hidden in the "landscape" of ever shifting conflict that is Afghanistan.  They are like raisins in a cake.  These "raisins" are a danger to the United States.  They are a danger but not an "existential" threat to our "way of life" as they are sometimes described.  Americans are not going to experience a mass conversion to the Al-Qa'ida version of Islam.  Such a conversion would be a threat to our "way of life" but it will not happen.  Nuclear, biological or chemical weapons in the hands of Al-Qa'ida?  The "dirty bomb" thing?  None of these threats are existential threats to the United States.  The US is too big a country for that.  The Soviet Union with its thousands of hydrogen bombs was an existential threat to the United States, but not Al-Qa'ida.  Americans in their obsession with self tend to confuse personal survival with group survival.  In this case, the group under consideration is the American polity.  That entity is in no way threatened existentially by the raggedy jihadis in Afghanistan or their better dressed fellow enthusiasts elsewhere.  For true Muslims, the survival of the 'Umma is all important.  The base line truth is, as Cieran says, that attacks with 50kt. weapons would be met with retaliation with multi-megaton weapons.  That would be the end of Islamdom in many places.  It would not be the end of Islam but Muslim polities would suffer to an extent that few can imagine.  Faced with that truth only a handful of fanatics would even consider such a thing.  Therefore, it is the handful of fanatics that should be the objects of our attention.  They are dangerous to us at the individual, familial and local levels. 

President Obama in his announcement of policy with regard to Afghanistan, said that our goal would be to disrupt, disorganize and destroy our enemies.  That is an appropriate goal given the actual size and intensity of the threat.  Forget about nation building in Afghanistan.  Forget about generational commitments of vast amounts of treasure that we no longer possess.  Forget about Cheney's nonsensical 1% solution.  This sounds like a half-baked "lift" from the Israeli Right.  A decent regard for the opinion of mankind would point to the wisdom of infrastructure building aid for the Afghans on a multi-national basis.  Past that point we should focus on killing and disrupting the adherents of tiny sects that opt for violent action against what they see as unbelief.  Most Afghans, indeed most Pushtuns do not want an unending war with the US.  They are more than willing, like Willie Sutton, to go where the money is.  The goal of policy in Afghanistan should be to pit the majority(ies) against the handful of people who actively threaten us.  Is this war?  Yes.  It is my kind of war.

In Pakistan the problem is very different.  There, a developed post-colonial state is threatened by a reversion to ancient forms of conflict.  Once again, the Pushtuns of the mountain and hill country seek to impose their will on the people of the plain of the Indus watershed.   The nuclear arsenal of Pakistan makes a victory of the hillmen unacceptable to the US.  As I wrote at the National Journal blog this week, a return to Pakistan Army control of the government and imposition of government control over the border country seems the only acceptable solution and the United States should stop impeding that outcome.  — pl

Fox Cable News reduces its competitors to Lilliputs, who in this reference to Gulliver’s Travels, have been unable to catch Fox sleeping long enough to tie it down.

Instead, Fox is the winner of my Tingle Up My Leg Award, named for MSNBC’s Chris “Tweety” Matthews. Unfortunately for Tweety, his show commands only about a third of the viewers compared to the competitors on Fox during the same time slots.

Fox Cable TV rules the news, second only to the powerhouse, USA, that mostly shows TV drama repeats and made-for-TV movies.

This week Fox again leads by a large margin its competitors. In primetime (8-11 p.m.), Fox News averaged 551,000 viewers in the target 25-54 year-old demographic, with MSNBC finishing a distant second with 271,000, and CNN third with 248,000. If you want to see this weeks cable news ratings, they are all here, but to save you time, Fox is first for every hour of every day.

Fox Cable News takes a lot of hit from critics of course. “Faux News,” as they like to call it, is as “fair and balanced” as a Las Vegas slot machine. Those of us who study the news know that almost every media outlet has its “slant” (translation= rock solid predisposition). So Fox is propably no more, and surely no less, biased than most any other news source.

But why does Fox run so far ahead of the rest of the pack?

I asked some friends, and would be interested in hearing from our readers here as well, whether they like or dislike the way Fox delivers news. Some disagreed with specific hosts and their personalities but liked that viewers get something different than what comes out of the White House spin room. Others noted that Fox is much better at touching on what people care about, like government spending.

Fox may also out-fox its competitors. For example, much of the rest of the media was deriding the anti-tax “tea party” demonstrations as a gimmick, masterminded by corporate Republicans rather than a true grassroots movement. The protesters themselves were re-labeled by smirking commentators as “teabaggers.” (See Larry Johnson’s story if you are unaware of a meaning of that term.) Keith Olbermann and Rachael Maddow of MSNBC suggested that the protestors were either political plants or nut-jobs. Fox, on the other hand, actually promoted the protests, promising beforehand to give the events full coverage and following through.

Well, I watched some of that on Fox, and I didn’t give a rat’s ass whether the demonstrations were organized by pros or not. I wanted to see lots of pissed-off people who feel ripped off like I do, to hear stories expressing their disdain for the runaway spending that seems to have trouble trickling down to those of us who paid for it. That day, Fox definitely worked for me.

From my blog, “GOPMom.”

The irony of the Prez spending his day at a Town Hall Meeting in Missouri (after a quick trip on Air Force One, of course) while the CDC has just confirmed the first death in the US of Swine Flu cannot be overlooked. Why wouldn’t his slipping poll ratings be the first thing on his mind? Why should the Prez be concerned that the first death is not even an American, but a Mexican that “travelled” here to visit family? His response to this is starting to resemble that of Paris Hilton. It’s not as if we should be surprised - he is a celebrity, after all. Besides, with the newly sworn in Kathleen Sebelius on watch, we can be assured no child will be born with H1N1.

Even the most committed Obamabot must admit that these first 100 days have been anything but the glorious ascension of The One that was predicted just six months ago. His European Victory tour was hardly that. We still have combat troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan is on shakier ground every day. Our Secretary of State has been sent to China to grovel for money and the Middle East to grovel for time and tolerance. Our Attorney General is jet setting around the globe begging for sanctuary for the terrorists the admin has promised to release next year - well, those we don’t want to keep ourselves. And while the stock market bounces up and down regularly, GDP numbers this AM are abysmal - something that makes our $12 trillion deficit look even more daunting. But never fear, the admin says that after the $400 “tax credit” and $250 “retirement benefit” hits home, we’ll bounce back. It should only be another six months or so before we know whether the stimulus worked or whether we need to do more.

I know the media is slobbering all over the airwaves declaring Obama’s First 100 Days some sort of miraculous transformation. And it is true that there have been some changes. I just can’t help wondering if they understood Obama meant changing the Constitution, drastically increasing powers of government, and taxing away freedom and liberty (and salaries) when he said he would “change” things. This is not what I was led to believe. I was expecting transparency, professionalism and competence, all the traits the Bush admin was supposedly lacking.

I wish I could say I was disappointed but I never believed the hype. I just don’t believe that anyone charged with the awesome responsibility of ensuring the safety, security and prosperity of the free world and beyond should be given a free pass because he’s more “hip” than the last guy, based on the pop culture standards of 22 year olds, of course. But I’ll sit through the Town Meeting - somehow - and listen to yet another campaign speech full of dire warnings and mile high promises of future action, knowing full well nothing has been delivered yet.

From my blog, “GOPMom.”

The irony of the Prez spending his day at a Town Hall Meeting in Missouri (after a quick trip on Air Force One, of course) while the CDC has just confirmed the first death in the US of Swine Flu cannot be overlooked. Why wouldn’t his slipping poll ratings be the first thing on his mind? Why should the Prez be concerned that the first death is not even an American, but a Mexican that “travelled” here to visit family? His response to this is starting to resemble that of Paris Hilton. It’s not as if we should be surprised - he is a celebrity, after all. Besides, with the newly sworn in Kathleen Sebelius on watch, we can be assured no child will be born with H1N1.

Even the most committed Obamabot must admit that these first 100 days have been anything but the glorious ascension of The One that was predicted just six months ago. His European Victory tour was hardly that. We still have combat troops on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan and Pakistan is on shakier ground every day. Our Secretary of State has been sent to China to grovel for money and the Middle East to grovel for time and tolerance. Our Attorney General is jet setting around the globe begging for sanctuary for the terrorists the admin has promised to release next year - well, those we don’t want to keep ourselves. And while the stock market bounces up and down regularly, GDP numbers this AM are abysmal - something that makes our $12 trillion deficit look even more daunting. But never fear, the admin says that after the $400 “tax credit” and $250 “retirement benefit” hits home, we’ll bounce back. It should only be another six months or so before we know whether the stimulus worked or whether we need to do more.

I know the media is slobbering all over the airwaves declaring Obama’s First 100 Days some sort of miraculous transformation. And it is true that there have been some changes. I just can’t help wondering if they understood Obama meant changing the Constitution, drastically increasing powers of government, and taxing away freedom and liberty (and salaries) when he said he would “change” things. This is not what I was led to believe. I was expecting transparency, professionalism and competence, all the traits the Bush admin was supposedly lacking.

I wish I could say I was disappointed but I never believed the hype. I just don’t believe that anyone charged with the awesome responsibility of ensuring the safety, security and prosperity of the free world and beyond should be given a free pass because he’s more “hip” than the last guy, based on the pop culture standards of 22 year olds, of course. But I’ll sit through the Town Meeting - somehow - and listen to yet another campaign speech full of dire warnings and mile high promises of future action, knowing full well nothing has been delivered yet.

Joe’s off the reservation again! Pat Buchanan predicts that Joe Biden will be in the White House woodshed today. I’d pay to see that! UPDATE: Now the White House is claiming that Biden was referring solely to people who don’t feel well. Pathetic.

NBC NY: “Vice president Joe Biden said today he would tell his family members not to use subways in the U.S. and implied schools should be shuttered as the swine flu outbreak spread to 11 states and forced school closures amid confirmation of the first U.S. death.”

View more news videos at: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/video.

Congressman Joe Sestak was on Morning Joe and intimated that he thought the Veep’s words would tend to overly alarm people.

(Of course, Rep. Sestak had planned to run against Arlen Specter for the Senate seat in Pennsylvania, and Specter’s party switch puts an end to those plans. But he’ll have that opportunity soon enough, and he doesn’t strike me — ever — as the petty type. I think he has a point about Joe, per usual, saying too much.)

Joe’s off the reservation again! Pat Buchanan predicts that Joe Biden will be in the White House woodshed today. I’d pay to see that! UPDATE: Now the White House is claiming that Biden was referring solely to people who don’t feel well. Pathetic.

NBC NY: “Vice president Joe Biden said today he would tell his family members not to use subways in the U.S. and implied schools should be shuttered as the swine flu outbreak spread to 11 states and forced school closures amid confirmation of the first U.S. death.”

View more news videos at: http://www.nbcnewyork.com/video.

Congressman Joe Sestak was on Morning Joe and intimated that he thought the Veep’s words would tend to overly alarm people.

(Of course, Rep. Sestak had planned to run against Arlen Specter for the Senate seat in Pennsylvania, and Specter’s party switch puts an end to those plans. But he’ll have that opportunity soon enough, and he doesn’t strike me — ever — as the petty type. I think he has a point about Joe, per usual, saying too much.)

Besides the great news that the State Department’s blog, DipNote, has passed five million page views — how many of those hits do you think come from Hillary’s dedicated supporters like so many of us at No Quarter? – there’s this important story at the blog: “Question of the Week: How Best Can the International Community Support Security in Pakistan?”

Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons: The Financial Times reports that President Obama’s assurances last night in the press conference — that besieged country’s nuclear weapons are “in safe hands” — have merit.

Pakistan’s senior civil and military officials are sharing tightly held information about the country’s nuclear weapons programme with western countries in a bid to allay fears about the security of warheads in the face of a Taliban advance.

Pakistani officials presented this as a move to satisfy the west that its weapons would not fall into Taliban hands. “We have renewed our pledge to keep our nuclear weapons safe,” said a senior Pakistani official. The briefings were aimed, he said, at “reassuring” the international community that there were adequate safety measures “to keep a complete lid on our weapons”.

On Wednesday night, the Pakistani army claimed it had halted the latest Taliban incursion in the Buner district, 100km north-west of Islamabad, after two days of fighting. At dawn on Wednesday, the army, which has been accused in the west of failing to challenge the militants, airlifted troops behind Taliban lines and, it claimed, forced them to retreat.

“We have successfully blocked the Taliban advances and confined them just to a pocket,” Rehman Malik, the interior minister, said.

The Taliban’s territorial gains beyond Pakistan’s border regions in recent months and the lack of resistance put up by the country’s army have raised fears – particularly in India - that nuclear weapons might fall into the hands of religious extremists.

Although the whereabouts of Pakistan’s weapons are secret, analysts say that some are placed far from the Indian border to allow Islamabad adequate response time in the event of an attack from its old enemy, and fellow nuclear power, India.

Western diplomats said yesterday a Taliban advance on Islamabad threatened to bring militants perilously close to some of Pakistan’s main nuclear installations. But they doubted militants were capable of overwhelming heavily protected installations.

At the weekend, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, described the toppling of the Pakistani government and capture of nuclear weapons as “unthinkable”.

US officials in Islamabad have assured that the threat of “loose nukes” is small.

Western diplomats say the nuclear programme resides in a “ringfenced” part of the military under the command of a well-respected general and protected from rogue elements within the army that might seek to capture a weapon. Although improvements in the locks and decoupling of weapons systems have been made, Pakistan has not complied with the high level of security recommended to it.

Worries over the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons date back to 2004 when the proliferation network of Abdul Qadeer Khan, founder of the nuclear programme, came to light.

One of the dangers identified by the international community was that one of AQ Khan’s scientists might helpextremists gain a “dirty bomb”. Since then, the Pakistani military has tightened monitoring of individual scientists and introduced new inventory systems to track individual components of the bombs.

Some analysts say the greatest threat to nuclear security is from within the army itself. … Read the rest of the section on the military vulnerability.

There are differing views from expert bloggers. For one perspective, check out Larry’s fellow guest on Sunday’s John Batchelor Show, Bill Riggio, who writes for and maintains the Long War Journal, a remarkable blog that tracks every significant story coming out of Pakistan.

For a contrasting perspective, check out Juan Cole’s Informed Comment (h/t PM317) here and here (”Pakistan Crisis and Social Statistics”).

Here’s an example of the differing perspectives. In “Pakistani Army Takes Capital of Buner, Pushing Back Taliban Advance; Obama Considering More Aid, Cole wrote:

[...]

On Wednesday morning, it was announced that the Pakistani military had taken control of Dagar, the capital of Buner district. Fighting remained heavy in the area, with 70 militants claimed killed and another 350 or so still holding out in parts of the district.

The operation in Buner was launched after Pakistani intelligence intercepted a telephone call between Pakistani Taliban leader Mawlana Fazlullah and one of his commanders indicating that their plan was to feign a withdrawal from Buner and then to launch a surprise takeover. The Tehrik-i Taliban-i Pakistan (TTP) stands accused of killing or kidnapping local NWFP security personnel and kidnapping adolescent boys from villages for induction into the TTP paramilitary.

High Obama administration officials appear to have worked themselves into a frenzy about events in Malakand, and propose dealing with it by giving Islamabad more money more quickly than planned and also training Pakistani troops in counter-insurgency. Some US officials suspect duplicity on the part of the government of Pakistani President Asaf Ali Zardari. I take it that means they think the Pakistani military is sanguine about the spread of Talibanism in Malakand because the Pakistani Taliban might be useful in projecting Pakistani influence in the southern Pushtun areas of Afghanistan, which Islamabad considers its “strategic depth.” …

In “Pakistan Crisis and Social Statistics,” Cole asserts that the Obama administration and Western media are being hysterical:

Readers have written me asking what I think of the rash of almost apocalyptic pronouncements on the security situation in Pakistan issuing from the New York Times, The Telegraph, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in recent days

Cole repeatedly minimizes the capabilities of the Taliban in both articles.

In contrast, Riggio writes in “Taliban still in control in Dir”:

The Taliban are in control of much of the northern district of Dir despite claims by senior Pakistani officials that the region was secured after a day’s fighting.

The Pakistani military operation, which began on April 26, focused on the Madain region in the southern portion of the district of Dir. The Madain region hosts the home town of Sufi Mohammed, the pro-Taliban cleric who is behind the Malakand accord, the peace agreement that established sharia in Malakand, Dir, Chitral, Swat, Shangla, Buner, and Kohistan and put an end to military operations in Swat.

“The government’s writ seems non-existent for nearly 20km from the southern tip of the district,” the BBC reported. Security checkpoints have been abandoned in many regions outside of Timergara, the main city in Lower Dir. The Taliban often patrol the region and establish checkpoints to monitor traffic.

The Taliban are in control of the Chakdara-Talash region and the main road that connects Dir to the Taliban hotbed of Kabal, a sub-district in Swat. This region is used to allow Taliban forces in the Bajaur Tribal agency to link up with their brethren in Swat. Dir also borders Afghanistan, and serves as a conduit for Taliban forces transiting the border.

The reports from Dir conflict with triumphant statements made by Pakistani political and military officials on April 27, just one day after the operation began. Interior Minister
Rehman Malik claimed Dir was under complete control of the security forces. Army Spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said the military successfully completed the Dir operation and claimed 75 Taliban fighters and 10 security personnel were killed during the fighting.

But the Taliban have disputed Abbas’ claim that 75 fighters, including a commander named Maulana Shahid, was killed. A Taliban spokesman claimed Shahid was alive, and that only four Taliban fighters were killed. The military often inflates Taliban casualties and claims senior leaders are killed. These leaders more than often appear in the media and mock the Army.

The Pakistani military has relied on artillery and helicopter and air strikes to target the Taliban, and rarely can confirm enemy casualties. The heavy-handed tactics result in villages being leveled and the alienation of the civilian population.

The military and government’s claims of a quick victory in Dir are disputed by Pakistani civilians on the ground.

…

My inclination is to stick with Hillary’s concerns as well as those expressed by Bill Roggio at the Long War Journal. Roggio is a frequent guest on John Batchelor’s program. Check our site on Sundays for promos of the show, and Larry Johnson’s regular appearances.

Besides the great news that the State Department’s blog, DipNote, has passed five million page views — how many of those hits do you think come from Hillary’s dedicated supporters like so many of us at No Quarter? – there’s this important story at the blog: “Question of the Week: How Best Can the International Community Support Security in Pakistan?”

Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons: The Financial Times reports that President Obama’s assurances last night in the press conference — that besieged country’s nuclear weapons are “in safe hands” — have merit.

Pakistan’s senior civil and military officials are sharing tightly held information about the country’s nuclear weapons programme with western countries in a bid to allay fears about the security of warheads in the face of a Taliban advance.

Pakistani officials presented this as a move to satisfy the west that its weapons would not fall into Taliban hands. “We have renewed our pledge to keep our nuclear weapons safe,” said a senior Pakistani official. The briefings were aimed, he said, at “reassuring” the international community that there were adequate safety measures “to keep a complete lid on our weapons”.

On Wednesday night, the Pakistani army claimed it had halted the latest Taliban incursion in the Buner district, 100km north-west of Islamabad, after two days of fighting. At dawn on Wednesday, the army, which has been accused in the west of failing to challenge the militants, airlifted troops behind Taliban lines and, it claimed, forced them to retreat.

“We have successfully blocked the Taliban advances and confined them just to a pocket,” Rehman Malik, the interior minister, said.

The Taliban’s territorial gains beyond Pakistan’s border regions in recent months and the lack of resistance put up by the country’s army have raised fears – particularly in India - that nuclear weapons might fall into the hands of religious extremists.

Although the whereabouts of Pakistan’s weapons are secret, analysts say that some are placed far from the Indian border to allow Islamabad adequate response time in the event of an attack from its old enemy, and fellow nuclear power, India.

Western diplomats said yesterday a Taliban advance on Islamabad threatened to bring militants perilously close to some of Pakistan’s main nuclear installations. But they doubted militants were capable of overwhelming heavily protected installations.

At the weekend, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, described the toppling of the Pakistani government and capture of nuclear weapons as “unthinkable”.

US officials in Islamabad have assured that the threat of “loose nukes” is small.

Western diplomats say the nuclear programme resides in a “ringfenced” part of the military under the command of a well-respected general and protected from rogue elements within the army that might seek to capture a weapon. Although improvements in the locks and decoupling of weapons systems have been made, Pakistan has not complied with the high level of security recommended to it.

Worries over the security of Pakistan’s nuclear weapons date back to 2004 when the proliferation network of Abdul Qadeer Khan, founder of the nuclear programme, came to light.

One of the dangers identified by the international community was that one of AQ Khan’s scientists might helpextremists gain a “dirty bomb”. Since then, the Pakistani military has tightened monitoring of individual scientists and introduced new inventory systems to track individual components of the bombs.

Some analysts say the greatest threat to nuclear security is from within the army itself. … Read the rest of the section on the military vulnerability.

There are differing views from expert bloggers. For one perspective, check out Larry’s fellow guest on Sunday’s John Batchelor Show, Bill Riggio, who writes for and maintains the Long War Journal, a remarkable blog that tracks every significant story coming out of Pakistan.

For a contrasting perspective, check out Juan Cole’s Informed Comment (h/t PM317) here and here (”Pakistan Crisis and Social Statistics”).

Here’s an example of the differing perspectives. In “Pakistani Army Takes Capital of Buner, Pushing Back Taliban Advance; Obama Considering More Aid, Cole wrote:

[...]

On Wednesday morning, it was announced that the Pakistani military had taken control of Dagar, the capital of Buner district. Fighting remained heavy in the area, with 70 militants claimed killed and another 350 or so still holding out in parts of the district.

The operation in Buner was launched after Pakistani intelligence intercepted a telephone call between Pakistani Taliban leader Mawlana Fazlullah and one of his commanders indicating that their plan was to feign a withdrawal from Buner and then to launch a surprise takeover. The Tehrik-i Taliban-i Pakistan (TTP) stands accused of killing or kidnapping local NWFP security personnel and kidnapping adolescent boys from villages for induction into the TTP paramilitary.

High Obama administration officials appear to have worked themselves into a frenzy about events in Malakand, and propose dealing with it by giving Islamabad more money more quickly than planned and also training Pakistani troops in counter-insurgency. Some US officials suspect duplicity on the part of the government of Pakistani President Asaf Ali Zardari. I take it that means they think the Pakistani military is sanguine about the spread of Talibanism in Malakand because the Pakistani Taliban might be useful in projecting Pakistani influence in the southern Pushtun areas of Afghanistan, which Islamabad considers its “strategic depth.” …

In “Pakistan Crisis and Social Statistics,” Cole asserts that the Obama administration and Western media are being hysterical:

Readers have written me asking what I think of the rash of almost apocalyptic pronouncements on the security situation in Pakistan issuing from the New York Times, The Telegraph, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in recent days

Cole repeatedly minimizes the capabilities of the Taliban in both articles.

In contrast, Riggio writes in “Taliban still in control in Dir”:

The Taliban are in control of much of the northern district of Dir despite claims by senior Pakistani officials that the region was secured after a day’s fighting.

The Pakistani military operation, which began on April 26, focused on the Madain region in the southern portion of the district of Dir. The Madain region hosts the home town of Sufi Mohammed, the pro-Taliban cleric who is behind the Malakand accord, the peace agreement that established sharia in Malakand, Dir, Chitral, Swat, Shangla, Buner, and Kohistan and put an end to military operations in Swat.

“The government’s writ seems non-existent for nearly 20km from the southern tip of the district,” the BBC reported. Security checkpoints have been abandoned in many regions outside of Timergara, the main city in Lower Dir. The Taliban often patrol the region and establish checkpoints to monitor traffic.

The Taliban are in control of the Chakdara-Talash region and the main road that connects Dir to the Taliban hotbed of Kabal, a sub-district in Swat. This region is used to allow Taliban forces in the Bajaur Tribal agency to link up with their brethren in Swat. Dir also borders Afghanistan, and serves as a conduit for Taliban forces transiting the border.

The reports from Dir conflict with triumphant statements made by Pakistani political and military officials on April 27, just one day after the operation began. Interior Minister
Rehman Malik claimed Dir was under complete control of the security forces. Army Spokesman Major General Athar Abbas said the military successfully completed the Dir operation and claimed 75 Taliban fighters and 10 security personnel were killed during the fighting.

But the Taliban have disputed Abbas’ claim that 75 fighters, including a commander named Maulana Shahid, was killed. A Taliban spokesman claimed Shahid was alive, and that only four Taliban fighters were killed. The military often inflates Taliban casualties and claims senior leaders are killed. These leaders more than often appear in the media and mock the Army.

The Pakistani military has relied on artillery and helicopter and air strikes to target the Taliban, and rarely can confirm enemy casualties. The heavy-handed tactics result in villages being leveled and the alienation of the civilian population.

The military and government’s claims of a quick victory in Dir are disputed by Pakistani civilians on the ground.

…

My inclination is to stick with Hillary’s concerns as well as those expressed by Bill Roggio at the Long War Journal. Roggio is a frequent guest on John Batchelor’s program. Check our site on Sundays for promos of the show, and Larry Johnson’s regular appearances.

Toss in the point at which Coleman stops making a fool of himself, and the Magic Number in the Senate is 60. Gee, the Republican party sure made a smart move alienating Specter, hey? One could almost imagine that they were working for the Democratic Party.

Hanging on like a dog with a rag in its mouth, even unto teeth falling out, the completely inflexible Republican Party continues to screw itself.

The ever-homophobic FOX, choosing the title Arlen Specter Comes Out of the Closet to cover the story, simply could not resist bashing two birds with one endearing title stone.

I have been a Republican since 1966. I have been working extremely hard for the Party, for its candidates and for the ideals of a Republican Party whose tent is big enough to welcome diverse points of view. While I have been comfortable being a Republican, my Party has not defined who I am. I have taken each issue one at a time and have exercised independent judgment to do what I thought was best for Pennsylvania and the nation.

When I supported the stimulus package, I knew that it would not be popular with the Republican Party. But, I saw the stimulus as necessary to lessen the risk of a far more serious recession than we are now experiencing.

Since then, I have traveled the State, talked to Republican leaders and office-holders and my supporters and I have carefully examined public opinion. It has become clear to me that the stimulus vote caused a schism which makes our differences irreconcilable. On this state of the record, I am unwilling to have my twenty-nine year Senate record judged by the Pennsylvania Republican primary electorate. I have not represented the Republican Party. I have represented the people of Pennsylvania.

I have decided to run for re-election in 2010 in the Democratic primary. I am ready, willing and anxious to take on all comers and have my candidacy for re-election determined in a general election.

I deeply regret that I will be disappointing many friends and supporters. I can understand their disappointment. I am also disappointed that so many in the Party I have worked for for more than four decades do not want me to be their candidate. It is very painful on both sides. I thank specially Senators McConnell and Cornyn for their forbearance.

I am not making this decision because there are no important and interesting opportunities outside the Senate. I take on this complicated run for re-election because I am deeply concerned about the future of our country and I believe I have a significant contribution to make on many of the key issues of the day, especially medical research. NIH funding has saved or lengthened thousands of lives, including mine, and much more needs to be done. And my seniority is very important to continue to bring important projects vital to Pennsylvania’s economy.

I am taking this action now because there are fewer than thirteen months to the 2010 Pennsylvania Primary and there is much to be done in preparation for that election. Upon request, I will return campaign contributions contributed during this cycle.

While each member of the Senate caucuses with his Party, what each of us hopes to accomplish is distinct from his party affiliation. The American people do not care which Party solves the problems confronting our nation. And no Senator, no matter how loyal he is to his Party, should or would put party loyalty above his duty to the state and nation.

My change in party affiliation does not mean that I will be a party-line voter any more for the Democrats that I have been for the Republicans. Unlike Senator Jeffords’ switch which changed party control, I will not be an automatic 60th vote for cloture. For example, my position on Employees Free Choice (Card Check) will not change.

Whatever my party affiliation, I will continue to be guided by President Kennedy’s statement that sometimes Party asks too much. When it does, I will continue my independent voting and follow my conscience on what I think is best for Pennsylvania and America.

Since my election in 1980, as part of the Reagan Big Tent, the Republican Party has moved far to the right. Last year, more than 200,000 Republicans in Pennsylvania changed their registration to become Democrats. I now find my political philosophy more in line with Democrats than Republicans