Everyone is my friend until they prove otherwise.
Dick Morris points out the Clinton’s support from foreigners at the American Congress today in light of the debate answer on Saudi investment in Citigroup.
Now we have Saudis who are heavily invested in the Clinton Library:
Now, comes word from Dick Morris of a political issue that surfaced during the recent Nevada debates: should we be concerned about such strategic investments from the Saudis and oil-rich Gulf Sheikdoms. Hillary Clinton thought it was alright, if the investments were vetted properly. As Morris, who was a political counselor to her husband, has pointed out President Clinton has received $10 million annually from Saudis and the oil Shiekdom of Dubai for his Presidential Library in Little Rock, Arkansas. That revelation is tantamount to a real conflict of interest between the Clinton and the American public over the threat of financial sharia this Presidential year.
In the past I’ve detailed those entanglements as well:
Previous articles on the Clinton Campaign of Corruption:
There’s a growing list of suspect and criminal Hillary Clinton supporters that just keeps getting bigger, today it’s time to add Aaron Tonken to the list.
William Danielcyzk ; Hsu Surrenders — Board of Trustees for New School, New York ; Sant Chatwal – Indian Immigrant Bundler ; “Ray” Jinnah Rehman — previously of Pal-C ; Vinod Gupta — of InfoUSA ; Mayor Samuel Rivera ; Peter Paul??; Aaron Tonken.
It’s also noteworthy that former Senator Bob Kerrey, and his “The New School’s” connection to Clinton surfaced again a few days back in an attack on Obama. The New School is part and parcel of the Clinton Machine, as evidenced by the previous board members (see links above,) and the 9/11 commission hearings orchestrated there.
“I supported the Bush tax cuts. John McCain voted against the Bush tax cuts with the Democrats twice,” he said before a crowd of mostly older voters. He later said Mr. Romney was “equivocal” in his support for the cuts.
Asked during a press briefing if he was breaking the 11th Commandment, Mr. Giuliani replied, “You mean contrast? Nah, I just pointed out where there are differences”
In Florida Rudy Guiliani is still running at the top of the pack with McCain in the polls, and this comes after a virtual vacumn of Guiliani news in the press the past two weeks. He’s really had no exposure as the initial small delegate primary wars have staged, but he’s still the man to beat in Florida for the other candidates.
In one primary Rudy can jump to the front of the pack and take the lead in the hunt for delegates. He’s actively challenging the others on their policies and positions, and the campaign now promises to turn very interesting. Story from AP:
Girding for battle as the rest of the GOP field descended upon Florida, Rudy Giuliani challenged them for the first time by name.
“Do they agree that you should have a national catastrophic fund?” he said in a Saturday tour of the Everglades. “I support it — I was the first one to support it. Now let’s find out where the others — John McCain and Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee and Fred Thompson — let’s see what their position is on this.”
For weeks, the former New York mayor has had this state to himself, having pulled out of the early primaries to focus time and cash on Florida’s 57 delegates. While others rallied late votes in South Carolina, he attended a round table about Florida’s space industry and toured the Everglades.
But it has cost Giuliani — in raw delegate counts and lost news cycles to those men who did contend the six Republican primaries so far. Giuliani finally won his first delegate Saturday, in Nevada. But he is behind even long-shot Ron Paul in that department, after Paul picked up four out West.
Stretching to stay relevant, Giuliani went on the attack and called two big allies to his side.
Actor Jon Voight and former FBI director Louis Freeh, Giuliani’s homeland security adviser and Delaware campaign chair, introduced him at a rally in the central Florida retirement community The Villages.
This will concretize the rest of the debate in the race for the Republican nomination – unlike the other candidates Guiliani is running an open campaign. He’s laid out actual commitments and very clear specific positions on numerous issues. The other Republicans will need to move from postures and generalities to clear stances and positions on specific issues when they hit Florida to compete.
It’s noteworthy that while there was a vacuum on Rudy news in the national press, the regional press in Florida has been running a steady stream of stories as the local reporters have been thrilled to have sole access to one of the Republican front-runners the past two weeks.
The Tehreek-e-Taliban stronghold is in the Waziristans, with the main nexus being South Waziristan, but occasionally you see them very active with targetted strikes in urban areas of the Sindh and Punjab. The most significant operations were Lal Masjid, and the various assasination attempts including the successful one against Benazir Bhutto (more on that here and here.) It’s notable that they have met with more success at the edges of the Urban areas and the frontiers – Lal Masjid and the successful assasination attempt were at the edge of the frontiers.
To effect operations in urban areas there are really only three options for them; all of which have drawbacks. They can ally with particular groups, they can import the operatives, or they can hire.
The best example of all three is Lal Masjid. The majority of the students in Lal Masjid were from the frontiers, or from the families of Old-guard ISI, the Hamid Gul contingent. They also worked with some criminal gangs to gain their weapons.
In the assasination attempts on Musharraf you see clear signs of them working with disaffected Military personell (the weapons used have been military rockets and machine guns, both obtainable only from the Army.)
The targetted assasination attempts against Benazir Bhutto were both logistically enabled by importing small cells and arming from criminal gangs.
What are the drawbacks of these methods? Importing operatives makes them less than effective since they tend to not know the city and they stick out; using criminal gangs for hire makes for mercenary allies who can be turned; and once an Army insider is used then that particular resource is burnt.
Their enablers and sympathizers in the cities are one part of the MMA party and JI, the Madrassahs, and some student groups on various campus’ in the cities.
So as with all insurgencies it would pay the government to watch for new people in the cities, the criminal gangs, and the student groups for that is where the insurgency will grow if TTP makes a bid to move into Urban areas.
In an example of how these things fall apart once moving deeper into the Sindh and Punjab you see this failed attempt in Karachi.
Karachi—Timely scanning helped police to round up five suspects here Saturday allegedly involved in planning to give a terror blow to Karachi during religious processions of Ashura-e-Moharam.
Four of the arrested terrorists had undergone training at a terrorist camp in Mir Ali’s tribal area. The gang leader Mohammed Aijaz alias Abdul Rehman had been imparting training in terrorism at various training camps after Afghan war and was a teacher at a “warfare” training camp in South Waziristan.
Azhar Farooqui IG Police Sindh told a press conference that five terror suspects including an alleged suicide bomber Aziz Ahmed alias Muhammad Khan, Muhammad Ejaz alias Abdul Rahman, Jamil Ahmed alias Wazir Akbar, Muhammad Hamid alias Qasim and Muhammad Wasim alias Imran.
IGP said that police recovered 6Kg explosives laid in the suicide jacket, 3 hand grenades, 6 detonators, 15 meter detonating wire, 500 grams cyanide, one generator used to generate remote control, 2 TT pistols with 20 rounds, 2 Kg ball bearings and one Kg spikes.
Pakistan authorities have arrested a fifteen year old teen in Dera Ishmael Khan for the assasination of former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto. This could be a Lal Masjid follower from the age. Story from the Daily Times:
DERA ISMAIL KHAN: Security officials in the NWFP said on Saturday they had arrested a teenager allegedly involved in last month’s assassination of former premier Benazir Bhutto, reported AP.
Aitezaz Shah, 15, told investigators that he had been part of a five-man squad deployed that day in Rawalpindi, a senior intelligence official, asking not to be named, said.
Aitezaz was arrested on Thursday in Dera Ismail Khan with another militant identified as Sher Zaman, according to the officials.
The two terrorists have confessed their involvement in the plot to kill Benazir, ARY television quoted Interior Secretary Syed Kamal Shah as saying.
In political news PML-N is hinting they would like talks with President Musharraf, a sign that they potentially are not as strong as they would appear to be going into elections. Right now Musharraf is relatively on the outs with the Pakistani people, but rhetoric aside the politicians in his PML-Q party and the heft they bring in parliament are still needed for any coalition. Whether that is formed with PML-N or PPP will be the question.
Story Here
In the Waziristan war the government forces have captured 50 Taliban near Wana, a sign that they are pressing harder than they stated yesterday when they said there would be “no offensive”. Story Here
In the Swat Campaign the troops continue to advance, and they are carrying on with policy of burning the houses of the leaders who broke the Jirga accords. Story here.
MINGORA: Security forces have taken control of the Namal, Shor and Sardan Top areas in Matta tehsil of the troubled Swat district in an ongoing operation against extremists on Saturday.
Militants have vacated the areas of Manja, Totanoo Bandai, Shah Dheri in Kabal tehsil and Puchar, Namal, Sardan Top and Shor in Matta tehsil, which were strongholds of Fazlullah, sources added. They said militants’ bunkers in these areas were empty, and they took their weapons with them as they moved to unknown locations.
The troops imposed a curfew during their forward march in the areas from 7pm on Friday night and no one was allowed to come out of their houses.
The security forces, during the operation, destroyed the houses of local militant commanders Sayed Karim, Lajbar Khan, Sahib and Bin Yamin, a close aide of rebel cleric Maulana Fazlullah.
Now that the roadblocks of De-Baathification imposed by Paul Bremer have been removed by the Iraqi government, they need to take things a step further and foster private business and small industry to jump-start their non-govermental economy
This takes skilled workers, and to get there Iraq needs a glut of two-year trade schools. The largely unemployed youths who could quickly turn to insurgency need something to do with their idle hands, and right now there is a ton of infrastructure to rebuild, and a future to create for their country.
To get there Iraq needs to open quite a few trade schools – electrical, carpentry, plumbing, masonry, tile, computer, communications, well you get the idea. Iraq is not cash-short at the moment and won’t be for the forseeable future with oil prices high, so the window of opportunity to do this in is right now. Trade schools make sense because there is a generation whose education was interupted by the war – 100% of them can’t go to college, so the fast-track to gainful employ for them will be shorter trade-schools.
Iraq needs to invest in their youth, and unions from around the world need to assist in those efforts by sending skilled workers to train the future workers of Iraq. There’s a parable about teaching fishing that applies here.
In his latest advertisement in Florida Rudy Guiliani quotes Mitt Romney’s and other’s praise of his past tax-cutting initiatives. See below.
The war in South Waziristan continues to heat up, with Government forces claiming 90 Taliban (“miscreants” is the term commonly used to describe terrorists in Pakistani papers,) killed. Story from AP:
RAWALPINDI, Jan 18 (APP): Security forces on Friday killed around 90 miscreants in two incidents in South Waziristan Agency, said an ISPR press release.In the first incident at 12.30 p.m., a convoy of security forces moving on Jandola-Wana Road was fired upon from Chaghmalai with small arms and rockets.
The security forces retaliated and engaged militants/miscreants with small arms and rockets. The fire fight continued for an hour. Exact number of miscreant’s casualties is not known, however, it is estimated that 20 to 30 miscreants were killed.
Four security forces personnel suffered injuries and two vehicles were damaged in the incident.
In the second incident, the miscreants started engaging Ladha Fort with small arms and rockets at 10 a.m. A large number of miscreants started gathering around north of the fort at 3 p.m.
Security Forces used artillery, mortars and small arms fire to engage the miscreants. Reportedly, 50 to 60 miscreants were killed and rest of them dispersed. The security forces suffered no casualty.
Media reports saying that Sipla Toi has been taken over by miscreants are incorrect as FC Troops are still manning the Fort, the press release added.
This is typical of media reports from the Frontiers of Pakistan — Islamist and Government stringers make claims and counter-claims, but in the end we only know that some fighting is going on until real reporters go to region.
Bill Roggio reported the earlier stories here.
The Frontier Corps troops have been demonstrably less than effective against Baitullah Mehsud’s Taliban tribal forces in South Waziristan, last year we saw the kidnappings and surrenders as well. The regular army is still tied up at the borders and in keeping the Swat Insurgency quelled, along with the usual sectarian fighting as Sunni Deobandis attack Shia in several regions during Ashura / Moharram.
Update from AP:
In a new show of strength this week, hundreds of Mehsud’s fighters mounted the attacks on the two forts in South Waziristan that exposed the Pakistan military’s weak grip over the lawless border region.
An intelligence official based in the area said security forces had in response launched a sweep to clear the area of militants. He asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media.
Between 50 and 60 insurgents died Friday when they attacked a fort in the village of Ladha with small-arms fire and rockets, a military statement said. Security forces repelled the attack using mortar and artillery fire.
Up to 30 more attackers were killed when they tried to ambush a military convoy near the village of Chakmalai, the army said. Only four troops were wounded, it said. It was not possible to confirm the casualty claims.
Despite its reports of high militant casualties in Friday’s clashes, the army denied that it had launched an offensive against the rebels.
“There was absolutely no offensive launched at any village in South Waziristan,” Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas told The Associated Press.
This is a three day weekend for many with Martin Luther King day on Monday, so it might be wise to go see Kite Runner before the limited engagement is up. It’s playing in theaters this weekend, and I plan to see it. The story tells the tale of the Taliban entry into Afghanistan, their dark ties to Nazism and racism. It’s the story of two Afghans, one Hazara /Shia, the other Sunni Muslim, and it’s particularly relevant as sectarian violence heats up across the Islamic world in this week of Ashura / Moharram.
