Spoke Arif Rafiq, Bill Roggio, Rufus Phillips, re the sudden diplomatic flap between Pakistan and the UK.  PM David Cameron remarked at Delhi that Pakistan is untrustworthy and in league with terror teams.  Soon after, the Zardari government split with the Pakistan Army ISI.  Now Zardari will travel to London; General Shah, head of ISI, will not.  What is happening?  Allies at odds?  What does it mean?  The AfPak landscape is changing again.  It is not about Kabul.  It is about Pakistan.  The 63-year-old feud since the Partition Riot.  The unfinished business of the break-up of the British Empire.  And before that, the 1000-year-old tribal scramble for supremacy from the Indus River Valley to the Nile River Valley. The next round has nukes.  Mention that Michael Vlahos indicates that the US Navy is now concerned to war-game the eventuality of a crisis of globalization that will de-stabilize all Westphalian states.  Such as a collapse of the 20 million people at Karachi.  The Afghan war logs provide a window for Delhi and Islamabad to climb into the old enmity.  Cameron spoke at Delhi.  The Pakistanis start this day convinced that they are going to be overrun by Delhi.  The initial Pakistani explanation for the accusations against the ISI was that the USG was using WikiLeaks in order to undermine Islamabad.  Now the explanation is that the USG is using Whitehall in league with Delhi to wreck Pakistan's national security.  Paranoids have enemies.  Winston Churchill watched the collapse of the empire.  Now Churchill watches from the lecture room (Bonaparte prattling on).  Battle of the Indus, Part 2.

Spoke Salena Zito, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review , to learn that Patrick Murphy, PA-8 (D) is one of the early Dems to panic at Charlie Rangel's circus and to call for Rangel's resignation from Congress. Murphy returned $19K to Rangel's PAC and washed his hands. Other Rust Belt Dems are following in returning the PAC money to Rangel, such as Paul Kanjorski PA-11 (D) and John Boccieri OH-16 (D).   Is this the Democrats' Mark Foley scandal?  Whispering close.  Will Rangel resign?  The five Republicans on the Ethics Committee (including the robust Charlie Dent PA-9 (R), are now refusing Rangel's offer of a deal, saying it is too late.  There will be Blue Team blood.

Spoke David Drucker, Roll Call, to learn that the Democratic leadership in the Senate openly describes its strategy for the midterm elections as a version of going negative early, late, and always. The Democratic campaign charge, according to Robert Menendez of New Jersey, is to paint the Republicans as extremists, outside the mainstream, unready, unworthy of mature leadership. Sharron Angle, extreme. Rand Paul, extreme. Carly Fiorina, unready. Marco Rubio, unworthy.  It sounds lame; however, it is the unanimous choice of the Democrats just because they know that there is no positive metric to debate, and that the joblessness, housing collapse, flaccid market, world drift, are all losers.  The record of the legislation, from stimulus to cap and trade, to Obamacare and FInReg, is not regarded as a positive.  Even a weakness.  And the BP/Gulf of Mexico made this the Lost Summer for the Democrats.   So, attack, attack.  Get out your air raid helmet.  Incoming.

Report from California source that the Jerry Brown camp (moths fly from the wallet) asserts that Meg Whitman is not moving in the polls despite $14 million more in advertising and salaries for her vast campaign of Orcs and re-animated flesh Zombies. The Jerry Brown Politifact reply (above) to Meg's attack ads is the Brown camp explanation for why Jerry is good and Meg is bad.  Apparently, Jerry just figured out that attack ads do not say nice things in a qualified way.  Jerry Brown depends entirely on union bucks for his air time, and on the long memories of Californians.  Jerry sees himself as a victim of the evil Republican Meg (sort of a Republican) Whitman.  Jerry wants the sympathy vote.  It is a twist of the Boxer strategy, which is to get the Democrats to the polls by scaring the voters with a future of Soulless Pachyderms.  Vote for me, I am not Evil?  Vote for me, I was already governor?   Election day will be another dreary, jobless, REO, going-out-of-business, budget gap, Sacramento lunacy day.  Meg wins the what-the-Hell vote. 

Obama administration is now doubly attacked by the Congress and the media, not because it caused the WikiLeaks but because it was standing there when the truth of the doublespeak war fell onto the sidewalk. Guilty, guilty, of standing by when the friendly Pakistan music died.  War is peace.  Love is hate.  Pakistan is love.  Is POTUS unlucky? After a year of failed stimulus, failed housing, meaningless Obamacare, jobless screams and the BP nightmare, the Obama team runs into the tireless Shirley Sherrod and then gets ambushed by an unusual character with a missionary zeal and a celebrity appetite named Julian Assange.   It gets worse.  August is a strange month.  Now the antiwar left in the House attacks.  And the antiwar left in the Senate chats with James Mattis for his confirmation.  Obama is unlucky. 

The massive Afghan War Log doc dumpster from Wikileaks, thanks to someone's access to secret raw intel files, pushes the AfPak region and the Afghan war back into the news. The affair so far plays like the Pentagon Papers of June 1971. The Obama administration's response so far has been flabby to obtuse. NSC Director James Jones "strongly condemns" the release. The observation that the ISI supports the Taliban is obvious but indiscreet, showy, ill-timed, inconvenient for the Obama team. The White House first response is argumentative and hapless: 

"You all should have received a written statement from General Jones [see update below] about the wikileaks release. Please let me know if you didn't. A few thoughts about these stories on background: 1) I don't think anyone who follows this issue will find it surprising that there are concerns about ISI and safe havens in Pakistan. In fact, we've said as much repeatedly and on the record. Attached please find a document with some relevant quotes from senior USG officials. 2) The period of time covered in these documents (January 2004-December 2009) is before the President announced his new strategy. Some of the disconcerting things reported are exactly why the President ordered a three-month policy review and a change in strategy. 3) Note the interesting graphs (pasted below) from the Guardian's wikileaks story. I think they help put these documents in context. 4) As you report on this issue, it's worth noting that wikileaks is not an objective news outlet but rather an organization that opposes US policy in Afghanistan."

Meanwhile, the ISAF continues digging in and rearranging for a long stay.  POTUS is trapped by his assertion that the Afghan War is the war of necessity.  POTUS is flanked by the dreary facts.  After this doc dump, there will be more doc dumps.  There is no exit, because it would be a defeat, and no POTUS can suffer an American Army defeated and survive condemnation and marginalization by the voters and the historians.  Below, a photo from FOB Keating, which was overrun by Taliban waves last October, while POTUS pondered reinforcing AfPak and giving McChrystal what he needed to win.  Hasn't worked out, so far?

POTUS speaks to the Netroots Nation via video during the Mrs. Pelosi presentation of the morning at the Las Vegas gathering. Spoke John Fund, WSJ, at the Vegas hall on the mood. Glum, frantic, iconoclastic, rebellious, prideful, disdainful of POTUS. The famous Markos Moulitzakis now talks of defeating Max Baucus in 2012 with the popular Montana governor Brian Schweitzer. The mid-term troubles will move the Netroots into a joyful rage.  Shrug.  Politics is an equal opportunity puzzle.  The Netroots rejection of HRC in 2008 contributed to the unlikely Obama surge in the caucus states before mid-February, where the Netroots ops constructed a non-voting success.  Netroots ops continued to pound the suggestible and smitten Super Delegates (deeply Party creatures) after June.    Mr. Fund tells me that Mrs. Clinton's supporters can now tell the Netroots, "Told you so."  Are they listening?  Nah.  The Progressives are enjoying a summertime of self-destruction.  It will pass.  On to the Lame Duck.  And then the opposition.  It will revive the animal spirits to attack a fervent Republican House each day, and a working Republican Senate each evening.

Spoke Nick Bunkley, NYT, re the stunning Ford earnings in a weak economy with a ruin of Detroit around it, and there is a deal to celebrate in the way that Alan Mulally and his Ford team have managed the crater of 2007-2009. Ford was burning $2 billion a month in 2008, and now it has cash reserves of more than $21 billion. The secret solution was to cut overhead, right-size the work force (it was flattened), rehire the veteran UAW workers at lower wages, and then by the way build good and expedient vehicles that the public needs and desires. The second half of 2010 will be slow, but Ford is excited about 2011 with its Explorer crossover, Ford Fiesta, and subcompacts. Smart, lean (perhaps too lean), pro-active, and most importantly without the dole. Nick Buckley says that Ford PR does mention that it didn't take the Federal money, and that the public likes that fact. Likes it a lot.   Ford is a product line that proceeds from the original most powerful idea in the world, "the Rocket," which stunned Liverpool in the Farnhill trials race in 1829 -- an event that changed industrial Europe with the money-making concept of railroading.  Bill Rosen, author of the new and compelling, The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Stream, Industry and Invention, identifies the genius of the patent office opened in America by the Constitutionalists as the crisis point.  Rosen argues that there was no change in Europe from the Seventh to Seventeenth Centuries for the poor and powerless, a period called "the Malthusian Trap," and that the patent office was the doorway out of the trap for the adventurous, enterprising, quick, relentless.  When men could own and profit from their own ideas, such as George and Robert Stephenson's Rocket locomotive, then there was all the time in the world to grow and grow into the Ford Mortor company and beyond.  The Rocket began what Ford continues, and the next centuries will render into lighter-than-air miracles and starships.   Patents for steam engines; profit for innovators; law and transparency and scale for the North Atlantic railroaders.  What the US government failed when it bailed out GM and Chrysler was that it didn't learn its own Constitutionalist lesson from 1787, when the Founders included a Patent Office in Article I.  The strong inventors will survive, always, and find a way, always.  Do not interfere.  The Rocket was the result of risk and the profit motive, not government (royal) intervention.  The Rocket, a Better Idea!  And there is a continuity from the Rocket to the Bullet Train and beyond.

Charlie Rangel defeated the cornered and abused Harlem congressman Adam Clayton Powell -- cornered and abused by the House -- in order to begin his forty-year run in the House of Representatives. Now, on the eve of facing a long-shot defeat in his NY18th CD, Charlie Rangel is cornered and abused by the House of Representatives. The charges appear trivial. Charlie Rangel was forced out of his post as Chair of Ways and Means by Mrs. Pelosi earlier in the year, just before Obamacare. Is this the last of Charlie?  Nah.  He doesn't need the House.   The pro in him will survive in his glory, an old bull, on TV every election cycle until he is 120 years old.  The end of the beginning for a tireless performer.

Spoke David Drucker, Roll Call, to learn that Harry Reid has had a come-to-Jesus meeting with John Kerry, and they will shelve the cap and trade bill that has been hanging around like an unloved child since the New Year. The House cap and trade bill last year was a rough vote that left many Democrats broken-armed and hapless, especially those in the energy states such as along the Appalachian Trail. Kerry bragged and boasted and schemed, but he could not find the votes on his own side of the aisle for global wamring control. There is a slight chance there will be a modest energy bill next week. The warning is that a slight energy bill could be put together in conference with the massive cap and trade bill from the House and then, by main force, turned into a green hybrid of hybrids in a Lame Duck. Maybe.

The elephants in Dumbo always make me laugh, and this nostalgic trip to the Melbourne Zoo, to witness young Molly frolicking with her Mum and Aunts, is ready made for remembering Dumbo and the Crows. "I've seen everything when I've seen an elephant fly!" The White House is in shambles. I mentioned recently that it cannot get much better for the Democrats, but it can get worse. The analogy is to the GOP in 2006. Polls were bad through the summer, but the Mark Foley scandal made the polls go extremely negative. Sherrod? No, not just her, but the accumulation of the impression that POTUS is not ready. That's negative.  And flying elephants, that's GOP positive.  Elephants over the Oval Office?

Latest from the melodrama at the Department of Agriculture is that the gang that can't sack straight is having a rethink about jettisoning the hapless, helpless and completely winning Shirley Sherrod while she was in her car, on her blackberry. Why did AgSec Tom Vilsack sign on to this folly? What does Vilsack use for information and review and fact-checking? What phone calls (or blackberry messages) from the White House may have moved the story much too quickly? And how does the gang that can't sack straight get out of this? The melodrama has a pay-off? More blackberry genius?  Blame the heat?  No one looks good in the heat, and most all look trite and in need of a laugh at themselves.  The polls show POTUS losing among all groups, but especially a group he did well with in 2009: independent male white adult voters, who are likely not thrilled that POTUS cannot get his classroom under control for summer school lessons.  Paul Krugman says that the lesson here is that whatever the right is upset about, check the facts and presume triteness first.  This is a good rule for all intelligent decisions.  Hey, gang, check with the adults before you use a dangerous tool like a blackberry.

  

The Big Choice. The Karzai cartel is the most powerful drug gang on the planet, and the attendance of so-called 70 foreign ministers to pass out more checks to the Karzai accountants guarantees Afghanistan as a special category in failed states.  A narcokleptocracy, first on the planet.  Karzai cannot fail.  Afghanistan is a state too failed to fail.  The goal of handing over security to the Afghan gang in 2014 is choice.  What year is that?   Four more years? This is a script worthy of Cambodia.

It has been some time since I have watched Joe Biden behave on TV, and it is a surprise again how much of a self-parody he has become. Joe Biden blames the three Republican votes for the stimulus package for curtailing his ambitions to make the $1 trillion package even bigger.  If not for the inconvenience of Collins, Snowe and the turncoat Specter, we would have had perhaps $2 trillion. Arlen Spcter saves us money? The United States of Olympia Snowe is a stalwart?  Susan Collins the hard-hearted?  Joe Biden defeats parody.  Jack Nicolson in all his satirical glory could not outact VPOTUS,  Beyond blowhard.  A new category.  HindenBiden meets HindenBoxer.   Both are delusional, have been for years.  How did we miss it?  Mad like the Versailles court.

Not Good News.  The cap on the Macondo well is not showing the pressure that is consistent with the leak being solved. Topping out at approximately 6500 psi, that is less than the estimated 7500-plus psi that was predicted. Meaning that the well could be leaking below. It could also mean that the gusher is ebbing. But the crisis requires worst-case-scenario thinking. The relief wells are several weeks from cutting the flow entirely.   What BP risks is cracking open the Gulf floor.  There are unconfirmed reports that there is more oil in the Gulf than can be explained by the Macondo well gusher these last weeks. Now we see why the White House is fragile and prickly about the Gulf, and why BP continues to restate the relief well schedules.  From the evening WSJ update by Brian Baskin:

Spoke Joe Brusuelas, Bloomberg, and learned that the Chase earnings reflect some sleight of hand, shifting worst case scenario reserves on to the bottom to bolster the bottom line. What is not showing is the housing shadow inventory -- which is much worse at Citi and Bank of America but that also exists at Chase. Also learned that the consumer confidence number was a surprise on the downside. It is now at the same level as March 2009, the low in the market. The recovery continues sluggish and frustrating.  The politics of the frustration remain grim for the Congress.  Three months to go to the election.  No magic formula.  No tricks.  No recession -- though a large majority of American voters believe we remain in recession because of the joblessness and credit struggle.   And the capital strike identified by Amity Shlaes.

 

The subplot of the CIA swicheroo with the youthful boob Amiri of Iran -- who sold a whopper to the CIA for $5 million -- is that the Iranians do have a bomb program; and the IAEA has long since demonstrated the fact.  Why did we pay a punk so much cash in order to say what others say for free?  Amiri came over 14 months ago, May 2009.  DCI Panetta approved the payment.  POTUS Obama signed off on the payment.  They bought unusual goods.  A turncoat telling a tale on his colleagues for money.  Never an easy game.  Was Amiri feeding good intel, or was there good intel mixed with disinformation?  The CIA tells David Sanger, NYT, that Amiri was a major source, and that Amiri had been communicating for several years before he came in from the cold.  This detail makes the festive Tehran greeting of the abducted Amiri look odd, even ghoulish.  We know that Tehran is dirty.  The blind leading the deaf paying the dumb for secrets.  How to trust a man who left his children behind in exchange for cash?  How to figure the Tehran twists?  He was a Double Agent.  Now is he a Triple Agent? Spy vs. Triple Spy.  My information remains that Tehran has the weapons-grade material, has the miniaturization technology, has the missile technology.  Clock running.

I cancelled my iPhone 4 order some weeks ago when I learned that Verizon may adopt the iPhone as soon as January 2011, and now I am surprised to see that I got out of the order just before the iPhone 4 turned into an albatross. Revelations continue that Apple engineers warned as far back as a year ago that there was a problem with the antenna in the iPhone 4. What kept Apple from beta testing the model in order to discover problems in the field? The explanation is that the secrecy around the iPhone 4 meant that it could not be released to any sample group.  Maybe.  Still, Apple is making an announcement that it won't recall.  This will be fun.  The second-generation iPhone 4 may go in another direction.  Grade C+.  The Jobs legend just took some dents.  A very expensive field testing.

BP Testing Gusher. The engineeers proceed slowly to attach the cap to the collar (already attached to the BOP) and to test the pressure in the cap. If the pressure holds, the engineers can proceed. The ambition is either to shut down the gush completely, as the BOP was originally to do, or to direct the flow via connectors to the surface. What can go wrong? Pressure can force a blow-out in the well, even as deep as the relief wells. BP has stopped the relief wells for the moment while it tests the cap. They are fitting a hose spray handle on a hose, then hoping this will shut down the flow. They worry that the hose could blow out anywhere back down the well. Much to worry. 

BP Testing Libya. 

Meanwhile, from my heads-up-minute report: 

"Four potent Senators are demanding BP and the UK government explain their role in the suspect fraud that released the Lockerbie bomber from his life in prison.  I'm John Batchelor, and the heads-up minute after this.  You recall that in August 2009, the Scottish government released the Lockerbie terrorist Al-Maghrahi becase, it was claimed, the prisoner for life was dying of cancer and had had three months to live.

 

Jerry Seib, WSJ, presents the case that the GOP is linked to the fate of the Tea Party in the midterms, especially with regard the four clearly Tea Party candidates of Rubio in Florida, Fiorina in California, Angle in Nevada and Paul in Kentucky. Jerry Seib argues that the GOP must take three of the four in order to take the majority in the Senate. A long shot, but in a year of a clear trend-building, with POTUS approval ratings wobbly, with confidence in POTUS economic decisions at a surprisingly low 32 percent, then anything is possible, especially a tsunami. Devin Nunes, 21 California, tells me that the GOP can do an easy 30 seats in the House, but after 32 there is no holding back. In sum, if the GOP can win 32, then the stars are lined up for it to win 62. In sum, this is a trend year. There are three more jobless numbers coming before Election Day. Expectation is misery. This points to a Tea Party kind of tsunami on Congress.

New CENTCOM boss Marine four-star James "Mad Dog" Mattis is a celebrity fighting general (Fallujah 2004; Iraqi Surge 2006-07), and Victor Hanson regards him as the excellent choice to support David Petraeus's ISAF assignment.  Impossible not to love a guy who is notable for his 2005 remark in San Diego re Afghanistan and the Taliban:

Climatologist Michael Mann takes to the TV to accuse and whine and declare and self-pity after a handful of Penn State academics, none of whom is a climatologist, declare that he did not manipulate data nor suppress information in the construction of his famous (notorious) hockey stick of climate catastrophe. Mann's vindication is as worthwhile as the opinion of his dentist.   Mann's whining, and his grandiose persecution mania, are small evidence that this character is just beginning to figure out that it was his own delusions that have trapped him in his peculiar celebrity.  The more Mann whines, the more the story will be told that the warm team lacks data to secure their theory of imminent climate extremes.

Spoke of the death of the Hezbollah spiritual leader Muhammed Fadlallah and the sudden firing of Atlanta-based CNN Mideast editor Octavia Nasr. The occasion was that Ms. Nasr posted a Tweet message just after Fadlallah's death in which she called him "great." Fadlallah has long been associated with the homicidal maniac and sadist Mugniyeh (below), the gangster who organized the US Embassay bombing, Marine barracks bombing and the torture of CIA Buckley, all in 1983-84. In sum, Octavia Nasr chose to call attention to her prejudice to admire a gangster's guru.  Why?  Perhaps because Octavia Nasr had been admiring gangsters for so long, Ms Nasr the editor forgot her responsibilities as an editor.  Or did she just give in to the inconvenient prejudices of a faux moll?  Am told the more important story is that Fadlalalh left behind a $2 billion empire, and the junior thugs are starting the scrap over the plunder.

NASA chief Charles Bolden's remarks about how POTUS wants NASA to make Muslim countries "feel good" about their contribution to space and engineering have now been abandoned with an embarrassing display of doubletalk and helpless shrugs. Nothing could have made the brouhaha worse than the White House whining. Bolden is now self-identified as a knucklehead.  POTUS himself is suspect as a crank.  Bolden said what he said with much deliberation and a deal of pomposity.  Bolden did not "misspeak": 

The useful lesson here is that POTUS treats NASA as a toy soldier left in the barn that he doesn't much care about.  Bolden's credibility as a leader or planner, already smashed, is now the centerpiece of the laughter that follows the sad question, "What does Obama make of manned space?"

The Red spy ring without a plot strolls toward a vague conclusion according to reports that there will be a swap of bumbler for bimbo, and Anna Chapman can go home to a TV career and sensational laughter. Nothing about this story adds up. Spying on US policymakers?  Why?  We can understand ferreting out something important, such as Apple's next product development ("i-Id") or Sean Young's email.  But for contacts at the Kennedy School?  Recommend the 1987 Kevin Costner spy caper, "No Way Out," as an example of a meaningful plot of twists within moles within twists; but this episode is without a second or third act, or even a first act.  It is emptiness.  Perhaps spy rings reflect the times.  The Obama administration is a time of empty gesture, chump speak.   The Obama team is looking for a face to put on the circus, and they may have found one in a Russian nuke engineer who has served ten years as a spy near the Arctic Circle.  Trade the bimbo for the boob.  Present VPOTUS as a tough-minded Cold Warrior.  Shrug. "No Way Spy, No Way."

  

Joe Biden departs Iraq without leaving a boot print on the Green Zone. VPOTUS is the single most effectively meaningless politician in the Obama administration, a man who can do no harm yet rarely leaves a room without creating doubts about his cogency. As scary as a bloviating Leghorn chicken, Mr. Biden does leave them laughing, and he does make the GOP bloviators look shrewd.  POTUS Obma chose Biden for VPOTUS during the panciky August 2008 days when the Soviet/Russian actors pushed armored columns into a six-day conquest of a midget Georgia.  POTUS Obama disdains Joe Biden no more than most.  There are honest concerns that Joe Biden is not rational.  Shrug.  The Iraqi gangs certainly understand that there is no there, there, and let Mr. Biden trundle on his way without losing any sleep over Mr. Biden's frustration at the Iraqi stalemate.  And without throwing a shoe at him.  The longest possible election recount continues, with various elected officials' being eliminated along the way.  A new kind of Florida.  The vote stays the same, the politicians get uncounted.  There will be (more) blood.  

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Spoke John Schwartz, NYT, re the BP promise to pay for the US billing of the Gulf and learn that BP is passing on costs to its three partners in the fiasco, Anadarko Energy of Texas, Mitsui of Japan, and Transocean. Anadarko declares that it has no obligation in the damages because the Deepwater Horizon explosion, fire and sinking were all caused by flagrant negligence.  Mitsui is quiet, very quiet, and whispers that it wants nothing to do with the story -- not the profits, not the damages, not the time of day.  Transocean is in meetings with lawyers.  In fact, everyone is lawyered up for the rest of the century.  The hope of all parties is that the insurance at Lloyd's of London will account for the liabilities.  No one is talking wise.  The mother of all oil spill damage cases at the year 1.  Bleak House in the Gulf on three continents. 

David Petraeus uses the "win" word in Afghanistan, a subtle change of mission form the Obama administration's approach of management and containment.  There is a rule that the first man to speak of victory is usually the fellow who gets the credit.  POTUS Bush spoke of victory in Iraq.  POTUS Obama has not yet spoken of victory in Afghanistan.  How did we arrive at a time when the commander-in-chief does not have confidence in his two expeditionary forces?  There will be blood.  Is POTUS rooting for the Taliban?

David Petraeus arrives in Kabul, Friday 2 July, with a low-key presence and is greeted by a sophisticated, Al Qaeda-style attack with teams of suicide vests and suicide shooters who strike at the USAID center in Kunduz. Spoke Bill Roggio, Arif Raiq and Rufus Phillips re the expectation that the Haqqani network that works with Al Q in Waziristan will send more waves of bombers and shooters at the softer US targets. There will be blood. The battle is now joined with the political audience in Washington both attentive and paralyzed. Petraeus cannot be fired. POTUS has turned loose a tiger who has no boss other than history. Routinely now I am told by Republican observers that Petraeus is a primary choice to challenge POTUS for 2012. It is an impractical and likely impossible scenario. It is highly unlikely.  Petraeus is 57 years old, and his tour at ISAF is two years.  It is not impossible.

The Iraq timetable collapses in much the same way as the Afghanistan timetable. Timetables are weapons. The Obama administration handed two weapons to adversaries. The Iraqi turmoil will continue just because there is no exit. The Afghan collapse will continue. These timetables are weapons. Does POTUS understand the weapons? POTUS commits his political future to extracting seventy-seven thousand combat troops from Iraq and one hundred thirty thousand combat troops from Afghanistan.  Date uncertain.  POTUS demonstrates repeatedly that he is a poor student of American history.  America goes to war with its enemies in order to win.  Unconditional surrender of Al Qaeda and of the Taliban are the two ambitions.  George Washington's general order of the Revolutionary War remains useful; it was unironic: "Victory or death."  POTUS is riding a maelstrom.  VPOTUS Biden sweats and darts and grins and rants to no resolution, an ineffective pol but a first-rate blusterer.  

  

POTUS signs the Iran Sanctions Act reluctantly, slowly, petulantly, after resisting and stalling and complaining for more than a year. The Israelis waited. The Jewish contributors started holding back on checks to the DNC last February. Still, POTUS stalled. POTUS has ears only for Abdallah of Riyadh. Tehran will retaliate, but the Iran Sanctions Act is a genuine financial blow to the black-shirted IRGC gang and their Twelver posse, not the knuckle-rap of the UN sanctions regime.  POTUS continues to entertain the fantasy of making peace in Tehran sometime around 2012.  POTUS is unhappy with being forced to sign the Iran Sanctions Act.  Very unhappy.

 

What Is Wrong with This Story? 

Anna Chapman, one of the most active of the Russian spy ring agents, was also an ambitious young capitalist who speaks of herself as an adventurous, fretful, sophisticated, globe-trotting web developer. Chapman speaks candidly of her fears at founding an aggregating real estate website. She mentions her home country, Russia. She is convincing and sharp. This is a spy? Of what? She talks about being trained as an investment banker, and being good at it, and rewarded, but that the thrill of going solo was vastly superior to being a hot shot. Anna Chapman talks well in at least two languages, and it is easy to see how she would have convinced her trainers and handlers to turn her loose on America. Then again, to what end? This woman doesn't need the SVR. Day three of the spy ring, and we still have little more than excuses as to why the round-up. My information is that it was White House frustration. POTUS and Eric Holder decided to lash out in order to act tough.  Frustrated by McChrystal, by polls, the office. No better reason has yet emerged. Flight? Laughable. Secrets? There were no secrets -- not for ten years; that is why there is no espionage charge.  Spoke Steve Cohen, NYU, re the damage done by the arrest of the 11 agents.  Too early to tell all of it, but the certainty is that the facts support the anti-American school in Moscow thinkers.  The Pro-American desk has now gone fishing.