Category Archives: government fraud spending collusion

Kerry’s Groveling Continues

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There is not a single State Department mission or a White House global challenge that does not require cooperation, check that, the groveling by Kerry to Iran or Russia. Diplomacy in 140 characters or less. Cant make this up.

Please Iran, we need an agreement to sign with the P5+1 on the nuclear program and we will allow Iranian hostilities to continue in Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Syria and Yemen. Kerry has proven to ignore the hegemony of Iran in all corners of the globe and the historical terrorism at the hands of the Ayatollahs. Then enter Russia, where Putin and Lavrov agree to cooperate but there are never any breakthroughs unless Putin’s demands are met and his own aggressions are ignored as witnessed by Crimea and Ukraine. A side note, 6100 people have been killed in Ukraine since Putin occupied the eastern region there.

So, in a rather quick trip to meet with Russian leadership, some clandestine agenda items are in the near future. Twitter is the communication platform of choice, at least for John Kerry. Sheesh…

There the readout of the meeting was ‘frank’ face to face talk. What? Putin is former KGB, frank talk? Hardly.

Ties between Moscow and Washington were shredded when Russia seized the southern Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in early 2014 and allegedly buttressed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Kerry visited Sochi after Obama snubbed Russia’s huge military parade to commemorate Soviet victory over Nazi Germany last week, in what was seen as punishment over Russia’s meddling in Ukraine.

Earlier in the day, Kerry and Lavrov laid wreaths at a World War II memorial to pay tribute to the Soviet dead.

On the balmy shores of the Black Sea, the top US diplomat’s Russian hosts also treated Kerry to locally made sparkling wine, according to Putin’s aides, while Lavrov gave his counterpart two baskets of potatoes and tomatoes.

Kerry-Putin Talks Could Deliver a Global Surprise

At 8:12 a.m. last Tuesday, Secretary of State Kerry Tweeted from Sochi, the Black Sea resort, with this mind-blower: “Had frank discussions with President #Putin & FM #Lavrov on key issues including #IranTalks, #Syria, #Ukraine.”

In 140 characters and a photograph, Kerry may have described the biggest thing he’ll get done as President Obama’s top diplomat. It’s early days and anything can happen between Washington and Moscow—as Kerry just demonstrated—but if this turn toward cordiality and cooperation holds, the consequences will refract like neutrons all over the planet.

And there’s nothing in any of the potential outcomes not to like.

As Kerry’s Tweet made plain, the Obama administration’s motivations in this demarche go to three immediate issues—two key to stability in the Middle East and one that has made the phrase “Cold War II” common currency in the past year and a half. Analysts of all stripes are unanimous: Washington has now concluded that there’s no resolving any of these questions without Moscow’s help.

That’s sound thinking except that it’s late by at least a year. One thing above all others prompted Obama and Kerry to get smart quick: These guys have a year and a half to leave a legacy of any value on the foreign side, and there’s not much other than failure in the hopper at the moment.

In Syria, the administration should have come to wiser conclusions in September 2013, when Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, saved Obama’s bacon by persuading Damascus to give up its chemical weapons inventories. Remember Obama’s foolish “red line” gambit? Lavrov threw the life jacket.

Kerry has said since mid-March that he wants new talks toward a political settlement in Syria, and Moscow is essential in making this happen. In this, the administration is straight out of Churchill: “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing—after they’ve tried everything else.”

It’s something of the same on the pending nuclear deal with Iran—which was the No. 1 topic in Sochi. It was Lavrov who got Tehran to consider, if not yet agree, to ship its stockpile of enriched uranium to Russia and re-import supplies as needed for peaceful purposes. With two and a half months before the deadline for this deal, Washington needs all five negotiating partners—Russia above all, I’d say—to keep their oars in the water.

As to Ukraine, its economy deserves emergency status, even if you read next to nothing in the news reports. Absent the kind of debt write-down the European Union refuses to grant the Greeks, Lawrence Summers argued in the Financial Times over the weekend, default is now a serious option.

Equally, Kiev has done little to address the terms agreed in Minsk last February, which included new constitutional provisions granting rebellious eastern regions greater autonomy. With Europeans increasingly impatient and Russia not even close to stepping back, Kerry’s assistant secretary for European affairs, the controversial Victoria Nuland, was in Kiev two days after Kerry’s Sochi sit-down to confer on implementing the Minsk II agreement, of which Russia is a primary signatory.

Small wonder Kerry spent seven hours in back-to-back talks—three with Lavrov and four with President Putin. It was his first visit to Russia in two years, and these the objects of his attention—cooperation getting the Syria crisis under control, the final stitching on the Iran deal, and a settlement in Ukraine that—it’s finally clear in Washington—cannot be achieved other than via a negotiated compromise based on Minsk II.

It’s a full agenda, but stop there and you don’t get the half of it. Look at the other factors that sent Kerry to Putin’s Black Sea resort residence:

• It has been clear for months that Washington’s assertive stance toward Russia has been a source of increasing trans-Atlantic tensions. The very real risk of a lasting rift in U.S.-E.U. ties can now be alleviated.

• European leaders are due to meet next month to consider the status of the U.S.-led sanctions regime, and at least six nations are on the record saying they’ve had enough. When Kerry hinted after the Sochi sessions that it could be time to step back, he opened a path away from an embarrassing display of disunity, if not mutiny.

• E.U-Russian relations can begin to mend, too. This is especially key on the economic side. The virtual freeze of banking operations, a drastic slowdown in investment flows, and Russia’s countersanctions against E.U. exports have all hurt the eurozone just as it struggles to recover from seven years of financial and economic crisis.

• Tensions within the E.U., heated of late, also stand to abate. Greece has been the most evident problem in this regard, as the Syriza government draws closer to Moscow in plainly purposeful defiance of the Brussels consensus. But Greece, we should note, is not alone in harboring these sympathies.

Russian officials close to the Kremlin, to the perplexity of many Western analysts, have been advancing a worst-is-over line for several weeks. Putin added his voice when he met Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, just before the Sochi talks.

Indeed, sanctions may have backfired in certain respects. While Moscow announced a 1.9 percent drop in 1Q GDP Friday, it was less than expected, and Russia’s industry seems to have been energized. It reminds me of Rhodesia before it became Zimbabwe, when international sanctions forced a not-unimpressive manufacturing sector into being: If you can’t bring it in, make it.

The ruble, meantime, has come back so strongly this year that Moscow started buying $100 million to $200 million in foreign exchange daily last week to hold it down.

Those hours in Sochi, let’s say, were long due, wherever you sit and however you look at it. Now to watch what comes of them.

Wall Street and 5th Avenue Planned for Benghazi

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Imagine a hotel room at the Plaza Hotel, shopping at Bloomingdales and dining at the Rainbow Room in Benghazi. Yes Benghazi, after all the most feared leader, Muammar Gaddafi is dead and all is calm after the attack on American interests in 2012. So, never let a  good crisis go to waste. Libya had and has a deadly history where some elites had high aspirations for a new Libya.

Trey Gowdy, the Chairman of the Benghazi Commission likely has some documented trails on Hillary’s future dreams for Libya, but you don’t and should know even more of the story. Libya, is hardly the place for booking a vacation on a Club Med holiday but Hillary and her mobilized force sure thought it was a perfect future opportunity.

The crisis in Libya had a long and bloody history with daily urban warfare, leading up to 2011 and 2012. The Institute for the Study of War gathered the calendar of Libyan hostilities from countless sources demonstrating that a perfect storm was gathering. Several foreign governments and countries had interests in Libya to protect, so when the United States announced Gaddafi had to go, he was actually buckling to the pressure and was willing to turn over power to his Minister of Justice. Some surmised that Gaddafi would not actual go quietly such that he would fire more Scud missiles as the rebels advance, and fears remain that the regime may also deploy chemical weapons.

Remembering the urgent call as revealed in audio tapes released that Hillary made with her stewards, Susan Rice and Samantha Power following close behind that the U.S. had to act quickly to prevent an anticipated massacre. Yet no one at the Pentagon or AFRICOM had any fresh intelligence that a chemical weapons attack or a planned massacre was in the immediate forecast.

Meanwhile, the National Transition Council was born with collaboration of outside NGO’s and the United Nations seeking a diplomatic solution post Gaddafi where many meetings took place. The mission was to gain and manage control of Libya where a future country would have thriving towns, economic opportunities and well, great shopping and even a stock exchange that emulated Wall Street.

The National Transitional Council (NTC) was formed on the 27th of February, 2011 to act as the political face of the revolution. Officially established on the 5th of March 2011 in Benghazi, the unicameral legislative body is composed of 33 members, representing the different Libyan cities and towns, in addition Political Affairs, Economics, Legal Affairs, Youth, Women, Political Prisoners and Military Affairs. Identities of some members, mainly from the western side of Libya are kept confidential for safety reasons. The Chairman of the NTC is Mustafa Mohammed Abdul Jalil. Hillary’s interlocutor to the NTC was Mohamed Mansour el Kikhia and he has meetings with David L. Grange in Jordan on the future and control of Libya.

The legislative body is in place for an interim period, until free democratic elections are held establishing the new Parliament.

Hillary knew about the planned Benghazi attack, heck Sidney Blumenthal predicted it.

Back in the Clinton State Department, Hillary was working her intelligence channels and her operatives were crafting relationships to gain traction in 2012 and beyond. Mrs. Clinton mobilized an inner circle, they included Sidney Blumenthal, Tyler Drumheller, Cody Shearer, Andrew Shapiro, MG David L. Grange (ret), Najib Obeida and Mohamed Mansour el Kikhia.

When a hacker worked some keyboard magic, he uncovered emails to that pesky New York Clinton server publishing emails between Blumenthal and a Hillary email firewall person, likely either Huma Abedin, Jake Sullivan or Cheryl Mills, who would then forward the most significant transmissions to Hillary herself. Hillary had a spy network which was originally revealed during the published of the Wikileaks cables.

Sidney Blumenthal had his own operatives that he worked around the globe yet those with Libya assignments included many of those listed above. Two of particular interest are David L. Grange and Najib Obeida, a Libyan official. General Grange performed some Pentagon secret operations before he retired where he went on to be involved in Osprey Global Solutions and later in Constellations Group which was formed by Bill White, a philanthropist whose objective was generating networks and business opportunities in Libya. “Gaddafi is dead, or about to be, and there’s opportunities, let’s try to see who we know there.”

There is still hope for a Libyan version of Park Avenue, Wall Street and Club Med. The Obama administration has earmarked and of the funds requested for FY2015, $9.5 million in Economic Support Fund (ESF) monies would support U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) programs “to help consolidate- democratic reforms” through technical assistance, training, capacity building, and electoral process support, including $3 million requested in part to fund the development of a “public financial management framework.” The Administration also requested an additional $20 million in global FY2015 Transition Initiatives funding over FY2014 levels and hopes to use $10 million of its Complex Crises Fund request “to address emerging needs and opportunities in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.” Funds appropriated in these accounts may be programmed for operations in Libya.

Outlook
The 2012 attacks in Benghazi, the deaths of U.S. personnel, the emergence of terrorist threats on Libyan soil, and the internecine conflict between Libyan militias have reshaped debates in Washington about U.S. policy toward Libya. Following intense congressional debate over the merits of U.S. and NATO military intervention in Libya in 2011, many Members of Congress welcomed the announcement of Libya’s liberation, the formation of the interim Transitional National Council government, and the July 2012 national General National Congress election, while expressing concern about security in the country, the proliferation of weapons, and the prospects for a smooth political transition.
To date, the Obama Administration and Congress have agreed to support a range of security and transition support assistance programs in Libya, some of which respond to specific U.S. security concerns about unsecured weapons, terrorist safe-havens, and border security. Identifying and bringing those involved in the September 2012 Benghazi attacks to justice has become a priority issue in the bilateral relationship, as has confronting any Al Qaeda affiliated groups present in Libya. Securing stockpiles of Libyan weapons also remains an issue of broad congressional concern, as does ensuring that transitional authorities act in accordance with international human rights standards in pursuing justice and handling detainees.
U.S. officials must weigh demands for a response to immediate security threats emanating from Libya with longer-term concerns for Libya’s stability, the survival of its nascent democratic institutions, and the future of U.S.-Libyan relations. Decisions about responding to threats to U.S. security are complicated by the relative weakness of the Libyan state security apparatus and the risk of inflaming public opinion or undermining the image of elected Libyan leaders through direct or overt U.S. security responses. If conflict persists, congressional debate over transition and security assistance programs in Libya may intensify, with advocates possibly arguing for further investment to prevent a broader collapse and critics possibly arguing that a lack of political consensus among Libyans makes U.S. assistance unlikely to achieve intended objectives.

You have plenty of time to book your next vacation, keep some small arms handy though.

 

 

Eyeing Islamists After they Leave the U.S.

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The trick words for foreign nationals to use to gain entry into the United States are refugee or asylum. That blasted ‘hearts and minds’ agenda is also married to another term, olive-branch.

Rather than deal with the root causes of failed nations such as Iraq, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Mexico, Syria and Libya which is the main charter of the United Nations Human Rights Council and Security Council, the destruction is being transferred to other Western countries by UN edict.

The United Nations is leading the charge and the State Department is helping by using the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Several countries are buckling to the demands of the United Nations. The United States is scheduled to take in 2000 Syrians, but watch that number, these are slippery characters we have at the UN and at the State Department.

The matter of Islamists in the United States for education, jobs or just visiting and then traveling to the Middle East is not a condition where we say, good riddance, we are likely to see or battle them at another time.

Those sympathetic soldiers in America learning from mosque sermons are told to learn from Anwar al-awlaki, now dead but his lectures and CD series remain on the internet for more learning. This is the challenge de jour for the FBI where cultivating communications from the U.S. to al Qaeda and or ISIS and even Boko Haram is leading the indictments across the country.

When those Pakistanis, Arabs, Somalis, Indians or even Chinese (Uighurs) have a United States connection by moving here and then gaining naturalized citizenship only to travel to countries of origination still pose robust terror issues. Some include al-walaki, Omar Hammami and Douglas McCain. An important case in point is Ahmed Farooq, born in Brooklyn, New York.

One of many remedies is to no longer allow entry into the United States under any kind of visa or by refugee/asylum request for at least three years or more.

The Unknown American Al-Qaeda Operative

Since 2009, “Ustad” Ahmed Farooq had been the public face of Al Qaeda in Pakistan, serving as the terror group’s chief Urdu-language propagandist, later being discussed as a potential nominee to the Shura Council of Al Qaeda central, and, most recently, serving as deputy leader of the group’s South Asia affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS).

But it was only this April, after his death in a January 2015 drone attack was acknowledged by Al Qaeda and U.S. officials, that his real name, dual U.S. nationality, and even his face (which was blurred in previous videos) were publicly revealed. It may have been to obscure the fact that Ahmed Farooq was really Raja Mohammad Salman, the graduate of an elite Pakistani military prep school whose father was a well-known Pakistani international relations professor and whose mother was a former parliamentarian nominated by a major Islamist party.

An American in Name Only

Farooq was American by circumstance. He was born in Brooklyn between 1979 and 1981, while his father, Raja Ehsan Aziz, who lived in the United States for seven years, was a graduate student at Columbia University. A Washington Post reporter suggests he was born in 1979 or 1980, but Pakistani government records state he was born in 1981.

It was unnamed American officials who revealed to the press after Farooq’s death that he was an American citizen. Farooq undoubtedly knew of his birth in the United States, but it was not mentioned in any public statements by him, Al Qaeda, or other jihadists. And he either obscured his American citizenship or was unaware of it. His mother, Amira Ehsan, claimed in a 2009 interview that her husband neither sought American citizenship for himself, nor applied for it for his son.

In Farooq’s early childhood, the family moved back to Pakistan—a Pakistan that was being radically reshaped by a military ruler, General Zia-ul-Haq, whose Islamization campaign at home and support of the Afghan war fought next door gave birth to a generation of Pakistanis with dreams of making the country—and region—an Islamic utopia. It’s this Pakistan, not America, in which his family seems to have gotten caught up in and ultimately shaped Farooq.

Islamist, Elite Family

Farooq’s father briefly served in Pakistan’s Foreign Service. He later joined the prestigious Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad, where he was a professor in the International Relations Department for two decades. In the 1980s, Aziz established himself as an expert on the war in neighboring Afghanistan. In the 1990s, Aziz, according to a Pakistani writer Kamal Matinuddin, claims to have traveled deep into Taliban-controlled Afghanistan. He would be consulted as an expert on the region into the 2000s, including for the UN. And he took part in an Islamabad think tank discussion on the Pakistan and Afghanistan insurgencies as late as 2008.

Aziz seems to have been somewhat careful in drawing a line between his academic work and political beliefs. In contrast, his wife, Amira Ehsan, was a well-known Islamist. She was affiliated with the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) into the 1990s. It’s unclear whether Aziz was formally affiliated with the group. But in the 1980s, the JI did include a segment of highly educated Pakistanis, often with PhDs from top Western universities. While JI has never had much popular support, it did receive a boost from General Zia, who appointed party members to key cabinet posts; his suppression of progressive voices also may have aided JI in developing a disproportionate representation in the country’s intelligentsia.

It does not appear that Aziz took part in radical activities publicly. He may be of a more moderate persuasion than his spouse. Amira Ehsan was elected to parliament in 1988 on a JI ticket, but she left the party in 1994 or 1995, joining a more radical splinter group known as Tehreek-e-Islami, which opposed what it perceived was JI’s timidity in working to establish an Islamic state. That same year, her own brother, the now-retired Colonel Muhammad Hamid, was reportedly involved in a failed coup attempt by a network of Islamist army officers, but later served as a prosecution witness.

During the late 1990s, as members of his family took on a more radical bent, Farooq attended the Cadet College Hasan Abdal, an elite military secondary school that has produced generals, business leaders, and other professionals. Farooq then attended the International Islamic University in Islamabad, a prominent school in the Pakistani capital where a small segment of its student body has been linked to radical networks.

Farooq’s family laid the groundwork for his radicalization. His mother, and other men and women in the Tehreek-e-Islami network, according to some news reports, may have even encouraged or even facilitated him and other sons to wage war against the Pakistani state. But when queried on the matter, a Pakistani official stated that Farooq’s parents were investigated and there was no evidence indicating they provided him any operational support. And in a 2009 interview, Amira Ehsan said that she “strongly oppose[s] terrorism within Pakistan.” One of her other sons, according to an unconfirmed report, is or was an army doctor. Yet in a tribute to Farooq, AQIS leader Asim Umar suggested that another brother of Farooq may have also died fighting in Pakistan’s tribal areas. The family may still have more explaining to do.

Generation Jihad

Ultimately, it was the ground shift in the region in the wake of 9/11 that pushed Farooq and many other Islamists in Pakistan over the edge. The Pakistani military decided to support the United States in the war against Al Qaeda and the Afghan Taliban. Pakistani jihadists were incensed by the arrest and transfer of many of their allies, including the Taliban ambassador to Pakistan, into U.S. custody, and the critical role Pakistan played in facilitating the fall of the Taliban, whose government was seen as uniquely reflecting Islamic ideals.

In 2007, Farooq joined an Al Qaeda cell led by Dr. Arshad Waheed, according to a Pakistani official. Waheed would be killed the next year in a CIA drone strike in South Waziristan. He was posthumously lionized by Farooq and Al Qaeda as a man who gave up a potentially lucrative medical career to fight in God’s path. Waheed left training to become a specialist in neurosurgery in October 2001, when the U.S. air campaign in Afghanistan began, providing medical assistance to militants in Kandahar. After the fall of Kabul to the Northern Alliance, Waheed returned to Pakistan, where he aided militants fleeing from Afghanistan. He was detained by Pakistani intelligence for alleged involvement in an assassination attempt on President Pervez Musharraf.

Waheed was the most prominent among many middle and upper middle class, educated Pakistanis who joined the ranks of Al Qaeda over the course of the decade following 9/11. What Waheed, Farooq, and others also had in common was past membership in the JI-affiliated student group, Islami Jamiat-e-Talaba, or family members associated with JI.

A Skilled Polemicist

In 2007 or 2008, Farooq began preaching using the pseudonym Qari Abdullah Farooqi on a jihadist outlet known as Sada-e Khorasan. In 2009, he—according to a Pakistani official—facilitated the Parade Lane attack, a massacre of men and children at an army mosque in Rawalpindi. In the same year, he began serving as Al Qaeda’s chief propagandist for Pakistan. By 2013, under Farooq’s stewardship, Al Qaeda’s productions in the Urdu would exceed all other languages in output.

Farooq’s style of preaching was gentle, almost effeminate. His voice was weak, perhaps due to a heart condition. But his polemics, especially in the framework of Al Qaeda’s long documentaries, were biting.

The narrative Farooq offered was truly radical. The Pakistan Army, he argued, was no army of Islam; it was and remains the “Royal Indian Army”—a tool of Western powers to suppress the natives. In Farooq’s account, the alleged crimes of the Pakistan Army long precede the war on terror. Slick documentaries he produced castigated the Pakistan Army for massacring Muslims in the 1971 civil war in what would become Bangladesh, and for military operations not just in the tribal areas, but also in Balochistan. He also excoriated the army as a corrupt institution that sold prisoners to the United States and enriched itself in real estate and other economic ventures.

Unlike Al Qaeda’s Arab leaders, Farooq was able to frame his arguments in a uniquely Pakistani way. Ahead of the 2013 general elections, he appropriated the rhetoric of leading Pakistani politicians, by bemoaning the shortages of “gas, electricity, and clean water” and calling for a “revolution.”

Beginning of the End of Al Qaeda

Farooq’s revolution never came. As Al Qaeda’s Urdu-language productivity rose, the group’s physical presence in the region continued to wane.

Today, Al Qaeda in Pakistan is a shell of its former self. It once had the capacity to order the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and anchor a jihadist war against the Pakistani state. Now, its core and South Asia leaderships have been decimated by drones and Pakistani military and police operations. An Urdu-language Al Qaeda spokesman said in a recent statement that drone attacks have killed scores of Al Qaeda central leaders and around fifty members of its South Asia affiliate.

Meanwhile, the Pakistani military has conducted hugely successful operations against Al Qaeda, the Pakistani Taliban, and other jihadist groups in North Waziristan and in Karachi. Anti-state jihadists have been denied critical operational space. Almost two-thirds of the Pakistan Army’s active-duty personnel are involved in some shape or form in the counterinsurgency in the country’s northwest.

But it will take a generation to completely cure Pakistan of the strain of jihadism that has infected the country since the 1980s. The perfect antidote is a pluralistic, democratic, prosperous, and secure Pakistan. A steep decline in terrorism, positive relations between its civilian and military leaders, and an improving economy suggest Pakistan is on that very track. Still, real change in the country will require not just a good year, but at least a decade of sustained reform.

Foreign Media Readout of Obama Failed Summit

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When foreign media, one from Qatar and the other from the United Kingdom provide readouts of Obama’s Gulf State summit at Camp David explaining nicely that it failed, one must worry even more.

Obama’s White House protocol office made a huge gaffe at the front end of the summit by getting a name and history wrong. Then he returned each night to the White House, leaving his invited guests to their own devices. Not only did topics like Iran and Iran get some verbal gymnastics but the matter of Syria and Russia did too. The whole charade boiled down to let us just keep channels open.

For Barack Obama, a sitting president to be so concerned, that it keeps him up at night about those dying and suffering, when he touts his special energies to human rights, his real indifference is on both sleeves for all to see that are watching.

The White House, his national security council, this connections to the United Nations and his jet-setter, John Kerry have no mission statement, no objective, no strategy and no final goal except to pass the burning of the globe on to the next administration. The death toll rises, he is cool with that, and that will frame his 8 year White House legacy.

The Guardian view on the UN talks on Syria: a waiting game while the country burns

In part:

What is going on is the classic diplomatic exercise of keeping channels of communication open in a confused situation in the hope that, as and when it changes, there will be some expertise and engagement available if new opportunities arise. De Mistura’s tactics also represent a recognition that, if there were ever a time when the Syrian war could be tackled on its own, that time has passed. It was always part of the larger regional contest between Iran and the Sunni states led by Saudi Arabia, a contest which in turn was deeply influenced by the difficult relationship between the United States and Iran, by the rise of jihadism, and by the standoff between the west and Russia.

Now all these dimensions are changing. Secretary of state John Kerry’s consultations with Vladimir Putin last week suggest a softening of US and Russian differences over Syria. Meanwhile, at Camp David, President Obama tried to allay the fears of Gulf states that Iran will exploit a nuclear agreement to become the region’s strongest power. It is indeed an open question whether Iran will become a satisfied power, interested in extricating itself from Syria and resting content with its enhanced influence in Iraq, or not. The US will both cooperate with Iran and oppose it, Obama has implied – cooperate in Iraq and parts of Syria, but oppose in other parts and in Yemen. It is a formula that must be very perplexing even to its authors. The new Saudi king, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, meanwhile, has thrown down a gauntlet in Yemen, and is propping up the Sisi regime in Egypt financially while Egypt is choosing sides in Libya. The verdict on this new Saudi forward policy has yet to be reached.

And a word or two from al Jazeera:

Another forgettable summit

The just-concluded Camp David summit promises little more than running in place.

In part:

In contrast, the just-concluded summit promises little more than running in place. For its part, Washington explained its intention to move forward with Iran on a nuclear deal while insisting that it did not portend a US pivot away from its traditional Arab friends. Arabs were and remain sceptical, and justifiably so.

Obama himself explained: “I want to be very clear. The purpose of security cooperation [with the GCC] is not to perpetuate any long-term confrontation with Iran or even to marginalise Iran.”

US initiatives

Saudi misgivings about the choices made by US presidents have a long pedigree. The kingdom has been on the losing end of US initiatives in the region for decades. Washington has proven more than willing to take advantage of Arab weakness – US Palestine policy holds pride of place in this regard.

Of equal if not greater strategic import, however, is the toxic legacy of the US’ destruction of Baghdad’s Sunni military and political leadership, offering Iran a strategic entree into Iraq it has not enjoyed for centuries.

”I do not believe it is in the United States’ interests, or the interest of the region, or the world’s interest, to [attack Iraq],” Crown Prince Abdullah told ABC News shortly before Vice President Dick Cheney’s arrival in March 2002. ”And I don’t believe it will achieve the desired result.”

Cheney dismissed Saudi concerns that war would destabilise the region. That is indeed what Bush wanted – a revolutionary break with the past out of which a new Middle East would be forged.

Shocking Financial Facts on AMTRAK

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AMTRAK is highly subsidized. In fact the subsidies are in the billions. Some dollars were eliminated amounting to $71 million that was due to sequestration, an effective ploy designed and implemented by the White House. There are routes that are not financially prudent to run at all.

Lawmakers appropriated more than $1.5 billion in 2013 to subsidize intercity passenger rail services provided by the National Railroad Passenger Corporation—or Amtrak—including $1.0 billion in grants for capital expenses and debt service, $0.5 billion in grants for operating subsidies, and $0.1 billion for disaster mitigation and repair work after Hurricane Sandy. Those amounts were subsequently reduced by a total of $71 million by sequestration. All told, the government covers almost all of Amtrak’s capital costs as well as more than 10 percent of its operating costs. In 1970, when the Congress established Amtrak, it anticipated subsidizing the railroad for only a short time, until it became self-supporting. Since then, however, the federal subsidies to Amtrak have totaled about $45 billion. This option would eliminate those subsidies, yielding savings of $15 billion from 2015 through 2023, the Congressional Budget Office estimates.

An argument in favor of this option is that federal funding is subsidizing the operation of uneconomic services and routes (including sleeper-class service and many long-distance routes) that are not used extensively and provide little public benefit in terms of reducing congestion or emissions of greenhouse gases. Eliminating Amtrak’s federal subsidy would encourage its managers to improve operating efficiency, in part by cutting unprofitable services and routes. It is also argued that if states or localities value those routes highly, they should be prepared to subsidize their operation (as is already done in some cases).

So first out to the microphone was Nancy Pelosi blaming the Republicans for cutting funding on AMTRAK. Next up was Chuck Schumer telegraphing the same blame on lack of funding.

Another hidden fact with regard to managing rail systems is a piece of software that performs much like a governor known as PTC, positive train control. This PTC was installed in the AMTRAK train 188 but it was turned off due in part to more testing. Failed funding on rail infrastructure was no to blame for the deadly disaster, it was speed. The 2 black boxes have been recovered and prove the train and rails had not failed.

To further rebut Pelosi and Schumer, more facts need to be shared with regard to their claims of lack of funding.

Amtrak Collected $1.3 Billion From Stimulus

$850 million directly to infrastructure on top of $1.4 billion budget
In part:According to Recovery.gov, Amtrak received $1,295,804,688 from President Barack Obama’s stimulus law through a grant from the Department of Transportation (DOT) filed under “Other Heavy and Civil Engineering Construction.”

The grant noted that roughly 50 percent of the money went to “infrastructure improvements” in the Northeast Corridor.

The funding, all of which has been allocated, paid for 154 individual projects in 46 states, and the District of Columbia. The grant mandated that at least $850 million go directly to infrastructure.

“The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) appropriated $1.3 billion to Amtrak for capital investment,” the grant states. “The ARRA requires that Amtrak allocate $850 million for funding to rebuild and modernize infrastructure and equipment.”

Amtrak can’t be bothered to finish up a safety system on time. But did Amtrak CEO Joseph Boardman ever miss a nickel of his $350,000-a-year salary? No. Did Amtrak fail to pay employee bonuses? No—in fact, it paid bonuses to people who weren’t even eligible for them, and then refused to rescind them once it was pointed out that they were unauthorized. So Amtrak took care of Amtrak’s priorities, just like every other government agency. But Amtrak’s priorities are not its customers’ priorities. And that new safety system that was supposed to be operating by the end of the year at the latest? Maybe by 2020. Maybe not.