Where’s Hillary?

Hasidic paper breaks the rules by editing Clinton out of White House photo

By Joe Pompeo
Hillary Clinton's expression, right hand clasped over her mouth in astonishment, is largely responsible for making the above photo iconic--and, to at least one newspaper, sexually suggestive.
In the photo, President Obama and his national security team are huddled around a conference table in the White House Situation Room, watching CIA director Leon Panetta narrate last Sunday's raid on Osama bin Laden's compound. The mood is clearly tense.
When Women's Wear Daily consulted a coterie of photo editors and designers about why the image is "destined to be one for the history books," Clinton was foremost in their responses.
"The Hillary Clinton expression is the one that holds the photograph fully," Time's photo director told the magazine. "You can see 10 years of tension and heartache and anger in Hillary's face," Conde Nast's Scott Dadich agreed.
Turns out she was probably just coughing during that crucial moment captured by White House photographer Pete Souza. But nevertheless, the image still proved a bit too racy for at least one of the many newspapers that printed it.
That would be the Ultra-Orthodox Hasidic broadsheet Der Tzitung, published in Brooklyn. The paper photoshopped Clinton, as well at the only other woman who could be seen in the room--Audrey Tomason, the national director of counterterrorism--out of the frame.

"Apparently the presence of a woman, any woman, being all womanly and sexy all over the United States' counterterrorism efforts was too much for the editors of Der Tzitung to handle," noted the prominent women's blog Jezebel.
Indeed, "The Hasidic newspaper will not intentionally include any images of women in the paper because it could be considered sexually suggestive," Rabbi Jason Miller explains in The Jewish Week. Though he notes that the publication's "fauxtograpphing" may in fact be a graver act against their religious tenets: "To my mind, this act of censorship is actually a violation of the Jewish legal principle of g'neivat da'at (deceit)."
Beyond that, Der Tzitung's editors apparently missed or blatantly ignored the guidelines stipulated on the official White House Flickr page, where the photo was released for use by news organizations: "The photograph may not be manipulated in any way."
The White House has not issued a response on the altered image.
UPDATE: The editors of Der Tzitung have apologized to the White House for altering the photo and responded to the Wasington Post with a comment clarifiying their position:
"In accord with our religious beliefs, we do not publish photos of women, which in no way relegates them to a lower status... Because of laws of modesty, we are not allowed to publish pictures of women, and we regret if this gives an impression of disparaging to women, which is certainly never our intention. We apologize if this was seen as offensive."

Obama Got Osama

Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, behind the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and four commercial airplanes, was killed in Pakistan in a firefight with U.S. troops, and that’s how finally Osama’s fever is finished among American’s with the dramatic announcement of his death by US President Obama.www.jalaybi.com brings for you the most waited announcement for the Americans and the rest of the world fighting against Alqeada, here is the complete  text of those words by  Obama that Americans have been longing to listen and every president of  US longing to utter since 9/11, finally President Obama got the chance to announce that “I have Got Osama after a decade”
PRESIDENT OBAMA: Good evening. Tonight I can report to the American people and to the world that the United States has conducted an operation that killed Osama bin Laden, the leader of al Qaeda, and a terrorist who is responsible for the murder of thousands of innocent men, women and children.
It was nearly 10 years ago that a bright September day was darkened by the worst attack on the American people in our history.The images of 9/11 are seared into our national memory. Hijacked planes cutting through a cloudless September sky, the Twin Towers collapsing to the ground, black smoke billowing up from the Pentagon, the wreckage of Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where the actions of heroic citizens saved even more heartbreak and destruction.
And yet, we know that the worst images are those that were unseen to the world, the empty seat at the dinner table, children who were forced to grow up without their mother or their father, parents who would never know the feeling of their child’s embrace. Nearly 3,000 citizens taken from us, leaving a gaping hole in our hearts.
On September 11th, 2001 in our time of grief, the American people came together. We offered our neighbors a hand, and we offered the wounded our blood. We reaffirmed our ties to each other, and our love of community and country.
On that day, no matter where we came from, what god we prayed to, or what race or ethnicity we were, we were united as one American family.
We were also united in our resolve to protect our nation and to bring those who committed this vicious attack to justice. We quickly learned that the 9/11 attacks were carried out by al Qaeda, an organization headed by Osama bin Laden, which had openly declared war on the United States and was committed to killing innocence in our country and around the globe.
And so we went to war against al Qaeda, to protect our citizens, our friends and our allies.
Over the last 10 years, thanks to the tireless and heroic work of our military and our counterterrorism professionals, we’ve made great strides in that effort. We’ve disrupted terrorist attacks and strengthened our homeland defense.
In Afghanistan, we removed the Taliban government which had given bin Laden and al Qaeda safe haven and support.
And around the globe, we’ve worked with our friends and allies to capture or kill scores of al Qaeda terrorists, including several who were a part of the 9/11 plot.
Yet, Osama bin Laden avoided capture and escaped across the Afghan border into Pakistan. Meanwhile, al Qaeda continued to operate from along that border and operate through its affiliates across the world. And so shortly after taking office, I directed Leon Panetta, the director of the CIA, to make the killing or capture of bin Laden the top priority of our war against al Qaeda, even as we continued our broader efforts to disrupt, dismantle and defeat his network.
Then last August, after years of painstaking work by our intelligence community, I was briefed on a possible lead to bin Laden.
It was far from certain, and it took many months to run this thread to ground.
I met repeatedly with my national security team as we developed more information about the possibility that we had located bin Laden hiding within a compound deep inside Pakistan.
And finally last week, I determined that we had enough intelligence to take action, and authorized an operation to get Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice.
Today, at my direction, the United States launched a targeted operation against that compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. A small team of Americans carried out the operation with extraordinary courage and capability. No Americans were harmed. They took care to avoid civilian casualties.
After a firefight, they killed Osama bin Laden and took custody of his body.
For over two decades, bin Laden has been al Qaeda’s leader and symbol and has continued to plot attacks against our country and our friends and allies. The death of bin Laden marks the most significant achievement to date in our nation’s effort to defeat al Qaeda.
Yet his death does not mark the end of our effort. There’s no doubt that al Qaeda will continue to pursue attacks against us. We must and we will remain vigilant at home and abroad. As we do, we must also reaffirm that the United States is not and never will be at war with Islam.
I’ve made clear, just as President Bush did shortly after 9/11, that our war is not against Islam, because bin Laden was not a Muslim leader. He was a mass murderer of Muslims. Indeed, al Qaeda has slaughtered scores of Muslims in many countries, including our own.
So his demise should be welcomed by all who believe in peace and human dignity.
Over the years, I have repeatedly made clear that we would take action within Pakistan if we knew where bin Laden was. That is what we’ve done. But it’s important to note that our counterterrorism cooperation with Pakistan helped lead us to bin Laden and the compound where he was hiding. Indeed, bin Laden had declared war against Pakistan as well and ordered attacks against the Pakistani people.
Tonight, I called President Zardari, and my team has also spoken with their Pakistani counterparts. They agree that this is a good and historic day for both of our nations. And going forward, it is essential that Pakistan continue to join us in the fight against al Qaeda and its affiliates.
The American people did not choose this fight. It came to our shores and started with the senseless slaughter of our citizens.
After nearly 10 years of service, struggle and sacrifice, we know well the costs of war. These efforts weigh on me every time I, as commander-in-chief, have to sign a letter to a family that has lost a loved one, or look into the eyes of a service member who’s been gravely wounded.
So Americans understand the costs of war. Yet, as a country, we will never tolerate our security being threatened, nor stand idly by when our people have been killed. We will be relentless in defense of our citizens and our friends and allies. We will be true to the values that make us who we are.
And on nights like this one, we can say to those families who have lost loved ones to al Qaeda’s terror: Justice has been done.
Tonight we give thanks to the countless intelligence and counterterrorism professionals who have worked tirelessly to achieve this outcome. The American people do not see their work or know their names, but tonight they feel the satisfaction of their work and the result of their pursuit of justice.
We give thanks for the men who carried out this operation, for they exemplify the professionalism, patriotism and unparalleled courage of those who serve our country. And they’re a part of the generation that has borne the heaviest share of the burden since that September day.
Finally, let me say to the families who lost loved ones on 9/11 that we have never forgotten your loss, nor wavered in our commitment to see that we do whatever it takes to prevent another attack on our shores.
And tonight, let us think back to the sense of unity that prevailed on 9/11. I know that it has, at times, frayed. Yet today’s achievement is a testament to the greatness of our country and the determination of the American people. The cause of securing our country is not complete, but tonight we are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to. That is the story of our history, whether it’s the pursuit of prosperity for our people, or the struggle for equality for all our citizens, our commitment to stand up for our values abroad, and our sacrifices to make the world a safer place.
Let us remember that we can do these things, not just because of wealth or power, but because of who we are: One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Shariah at the Kumback Café

December 6, 2010

By ROGER COHEN

PERRY, OKLAHOMA — They call Oklahoma the buckle of the Bible Belt. It’s the state where all 77 counties voted Republican when Barack Obama was elected and where 70.8 percent of the electorate last month approved a “Save Our State Amendment” banning Islamic, or Shariah, law.
So I decided to check the pulse of a resurgent conservative America at the Kumback Café. The Kumback, established 1926, is a cozy, memorabilia-filled joint that sits opposite the courthouse in downtown Perry, population 5,230.
Things work like this at the Kumback: The guys, average age about 80, arrive around 8 a.m. and get talking on “the whole gamut of life”; the girls, average age too indelicate to print, gather later at a horse-shoe shaped table toward the back. Ken Sherman, 86 and spry, explained: “We’ve got to come here every day to find out what’s going on. And by the time we leave we forget.”
I asked Paul Morrow, a whippersnapper at 71, how things were going. “There’s just too much Muslim influence, all this Shariah law,” he said. “We’re conservative here, old and cantankerous.”
You might not expect Shariah, a broad term encompassing Islamic religious precepts, to be a priority topic at the Kumback given that there’s not a Muslim in Perry and perhaps 30,000, or less than one percent of the population, in all Oklahoma. And you’d be wrong.
Shariah is the new hot-button wedge issue, as radicalizing as abortion or gay marriage, seized on by Republicans to mobilize conservative Americans against the supposed “stealth jihad” of Muslims in the United States and against a Democratic president portrayed as oblivious to — or complicit with — the threat. Not since 9/11 has Islamophobia been at such a pitch in the United States.
The neoconservative Center for Security Policy in Washington recently described Shariah as “the pre-eminent totalitarian threat of our time.” Many Republicans, with Newt Gingrich leading, have signed up. Their strategy is clear: Conflate Obama with creeping Shariah and achieve the political double-whammy of feeding rampant rumors that he’s a closet Muslim and fanning the fears that propel a conservative lurch.
It’s not pretty, in fact it’s pretty odious, but to judge by the Republican surge last month, it’s effective in an anxiety-filled America.
Galvanized by State Question 755, barring “courts from considering or using Shariah Law,” Republicans swept to the Oklahoma governorship and veto-proof majorities in the Legislature for the first time.
Question 755 was “a pre-emptive strike,” in the words of its most active proponent, Republican State Representative Rex Duncan, whose portrait hangs in the Kumback. The question arises, given the quiet on the prairies, against whom? A prominent Oklahoma pastor, Paul Blair, told me it was aimed at those “whose plan is not to coexist but bring the whole world under Islam.”
A preliminary federal injunction, granted after a prominent local Muslim, Muneer Awad, challenged the constitutionality of the amendment in the nation where “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” has blocked its certification for now. The very curious case of Shariah and Oklahoma may be headed to the Supreme Court.
Marilee Macias, the bubbly owner of the Kumback, swung by. “Duncan’s ahead of the game,” she said. “He’s a military guy, been around the world. I don’t know what these Muslims are preparing but I know that stoning women, we don’t want that here.”
Bud Johnson, 84, who worked in Washington and is gently mocked at the Kumback for his East Coast liberalism, shook his head. “It’s going to cost the state a lot of money to try to defend a stupid law,” he said. “There should be a reason for a law, not just hatred and emotions. But my view went down here like the Titanic. The fear element has got us.”
To understand U.S. politics today, try “It’s the fear element, stupid.”
I asked Frank Lawson, 83, about Obama. “I think the young man’s a Muslim,” he said. Case closed. He continued: “I got on the computer, punched in Koran, and there it is in black and white: They are out to rule the world and if you don’t convert, they kill you.” Cherry-picked inflammatory phrases, attributed to the Koran but more often lifted from interpretations of it, course through Oklahoman churches and spread via Internet chatter.
Sherman asked me what “that huge Muslim movement that took over Europe,” was called. I couldn’t help. “Begins with ‘O”’ he said. “The Ottoman Empire?” I ventured. Yep. Case closed again.
Things were quiet on Perry’s main square. So quiet the “Muslim threat” was hard to imagine. It was even harder to imagine that, right here, Timothy McVeigh, the homegrown terrorist who killed 168 people in a 1995 Oklahoma attack, was held after being stopped by a state trooper outside Perry for having no license plate.
Nobody initially suspected McVeigh. Suspicion fell on men “of Middle Eastern appearance,” including Imad Enchassi, now the imam of a large Oklahoma mosque, who told me, “Things are much worse now, I’m looking over my shoulder for the first time.”

Reading Woodward in Karachi

Is this the nail in the coffin of the U.S.-Pakistan relationship?

BY MOSHARRAF ZAIDI | OCTOBER 4, 2010

Bob Woodward's books have an uncanny ability to create palpable nervousness in Washington. They almost always expose some government officials in a poor light. But though many figures in his latest, Obama's Wars, don't come off particularly well, there is one clear, overwhelming, and irreconcilable villain. It isn't a member of Barack Obama's administration, the Taliban, or even al Qaeda. In fact, it's not a person at all.

In the opening chapter, Woodward introduces his bad guy: "the immediate threat to the United States [comes] ... from Pakistan, an unstable country with a population of about 170 million, a 1,500 mile border with southern Afghanistan, and an arsenal of some 100 nuclear weapons." Never mind the Woodward effect in Washington; in Obama's Wars, the villain is an entire country.
Relations between the United States and Pakistan have never been more fraught. Last month, NATO helicopters breached Pakistani airspace several times. In the first instance, they engaged a group of suspected terrorists, killing more than 30. On Sept. 30, in another breach of Pakistani territory and airspace, NATO gunships fired on Pakistani paramilitary troops from the Frontier Constabulary (FC). Three Pakistani soldiers were killed and another three were badly injured. No one even attempted to dismiss the incident as friendly fire. In response, Pakistan has shut down the main border crossing and supply route into Afghanistan at Torkham, and militants have attacked convoys bringing fuel to NATO forces. All this comes after the most intense month of U.S. drone attacks in Pakistan since the campaign began.
Into this environment comes Woodward's account of the Obama administration's decision to embrace a surge strategy in Afghanistan, which also offers a pretty good window into what American power sees when it looks at Pakistan. Woodward's emphasis on the "Pak" in AfPak reflects a larger shift in emphasis in official Washington. Perhaps inadvertently, the book is also likely to confirm many of the darkest suspicions that ordinary Pakistanis have about their erstwhile American allies.
Before 9/11, Pakistan's hot and cold relationship with the United States was the object of obsession for three generations of Pakistani foreign-policy analysts, but there were hardly a dozen serious Pakistan scholars in the United States. The imbalance was for good reason. America was a massive ATM for corrupt and lazy Pakistani governments -- especially military dictatorships. Conversely, though Pakistan periodically offered an interesting and useful ally in the South Asia region, it was too cumbersome to trust as a long-term friend.
It isn't surprising therefore that no matter how sincerely U.S. presidents have wanted to befriend and help Pakistan -- and it is clear that Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all have made serious and sincere efforts to "get" the country -- the outcome of the efforts tends to look alarmingly more like a relationship between adversaries than friends.
Woodward's book is advertised as an insider's peek into how Obama has chosen the team and run the plays on the U.S. war in Afghanistan. And a large factor in this process has been the increasingly tense and complicated calculus that describes the relationship between the Obama administration and the Pakistani government. This calculus is made more convoluted by the fact that a large part of the U.S. military effort in Pakistan entails a covert war, parts of which have the blessing of Pakistan's military and political leaders, and parts of which fall into some tricky gray areas.
It should be self-evident that this covert war is not designed to kill Pakistanis or weaken the Pakistani state. It would be hard to convince reasonable people that key U.S. leaders, from Obama to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, from Vice President Joe Biden to Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman John Kerry, seek to damage Pakistan, or Pakistanis. Indeed, Kerry and Biden have been huge supporters of Pakistan and of the need to establish a deeper relationship with the Pakistani people. Kerry, in particular, has been at the forefront in pushing civilian aid funds to Pakistan through Congress. Still, for the U.S. leadership under Obama, the prize is simple. Hunt down al Qaeda and its enablers hiding out in Pakistan. Kill them all. And move on. But today, it's increasingly unclear just who Enemy No. 1 is anymore.
And this message is heard loud and clear back on the Pakistani main street. As much as supporters of the effort -- both in Washington and Islamabad -- may go to great pains to explain that this war is for Pakistan's own good and that the United States is not waging a war on Pakistan, such appeals are likely to fall on deaf ears, and not just among the conspiratorial hypernationalist types.
Even among some of the most stalwart supporters of the United States, suspicion of Washington's intentions runs deep and wide. In an account of a meeting between President Asif Ali Zardari and U.S. diplomat Zalmay Khalilzad, Woodward describes Zardari's passionate elaboration of why he is convinced that the TTP -- often called the Pakistani Taliban -- are being financed and directed by the United States to weaken Pakistan so that Washington can grab Islamabad's nukes. This kind of ridiculous suspicion of the United States is, of course, as Woodward also notes, a regional disease, with Afghan President Hamid Karzai routinely blaming the United States for supporting the insurgency. But dismissing the ridiculous without understanding its resonance is also dangerous. If this account of Zardari's meeting with Khalilzad ever made the front page in Pakistan, Zardari, whose popularity has suffered for being a U.S. ally, would get an immediate boost. That's how deep the suspicion runs.
All conspiracies, no matter how wild, need to be oxygenated by facts. Since that meeting, at the beginning of May 2009, drone attacks in Federally Administered Tribal Areas have consistently increased. Most damning for the U.S. presence has been the enduring presence of contractors like the company formally known as Blackwater. All of these issues are huge stories in Pakistan's vibrant 24/7 news culture -- largely because they feed the fear-based narrative of what the United States really wants in Pakistan.
Woodward's book confirms the covert war in Pakistan and provides some measure of its extent in an account of Obama's first serious intelligence briefing lead by Michael Hayden, who preceded current CIA Director Leon Panetta. In that briefing, on Dec. 9, 2008, Hayden gave Obama a full rundown of every category of covert activity the United States was involved in across the globe. The first and most significant was a package of clandestine counterterrorism operations around the world that included Predator drone strikes against suspected terrorists. When Obama asked, "How much are you doing in Pakistan?" the answer Hayden gave was about 80 percent. We own the sky, Hayden said, and informed Obama that the drones take off and land at secret bases in Pakistan.
But Hayden wasn't boasting; he was well aware of the limited value of remote warfare. And his concerns were eerily prescient in the context of September's record-breaking drone strikes. He repeatedly warned the incoming Obama administration that the drones did not represent a strategy, but a tactic: "Unless you're prepared to do this forever, you have to change the facts on the ground." Hayden was convinced that without successful counterinsurgency on both sides of the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, those facts on the ground would not change.
Of course, we know what has happened since. The drones have become one of the primary instruments of U.S. foreign policy in Pakistan. Planeloads of young State Department officers, accompanied by dozens of private and public-sector security personnel, land in Islamabad on a weekly basis. They bring with them promises of increased aid, more effective aid, more civilian aid, and more transparent aid. Yet every meeting they attend, every cocktail party they are invited to, every op-ed section they scan is littered with references to drone attacks.
Is it any surprise that Pakistanis see conflicting messages coming out of Washington? Within this deeply negative and gloomy context, Woodward's book exposes some of the U.S. government's contingency plans for Pakistan, including military strikes on as many as 150 suspected terrorist training sites. One conspiracy theory popular in Islamabad, which the book will no doubt feed, is that U.S. special-operations forces will one day come and take Pakistan's beloved crown jewels -- the more than 100 nuclear weapons thecountry bankrupted itself to develop.
Biden, according to Woodward, broached this topic at a strategy meeting in the fall of 2009, saying, "We can't lose sight of Pakistan and stability there. The way I understand this, Afghanistan is a means to accomplish our top mission, which is to kill al Qaeda and secure Pakistan's nukes." Of course, Biden is not suggesting that the United States would take Pakistan's nukes, but rather that it would ensure that there isn't an overthrow of the Pakistani government by terrorist groups, but his words are still likely to be interpreted as the ultimate proof of what this whole fuss -- 9/11, the war on terror, the reorientation of the Afghan campaign, and the covert war in Pakistan -- has all been about. For the ordinary Pakistani, there is no better or more comforting explanation for the three years of nonstop suicide bombings and violence that Pakistan has been plunged into.
But what might be most offensive to Pakistanis may be the sense among U.S. officials, as conveyed by Woodward, that Pakistanis are not taking the militant threat seriously. Pakistanis are keenly aware of the 30-year-old monster of extremists and radicals that their governments and military have cultivated in the name of national security. The terrorists of the TTP and other al Qaeda affiliates that have wreaked so much destruction -- causing more than 30,000 deaths since 2001 in Pakistan -- are deeply unpopular.
But these enemies are, at least, domestic and familiar. The public knows full well that the monster of extremism is an intergenerational challenge, one that will require careful and assiduous attention. Anti-American hatred, on the other hand, is fueled by a simpler narrative. There is no ideological commitment or religious fervor that fuels the Pakistani public's anti-Americanism. Nor is there a particularly civilizational flavor to it. Pakistani anti-Americanism comes from a sustained narrative in which Pakistan is the undignified and humiliated recipient of U.S. financial support -- provided at the expense of Pakistani blood. This may not be reflective of the intentions of Obama's war, but it is reflective of the outcome of this war on main street in Pakistan. And perception is reality.
One of the most telling accounts in the book is of Husain Haqqani, the Pakistani ambassador to the United States, trying to explain to members of the Obama administration how to engage with Pakistan. After trying a number of analogies, the unflappable Haqqani finally just lays it out plainly, "Give us a little bit of respect. Don't humiliate us publicly."
The public humiliation of being the subject of Obama's war, without being able to publicly acknowledge its myriad dimensions, is a pressure that is crushing Pakistan's fragile democracy and hurting wider U.S. goals. If one of the objectives of Obama's war was to stabilize and secure Pakistan, then, by that measure, the war is not doing well at all. The surge has been a massive failure, notwithstanding the achievements of the clandestine war and the drone strikes.
That perfectly captures the American conundrum in Pakistan. The things that have the most value for the Obama administration -- using covert actions and drone strikes to take out known al Qaeda members -- provoke the most disquiet in Pakistan. Pakistanis will not come away from reading Obama's Wars with any confidence in the warm sincerity of Hillary Clinton's multiple visits to the country to build bridges and spur the U.S. public diplomacy machine. Instead, the suspicious instincts of Pakistanis will be vindicated. The irony could not be richer. No U.S. administration has ever invested so much effort and time in trying to understand and accommodate Pakistan's complex realities into its own calculus. Woodward's book confirms what this outpouring of U.S. interest and attention is all about: It is about fear.

Pakistanis Tell of Motive in Taliban Leader’s Arrest

By DEXTER FILKINS

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — When American and Pakistani agents captured Abdul Ghani Baradar, the Taliban’s operational commander, in the chaotic port city of Karachi last January, both countries hailed the arrest as a breakthrough in their often difficult partnership in fighting terrorism.
But the arrest of Mr. Baradar, the second-ranking Taliban leader after Mullah Muhammad Omar, came with a beguiling twist: both American and Pakistani officials claimed that Mr. Baradar’s capture had been a lucky break. It was only days later, the officials said, that they finally figured out who they had.
Now, seven months later, Pakistani officials are telling a very different story. They say they set out to capture Mr. Baradar, and used the C.I.A. to help them do it, because they wanted to shut down secret peace talks that Mr. Baradar had been conducting with the Afghan government that excluded Pakistan, the Taliban’s longtime backer.
In the weeks after Mr. Baradar’s capture, Pakistani security officials detained as many as 23 Taliban leaders, many of whom had been enjoying the protection of the Pakistani government for years. The talks came to an end.
The events surrounding Mr. Baradar’s arrest have been the subject of debate inside military and intelligence circles for months. Some details are still murky — and others vigorously denied by some American intelligence officials in Washington. But the account offered in Islamabad highlights Pakistan’s policy in Afghanistan: retaining decisive influence over the Taliban, thwarting archenemy India, and putting Pakistan in a position to shape Afghanistan’s postwar political order.
“We picked up Baradar and the others because they were trying to make a deal without us,” said a Pakistani security official, who, like numerous people interviewed about the operation, spoke anonymously because of the delicacy of relations between Pakistan, Afghanistan and the United States. “We protect the Taliban. They are dependent on us. We are not going to allow them to make a deal with Karzai and the Indians.”
Some American officials still insist that Pakistan-American cooperation is improving, and deny a central Pakistani role in Mr. Baradar’s arrest. They say the Pakistanis may now be trying to rewrite history to make themselves appear more influential. It was American intellgence that led to Mr. Baradar's capture, an American official said.
“These are self-serving fairy tales,” the official said. “The people involved in the operation on the ground didn’t know exactly who would be there when they themselves arrived. But it certainly became clear, to Pakistanis and Americans alike, who we’d gotten.”
Other American officials suspect the C.I.A. may have been unwittingly used by the Pakistanis for the larger aims of slowing the pace of any peace talks.
At a minimum, the arrest of Mr. Baradar offers a glimpse of the multilayered challenges the United States faces as it tries to prevail in Afghanistan. It is battling a resilient insurgency, supporting a weak central government and trying to manage Pakistan’s leaders, who simultaneously support the Taliban and accept billions in American aid.
A senior NATO officer in Kabul said that in arresting Mr. Baradar and the other Taliban leaders, the Pakistanis may have been trying to buy time to see if President Obama’s strategy begins to prevail. If it does, the Pakistanis may eventually decide to let the Taliban make a deal. But if the Americans fail — and if they begin to pull out — then the Pakistanis may decide to retain the Taliban as their allies.
“We have been played before,” a senior NATO official said. “That the Pakistanis picked up Baradar to control the tempo of the negotiations is absolutely plausible.”
As for Mr. Baradar, he is now living comfortably in a safe house of Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the Pakistani official said. “He’s relaxing,” the official said.
Many of the other Taliban leaders, after receiving lectures against freelancing peace deals, have been released to fight again.
Exactly why the Pakistan’s intelligence agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, became so alarmed at the Afghan peace talks is unclear. In retrospect, paranoia seems to have figured as much as national self-interest.
A senior Afghan official said that beginning late last year, his government had reached out to a number of Taliban leaders to explore the prospect of a deal. Among them were Mr. Baradar and another Taliban leader named Tayyib Agha. The Afghan official declined to say who met the Taliban leaders, but reports of such meetings have since surfaced. Ahmed Wali Karzai, the president’s brother, reportedly met Mr. Baradar in January, according to a former Afghan official and a former NATO official. Mr. Karzai’s brother denies it.
In another overture, Engineer Ibrahim, then the deputy chief of the Afghan intelligence service, met with a group of Taliban leaders in Dubai, according to a prominent Afghan with knowledge of the meeting. Mr. Ibrahim, now with the National Security Council, could not be reached for comment on Sunday.
A Pakistani spiritual leader close to the Taliban leadership said that, earlier this year, he had received a message through an intermediary that Mr. Karzai wanted to talk peace. “We rejected it,” he said.
The discussions with Mr. Baradar and the other Taliban were in their early phases, but they seemed promising, the Afghan official said. Their aim was to establish conditions under which formal talks could begin.
“It was the beginning of a negotiation, so both sides staked out extreme positions,” the Afghan official said. “But we sensed a readiness for peace.”
When Pakistani intelligence officials learned of the overtures, they became unnerved by what they saw as an attempt by the Afghans to strike a peace deal without them. In particular, the ISI suspected the Americans were orchestrating the talks.
In January, days before Mr. Baradar’s capture, a senior ISI official told The New York Times that his agency was hunting the Taliban leader because he was in contact with the Americans. The ISI official accused the Americans of disregarding Pakistan’s legitimate security interests.
“We are after Mullah Baradar,” the senior ISI official said. “We strongly believe the Americans are in touch with him.”
A second ISI official confirmed that the Pakistanis had decided to go after Mr. Baradar to shut down what they feared were blossoming peace talks.
“This is a national secret,” he said. “The Americans and the British were going behind our backs, and we couldn’t allow that.” American and British officials denied they were directly involved in talks with the Taliban.
Once the decision was made to detain Mr. Baradar, the Taliban leader was tracked to Karachi, a sprawling, violent city of nearly 20 million people. There, the Pakistani official said, ISI agents waited for him to activate his cellphone. After several days, the alarm went off, and the agency narrowed Mr. Baradar’s whereabouts to a densely populated area of about two square miles.
That was as far as the intelligence agency’s technology would go, the Pakistani official said. To pinpoint Mr. Baradar’s location, ISI agents turned to the C.I.A.
Since 2001, the C.I.A. and the ISI have maintained an uneasy relationship. They have cooperated on hundreds of operations and detained dozens of militants, but they have clashed over the ISI’s support for the Taliban.
Within minutes of Mr. Baradar’s cellphone activation, the C.I.A. sent two unarmed American technicians to join the Pakistani intelligence agency’s team, the Pakistani official said.
Activating a portable tracking device, the C.I.A. team quickly led the ISI to Mr. Baradar’s home. Only four hours after his cellphone went on, Mr. Baradar was in Pakistani custody, the Pakistani official said. According to the Pakistani official, the ISI did not inform the Americans of the identity of the target.
American officials disputed this account, saying the intelligence indicated that the target was related to Mr. Baradar. But they conceded that they did not know the identity of Mr. Baradar until after the arrest.
The Pakistanis refused to allow the C.I.A. to interrogate Mr. Baradar or even to be present when they spoke. Another Pakistani official said Mr. Baradar was taken to a safe house in Islamabad, where he was debriefed. It was only several days later that the C.I.A. learned of his identity and were allowed to question him.
The Pakistani official even joked about the C.I.A.’s naïveté. “They are so innocent,” he said.
Some American officials insist that while the C.I.A. may not have known whom the Pakistanis were capturing, the Pakistanis did not know either. They speculated that once the Pakistanis had Mr. Baradar, they may have decided to hold him to scuttle the peace talks. It was then, some American officials say, that the Pakistanis may have decided to detain the other Taliban leaders.
“We are not convinced that that was why Baradar was picked up,” an American official in the region said, referring to the Afghan talks. “But maybe that was why he was held.”
Yet other American officials said the Pakistani version seemed more credible than the C.I.A.’s. “Baradar is too high-profile for them not to have known who it was,” the senior NATO official said.
Within days of Mr. Baradar’s arrest, Pakistani agents picked up as many as 22 other Taliban leaders across Pakistan, according to an official with the United Nations in Kabul. The detentions included some of the most senior Taliban commanders, including Mullah Qayoom Zakir, Abdul Kabeer and Abdul Rauf Khadem.
“We know where the shadow government is,” the Pakistani security official said.
The official said the detained Taliban leaders were warned against carrying out future negotiations without their permission. A former Western diplomat, with long experience in the region, confirmed that the ISI sent a warning to its Taliban protégés.
“The message from the ISI was: no flirting,” he said.
Afghans close to the Taliban said the arrests of Mr. Baradar and the others illustrated the strained relationship between the Taliban and their benefactors in Pakistani intelligence. The ISI may protect the Taliban’s leaders, they said, but they also limit their freedom. “When we try to act on our own, they stop us,” the Pakistani spiritual leader said.
Since then, many of the Taliban leaders who were detained have been set free, officials said. Principal among them is Mr. Zakir, a Taliban commander who was released from the American prison at Guantánamo Bay in 2006.
Mr. Zakir, who took over for Mr. Baradar, is regarded as more brutal than his predecessor, unconcerned about civilian casualties — and less inclined to do a deal with the Karzai government.

Pir Zubair Shah and Souad Mekhennet contributed reporting from Islamabad, and Mark Mazzetti from Washington.

Pakistan Is Said to Pursue Foothold in Afghanistan

By JANE PERLEZ, ERIC SCHMITT and CARLOTTA GALL.

Published: June 24, 2010

This article is by Jane Perlez, Eric Schmitt and Carlotta Gall.

Orlin Wagner/Associated Press

Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the Pakistani Army chief, who has offered to broker a peace deal with the Taliban leadership.

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan is exploiting the troubled United States military effort in Afghanistan to drive home a political settlement with Afghanistan that would give Pakistan important influence there but is likely to undermine United States interests, Pakistani and American officials said.
The dismissal of Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal will almost certainly embolden the Pakistanis in their plan as they detect increasing American uncertainty, Pakistani officials said. The Pakistani Army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, preferred General McChrystal to his successor, Gen. David H. Petraeus, whom he considers more of a politician than a military strategist, said people who had spoken recently with General Kayani.
Pakistan is presenting itself as the new viable partner for Afghanistan to President Hamid Karzai, who has soured on the Americans. Pakistani officials say they can deliver the network of Sirajuddin Haqqani, an ally of Al Qaeda who runs a major part of the insurgency in Afghanistan, into a power-sharing arrangement.
In addition, Afghan officials say, the Pakistanis are pushing various other proxies, with General Kayani personally offering to broker a deal with the Taliban leadership.
Washington has watched with some nervousness as General Kayani and Pakistan’s spy chief, Lt. Gen. Ahmad Shuja Pasha, shuttle between Islamabad and Kabul, telling Mr. Karzai that they agree with his assessment that the United States cannot win in Afghanistan, and that a postwar Afghanistan should incorporate the Haqqani network, a longtime Pakistani asset. In a sign of the shift in momentum, the two Pakistani officials were next scheduled to visit Kabul on Monday, according to Afghan TV.
Despite General McChrystal’s 11 visits to General Kayani in Islamabad in the past year, the Pakistanis have not been altogether forthcoming on details of the conversations in the last two months, making the Pakistani moves even more worrisome for the United States, said an American official involved in the administration’s Afghanistan and Pakistan deliberations.
“They know this creates a bigger breach between us and Karzai,” the American official said.
Though encouraged by Washington, the thaw heightens the risk that the United States will find itself cut out of what amounts to a separate peace between the Afghans and Pakistanis, and one that does not necessarily guarantee Washington’s prime objective in the war: denying Al Qaeda a haven.
It also provides another indication of how Pakistan, ostensibly an American ally, has worked many opposing sides in the war to safeguard its ultimate interest in having an Afghanistan that is pliable and free of the influence of its main strategic obsession, its more powerful neighbor, India.
The Haqqani network has long been Pakistan’s crucial anti-India asset and has remained virtually untouched by Pakistani forces in their redoubt inside Pakistan, in the tribal areas on the Afghan border, even as the Americans have pressed Pakistan for an offensive against it.
General Kayani has resisted the American pleas, saying his troops are too busy fighting the Pakistani Taliban in other parts of the tribal areas.
But there have long been suspicions among Afghan, American and other Western officials that the Pakistanis were holding the Haqqanis in reserve for just such a moment, as a lever to shape the outcome of the war in its favor.
On repeated occasions, Pakistan has used the Haqqani fighters to hit Indian targets inside Afghanistan, according to American intelligence officials. The Haqqanis have also hit American ones, a possible signal from the Pakistanis to the Americans that it is in their interest, too, to embrace a deal.
General Petraeus told Congress last week that Haqqani fighters were responsible for recent major attacks in Kabul and the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan, adding that he had informed General Kayani.
Some officials in the Obama administration have not ruled out incorporating the Haqqani network in an Afghan settlement, though they stress that President Obama’s policy calls for Al Qaeda to be separated from the network. American officials are skeptical that that can be accomplished.
Richard C. Holbrooke, the Obama administration’s special envoy to Pakistan and Afghanistan, said on a visit to Islamabad last weekend that it was “hard to imagine” the Haqqani network in an Afghan arrangement, but added, “Who knows?”
At a briefing this week at the headquarters of Pakistan’s premier spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, Pakistani analysts laid out a view of the war that dovetailed neatly with the doubts expressed by Mr. Karzai. They depicted a stark picture of an American military campaign in Afghanistan “that will not succeed.”
They said the Taliban were gaining strength. Despite the impending arrival of new American troops, they concluded the “security situation would become more dangerous,” resulting in an erosion of the American will to fight.
“That is the reason why Karzai is trying to negotiate now,” a senior analyst said.
General Pasha, the head of the intelligence agency, dashed to Kabul on the eve of Mr. Karzai’s visit to Washington in May, an American official said. Neither Mr. Karzai nor the Pakistanis mentioned to the Americans about incorporating the Haqqanis in a postwar Afghanistan, the official said.
Pakistan has already won what it sees as an important concession in Kabul, the resignations this month of the intelligence chief, Amrullah Saleh, and the interior minister, Hanif Atmar. The two officials, favored by Washington, were viewed by Pakistan as major obstacles to its vision of hard-core Taliban fighters’ being part of an Afghanistan settlement, though the circumstances of their resignations did not suggest any connection to Pakistan.
Coupled with their strategic interests, the Pakistanis say they have chosen this juncture to open talks with Mr. Karzai because, even before the controversy over General McChrystal, they sensed uncertainty — “a lack of fire in the belly,” said one Pakistani — within the Obama administration over the Afghan fight.
“The American timetable for getting out makes it easier for Pakistan to play a more visible role,” said Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas, the spokesman for the Pakistani Army. He was referring to the July 2011 date set by Mr. Obama for the start of the withdrawal of some American combat troops.
The offer by Pakistan to make the Haqqanis part of the solution in Afghanistan has now been adopted as basic Pakistani policy, said Rifaat Hussain, a professor of international relations at Islamabad University, and a confidant of top military generals.
“The establishment thinks that without getting Haqqani on board, efforts to stabilize the situation in Afghanistan will be doomed,” Mr. Hussain said. “Haqqani has a large fighting force, and by co-opting him into a power-sharing arrangement a lot of bloodshed can be avoided.”
The recent trips by General Kayani and General Pasha to Kabul were an “effort to make this happen,” he said.
Afghan officials said General Kayani had offered to broker a deal with the Afghan Taliban leader, Mullah Muhammad Omar, and had sent envoys to Kabul from another insurgent leader and longtime Pakistani ally, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, with the offer of a 15-point peace plan in March.
As for the Haqqanis, whose fighters stretch across eastern Afghanistan all the way to Kabul, they are prepared to break with Al Qaeda, Pakistani intelligence and military officials said.
The Taliban, including the Haqqani group, are ready to “do a deal” over Al Qaeda, a senior Pakistani official close to the Pakistani Army said. The Haqqanis could tell Al Qaeda to move elsewhere because it had been given nine years of protection since 9/11, the official said.
But this official acknowledged that the Haqqanis and Al Qaeda were too “thick” with each other for a separation to happen. They had provided each other with fighters, money and other resources over a long period of time, he said.
Also, there appeared to be no idea where the Qaeda forces would go, and no answer to whether the Haqqanis would hand over Osama bin Laden and his second in command, Ayman al-Zawahri, the official said.
The Haqqanis may be playing their own game with their hosts, the Pakistanis, Mr. Hussain said.
“Many believe that Haqqanis’ willingness to cut its links with Al Qaeda is a tactical move which is aimed at thwarting the impending military action by the Pakistani Army in North Waziristan,” he said.

GORDON DUFF: ISRAEL-SAUDI WAR PACT ON IRAN “HOGWASH”

Gordon Duff

The London Times reported today that Saudi Arabia has given permission for Israel to fly over their territory to attack unspecified “nuclear facilities” in Iran.  Mention of specific Saudi actions including deactivating their air defense systems to allow Israel use of their airspace was directly referenced by the Times in their story by Hugh Tomlinson.  However, not only is such a possibility not a possibility, the story itself is designed to destabilize world markets.
Iran is capable of closing the Straits of Hormuz and stopping all oil shipments from, not only the Persian Gulf states, including Kuwait and Iran but Saudi Arabia itself.  At the first sight of an Israeli plane, every tanker and oil facility in the Gulf would be destroyed and the Saudi capital in ruins from Iranian missiles.
The closing of the Straits alone would crash the world’s stock markets instantly throwing the world into an immediate depression.  Oil would go over $250 a barrel overnight and gas prices in the US would hit $10 per gallon.  This is not speculation.

IRANIAN SILKWORM MISSILE NEAR HORMUZ

Iran’s military capability has been focused entirely on closing the Straits and cutting off much of the world’s oil supply.  Thousands of Chinese Silkworm missiles are at the ready, set into the islands of the Straits seized by Iran years ago or hidden along the coastline or on mobile launchers.  In fact, the US Navy is would have to immediately withdraw from the region.
Every defense specialist in the world knows all of this.  The United Arab Emirates sits across the Straits from Iran and stares into this mass of missiles, torpedo boats and submarines.  They are funding a massive missile defense system and have even considered spending billions to construct a canal bypassing the narrow straits.  Iranian troops have been dug into islands adjacent to the Straits for decades.  When talking about the Straits of Hormuz, the term “tight as a tick” comes to mind.  “Duck in a barrel” is another analogy with us being the ducks.
The game isn’t to start a war, knowing full well that America would be required to defend Saudi Arabia though there are no agreements to defend Israel, especially if they are the aggressor.  With over $2 trillion dollars pumped from the US economy by Israeli-American companies like Goldman Sachs during the Bush sponsored “pump and dump,” the “banksters” weren’t satisfied.  They now want to pick America’s bones.
Any attack on Iran that involved Saudi Arabia in any way would bring an automatic response from Pakistan.  Without their military efforts, the US would be forced to withdraw from Afghanistan in weeks.  Even with their help, and increased force levels, America’s presence is unsustainable as the Karzai government has already collapsed.  Nobody is admitting it yet but Karzai and his US backers rule nothing and control nothing, even worse than when Bush left office.
The real players in the Middle East are Turkey, Iran and Pakistan.  Two of these nations are major US allies.  The population of the three nations exceeds that of the US and their combined armies number, with reserves at two million, over double that of the United States.  Were the three to join together, Afghanistan and Iraq would be forced, out of survival to join in, creating a contiguous state, a nuclear state, capable of taking Saudi Arabia in days and doing so without any US resistance.  After all, these are American allies and Saudi Arabia would be, technically, an aggressor nation.  Though mutual defense pacts do not include Iran, a history of resentment against Saudi-Israeli collusion and the current chill between Israel and Turkey would build this polyglot coalition state almost overnight.
In the long run, such a country would be the real strategic partner the US has always desired, with a single nuclear arsenal under Pakistani control and Iranian issues eliminated as they would be the junior power in a coalition with decades of ties to the US.  If any of this seems difficult to grasp, position papers outlining this exact situation have been around for years.
Given the chance, Israel would join this group of states.  Those familiar with private “back channel” diplomatic initiatives know that this has is considered.  Turkey, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan all maintain a covert level of cordial relations with Israel, relations poisoned by the Gaza crisis.
Israel’s aggressive stance toward apartheid expansionism, fueled by the hubris supplied by American hegemony in the region is only one of the considerations needed in evaluating the dynamic in the region.  The humiliation Turkey suffered, despite the fact Turkey’s powerful military has always worked closely with Israel, threatens to destabilize their civilian government and add to Islamic militancy there.
Iraq is going through a rough period after recent elections.  They are expect to ask the US to keep troops in place in significant numbers well past the agreed upon date of withdrawal.
Iran, a country whose civil government is extremely unpopular with its own people, maintains stability through police state tactics rivaling those of the Shah’s Savak and punishes its own population by maintaining status as a rogue state, a virtual pariah nation, as a way of clamping down on dissent.
Afghanistan is in total collapse.  Along with the Taliban, a number of additional divides with the nation have occurred and the new national army and police force are total failures.  An informal defacto government is now ruling increasing areas of the country and may be able to build stability if certified by the royal families.  President Karzai is trying to work closely with Pakistan, a major policy change for him, out of a combination of necessity and panic.  However, Karzai has burned too many bridges to be able to bring cordial relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan, nations with a history of rivalry and some acrimony.
Pakistan may be the key to the puzzle.  Pakistan’s unsteady democracy has been ineffective but current military leadership in Pakistan is highly competent, very pro-US and moderate.  The primary problems are Pakistan’s economy, nearing total collapse and the instability of terrorism that has pushed Pakistan to the edge.  Pakistan’s desire is to underwrite economic growth but has no oil resources for such as task.  Without the ability to overcome internal corruption and address the root causes of extremism in the tribal areas along the border with Afghanistan, Pakistan faces destabilization.  Membership in a coalition state would address some of these problems.  Occupation of Saudi Arabia under an “Islamic Protectorate” necessitated by Israeli incursions into Saudi airspace would solve all of Pakistan’s problems.
The media can be a powerful thing.  When a story, such as the one in the London Times, could jolt markets or push nations to irational acts, a poor understanding of regional conditions and history could have quite another effect, one entirely unexpected.

Obama Says Afghan Policy Won’t Change After Dismissal

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Gen. David H. Petraeus with the defense secretary and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

By HELENE COOPER and DAVID E. SANGER

Published: June 23, 2010

WASHINGTON — President Obama on Wednesday fired his top Afghanistan war commander after only a brief meeting in the Oval Office, replacing Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal with his boss and mentor, Gen. David H. Petraeus, and sending a clear signal that the current war strategy will continue despite setbacks and growing public doubts.

Two hours later, an angry Mr. Obama privately reprimanded members of his bickering national security team, adopting a “stern” tone during a meeting in the Situation Room and ordering them to put aside “pettiness,” and not to put “personalities or reputation” ahead of American troops who have been put in harm’s way, administration officials said.
Speaking in the Rose Garden to reporters, Mr. Obama said he did not fire General McChrystal for critical comments about him and his staff in Rolling Stone magazine, nor “out of any sense of personal insult.” Rather, the president cited the need for his team to unite in pressing the war effort.
“I don’t think we can sustain that unity of effort and achieve our objectives in Afghanistan without making this change,” he said.
Even by the standards of a capital that has seen impeachment and scandals in recent years, the drama surrounding the firing of a wartime commander was palpable.
Generals have come and gone in disputes over policy and execution — indeed, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates fired General McChrystal’s predecessor, Gen. David D. McKiernan, just a year ago. But the removal of General McChrystal culminated a remarkable public waiting game, with White House and top military officials trying to guess what the president would do, and Mr. Obama keeping his cards close to his vest until the very end.
While publicly rebuking him Tuesday, Mr. Obama had said he would not decide the general’s fate until they met face to face. But as early as Monday night, officials said, when Mr. Obama first learned of the Rolling Stone article in which General McChrystal and his staff criticized administration officials, the president and his advisers were discussing the likelihood that the general would have to go.
“A lot of us were arguing that the message of letting McChrystal’s comments roll off our backs would be enormously harmful,” one administration official said.
By Tuesday, when the president met with the general’s biggest supporter and a powerful one, Secretary Gates, White House and Pentagon officials were already discussing General Petraeus as the most likely replacement.
It has been nearly 60 years since President Harry S. Truman fired Gen. Douglas MacArthur in the midst of the Korean War, the last time a president directly stepped in to remove the senior commander in a war zone for disrespect toward the White House. For Mr. Obama, this was a MacArthur moment, a reassertion of civilian control.
The president also used the moment to emphasize that the policy in Afghanistan would not change, even as his own party and international allies display strong doubts about the way forward, including whether the United States can ever navigate a troubled relationship with Afghanistan’s president, Hamid Karzai.
General Petraeus is taking a step down. As head of United States Central Command, he has oversight for Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and the entire region. He has supported General McChrystal’s point of view during internal administration strategy debates. His appointment is meant in part to calm the nerves of NATO allies and Mr. Karzai.
Mr. Obama called Mr. Karzai Wednesday to try to get the Afghan president on board — Mr. Karzai made a personal appeal to Mr. Obama on Tuesday night to keep General McChrystal — and Mr. Obama received at least an initial public statement that “President Karzai respects President Obama’s decision.”
Gen. James L. Jones, the national security adviser, whom one of General McChrystal’s aides had dismissed in the article as a “clown,” called his counterparts in Europe to assure them that Mr. Obama was not abandoning his approach. He repeated Mr. Obama’s line that this was a change in personnel, not in policy.
The president chose General Petraeus, a media-savvy, ambitious officer, instead of lesser-known figures who might have had more trouble stepping in to such a volatile situation. “The one person you could have inserted in there to calm those nerves was Dave Petraeus,” said one senior administration official.
General Petraeus will have to relinquish the top job at Central Command to assume command in Afghanistan. White House officials said no decision had been made on who would succeed him.
General Petraeus, while intimately familiar with Afghanistan and its myriad problems, is inheriting direct command at a particularly fraught moment. Seven months into President Obama’s surge of forces, there is little evidence that the addition of tens of thousands of troops has beaten back the Taliban, or that Mr. Karzai’s government will soon be able to hold and administer territory the United States helps it retake.
Mr. Obama admitted as much indirectly on Wednesday in the Rose Garden when he said: “We have a clear goal. We are going to break the Taliban’s momentum.” They were the same words he used seven months ago at West Point in announcing the surge, and as one senior official said, “The president was acknowledging that a third of the way into the surge, the momentum has not been broken.”
One senior administration official noted that General McChrystal and Mr. Karzai “just came off the most constructive week we’ve had in a while with Karzai” when the two men traveled through Kandahar, the site of the next big counterinsurgency push. General McChrystal reported back that Mr. Karzai finally seemed deeply engaged in the details of the effort to regain control over the sprawling city, one of the Taliban’s home bases, administration officials said.

General Petraeus will now be responsible for executing the Kandahar offensive into the spiritual heart of the Taliban. White House and Congressional officials say they expect he will be confirmed quickly — probably by the end of next week.

General McChrystal had already prepared his brief resignation letter when he walked into the meeting with Mr. Obama; he left quickly afterward, saying nothing to the reporters who converged near him. Relieved of his post, he did not attend a regularly scheduled National Security Council meeting that included all the same administration officials whom he or his staff disparaged in the article.
“I welcome debate, but I won’t tolerate division,” the president said afterward. He said that it was crucial for American troops and military officers to observe a “strict adherence to the military chain of command and respect for civilian control over that chain of command.”
In the Rolling Stone article, General McChrystal and his aides belittled many of their civilian counterparts on the Afghanistan strategy team.
In a typical response from other military officials, one Army officer with multiple tours in Afghanistan expressed anger at the lack of discipline displayed by General McChrystal and his inner circle. But he warned that it was symptomatic of wider problems with Mr. Obama’s strategy and among his national security advisers.
“They brought this upon themselves and embarrassed the entire military as an institution,” said the officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity to avoid any punishment for criticizing his chain of command.
“Hopefully, the president uses this as an opportunity to refine his policy and objectives, and also to shuffle the rest of his Af-Pak team, as well,” he said, using the abbreviation for the Afghanistan-Pakistan region. “McChrystal isn’t the only one who probably needs to move elsewhere.”
The major criticism of the United States strategy is that its success relies on support from an Afghan government that so far has been unwilling or unable to exert control and eliminate widespread corruption.
Lawmakers from both parties as well as senior military officers in Afghanistan and in Washington expressed regret at General McChrystal’s departure, but strongly supported Mr. Obama’s decision. And while the change in four-star commanders is unlikely to cause any change in strategy, they said General Petraeus might subtly alter the ways it is carried out.
“The overall strategy is not going to change, but like anyone, Petraeus will go back and check the assumptions, the vantage from Kabul, the personal dynamics and interpersonal relationships,” Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, said in a telephone interview. “There will be shifts in emphasis and tone. Petraeus’s leadership style is reaching out, going down to the troop level, reaching out to allies and to the civilian leadership.”
In Kabul, Afghanistan, senior officers spent most of Wednesday anxiously waiting for news out of Washington, watching the BBC for leaked reports about their boss’s fate. One military official in Kabul described the mood at General McChrystal’s headquarters as a “mix of despondency and anger.”
“People are shocked,” he said. “People are upset.”

Eric Schmitt, Thom Shanker and Mark Mazzetti contributed reporting.

50 healthy foods for under $1 a pound

By Jeff Yeager, The Daily Green

(Photo: Robin Macdougall / Getty Images)

If you are what you eat, then I should weigh-in at under $1 a pound.
That's because, as a general rule of thumb, I try to only buy foodstuffs that costs under a buck per pound. Under $1 a pound, year-round -- that's my grocery shopping mantra.
It's not just because I'm a world-class penny-pincher and smart shopper; believe it or not, it's also about eating healthier. When you look at the USDA's "food pyramid," many of the things we should be eating the most of -- grains, legumes, fruits, and vegetables -- happen to cost the least.
It's often the stuff that's bad for us (at least in large quantities) like red meat, fatty dairy products, and processed foods high in trans saturated fats, that cost the most, on a per pound basis.
To prove my point, I've put together this list of 50 healthy foods that I've purchased at least once in the last six months for under $1 a pound.
So rev-up your shopping cart, but be careful: There's a Green Cheapskate loose on aisle five!

• Apples - One a day keeps the cheapskate away.
• Asparagus - HUGE store special at 99 cents a pound during Easter week. I bought 10 pounds, blanched it, and then froze it.
• Bananas - Potassium for pennies.
• Barley - A tasty alternative to rice and potatoes.
• Beans - Canned or dried. Kidney, pinto, navy, black, red, and many more.
• Bok choy - Steam and serve with a little soy sauce.
• Broccoli - Yes, a store special. Usually closer to $2 per pound.
• Bulgar wheat - Try it in pilaf or a tabouleh salad.
• Cabbage - Green and red. I like mine fried.
• Cantaloupe - No, sorry, I can't; I'm already married.
• Carrots - Raw or steamed. Rich in carotenes, a healthy antioxidant.
• Celery - Stir-fry it for a change.
• Chicken - Whole or various parts, on sale.
• Chickpeas - AKA garbanzo beans -- mash 'em up as a healthy sandwich spread.
• Cornmeal - "Polenta" is all the rage these days, but I loved it 40 years ago when Mom called it "cornmeal mush."
• Cucumbers - Try peeling, seeding, and steaming with a little butter and salt.
• Daikon radish - My new favorite raw veggie.
• Eggs - Don't overdo them, but eggs provide high quality protein and still cost about $1 per pound. (Plus, there are many eggscellent things you can do with the shells.)
• Green beans - Frozen, but fresh are sometimes on sale for under $1 a pound in-season.
• Greens - Kale, mustard, turnip, and collard greens are rich in vitamins and a good source of fiber. Here's how I cook 'em.
• Grapes - Store special at 99 cents a pound.
• Grapefruit - Bake with a little brown sugar on top for a healthy dessert.
• Lentils - Perhaps the perfect food -- healthy, cheap, and versatile. Think soups, salads, sandwich spreads -- and those are only some of the "s" possibilities.
• Liver - Chicken livers usually cost under $1 a pound, and sometimes beef and pork liver can be found in the DMZ ("Dollar Maximum Zone").
• Mangoes - High in fiber and vitamins A, B6, and C.
• Milk - Yep, on a per-pound basis, milk still costs well under $1 a pound.
• Napa cabbage - Delicious steamed or raw in a salad. 
• Oatmeal - The good old-fashioned "slow cooking" kind ... that takes all of five minutes.
• Onions - Try baking them whole in a cream sauce.
• Oranges - Frequent sale price when in-season.
• Pasta - Store special at 89 cents a pound -- I nearly bought them out!
• Peanut butter - Special sale price, but stock up because it usually has a long shelf life.
• Pork - Inexpensive cuts of pork frequently go on sale for 99 cents per pound or less; sometimes even ham during the holidays.
• Potatoes - White and red, Baked, mashed, boiled, broiled, steamed.
• Pumpkin - Yes, you can eat the same ones you buy as holiday decorations, and they usually cost under 50 cents a pound.
• Rice - White for under $1 a pound; brown, a little more expensive but better for you.
• Rutabagas - Hated them as a kid; can't get enough of them now.
• Sour cream - 99 cents on sale, but long shelf life, so stock up. My cucumber awaits.
• Spinach - Frozen (but Popeye doesn't care).
• Split peas - Add a hambone and make the ultimate comfort soup. Try it in the crock-pot!
• Squash - Try baking acorn squash with a little brown sugar.
• Sweet corn - Canned or fresh on the cob, in-season. (Try this recipe for summer corn fritters.)
• Tomatoes - Canned are often better than fresh to use in cooking, and occasionally you can find fresh on sale for under a buck, in-season. 
• Turkey - A popular bargain-priced, loss-leader around the holidays -- buy an extra bird and freeze it for later.
• Turnips - Make me think of my grandparents, who always grew them.
• Watermelon - Whole, in-season melons can sometime cost less than 20 cents a pound if they're on sale and you find a big one.
• Wine - Well, at least the stuff I drink -- a 5-liter box (approximately 11 pounds) for about 10 bucks, on sale. (BTW, the beer I drink is even less expensive per pound.)
• Yams/sweet potatoes - One of the healthiest foods you can eat, and usually available year-round for under $1 a pound.
• Yogurt - 8-ounce containers on sale, two for $1.
• Zucchini - OK, they're a type of squash (above). But I love them so much they deserve their own place on the list. Plus they look great in pantyhose.

Here are a few disclaimers about my list-o-50:
No, I don't live on another planet or in a part of the country where the cost of living is deflated. In fact, I live and shop in the Washington, D.C., metro area, which has one of the highest costs of living (and groceries) in the country.
No, I'm not saying that all of these items are available in every store, at all times. But if you shop carefully, you can always find at least some variety of these foods around which to plan your meals.
Many of the items on the list (e.g., most root vegetables, bananas, beans, etc.) can usually be purchased for under $1 pound even when not on sale or in-season. Other items on the list were "store specials" and typically would cost more than $1 a pound, and/or they were in-season so cost less.
No, none of the items on my under $1-a-pound list are organically grown. The pros/cons of that debate aside, for most people with a limited budget, the choice isn't whether or not to buy expensive organic, it's whether or not to eat highly processed crap like fast food or eat inexpensive healthy foods like those on my list. (See the dirty dozen foods with the most pesticides to maximize organic purchases.)
No, I'm not saying that by eating only these foods you'll have a complete, healthy diet. But they certainly can be the backbone around which to plan healthy, inexpensive menus for your family.
No, I don't burn up a lot of time and gas by running around to a lot of different grocery stores, and I rarely use coupons. I shop only once every week or two, and I usually shop at only one or two stores.
I plan my meals around the-best-of-the-best weekly store specials (aka the "loss-leaders"), the sale items that are usually on the front page of the weekly circular most stores publish. If you're not a creative cook like me, try a website like Delish or Epicurious, where you can enter the ingredients you have to work with and get all kinds of recipes.
Now look at all the money you've saved! Jeff Yeager is the author of The Cheapskate Next Door and The Ultimate Cheapskate's Road Map to True Riches.