Thursday, January 10, 2013

Iraq related items of the day.....Iraq closes border with Jordan - another Sunni retaliation move.....Who killed Sakine Cansiz and Fidan Dogan - two key PKK leaders , in Paris today ? Meanwhile , why should KBR get a tax payer funded get out of jail pass for willful negligence ? Pakistan closes borders until truckers do the bidding of Zardari - in turn , the truckers strike ...... Items of note regarding Syria and Iran....

http://news.antiwar.com/2013/01/09/iraq-closes-border-with-jordan-citing-security/


Iraq Closes Border With Jordan, Citing ‘Security’

Protesters Accuse Regime of Moving to Retaliate Against Sunni West

by Jason Ditz, January 09, 2013
Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has ordered the military to close the nation’s only border crossing with Jordan, citing unspecified “security concerns” and insisting there was intelligence information behind the decision.
The closure will have a major impact on business in the Anbar Province, the Sunni-dominated province of Western Iraq that has been the center of anti-regime protests, and many protesters believe the move is intended to “punish” them.
The protests in Anbar have grown in intensity in recent weeks, and sympathetic protests have broken out in Baghdad’s Sunni neighborhoods, with politicians calling on Maliki toresign and schedule early elections.
Maliki has rejected calls to resign so far, insisting the protests are “unconstitutional.” He has some support among the nation’s Shi’ite majority, and pro-regime rallies have been held in southern Iraq in recent days. Yet Maliki’s hold on the Shi’ite community is far from absolute, with influential cleric Moqtada al-Sadr endorsing the protests, and MPs from his Shi’ite-dominated Iraqi National Alliance throwing their support behind calls for early elections.

And look at this little nugget - Were Defense Industry Iraq contractors provided tax payer funded get of civil responsibility cards even where guilty of willful misconduct ? 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/01/09/kbr-guilty-iraq-negligence_n_2436115.html


KBR, Guilty In Iraq Negligence, Wants Taxpayers To Foot The Bill


WASHINGTON -- Sodium dichromate is an orange-yellowish substance containing hexavalent chromium, an anti-corrosion chemical. To Lt. Col. James Gentry of the Indiana National Guard, who was stationed at the Qarmat Ali water treatment center in Iraq just after the 2003 U.S. invasion, it was “just different-colored sand.” In their first few months at the base, soldiers were told by KBR contractors running the facility the substance was no worse than a mild irritant.
Gentry was one of approximately 830 service members, including active-duty soldiers and members of the National Guard and reserve units from Indiana, South Carolina, West Virginia and Oregon, assigned to secure the water treatment plant, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Sodium dichromate is not a mild irritant. It is an extreme carcinogen. In November 2009, at age 52, Gentry died of cancer. The VA affirmed two months later that his death was service-related.
In November, a jury found KBR, the military's largest contractor, guilty of negligence in the poisoning of a dozen soldiers, and ordered the company to pay $85 million in damages. Jurors found KBR knew both of the presence and toxicity of the chemical. Other lawsuits against KBR are pending.
KBR, however, says taxpayers should be on the hook for the verdict, as well as more than $15 million the company has spent in its failed legal defense, according to court documents and attorneys involved with the case.
KBR's contract with the U.S. to rebuild Iraq’s oil infrastructure after the 2003 invasion includes an indemnity agreement protecting the company from legal liability, KBR claims in court filings. That agreement, KBR insists, means the federal government must pay the company's legal expenses plus the verdict won by 12 members of the Oregon National Guard who were exposed to the toxin at the Qarmat Ali water treatment plant.
The military disagrees. A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers contracting officer told KBR in November 2011 that litigation costs "are not covered by the indemnity agreement."
The public doesn’t know what the indemnity agreement actually says because the military considers it classified. Until recently, the veterans exposed to the toxin couldn’t know either, nor could attorneys at the Department of Justice, who were left battling the contract in the dark, according to a source there.
Michael Doyle, a Houston-based lawyer who helped the successful suit against KBR, told The Huffington Post the military declassified the indemnification agreement on Dec. 21 and gave it to him under a protective order that banned him from sharing the language to parties not involved in the case. John A. Elolf, a spokesman for KBR, confirmed the declassification of the agreement and said the contractor also was prevented from providing a copy. HuffPost has requested the document under the Freedom of Information Act from the Corps of Engineers.
Doyle said the agreement may mean a taxpayer “bailout” for KBR. “It's basically saying that no matter if we're guilty of -- willful misconduct, poisoning soldiers -- taxpayers have to pay to cover us as well as whatever we decide to pay on lawyers at whatever rates and all these fees,” Doyle said. “That's a pretty good bailout."
Elolf, the KBR spokesman, said the company sought the indemnification agreement because its work was “performed under dangerous conditions in Iraq.” He said the government is required to indemnify KBR for claims arising from its restoration work.
“To date, the U.S. government has failed to comply with its indemnification obligations,” Elolf said in an email. “KBR is confident that it will prevail in enforcing the U.S. government’s legal obligations.”
It's unclear how many defense contractors have secret indemnification agreements with the military. Under the law, most government agencies are banned from enteringopen-ended indemnification agreements, but the Pentagon and a handful of other agencies were exempted in an executive order signed by President Richard Nixon in 1971.
KBR originally claimed it didn’t know about the deadly toxin until the spring of 2003. Documents produced in the lawsuit, however, revealed that KBR knew the chemical was being stockpiled and used in massive quantities at the water treatment facility as early as January of that year. Prior to the U.S. invasion, Iraqi workers would treat water at the plant with sodium dichromate before injecting it under pressure into the ground, driving oil to the surface. Sodium dichromate helped increase the life of pipelines and pumps by preventing corrosion.
Soldiers assigned to guard the facility said the chemical dust came from bags stacked both inside and outside the plant, which some soldiers would sit on or use for protection from the wind. Wind spread the orange powder from the thousands of 100-pound bags. Gentry estimated the dust covered about half the plant's area.
“There were soldiers that actually brought it up, asked what it was, and they were told it was a mild irritant at first,” Rocky Bixby, 45, a plaintiff in the Oregon National Guard suit that bears his name, told HuffPost.
"They had this information and didn't share it," Gentry said in a deposition two days before his final Christmas, in 2008. "I'm dying now because of it."
Another soldier, Larry Roberta, now 48, was exposed to the chemical after a gust of wind blew it into his eye and into a chicken patty he was eating. After washing his face and mouth, he tried washing the chicken, because it was the only food he had left for the day. "It tastes like a mouthful of nickels,” Roberta said. “I just kept washing my mouth and I couldn't get that taste out."
Roberta said he now requires an oxygen tank because he has less than 60 percent of his lung function and gets migraines stemming from the eye that was exposed to the chemical. He had surgery to fix the muscle at the top of his stomach that prevented food from coming back up. “I can’t throw up, I can’t even burp,” Roberta said. “You know, when you can’t burp, the air has to come out the other end, which makes me the stinky dog that nobody wants to let in the house.”
Roberta said he doesn’t think U.S. taxpayers should have to pay for KBR’s mistakes.
"The United States Army Corps of Engineers is not in the business of restoring oilfields, therefore they hired KBR as their subject expert," Roberta said. "KBR was paid a good sum of money to do a job and unfortunately it didn't get done well. … The end results were okay, but they made some mistakes along the way."
Gentry’s wife said the “bailout” fits a KBR pattern.
“Whether it’s morally, ethically or even fiscally, there was no accountability then and there is no accountability now,” LouAnn Grube Gentry told The Huffington Post. “In fact, they continue their negligence and indifference. And just as an example of that is they continue to overbill the government for the legal fees. And to me that in itself proves that they are profit-mongering and their sole motivation is profit.”
Gentry said her husband initially declined to get involved in the litigation because of his loyalty to the National Guard and the Army. Gentry even praised KBR’s work during his second tour in Iraq, calling company safety measures “top grade” during a deposition. He decided to join the litigation late in his life because he felt KBR was being dishonest about what it knew about the chemical.
“Once KBR denied accountability, denied knowing, my husband became very angry,” Gentry said.
A federal jury in Oregon found on Nov. 2 that KBR negligently exposed troops to the toxic dust and ordered the company to pay $85 million in noneconomic and punitive damages to the Oregon National Guard members. A separate suit against KBR on behalf of national guardsmen from both Indiana and West Virginia, as well as troops from the U.K., is pending in federal court in Houston. That case awaits a decision from the U.S. Court of Appeals on whether the case can proceed with claims based on wartime activity.
Bixby, who said he was at the water treatment plant for as many as five days, said it makes no sense for taxpayers to pick up the bill for KBR’s mistakes.
"I think it's fraudulent and I think it's criminal on their part to do this,” Bixby told HuffPost.
Secret indemnity agreements shouldn’t be a problem in the future, because of a provision in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2013 pushed by Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.). The act requires the Pentagon to disclose indemnification clauses that hold military contractors harmless and to justify the agreements to Congress.
“What KBR received -- and Oregon soldiers and the American taxpayers may be stuck paying for -- is a get out of jail free card that no one outside of the Pentagon had any say in giving them,” Wyden said in a statement last month. “Thanks to that plum deal, KBR could be let off the hook after negligently exposing Oregon service members to toxic chemicals. Some indemnification agreements are justified, but many are not, and the Pentagon should have to justify these agreements to Congress.”

And who killed the Kurd activists in Paris ? 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jan/10/kurdish-activists-shot-dead-paris

Kurdish activists shot dead in Paris

Sakine Cansiz, a PKK co-founder, among three women found dead in office building with bullet wounds to neck and chest
Kurds protest in Paris
Members of Paris's Kurdish community gather outside the office block where three Kurdish activists were found dead. Photograph: Thomas Samson/AFP/Getty Images
Three Kurdish women activists have been found dead with bullet wounds to the neck and chest in the Kurdistan information centre in Paris.
One of the women found in the early hours of Thursday morning was said to be Sakine Cansiz, a co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers' party (PKK).
Officials in Turkey are currently holding talks with the PKK's jailed leader, Abdullah Ocalan, to persuade the group to disarm. The decades-long conflict between the Turkish state and the PKK has killed about 40,000 people since the 1980s.
Another victim of the Paris shootings, Fidan Dogan, was part of the Kurdistan National Congress, based in Brussels. The third was a young activist.
The bodies were discovered on the first floor of the building in Paris's 10th arrondissement just before 2am after one woman's partner, concerned he could not contact her, called police.
The French interior minister, Manuel Valls, was at the scene and described the killings as "intolerable" and "unacceptable." He said French anti-terror police would help with the inquiry. French police sources told reporters that the crime-scene suggested "an execution", but the circumstances and motive remain unclear.
"The only certainty for the moment is that this is a triple homicide," a French police spokesperson told TF1 news.
French media reported a crowd of between 100 and 200 Kurdish people gathered in front of the building shouting slogans in support of the PKK.



http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2013/01/20131106596765340.html









Three Kurdish women shot dead in Paris

Bodies found early Thursday morning inside the Kurdish Information Centre, including a co-founder of the PKK.
Last Modified: 10 Jan 2013 11:13
Three Kurdish women have been shot dead overnight inside the Kurdish Information Centre in Paris, including a co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
Their bodies were found at around 2am on Thursday morning [0100GMT]. All three were shot in the head.
"The scene leads one to think of an execution, but the investigation will determine the exact circumstances," a police source told the AFP news agency.
French interior minister Manuel Valls, who visited the centre, also described the killings as an execution. "This is a very grave matter and this explains my presence. This is unacceptable," he told reporters at the scene.
Sources in Diyarbakir, in eastern Turkey, told Al Jazeera that one of the women, Sakine Cansiz, was a co-founder of the PKK, the separatist group which has been fighting a decades-long insurgency against the Turkish government. Cansiz was one of the PKK's European representatives.
'We are all PKK'
Another was 32-year-old Fidan Dogan, who worked in the centre, according to its director, Leon Edart. The third was Leyla Soylemez, described by the group as a "young activist."

Hundreds of Kurdish protesters gathered outside the centre in Paris to protest the killings
The three were last seen on Wednesday at the centre, which was locked by late afternoon.
Hundreds of Kurds gathered outside the centre on Thursday to protest, with some chanting "we are all PKK!" and blaming Turkey for the killings.
French police in October detained a suspected European leader of the PKK and three other members of the group as part of a probe into terrorism financing and association with a terrorist group. The PKK is listed as a terrorist organisation by Turkey and much of the Western world.
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish prime minister, has accused France of obstructing its fight against the PKK.
The Turkish government has recently resumed negotiations with jailed PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan about disarming his group in exchange for greater rights for the country's Kurdish minority.
In Turkey, Huseyin Celik, the deputy chairman of the Turkey's ruling party, said the attack appeared to be the result of "an internal feud" within the PKK, and suggested they were an attempt to derail talks with the group.
Zubeyir Aydar, a European representative for the PKK, blamed the attack on "dark forces" trying to interrupt the talks.
In Pakistan , supplies cut off into Afghanistan once again , although not drone related or caused by any US actions for that matter ,  this time.....

Govt Ordered Individual Truckers to Stop Private Shipments

by Jason Ditz, January 09, 2013
The age-old problem of getting war materiel into occupied Afghanistan is once again rising for NATO, with the announcement that 4,000 supply trucks have effectively halted shipments through Pakistan as part of a strike.
The truckers delivering shipments to NATO in Afghanistan often did so as individual contractors in the past, but the Pakistani government has decided that, in order to “cut down on theft,” the truckers will no longer be allowedto contract individually, but will have to work for a handful of “authorized companies” on good terms with the Zardari government.
The truckers say that the new rules are corrupt and will cost them a large portion of the money they would normally earn from shipping into occupied Afghanistan, and so they are unwilling to do so until Pakistan reverses the ban.
NATO is so far refusing to comment on the latest halt of shipments, but in the past lack of access to Pakistan cost them $100 million per month, obliging them to use pricier overland routes through the former Soviet Union. This could be even more costly this time, as many NATO nations are shipping massive quantities of equipment back out of the country as part of the drawdown as well.

Iran and Syria items of note......

http://www.debka.com/article/22679/Panetta-Dempsey-clear-Pentagon-desk-of-US-military-option-for-Syria-

Panetta, Dempsey clear Pentagon desk of US military option for Syria

DEBKAfile Special Report January 11, 2013, 10:30 AM (GMT+02:00)
Tags:  Leon Panetta   Gen. Martin Dempsey   chemical weapons   Syria   Chuck Hagel 
Syria's chemical weapons taken off US table
Syria's chemical weapons taken off US table

At a joint news conference Friday, Jan. 11, retiring Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs, Gen. Martin Dempsey, cleaned the Pentagon’s Syrian desk ready for incoming Secretary Chuck Hagel.  Boiled down to essentials, their triple message was that Bashar Assad could not be stopped from using chemical weapons if he chose to do so, that securing the CW sites after Assad’s fall was the job of the “international community” and that no US ground troops would be sent to Syria.
Panetta and Dempsey essentially confirmed a fact first reported by DEBKAfile in the third week of November: US naval, air and marine forces were withdrawn from Syrian offshore waters following the White House's decision to stay clear of military involvement in the Syrian conflict. After extending Syrian opposition forces diplomatic support for nearly two years, the Obama administration is dumping the Assad headache in the laps of Syria’s immediate neighbors, Turkey, Jordan and Israel, and casting the rebels adrift.
This decision was spelled out with crystal clarity by Panetta and Dempsey at a joint Washington press conference in Washington:
“The United States is increasingly focused on how to secure Syria's chemical weapons if President Bashar al-Assad falls from power,” said the outgoing defense secretary. In reference to the problem while Assad is still in place, Panetta emphasized that the United States is not considering sending in ground troops.
At one stroke, he refuted Western and Israeli media claims of American and Israeli special forces operating at the chemical weapons sites.
His words also broadly hinted to Bashar Assad that, if he kept his hands off using his chemical arsenal, he would enhance his chances of staying in power, because after America’s exit from the war scene, no other military force would be around to help the opposition remove him.
Panetta was less clear about the so-called “international community” – an amorphous entity in every sense. He said: "I think the greater concern right now is what steps does the international community take to make sure that when Assad comes down, there is a process and procedure to make sure we get our hands on securing those sites. That I think is the greater challenge right now."  
The US government was discussing the issue with Israel and other countries in the region, he said, but ruled out deploying American ground forces in any "hostile" setting. He repeated: "We're not talking about ground troops."  

The defense secretary did not say exactly how this international coalition would function or whether it would go into action if Assad himself embarked on chemical warfare. Neither did he refer to the claim leaked by British intelligence this week that the Syrian stock of 50 tonnes of un-enriched uranium, enough for weapons grade fuel for five nuclear devices, had gone missing and may have passed to Iran.
Gen Dempsey, addressing the same press conference, spoke about the current problem: He said that if Assad chose to use his chemical stockpiles against opposition forces, it would be virtually impossible to stop him. Preventing the launch of chemical weapons "would be almost unachievable,” he said “... because you would have to have such clarity of intelligence, you know, persistent surveillance, you would have to actually see it before it happened."
He added that “messaging” to the Syrian ruler publicly warning him that the use of chemical weapons would cross a red line, established a deterrent, because “he might think it would prompt outright US or international intervention leading to his downfall. But that’s different from preemption.”
Dempsey was repeating Panetta’s implied message to Assad that avoiding chemical warfare would extend the life of his regime, say our sources.
US military sources later told reporters that, while Dempsey and Panetta believe sarin gas will break down after 60 days – “That’s what the scientists tell us,” Dempsey said, US government sources have suggested that “Syrian sophistication with chemical weaponry may leave the combined, weaponized sarin deadly for up to a year.” Sarin, they say, is exceptionally hard to dispose of.
DEBKAfile reports: This confusion is compounded by the decoys used by the Syrian army to conceal its chemical weapons stocks, which are now believed to have been distributed among different Syrian Air Force bases.
Israel has responded to the US withdrawal from the Syrian arena with a decision announced by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that Israel has started erecting a special security fence along its 57-kilometer boundary with Syria.
Ankara's response has been to segregate Turkey from the Syrian conflict behind the six Patriot anti-missile batteries provided by NATO and place them on the border of its embattled neighbor in defensive array.
Indeed, both countries have retreated to defensive postures. However, neither the Patriots nor the wall will be much use should chemical weapons fall into rebel hands, including the Islamist terrorists in their ranks, and they decide to use them.

http://www.phantomreport.com/syrias-rebels-form-own-secret-police

Syria’s rebels form own secret police

by PHANTOM REPORT on JANUARY 10, 2013
Source: The News PK
Just the mention of the word would send shivers down the spine of Syrians: “mukhabarat”, or secret police.
Abuses by President Bashar al-Assad’s feared security units were among the reasons Syrians took to the streets in March 2011, leading to an uprising that has become a civil war.
But now some of the rebels fighting Assad say they have set up a mukhabarat of their own to “protect the revolution”, monitor sensitive military sites and gather military information to help rebels plan attacks against government forces.
“We formally formed the unit in November. It provides all kind of information to (opposition) politicians and fighters. We are independent and just serve the revolution,” said a rebel intelligence officer who goes under the name Haji.
Rebel commanders had put Reuters in touch with Haji, who is based in Syria, via Skype on condition he not be identified.
Haji said most of the rebel mukhabarat’s members were army defectors and former intelligence officers, and that the information they gathered was distributed to all anti-Assad factions and rebel brigades without discrimination.
However, the organization appears to operate independently from the main opposition Syrian National Coalition and the Free Syrian Army, effectively answering to itself.


Haji was careful to distinguish between its methods and those of the secret police under Assad, saying he was aware of the feared reputation of the government’s internal spy services.
“Our work is organized, we have an internal law and we are committed to international laws and human rights,” he said, speaking briefly over Skype.
Assad’s mukhabarat – a blanket term for an array of sometimes overlapping and mutually mistrustful security services – that has helped keep his father before him in power for more than four decades, stamping out dissent and insulating Syria from the frequent military coups that had plagued it previously.
CLANDESTINE ACTIVITY
The new rebel body has operated secretly for months, Haji said, helping fighters carry out attacks on government targets.
He did not specifically claim credit for a bomb attack on a security headquarters in Damascus in July that killed five of Assad’s top security officials, including his defense minister and his brother-in-law, who was an intelligence chief.
Haji declined to disclose details of the rebel agency, but said it operated across Syria, including in Aleppo and Idlib in the north, Deir al-Zor in the east and the capital Damascus, adding: “We have our spies among the regime who are providing us with information that we need, including military information.”
Syrians have long exchanged horror stories of the dungeons of the intelligence branches where dissidents were incarcerated, often tortured and sometimes killed. Opposition activists insist their own mukhabarat will be nothing like those Assad inherited from his father, the late President Hafez al-Assad.
“The word security should mean the security of the people,” said an opposition activist using the name Abu Hisham in Aleppo.
“Unfortunately, Assad’s security bodies changed it to mean preserving the security of the government against the people,” he said. “Having this agency is important right now to track down the shabbiha (pro-Assad militia) and regime forces. We hope they remain up to the responsibility after toppling Assad.”

The rebel mukhabarat is keeping a close eye on the movements of Assad’s family, his army generals and senior officials who until now remain out of the insurgents’ reach, Haji said.

He denied widespread rumors that Assad’s brother Maher, a military commander, had also been killed in the July bombing, adding that his wife had given birth to twin boys last month.
Haji also said Assad, who gave a speech in the Damascus Opera House on Sunday, remains in the capital, but that morale of government officials was low and that many were secretly helping the rebels as an insurance policy in case they won.
“They approach us and they give us the information. We do not pay them. They say all they want is protection for their families later on,” he said, alluding to a post-Assad Syria.
SECTARIAN TOOL
In the Arab world’s many past or present police states, Syria’s mukhabarat has long had a reputation as one of the most ruthless. It consists of at least five powerful agencies who spy on each other, tap phones of dissidents and vie for power.
Created under French Mandate rule of Syria from 1923-43, the secret police became ever more powerful under Hafez al-Assad, who ruled with an iron fist from 1971 until his death in 2000.
Corruption, personal interests and a lack of communication among its branches might appear to offer avenues for rebels to infiltrate Assad’s mukhabarat, but the security services are dominated by the Syrian leader’s tight-knit Alawite minority.
The Alawites, who make up about 12 percent of Syria’s 23 million people, have rallied behind Assad, fearing revenge by the mostly Sunni Muslim rebels if he is toppled.
Other minorities, which include Druze, Christians and Shi’ites, fear for their freedoms if the armed revolt brings Sunni Islamist hardliners to power.
Such fears deepened after documented abuses by some rebels accused of torturing and summarily executing their opponents, as well as of looting state and private property during nearly 22 months of conflict that has cost at least 60,000 lives.

Haji said his intelligence agents were documenting such violations so that the perpetrators could be held to account.

“We are watching everybody. We have gathered information about every violation that happened in the revolt,” he said.
“Those we cannot punish now will be punished after toppling Assad. Nothing will be ignored. We have our members among all the working brigades. They are not known to be intelligence and they operate quietly.”
His agents, Haji said, worked undercover as activists, citizen journalists or fighters.
While welcoming the formation of the rebel intelligence service, one insurgent commander voiced concern it might change its agenda to serve a group or a political party later on, just as Assad’s mukhabarat had focused on protecting his rule.
“After toppling Assad all of this will be reshaped – it is a temporary unit but there is fear that this unit will remain secretive the way it is now and starts executing unwanted agendas,” said the commander, known as Obeida.
“We fear that later it will become political and serve a political agenda as if all our sacrifices never happened.” (Reuters)

UN Envoy: Assad’s Family in Power ‘Too Long’

Brahimi Comments Throw Doubt Into Peace Plan

by Jason Ditz, January 09, 2013
In an interview with BBC, United Nations special envoy to Syria Lakhdar Brahimi said that the 40 years of uninterrupted rule by President Bashar Assad’s family was “a little bit too long,” the first time he has taken a public position on the matter.
The comments may be relatively tame on the surface, but Brahimi and his predecessor Kofi Annan had both sought to avoid taking specific positions on what post-civil war Syria might look like in an attempt to focus on getting peace talks going.
Brahimi went on to criticizeAssad for recent talk of reforms, saying that the time for such offers has passed and that the Syrian public wants a specific say in their own future instead of just getting whatever the regime chooses to offer.
Rebels were quick to embrace Brahimi’s comments, but while they style themselves as a reflection of the will of the Syrian public, their own ambitions to impose rule on the nation are unlikely to be any more welcomed.
In the end, Brahimi’s comments could make his position all the more difficult, while neither side is liable to be able to agree to his negotiations any more than they were before.

Probably Iran’s Fault: US Officials Settle on Iran in Absence of Evidence

Officials Pin Slowed Banking Websites, Photos of FBI Agent on Iran

by Jason Ditz, January 09, 2013
Evidence is a rare thing in US foreign policy statements these days, but certitude is a lot more common. It may seem odd that officials arrive at 100% confidence without proof, but when pinning blame on somebody becomes a matter of expediency, it is remarkable how quickly those officials can become convinced. And nothing is more expedient than blaming Iran.
So when a handful of US banking websites run slow for “several minutes,” US officials have “no doubt” Iran is responsible, and that Iran did so in revenge for US banking sanctions against them. “No doubt,” but no specific evidence to back up the allegation beyond an argument that it would make some sort of sense.
Photos of retired FBI agent Robert Levinson, including one with him wearing an orange jumpsuit and holding a sign saying “I am here in Guantanamo” are also a matter of some interest. US officials had long hinted that they figured Levinson was in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
But with the photos and videos making the rounds, blame is needed, and now US officials “presume” Iran is responsible for those photos. The sum total of the argument for this is that Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been critical of the Guantanamo detention center, yet this sort of criticism is common across much of the world, and there seems no evidence at all that it is Iran. The presumption, rather, is a hope that publicly blaming Iran will distract from the inability of the US to come up with any good proof, and likewise enjoy the harm done when such stories hit the news circuit unquestioned.


and some cat and mouse games in the Gulf.....

http://rt.com/news/uss-jacksonville-hormuz-periscope-fishing-boat-809/


Billion-dollar US nuclear sub comes off worst in Strait of Hormuz collision with ‘fishing boat’

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Published: 11 January, 2013, 19:33
TAGS:
Nuclear, Accident, Iran, USA, Vessels,Navy
TRENDS:
Iran tension
USS Jacksonville (SSN-699)
USS Jacksonville (SSN-699)
The USS Jacksonville, a large nuclear submarine, has broken its periscope after colliding with a vessel which escaped unscathed. This is the latest collision to involve a US vessel in the busy and tense oil chokepoint of the Strait of Hormuz.
The American sub was performing a routine pre-dawn patrol when seamen heard a “thump”, according to a Navy source who spoke to several news agencies. The crew tried to ascertain the damage by looking into its periscope, only to realize it was no longer working. The other periscope on the submarine revealed that the first one had been“sheared off”.
It appears the ‘fishing trawler’ that collided with the 7,000-tonne submarine was not only undamaged, but barely noticed the accident.
“The vessel continued on a consistent course and speed, offering no indication of distress or acknowledgement of a collision,” says an official statement published on the US Navy website.
Authorities insist that USS Jacksonville is in no immediate danger.
“The reactor remains in a safe condition, there was no damage to the propulsion plant systems and there is no concern regarding watertight integrity,” they said.
The cost of repairing the damaged periscope are as yet unclear, but the discontinued Los Angeles-class submarines, to which USS Jacksonville belongs, would cost over $1 billion to build in today’s money (the sub was launched in 1978).
USS Jacksonville has now returned to Bahrain, where its damage will be assessed.
The Strait of Hormuz, by far the world’s busiest oil choke point and less than 40km across at its narrowest, has been a scene of several collisions since tension has risen between Iran and the US over the past two years.
The latest spiral of tension in the waterway, which is controlled by Iran on the north side, and US allies Oman and the United Arab Emirates on south, started with the gradual imposition of sanctions on the export of Iranian oil to most Western countries over the last two years.
In response, Iran has repeatedly threatened to close the strait, which transits a third of the world’s sea-borne oil, through ‘asymmetrical’ measures such as laying extensive minefields.
To counter the threat, the US and its allies have deployed what UK media has reported is the biggest concentrated naval force since World War II.
In the crowded passageway, with distrustful captains from dozens of nations operating at cross-purposes, collisions are inevitable.
Most notably, in August last year a Japanese oil tanker left a 3-meter-wide hole in the side of Navy destroyer USS Porter.





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