Friday, December 01, 2006

does it spin clockwise or counter-clockwise?"

* clemons:
"Obaid is a personal national security advisor to Saudi Ambassador to the US Prince Turki al-Faisal and what he is writing is no doubt the public version of what King Abdullah told Cheney when the VP was summoned to Riyadh.

What Obaid has articulated here is not offered as a threat if the US leaves Iraq, which the US must do in my view. This is the first robust declaration that the Saudis are willing to fill the vacuum left by the United State in the region and knock back some of the unchecked expansion of Iranian influence in the region.

It's not good to have rising powers with pretensions of future greatness clashing like this -- but there is NO CHOICE.

And frankly, it's much better to have the Saudis engaged that not engaged in Iraq. Iran must be balanced -- and while this may seem like an escalation, it actually is an important potential cap on a worsening of this increasingly ulcerous mess in Iraq.

But what the Saudis are doing and what they need to be do is not new -- it has been predicted for quite a while. And this is the consequence of the Bush administration's failure to think strategically. We have now drawn Saudi Arabia into a potential collision that could destabilize that nation and seriously harm our access to vital oil and natural gas supplies.

So don't blame the Saudis for seeing the world and their region as it is -- not as George W. Bush fantasizes."


* clemons:
"...but Philip Zelikow's departure as Condi Rice's Counselor is very bad for those hoping for a more enlightened Bush administration foreign policy course.
[]
This is not good news for our side. Zelikow leaving indicates a few things -- Cheney still has significant power; regional deal-making in Middle East is still more fantasy than real (despite Olmert's recent moves); and our 'chances' of finding a third option between bombing and acquiescing to Iran diminish significantly with Zelikow's departure (my take anyway).

Zelikow had faults as we all do -- but he really was the only master strategist left who might have played a historic role in reshaping the US's foreign policy future. I think Rice really needed him."
* meanwhile, xymphora on zelikow's resignation: "Chalk another one up for the neocons"

* larisa appears to have a girl crush on this woman for some reason. meanwhile, re the nuclear sushi, she says:
"This is quite serious and possibly an act of war against the west. But it seems the major focus of most people is on yet another terra threat, which I won't even bother to link to because it is total bullshit! See, in the US we are hiding from theory while in actuality, a bio-nuke weapon was used on British soil, possibly contaminating a number of people and perhaps spreading into other locations outside of the crime. Hello? Can we just shut the terra warning system off for now? Just until we get this real act of terrorism under control?"
* meanwhile, xymphora on russian assasinations:
"We seem to be looking at a battle royale between Boris Berezovsky and the Russian state. Gaidar is a mild critic of the regime, but an insider, and Kerimov, unlike Berezovsky and the crooks who are sheltered in Israel, remained in Russia and is a big shareholder in Putin’s baby, Gazprom."
* jen's site has been pulled by Blogger. Booooo. I presume the copyright Gods got to her.

* meanwhile, jen has a new home. yay. apparently she has a new trick to get around Fair Use.

* someone from Australia made a comment over at FDL. someone replied:
"When you refresh the page, does it spin clockwise or counter-clockwise?"

7 comments:

Track said...

Zelikow is a good guy? Right. He rewrote the National Security Strategy emphasizing the preemptive doctrine. He is a bad guy.

Scenario: The FSB is concerned about Litvinenko's investigation of Beslan so they figure the best way to deal with Litvinenko is by smuggling Polonium 210 into Britain? Even if they had shot him there would likely be the same amount of speculation as to who had the motive. Strange story.

Love the way Clemons (and pretty much every pundit in the US) seems to think all the think tanks and foreign policy strategists in the Pentagon and State Department couldn't have imagined that Iran might have benefited from an ill conceived invasion and occupation of Iraq. Strange.

Anonymous said...

i'm so pleased Jen's back. she and you are like two of my four daily news reads now (down from the hundreds mark).

lukery said...

Noise - right - re zelikow, and right re Litvinenko - what a strange fucking world.

the mind boggles.

rimone - thanks, and who are the other two?

Track said...

"The resignation of Kissinger as chairman of the 9/11 commission is not good for everyone who wants to see the truth come out."

IMO, that is level of spin being applied to Zelikow's exit.

Anonymous said...

they change according to my mood. as i said in mail this morning, apart from have skunk and jen, the carpetbagger, scott/stress, and sometimes billmon, froomkin, digby, needlenose, blairwatch, a tiny revolution, all depending on what i'm up to.

btw, there's one particular cunt who's about to be removed from 'reservoir dogs'. not naming names, but she actually had the balls to tell me she never read me. i'm all 'what the fuck am i doing on your goddamned blogroll then? mine is sacred to me.' i totally didn't dig her answer.

moving right along, i'm dying to write something political again and i shall but it's something that's never in headlines, never mentioned in corporate media. it's about my latest personal achievement, of course (in a me me me kinda way). but that'll be in awhile cause i need to do about 5 years worth of research. oh wait--i never told you about this.

never mind. :-) (sorry, sorry, sorry, i'll tell you in mail if i don't forget; remind me if i do).

Anonymous said...

thx lukery, nah, no tricks i decided. screw it. i'll probably be moving frequently so donkeyod.com is probably better to use since i can point it to my new home each time. ;) honored to be mentioned, since i'm just a copy paste a thon. i'm not worthy. that goes for you too, rimone. love yas, jen

Anonymous said...

to Jen: :-) xxxxxxxx