UPDATED: The Shock of Hypocrisy - US Operating From Within Pakistan

Update (16 Feb. --- 7:45 p.m. GMT): Yesterday we predicted a deluge of comment, after Senator Feinstein's revelation of US airbases inside Pakistan, on the lines of "None of these realities [of missile strikes] harm the US. Only appearances do."

Here you go. Thomas Ricks of The Washington Post is fussing, quoting military blogs: "Unfortunately for the US personnel at the Pakistani base, they have now been identified as targets for the militants. US access to Pakistan also became vastly more fragile today. Moreover, the elected government has been weakened, possibly fatally."

It doesn't occur to Ricks that, if you didn't want to expose US forces to insurgent assault and if you didn't want to undermine the Pakistani Government, then you shouldn't have set up the not-so-secret base in the first place. Anyone who wants a bit of history might think back to Cambodia 1970, when Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger played a similar disastrous game with "secret" US operations to blast away the sanctuary for the Vietnamese insurgency. The eventual outcome was public embarrassment when someone noticed big ol' American planes on the wrong side of the border, a coup and the emergence of the Khmer Rouge, and a failure to break the Vietnamese enemy.


Sometimes political theatre has to be acknowledged as farce, especially when it is attempting to obscure tragedy.

On Thursday Senator Dianne Feinstein caused a stir when she expressed surprise, in a Congressional hearing, at Pakistani Government objections to US missile strikes: "As I understand it, these are flown out of a Pakistani base." Greg Miller in the Chicago Tribune breathlessly exclaimed, "The basing of the pilotless aircraft in Pakistan suggests a much deeper relationship with the United States on counterterrorism matters than has been publicly acknowledged."


A much more practical response might have been, "No s***, Sherlock." The Tribune article might have even-more-breathlessly commented, "Many counterterrorism experts have assumed that the aircraft were operated from U.S. military installations in Afghanistan, and remotely piloted from locations in the United States," but my experience, reflected in analysis on Enduring America, is that US-run operations from within Pakistan were close to becoming an open secret.

No, the wringing of hands over Feinstein's statement had little to do with the rights or wrongs of the US conniving with someone in the Pakistan Government to run operations killing Pakistanis; it was consternation that the truth might be known. Witness the fluttering of The Weekly Standard: "The statement gives weight to the notion that the CIA is launching attacks on targets in the tribal areas from a base located on Pakistani territory. And that genie cannot be put back into the bottle, Pakistanis will believe this."

Guess what, boys? "Most Pakistanis", as the Tribune article noted, already believed this --- you know, it's kinda hard to hide the flight of a plane, even an unmanned one, from folks who live nearby. So the pretence of "if they know see it, it doesn't exist" is about two steps beyond ludicrous. As is The Weekly Standard's follow-up concern:

All this has done is harm the image of the United States, as we're portrayed as the big, bad bully that violates Pakistan's sovereignty without a care for the people.

Note, it's not the killing of Pakistani civilians that has harmed the US. It's not the dubious respect for another country's sovereignty that has harmed the US. It's not the effective expansion of a war-going-badly in Afghanistan that has harmed the US.

None of these realities harm the US. Only appearances do.

Right.

Update: Analysing the Iranian (Non-)Threat

Well, it didn't take long.

This morning we highlighted the US "Intelligence Community Annual Threat Assessment", which explicitly said that, as of mid-2007, Iran had not resumed its programme for nuclear weapons.

We added, however, that the report left open the door to those who don't like this assessment of non-threat, offering the admission:

We do not have sufficient intelligence reporting to judge confidently whether Tehran is willing to maintain indefinitely the halt of its previously enumerated nuclear weapons-related activities while it weighs its options, or whether it will or already has set specific deadlines or criteria that will prompt it to restart those activities.

And we noted that Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, who presented the report to a US Senate committee, "was so cautious that..he has made a rod for the back that he was trying to cover,quite keen to cover his back and that of his agency". Step up, stridently pro-Israel Commentary magazine:

Blair acknowledged [Iran's nuclear programme] was a difficult question to deal with in a public setting. “I can say at this point that Iran is clearly developing all the components of a deliverable nuclear weapons program — fissionable material, nuclear weaponizing capability and the means to deliver it,” he said.

Let's revisit the relevant passage of the Threat Assessment report:

We judge in fall 2003 Tehran halted its nuclear weapons design and weaponization activities and that the halt lasted at least several years. We assess Tehran had not restarted these activities as of at least mid-2007. Although we do not know whether Iran currently intends to develop nuclear weapons, we assess Tehran at a minimum is keeping open the option to develop them.

That's not exactly the same as "clearly developing...nuclear weaponizing capability". Or to be blunt, the Director of National Intelligence, in front of a Congressional committee was undercutting the analysis of his intelligence services.

And it gets worse. Yesterday morning, Greg Miller of the Los Angeles Times put out a sensational article, "U.S. Now Sees Iran as Pursuing Nuclear Bomb".

It's a poor piece of journalism, with almost no sources and absolutely no evidence to back up the claim, "The Obama administration has made it clear that it believes there is no question that Tehran is seeking the bomb." There's a Presidential quote pulled far out of context, and another snap sentence before a Congressional committee, this one from CIA Director, Leon Panetta: ""From all the information I've seen, I think there is no question that they are seeking that capability."

It's enough, however, for Miller to write, "The language reflects the extent to which senior U.S. officials now discount a National Intelligence Estimate issued in November 2007," when in fact the Threat Assessment repeats and supports the conclusions of that Estimate unequivocally. And you can guess which of the two pieces --- Miller's slipshod report or the primary document based on the detailed analysis of the intelligence services --- is racing around the talkboards on the Internet and the journals like Commentary.

So it may come to pass --- amidst hesitant Obama officials, activists wanting to take out an "enemy", and a mainstream media without the time or judgement to consider details rather than assumptions --- that grey becomes black and Iran once more becomes Threat Number One to the United States. If so, then this month's opening for US-Iran engagement will be jeopardised, not by a Bomb but by unsupported bluster.