Panetta

The news tonight also puts a different light on some of the reshuffling of major posts. The move of Panetta from CIA to Defense makes more sense. If this was an intelligence victory, as seems to be the case, then moving the person in charge of that to head up the remaining operations in the area offers continuity.

Petraeus in at CIA strikes me more as trying to keep him out of the upcoming presidential contest than anything else, though, again, this takes some rethinking. It may be that the general understood he would not be able to contest once OBL had been disposed of as this will be the horse BHO rides to victory next year, and is content to bide his time for 2016.

But the interesting story to tease out of here is what was Panetta's involvement in this operation and why is this leading to him going to replace Gates at Defense rather than have him remain at the CIA?

Anglachel

Bin Laden Dead - Updated

I've already read cynical responses from the anti-Obama contigent (left & right wings) and I think they are missing the real point.

Osama bin Laden is someone who declared war on the rest of humanity and has engaged in the butchery of thousands of people across four continents (North America, Europe, Africa and Asia) for more than two decades. Any justification for his violence was long ago vitiated by the purposeful targeting of ordinary civilians. It matters not that Bush & Cheney and their neocon crew used him as an excuse to engage in their own butchery. In the attack on the World Trade Center, he was attacking the world, not just the US, and everything that modernity stands for, particularly what is best about it - secularism, equal rights, equality before a rational rule of law, and the undermining of fundamentalist power structures.

Will this event be used in opportunistic ways by every political operator under the sun? Duh, and irrelevant.

This person did not care to share the world with the rest of humanity, wishing to arrogate to himself the power of life and death over all others. It is right and just that the world decline to share the world with him.

Anglachel

UPDATE - Interesting news snippet I have only seen in my local fish-wrap:
"An American official says Osama bin Laden was killed in a mansion close to the Pakistani capital. 

A Pakistani intelligence official confirmed that the al-Qaida leader had been killed in Pakistan. "

This news intimates that he has been living in Pakistan under the protection of someone influential for some time.  Time to be following some money.

Slowly Returning

Life slowly returns to normal.

I've been watching a lot of stuff from Netflix - on demand and DVDs - as I've been wading through my  emotional detritus these last two months. I cam across a very interesting British detective series I recommend to anyone. It's called Life on Mars and has two very short (by US standards) seasons of eight episodes each. The basic premise is a contemporary police detective, Sam Tyler, is involved in a car accident. He wakes up in 1973, still a police detective in the same city. Much psychopathy ensues. The first season deals with a specific problem from Sam's past (which is the series' present) while the second season tries to provide a satisfactory explanation of what the hell is happening. It is a brilliant bit of story telling.

What Did You Think Was Going to Happen?

Way too many people out in Ye Olde Blogosphere are getting their collective knickers in a twist over the reality that - GASP! - wikileaks is getting shut down by a combination of government and commercial actors.

Grow. The. Fuck. Up.

Foreign and Domestic

As I read various things about the wikileaks document dump, something becomes very clear. Many commenters don't or can't distinguish between domestic law and foreign policy.

First off, the laws that govern US citizens and others within our borders are specific to this geographical location. They may apply to our citizens outside our borders, but that is more complicated and will depend on where that person is - a military base, a consulate, during a diplomatic meeting, on personal vacation, etc. - and what that person is doing. Restrictions and penalties are higher for people serving the nation in an official capacity (military, diplomats, trade representatives, etc.) because they have to varying degrees the authority of the nation behind their actions.

Suspect Intelligence

Here's a thought. Most of the cables released by wikileaks aren't classified. 54% were unclassified, 40% were confidential and the remaining 6% had a higher designation. Most came from a network called SIPRNet, which is a major conduit for shared information since 9/11.

While the data is tagged as being from that source, it actually is unknown who obtained the data. Bradley Manning is a prime suspect, mostly based on the leak of the helicopter video and the testimony of Adrian Lamo. I think Manning has provided material (classified or otherwise) to Assange, but probably not the bulk of what wikileaks showed the press. He may be being used as a fall guy, and I think even with a fairly low rank, he could have seen a lot of unclassified material, but the breadth of the information along with the knowledge that it is far more than Manning (or Lamo said Manning) claimed to have downloaded makes me doubtful that there is a single source.

Wikileaks - Cui Bono?

I'm going to ruffle more than a few feathers with this post, but there are two words that come to mind when I read over the information Wikileaks is releasing.

Valerie Plame.

This smells like a rather large rat-fucking operation with information on so many fronts being made public all at once. What I see is fairly conventional politics of states, but it is sure to enrage the purists on the left and the nationalists on the right in about equal measure. The first group will wring their ineffectual hands over the evil of the government while the latter will rage at their screens over the release of state secrets.

Who is benefiting from this, really? This is designed to embarrass and compromise people, force resignations, undermine conduct of policy.

This much information being released does not happen without some serious coordination and power. This wasn't done by a few outraged whistle-blowers.

Anglachel

Update - To save pointless speculation, no, I don't think this is the White House trying to make  HRC look bad. They have their hands full making themselves look like dolts, after all. My guess is the remnants of Cheney's operation at State and in the military (potentially with help from the CIA and key news reporters) providing carefully selected stuff to an operation all too happy to tell the "truth", no matter how distorted, misleading, or lacking in context that alleged "truth" is.

No, I don't have much respect for Wikileaks. It's all too eager to play messenger for unknown interests. If you think this latest round of releases is good for anyone except the hard right, you need to get out more.

PS - Thanks, Falstaff! Good catch.

New Government in Japan

The LDP is out, according to the BBC.

The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) appears to have won a crushing victory. Their leader, Yukio Hatoyama, a political animal of the highest degree and the grandson of a former Prime Minister, has vowed to turn domestic policy more towards support of individual citizens and to be less corporatist and states that they will no longer ally so closely with the US.

It will be interesting to see if Mr. Hatoyama does bring change to the government or if it is only "change".

This development bears watching.

Anglachel