Whatever happens to the detainees, the important point for much of the commentariat is that Guantánamo will be shuttered. For Guantánamo’s many critics, the facility long ago became a symbol of all that is wrong with the Bush administration’s conduct of the war on terror-from its cowboy-like unilateralism to its alleged widespread torture and abuse of terrorist suspects. That many dangerous enemies lurk in Guantánamo’s cells has often been a secondary concern, if a concern at all. Thus, when President-elect Obama spoke of regaining “America’s moral stature in the world,” he was endorsing the widespread perception of Guantánamo as an American sin that originated in the Bush administration’s overreaction to the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.

This perception, however, was always skewed. The new administration will soon discover from its review of the Guantánamo files what motivated its predecessor: The scope of the terrorist threat was far greater than anyone knew on September 11, 2001. But for the Bush administration’s efforts, many more Americans surely would have perished.

This conclusion is based on a careful review of the thousands of pages of documents released from Guantánamo, as well as other publicly available evidence. In 2006, the Department of Defense began to release the documents to the public via its website. The files had been created during the Combatant Status Review Tribunals (CSRT) and Administrative Review Board (ARB) hearings held for nearly 600 detainees. This unclassified cache includes both the government’s allegations against each detainee and summarized transcripts of the detainees’ testimony. Although the documents were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by the Associated Press, the intelligence contained in the files was largely ignored by the mainstream press for more than two years. Thus, the New York Times reported only the day before the recent presidential election that the files contain “sobering intelligence claims against many of the remaining detainees.”

Sobering indeed. Read it all. You’ll see but a small sampling of what the Times was reacting to, even though they continue to deride the facility and the President who established it.

Since the end of the Cold War, the U.S. nuclear weapons program has suffered from neglect. Warheads are old. There’s been no new warhead design since the 1980s, and the last time one was tested was 1992, when the U.S. unilaterally stopped testing. Gen. Chilton, who heads U.S. Strategic Command, has been sounding the alarm, as has Defense Secretary Robert Gates. So far few seem to be listening.

The U.S. is alone among the five declared nuclear nations in not modernizing its arsenal. The U.K. and France are both doing so. Ditto China and Russia. “We’re the only ones who aren’t,” Gen. Chilton says. Congress has refused to fund the Department of Energy’s Reliable Replacement Warhead program beyond the concept stage and this year it cut funding even for that.

Gen. Chilton stresses that StratCom is “very prepared right now to conduct our nuclear deterrent mission” — a point he takes pains to repeat more than once.

Modernize our nuclear arsenal by replacing old weapons with new designs? Three words: Not gonna happen.

During the campaign, Barack Obama famously made a forceful pledge that, “I will set a goal of a world without nuclear weapons. To seek that goal, I will not develop new nuclear weapons, I will seek a ban on the production of fissile material, and I will negotiate with Russia to take our ICBM’s off hair-trigger alert and to achieve deep cuts in our nuclear arsenal.” See the full statement in context below.

Still atop the Foreign Policy page at BarackObama.com is the #1 listed priority; a fanciful pledge of securing “all loose nuclear materials in the world within four years” and banning all new nuclear weapons production. In the real world, the former is a wholly unattainable ideal rather than an achievable pledge, and the latter is achievable only unilaterally.

Obama and Biden will secure all loose nuclear materials in the world within four years, and will negotiate a verifiable global ban on the production of new nuclear weapons material to curb the spread of nuclear weapons.

So, while President-Elect Obama has been accused by supporters of “selling out” on Foreign Policy within the context of Iraq, going against his campaign promises there (which we applaud), it is highly unlikely he would go against his campaign pledge to not develop any new nuclear weapons.

For one reason, modernizing our nuclear arsenal will cost a not-so-small sum of money while government tax receipts are in decline. For another, it provides Obama no political advantage. The nuclear arsenal can be ignored - or even shrunk, as Obama pledged - without any short term consequences. For politicians, think of stewarding the aging American nuclear arsenal as managing Social Security program, only with far more dire potential consequences. It is, nevertheless, a rusty can that can be kicked down the road for someone else to inherit. Just like… Social Security.

If elaboration is needed, read the first graphs.

Mr Obama has moved quickly in the last 48 hours to get his cabinet team in place, unveiling a raft of heavyweight appointments, in addition to Hillary Clinton as his Secretary of State.

But his preference for General James Jones, a former Nato commander who backed John McCain, as his National Security Adviser and Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano, a supporter of the war, to run the Homeland Security department has dismayed many of his earliest supporters.

The likelihood that Mr Obama will retain George W Bush’s Defence Secretary, Robert Gates, has reinforced the notion that he will not aggressively pursue the radical withdrawal of all combat troops from Iraq over the next 16 months and engagement with rogue states that he has pledged.

Chris Bowers of the influential OpenLeft.com blog complained: “That is, over all, a centre-right foreign policy team. I feel incredibly frustrated. Progressives are being entirely left out of Obama’s major appointments so far.”

Markos Moulitsas, founder of the Daily Kos site, the in-house talking shop for the anti-war Left, warned that Democrats risk sounding “tone deaf” to the views of “the American electorate that voted in overwhelming numbers for change from the discredited Bush policies.”

Look, President-Elect Obama knows that Iraq is won, regardless his campaign rhetoric. To his credit, he is loathe to trade in victory already won before his inauguration for defeat just to appease fervent supporters, such as Markos Moulitsas and Chris Bowers. With the slightest patience, he can take credit - rightly or not - for removing US troops from Iraq and increasing the force levels in Afghanistan.

Naturally, these events would have occurred regardless the election’s result. The war in Iraq has been essentially won, and the Afghanistan-Pakistan theater is in need of an infusion of both forces and a new ground-up strategy. And Obama - with David Petraeus in charge at CENTCOM and Robert Gates at Defense - will be able to politically take credit for it in his first term.

Moulitsas and Bowers (et al) seemingly much prefer defeat and the abandonment of the Iraqi people. Kudos to Barack Obama for ignoring them.

US predator drone missile strikes are reaching farther into Pakistan. This is most likely a reaction to an enemy which has been attempting to shift from under the watchful and lethal eyes of the American predators.

Just ran across this Daily Times (Pakistan) report on a deep strike in Bannu, and found a degree of verification of the logically deduced:

Taliban movement: AP reported two other intelligence officials based in Bannu as saying that the Taliban had begun moving away from the border, including districts and other settled areas, in an apparent bid to avoid the missile strikes. Pakistani officials say they are rarely warned of such attacks.

For what it’s worth.

Iran has now produced roughly enough nuclear material to make, with added purification, a single atom bomb, according to nuclear experts analyzing the latest report from global atomic inspectors.

The figures detailing Iran’s progress were contained in a routine update on Wednesday from the International Atomic Energy Agency, which has been conducting inspections of the country’s main nuclear plant at Natanz. The report concluded that as of early this month, Iran had made 630 kilograms, or about 1,390 pounds, of low-enriched uranium.

Several experts said that was enough for a bomb, but they cautioned that the milestone was mostly symbolic, because Iran would have to take additional steps. Not only would it have to breach its international agreements and kick out the inspectors, but it would also have to further purify the fuel and put it into a warhead design — a technical advance that Western experts are unsure Iran has yet achieved.

Seriously. Who is going to stop the Iranians? With the exception of Israel, whose conventional reach and thus capabilities are limited, the rest of the world remains transfixed on arriving at a global consensus that will never happen. Not on Iran. Not on any issue.

And that’s why I say the genie has left and taken her bottle with her.

But is our view of the existential threat too narrow?

Dr. Michael Oren, author of the Six Days of War and currently at Georgetown University, would argue yes. Offering the Israeli perspective to the Iranian challenge during the concluding panel of the Hudson Institute’s conference “Iran, Hezballah, and Hamas: Tehran’s War against the West by Proxy?”, Oren provided a more expansive take on the existential threat that a nuclear Iran could pose to Israel - without even launching a weapon.

Oren argues that Iran could economically cripple Israel by simply going on a permanent state of nuclear alert - a move that Israel would feel compelled to reciprocate. That sense of impending conflict, with a potentially catastrophic end result, would likely bring a halt to Israel’s lucrative tourism business. In 2001 and 2002, when the violence of the Al-Aqsa Intifadah was at its peak, hotels is Israel remained desolate and the economy suffered. Foreign investment, which is a critical component of Israel’s thriving hi-tech industry, among other sectors, would significantly be reduced. In essence, Israel would be choked economically without a single nuclear weapon being launched.

“Hizballah would fire Katusha rockets into Northern Israel. Israel would want to respond and Iran would go onto nuclear alert and immediately deter Israel and it would give Hizballah and Hamas almost a free reign, perhaps moving Katusha rockets into the West Bank, in which case they would pose very much an existential threat.”

Oren also notes the ramifications of further nuclear proliferation amongst Israel’s neighbors - which makes the overall scenario even more daunting.

The full audio from the conference is available on the Hudson Institute’s website.

Pakistan’s army chief, General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, has assured NATO commanders meeting in Brussels that he will keep supply lines to their troops in Afghanistan open after a surge in attacks along the Afghan-Pakistani border.

A top NATO officer, Italian Navy Admiral Giampaolo Di Paola, told reporters afterward that Kayani also urged the alliance to work with local tribal leaders, rather than just trying to seal off the border through force, which he said cannot be done.

General Kayani’s presence at the meeting indicates how interlinked security developments in Pakistan have become with those in neighboring Afghanistan, where NATO has about 70,000 troops.

Pakistani and NATO officials say they are pooling their efforts to fight militants on both sides of the border. They say the ongoing “Operation Lionheart” involves U.S.- led coalition forces in Afghanistan giving assistance to Pakistani troops fighting militants in Pakistan’s tribal district of Bajaur.

US predator drone missile strikes are reaching farther into Pakistan. This is most likely a reaction to an enemy which has been attempting to shift from under the watchful and lethal eyes of the American predators.

And with Kiyani’s trust and confidence, notice that the strikes are almost always netting multiple bad guys and not evacuated huts and buildings. That oft-overlooked change from the past is as significant an indicator of US-Pakistani military cooperation as any other out there.

The Syrian facility bombed by Israeli planes last year bore multiple hallmarks of a nuclear reactor, and the ruined site was contaminated with uranium, United Nations nuclear inspectors confirmed today in a report that largely backed Bush administration accounts of a secret atomic program in the Syrian desert.

The report stopped short of declaring the Syrian facility to be a nuclear reactor, noting that Damascus had taken extensive steps to sanitize the site before officials of the International Atomic Energy Agency were allowed to visit. But agency officials said Syria had failed to provide blueprints or other documents to support its claim that the destroyed building had a non-nuclear purpose.

For the record, I expect an official IAEA report to be worded in such a manner as to stop short in declaring the site a nuclear facility.

But also for the record, I expect the IAEA and Elbaradei not to label as half-baked lunatics those of us outside the report’s official process who conclude that it most certainly was a nuclear facility.

For what it’s worth, the Israelis had soil samples before and after the attack, long before the IAEA was permitted to perform its post-scrub inspection of freshly renovated barren desert soil.

Perhaps the long water supply lines to the Euphrates River leaves open the possibility that the facility was a rare inland water treatment plant. The North Koreans and Iranians are surely on the cutting edge of water treatment technology.

Peaceful water treatment technology, of course.

In a dramatic escalation of high seas crime, Somali pirates hijacked a Saudi supertanker loaded with crude hundreds of miles off the coast of East Africa — defeating the security web of warships trying to protect vital shipping lanes.

I mean, when was the last time anyone on the short list for a national security or defense position had to deal with pirates? If you listened to some, this is a problem so serious as to cause vapor lock:

Operations undertaken by the coalition fleet are fraught with legal difficulties, ranging from restrictive rules of engagement to rights of habeas corpus, as the British Navy discovered when it detained eight pirates after a shootout last week. Yesterday the detainees were passed on to Kenya, where efforts to prosecute them will be closely watched for precedent.

Powerless? Really? Has it come down to this; the world’s most powerful nations are helpless against brigands in a john boat? I mean why all the hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth when that’s demonstrably untrue:

Somali pirates attempting to hijack a Japanese oil tanker in the Gulf of Aden were thwarted in part due to the intervention of German Navy frigate … the Takayam oil tanker was attacked early on Monday, April 21, by a small boat off the northern coast of Somalia … The tanker sent out a radio distress call, which was received by the [German frigate]. The frigate headed straight for the scene, sending ahead a helicopter to intercept the pirates. By the time the helicopter arrived, the pirates had fled in their speedboat, the spokesman said, adding that the mere threat of the naval force had been enough to scare off the bandits.

Feel free to do your own interpretation of the “Run away!” line from The Holy Grail.

No one likes war and no one wants to deal with excessive risk, but from a military standpoint this isn’t any kind of contest. As with most martial issues however, it’s not the fighting but the aftermath that tends to be a problem. Perhaps if we didn’t largely ignore the ‘small stuff’ (a’la Somalia) we wouldn’t have to worry about $100M in crude going missing or being held hostage by armed ragamuffins. People scoff at efforts like Africa Command, but you can trace a lot of evils (and project out even more serious ones) back to Africa. We can debate whether the outgoing administration would be doing a favor or disservice to the incoming one by laying the smack down on pirates, but it’s an issue that will need be addressed decisively soon or we can stop debating about the need for more Joint Strike Fighters because they won’t be effective against the next pressing military threat.

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Houston, said delayed assistance might jeopardize Mexico’s offensive against vicious drug cartels in domestic warfare that has killed nearly 5,000 people over the last two years as gangs battle for turf to smuggle billions of dollars worth of cocaine, marijuana and methamphetamines into the United States.

“Mexico is an important ally,” Jackson Lee said. “We should support our strong alliance with them as quickly as we can.”

A State Department official, speaking to the Houston Chronicle on condition of anonymity, said bureaucratic hurdles will still be in place when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice meets with Mexican Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinosa in Washington near the end of November for what may be their last summit.

Rice had assured her Mexican counterpart in late October that the bureaucratic process would be completed “quite soon” because the United States considers implementation “an urgent task.”

A Mexican diplomat said his government remains realistic about red tape delays.
“I wouldn’t say people in Mexico are disappointed or frustrated. They understand that this is just bureaucracy,” said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

Still, the violence from the Mexican drug war is now spilling over the U.S. border. What is even more disturbing is the extent to which the influence of the Mexican drug cartels has spread around the country. If you look carefully, you may find your own town in the path of the Mexican drug lords.

We face a serious problem. Making it worse is that the youth gangs are now involved in trafficking and enforcement for the cartels on the U.S. side of the border. Further, there are reports of increased anti-law enforcement activities on the U.S. side of the border, especially following recent raids against cartel warehouses.

Part of the problem I have with all of this is that some people in Congress actually “Blame America” for this problem. This, despite some reports that drug use among American youth has declined by over 20% since 2001.

It was reportedly - according to intelligence sources - a plutonium plant; a joint operation consisting of Syrian hosting, Iranian funding and North Korean construction.

So, how is it that uranium is found?

Either the reports of it being a plutonium facility were false, or the uranium source could be traces of depleted uranium from Israeli ordnance, or perhaps something more, or at least different.

But that was my first thought on reading the uranium find in Syria.

Syria has, of course, weeks ago suggested that nuclear material was planted by Israeli intelligence for the IAEA to find. I find that about as believable as suggesting the Iranians and North Koreans killed in the strike were innocent tourists looking for the Disney Syria theme park.

That said, a curious bit of information that I’ve heard no one yet question.

For a flashback reference, readers may like to see the following from earlier this year as well:

1. NRO: At The Improv: IAEA Righteous Indignation
2. NRO: Whew! IAEA ‘Satisfied’ With Syria Trip
3. Der Spiegel: Assad’s Risky Nuclear Game

UPDATE: I am surprised that no one has challenged and asked me, “Well, how do you think they were going to make plutonium, from sand?” The answer to my own unasked rhetorical question, of course, is by recycling spent uranium fuel. So the enrichment level and traceable origins of the uranium traces sampled is important. Not conclusive either way, but important.

After noting that there are a lot of people - known and unknown to the public - who deserve measures of credit for the successful strategy that made victory possible, we dare not forget one important man amid all his criticisms, due and undue.

But the fact remains that only President George W. Bush made or would have made the command decision he made. Only President George W. Bush, derided and vilified, had the conviction and determination to allow a path to victory when nearly everyone else had written Iraq — and her people — off to defeat. Call it “The Audacity of Victory.”

Imagine life as an Iraqi in Baghdad or Ramadi or even Fallujah or Najaf or Baquba and all points between had President Bush relented to common popular domestic and international wisdom, opinion and sentiment and left the Iraqi people to the wolves among them, only to abandon them by “ending it,” executing an “honorable withdrawal,” or “redeploying” our forces. Our defeat would have been theirs ten-fold. Ask one.

Our current narrative-defining trifecta of media, political elite, and academia will surely not credit George W. Bush with achieving victory in Iraq while they are afforded the more palatable option of crediting a President Barack H. Obama with a draw-down of forces. But it is with certainty afforded by said trifecta’s predictability that without President George W. Bush’s steadfast determination and leadership, the events, discussion and reporting surrounding Iraq today would be horrific in nature.

The audacity of victory. You have to want it.

Those were my two cents ending the week Friday, and they’re my two cents beginning this week on Monday.

A source in Chicago informed me earlier today that John McCain will be meeting with Obama and his handlers tomorrow in Chicago in order to discuss the possibility of a Secretary of Defense appointment. That McCain will be in Chicago tomorrow is corroborated by an article London Times published one hour ago. The Times, however, claims McCain will most probably not be appointed to a Cabinet position. But he will be consulted on topics on which he and Obama have “common ground.” This certainly does not preclude the possibility of an appointment of McCain to Secretary of Defense.

Our source maintains that McCain will visit Chicago tomorrow in order to discuss the Secretary of Defense appointment. Even if Obama chooses not to appoint McCain to this position, it raises a series of questions:

Read the questions at No Quarter.

Thanks to The John Batchelor Show, where I heard it first.

Chew on that for a while.

UPDATE: It’s worth noting that the No Quarters blog is the only source suggesting a McCain SecDef conversation, and tht nearly every other discussion has centered around Robert Gates being asked to stay - something that makes far more sense for several reasons. For whatever it is or isn’t worth, the Washington Post this morning goes on about a Gates transition.

• Defense Secretary Gates Working to Ensure Smooth Transition - Washington Post

The kidnapping of senior Iranian diplomat Hashmatullah Atharzadehon Thursday could signal the start of a regional war between alleged al-Qaeda militants and the Iranian government, a senior militant said. “This is payback time for Iran and for its active involvement in destabilising the Taliban government in Afghanistan and for facilitating the US-led invasion on Afghanistan through pro-Iranian Afghan groups,” a senior militant told Adnkronos International (AKI), speaking on condition of anonimity.

The militant said Atharzadeh’s abduction was due to “the arrest of top Al-Qaeda leaders in Iran, for facilitating the US invasion on Iraq through pro-Iran militias and last but not the least for waging the war on the Taliban in Pakistani Khurram agency where Iran provided arms and ammunition to the Shia tribal groups to fight against the Taliban,”

Atharzadeh, who is based at the Iranian Consulate in the northern Pakistani city of Peshawar was abducted by gunmen on Thursday.

Atharzadeh is the commercial attache at the consulate and was reported to have been kidnapped by four armed men on his way home in Hayatabad district where the consulate is located.

“More attacks and actions will be carried out against Iranian interests in coming days and we shall settle each and every dispute through negotiations,” concluded the militant.

So what really has caused the Taliban and al-Qaeda to make such an aggressive move against the Iranian regime, which still holds senior al-Qaeda terrorists under ‘house arrest’ since they fled Afghanistan?

Well, that’s the puzzle. But significant pieces are missing from view, and it may well have to do with the al-Qaeda terrorists still in Iran. A release deal gone bad? Actual imprisonment for some? A simple but highly unlikely case of mistaken identity on the part of the Taliban kidnappers?

Whatever the actual catalyst, it didn’t happen over seven years ago.

At any rate, one passage within the Post’s report raised an eyebrow and garnered a subtle chuckle.

Al-Qaida and Taliban fighters are behind much of the escalating violence along the lengthy, porous Afghan-Pakistan border, and both nations have traded accusations that the other was not doing enough to keep militants out from its side.

Come again? The Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies are behind “much” of the violence along the border? Who is behind the rest, the Philippine Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Colombian FARC?

Just asking.