Saudis Report Plot To Assassinate Obama

And as usual, the comments at the CBS site are full of bile towards President Obama. They're never happy.

The Saudi Arabian newspaper al-Watan reported today that Turkish security services have arrested a man of Syrian origins Friday in connection with a plot to assassinate President Barack Obama during his current visit to Turkey.

The man, who was carrying an Al-Jazeera TV ID card in the name of M.G., confessed after his arrest that he was planning on stabbing the U.S. president with a knife during the Alliance of Civilizations summit held in Istanbul, adding that he had three other accomplices to help him execute his plan.

According to the paper, Turkish investigators were trying to verify whether the Qatari-based Arab TV channel has truly issued the ID card produced by the man, or if it’s a forged copy.

The suspect, a permanent resident of Istanbul, has been regularly attending all conferences and events relating to the Middle East held in the city.

Unclenching fists: Syria edition

By GottaLaff

What was that the Rushpublics were saying about reaching out to the evildoers? Fists are unclenching, despite their best efforts to undermine President Obama:

Syria's foreign minister said on Wednesday his country would be happy to help U.S. President Barack Obama implement his plan to pull U.S. combat troops out of Iraq.

"Syria is ready to offer whatever help is necessary" to make a success of the U.S. withdrawal plan, Walid al-Moualem told journalists after meeting Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki during a visit to Baghdad.

The United States had not asked if it could withdraw troops through Syria, he told a joint news conference with Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari.

Moualem's friendly tone was a sign of the marked improvement in bilateral relations since Obama became president on January 20.

No, what?! Relations have... improved? With who again? Syria? Since when, again? Ohhh, since Obama became pres-i- dent.

Im. Proved.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad called Obama "a man of his word" in an interview with an Italian newspaper last week and said he hoped to meet him.

Think, think... What was it like, say-y, a few months ago? When that swaggering, mouth-breathing, delusional mental amoeba was in office? Why, here's the answer now!

Under former President George W. Bush, relations were extremely strained. U.S. officials accused Syria of doing little to stop the flow of foreign jihadists into Iraq through its porous border, though Syria said it was doing what it could.

Bush's little autobiography may have just been reduced to four pages, because he might want to leave this part out.

Turkish shoemaker of "Bye-Bye Bush Shoe" gets 300,000 orders

By GottaLaff

Bush. Shoe. Mike Meyers. 16 seconds.

Flying sole-lo:

The shoe hurled at President George W. Bush has sent sales soaring at the Turkish maker as orders pour in from Iraq, the U.S. and Iran.

The brown, thick-soled “Model 271” may soon be renamed “The Bush Shoe” or “Bye-Bye Bush,” Ramazan Baydan, who owns the Istanbul-based producer Baydan Ayakkabicilik San. & Tic., said in a telephone interview today.

“We’ve been selling these shoes for years but, thanks to Bush, orders are flying in like crazy,” he said. “We’ve even hired an agency to look at television advertising.”[...]

Baydan has received orders for 300,000 pairs of the shoes since the attack, more than four times the number his company sold each year since the model was introduced in 1999. The company plans to employ 100 more staff to meet demand, he said.

There's the answer to our tanking economy, right there. "Bye-Bye Bush" shoe factories. President Obama can call the upswing the "Bush Shoe Economy". The "Shoo, Bush!" economy?

“Model 271” is exported to markets including Iraq, Iran, Syria and Egypt. Customers in Iraq ordered 120,000 pairs this week and some Iraqis offered to set up distribution companies for the shoe, Baydan said.

A company in Maryland ordered 4,000 pairs. See? Instant upswing.

H/t: TPM

Bombed Syrian Site Appears to Have Been Nuclear Reactor

By GottaLaff

One more as I run out the door:

The Syrian facility bombed by Israeli planes last year bore multiple hallmarks of a nuclear reactor, and the ruined site was contaminated with uranium, U.N. 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. [...]

But more provocative was the IAEA's discovery, during a visit to the site in May, of traces of uranium in soil recovered from the site. A senior U.N. official, describing the finding, said the soil samples contained "significant" amounts of uranium in a form that clearly suggested human manipulation. The uranium was not enriched but had been "chemically processed," official said.

Yikes.

US military conducts a dozen secret strikes in four years: report

By GottaLaff

Believe it or not, Iran was not one of the countries that was targeted:

US special forces have conducted about a dozen secret operations against Al-Qaeda and other Islamic militants in Pakistan, Syria and other countries under broad war-waging authority given them by the administration of President George W. Bush, The New York Times reported on its website.

Citing unnamed senior US officials, the newspaper said the authority was contained in a classified order signed by then-defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld in early 2004 with the approval of President Bush.

The order gave the military permission to attack Al-Qaeda and other hostile targets anywhere in the world, even in countries not at war with the United States, without any additional approval, the report said.

Now they tell us. Okay, so they didn't zap Iran. But...

The paper said, however, that US forces had carried out reconnaissance missions in Iran using other classified directives.

About a dozen additional operations have been canceled in the past four years because they were deemed too risky, too diplomatically explosive or relied on insufficient evidence, the paper said.

Before the 2004 order, the Pentagon needed to get approval for missions on a case-by-case basis, which could take days, the paper recalled.

But Rumsfeld was not satisfied with the status-quo and pressed hard for permission to use military power automatically outside the combat zones of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to The Times.

That Rummy. What a funster, always keeping us on our toes. If only we had known, right? Because, you know, "there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns -- the ones we don't know we don't know."

Meanwhile...

By GottaLaff

Here's a taste of what's coming Obama's way:

Syria's Assad says US should withdraw from Iraq Syrian President Bashar al-Assad on Sunday called on the United States to pull its troops out of Iraq, saying they posed a threat to neighbouring states. "The presence in Iraq of American forces of occupation is a permanent threat to neighbouring countries and an element of instability in the region," Assad said in a speech to Arab parliamentarians in Damascus.

Report identifies UK terrorist enclaves Secret enclaves of al-Qaeda extremists based in London, Birmingham and Luton are planning mass-casualty attacks in Britain, according to a leaked Government intelligence report. The document, which was drawn up by the intelligence branch of the Ministry of Defence, MI5 and Special Branch, states that "some thousands" of extremists are active in the UK.

Happy honeymoon.

Look what's going on in Iraq, Syria, Gitmo, and Pakistan

By GottaLaff

We've been concentrating so hard on the election that some of this slips by us unnoticed. Well, it's time to notice:

Marine orders access to US secret prison camp at Guantánamo --Guantánamo commanders have long refused to say who runs it, or how much it cost to construct. A judge has ordered the Pentagon to give two military attorneys unprecedented access to a secret prison camp here in a ruling that specifically notes that alleged 9/11 conspirator Ramzi bin al Shibh has been mentally ill and may be still. Marine Col. Ralph Kohlmann, the chief judge for military tribunals, issued the three-page ruling on Sunday. He granted access to two Pentagon lawyers with top-secret clearances to inspect a portion of Camp 7, a secret prison camp facility run by a clandestine unit called Task Force Platinum, which segregates former CIA prisoners from the other 250 war-on-[of]-terror captives here.

Next:

Report on Iraq Security Lists 310 Contractors At least 310 private security companies from around the world have received contracts from United States agencies to protect American and Iraqi officials, installations, convoys and other entities in Iraq since 2003, according to the most comprehensive accounting yet of the secretive and weakly regulated role that private firms have played in the conflict. [...] The list, more extensive than any that had previously been disclosed, contains some familiar American companies, like Blackwater and DynCorp, but also hundreds of obscure firms.

Next:

Iraq VP: US blackmailing Iraq over SOFA The US military has threatened to halt vital services in Iraq if Baghdad refuses to sign a controversial US security pact with Washington. In addition to halting all military actions, US forces would cease activities that support Iraq's economy, educational sector and other areas- 'everything' - Tariq al-Hashemi, Iraq's Vice President told the US newspaper McClatchy. According to al-Hashemi, many Iraqi politicians view the move as 'political blackmail'.

Next:

Pakistan summons U.S. ambassador on border strikes
Pakistan's government summoned the U.S. ambassador today to urge an immediate halt to missile strikes on suspected militant hide-outs near the Afghan border.

And finally:

Iraq condemns U.S. assault on Syria
The Cabinet also approves changes to a proposed security deal, including giving Iraq the right to determine whether any U.S. soldier suspected of committing a crime should stand trial in Iraqi court.

Our next president-- that would be President Obama-- will have to deal with all of this. Look what Bush has stuck him, and us, with. Of course, the Republicans will condemn Obama for not resolving every bit of it within the first month of his presidency.

One Last Bush Doctrine

By GottaLaff

Froomkin:

Belittled domestically, President Bush is flexing his last working muscle: His control over the nation's military. And in so doing, he is adding one last addendum to the ever-changing Bush Doctrine, establishing yet another de facto U.S. policy on his way out the door, and leaving his successor with yet another controversial precedent to wrestle with.

By approving a U.S. military raid across the Iraqi border into Syria, Bush has changed the rules once again. On Sunday about two dozen special forces soldiers entered the country by helicopter and killed a suspected Iraqi insurgent leader, without the permission or cooperation of the Syrian government. Call it an October surprise -- if not, at least so far, the October surprise.

Here's one effect of the newest version of the Bush Doctrine. That would be the same Bush Doctrine of which IWRC* Palin was unaware. Surprise!

The Syrian government ordered an American school and a U.S. cultural center in Damascus closed on Tuesday in response to a deadly U.S. attack on a village near the Iraq border, the state-run news agency said.

President Obama's got his work cut out for him.

*"In What Respect, Charlie?"

Attack on Syria 'linked to US poll'

By GottaLaff

Background here and here.

Hey kiddies, guess what time it is! It's Election Time! That means it's Messing with Election Time, too! Weeee!

Thabet Salem a veteran Syrian political analyst explained to Gulf News that it seemed like a ploy by the election campaign of US presidential candidate John McCain.

"They [the Republicans] want to show the world that things remain complicated in the Middle East and threats are still there, to justify the continuation of the 'war on terror.' This gives strong long-term support to the McCain presidency," he said.

---

---

"The timing is amazing, from a neo-conservative point of view, a few days before the American elections," Marc Gopin, a Jewish-American professor at George Mason University who visits Syria frequently for inter-faith dialogue with its Mufti Ahmad Hassoun, said.

"The fact that the fighting lasted for 40 minutes means that it was planned beforehand. This means that Syrian radars were jammed to enable such a long operation. The tension is intentional at this stage to serve the McCain campaign," journalist Mustapha Al Sayyed told Gulf News. [...]

Sunday's attack was described as "the first act of American aggression on Syria" since relations were established between the two states in 1945.

Hey kiddies! Guess what month it is! It's October. Surprise!

H/t: Jon Lester

Dennis Kucinich questions timing of U.S. raid into Syria

By GottaLaff

You question, I question, we all question BushCo... and today, Kucinich questions:

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D-Ohio) is questioning the timing of a reported U.S. incursion into Syrian territory. "We are on the eve of national elections and we must be mindful of the Administration's past manipulation of security issues in order to influence public opinion," he said.

The White House isn't commenting on the reported attack, which is said to have occurred over the Iraqi border in Bukamal near the town of Deir Ezzor. The L.A. Times reported that while U.S. officials "would not confirm the attack, they used language typically employed after raids conducted by secretive Special Operations forces."

The Syrian Arab News Agency reported on Sunday that four U.S. helicopters conducted an attack in which at least eight people were killed.

Kucinich continued:

"We cannot stand by and let them use the lives of innocent people as pawns in their wrongful political objectives."

October surprise? Not if Dennis can help it.

Witnesses: US Helicopters Attack Syrian Village

By GottaLaff

Oh, swell:

U.S. military helicopters attacked an area along Syria's border with Iraq on Sunday, causing casualties, Syrian state TV and witnesses said.

The television report quoted unnamed Syrian officials and said the area is near the Syrian border town of Abu Kamal. It gave no other details.

Local residents told The Associated Press by telephone that two helicopters carrying U.S. soldiers raided a farm in the village of Hwijeh, 10 miles inside Syria's border, killing seven people and wounding five. One of the witnesses said five of the dead were from a single family.

The residents refused to allow their names to be given because they feared they would be harassed by authorities.

The U.S. military in Baghdad had no immediate comment.

Gramm-pa McCain should be thrilled. More war! Weeee!

Wednesday Links For Thee

Howard Wolfson is talking and I am nauseated.

Oil price passes $130 a barrel

Lost parrot tells veterinarian his address

McCain Media Consultant McKinnon Resigns

The New York Times reports Sen. John McCain's "chief advertising strategist," Mark McKinnon, "announced Tuesday that he was resigning, following through on a vow he had made months ago not to work against the candidacy of Senator Barack Obama." The AP adds that McKinnon "said last year that he didn't want to work against an Obama candidacy. Electing Obama 'would send a great message to the country and the world,' McKinnon said at the time, although he added that he intended to vote for McCain."

Ground Zero Responders Found To Have Elevated Anxiety Levels

Israel Holding Peace Talks with Syria

The Hill: Panel nixes Bush order on earmarks
House Democrats have escalated their shoving match with the White House over so-called “air-dropped” earmarks.

Police say at least 11 killed by gunfire in Baghdad

What's behind the battle over the new G.I. Bill?

White House Denies Planning Iran Attack

A rumor that the Bush Administration is planning to launch an attack on Iran drew a swift denial from the White House. The AP reports the White House flatly denied a report published in the Jerusalem Post yesterday that alleged President Bush plans to attack Iran before the end of his term.

McCain Favored Talks With Syria

As the media begins to scrutinize McCain's record, there will be more days like today. I know. My book, The Real McCain, is full of McCain flip-flops, disingenuous statements and other smoke and mirrors employed by a supposed "straight-talker."

Not surprisingly, to cap off a day when we found out McCain did favors for a land developer pal, embraced an extremist organization he denounced the last time he ran for president (the NRA) and once wanted to negotiate with Hamas (even though now he'll never talk to any enemy and call Barack Obama "naive" for thinking that diplomacy thing should ever be employed), we now find out he also once believed in talks with Syria even as he admitted they were sponsoring terrorists. A country that we pointed out a few days ago his advisor Jim Woolsey wants to preemptively bomb.

A glimpse of The Real McCain.