Usual contradictory signals regarding US intention for Iran nuclear talks.....
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/10/25/iran-bomb-uranium-israel/3186567/
With the negotiations expected to take months to sort out all of the minor details, that means Iran isn’t going to be seeing any near-term benefits from their diplomacy push, and rather Iran’s international trade is still falling under the existing sanctions.
Turkey has provided aid to some al-Qaeda linked factions and is openly backing the rebellion, but has declined to endorse the al-Qaeda fighters publicly.
The cars apparently crossed into Lebanon through the border town of Arsal, and have been sent on from there deeper into Lebanon, with one of them reportedly sporting faked Hezbollah identification.
The contract for the Parwan Courthouse was actually handed out over two years ago, during June of 2011. The CLC Construction Company was awarded the $2.38 million contract to build it by the Pentagon, and it was supposed to be done by the end of 2011.
But costs keep soaring, for some reason, and the latest Pentagon war budget request is estimating the costs now at $2.1 million per soldier on the ground, insisting the spike is a product of the drawdown.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/10/25/iran-bomb-uranium-israel/3186567/
A new report that says Iran may need as little as a month to produce enough uranium for a nuclear bomb is further evidence for why Israel will take military action before that happens, an Israeli defense official said Friday.
"We have made it crystal clear – in all possible forums, that Israel will not stand by and watch Iran develop weaponry that will put us, the entire Middle East and eventually the world, under an Iranian umbrella of terror," Danny Danon, Israel's deputy defense minister told USA TODAY.
Iran is developing and installing new and advanced centrifuges that enable Iran to enrich even low-enriched uranium to weapons grade uranium needed for nuclear weapons within weeks, Danon said.
"This speedy enrichment capability will make timely detection and effective response to an Iranian nuclear breakout increasingly difficult," he said.
"Breakout" refers to the time needed to convert low-enriched uranium to weapons-grade uranium. On Thursday, the Institute for Science and International Security issued a report stating that Iran could reach that breakout in as little as one month based in part on Iran's own revelations about its nuclear program.
"If they use all their centrifuges ... and their stockpiles of low- and medium-enriched uranium, that would take one to 1.6 months," said David Albright, president of the institute and a former inspector for the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency.
The report comes as the White House is trying to persuade Congress not to go ahead with a bill to stiffen sanctions on Iran to force it to open up its program to inspection. The White House on Thursday invited senate staffers to a meeting on Iran strategy for negotiations that are to resume next month with Iran, it said.
In discussing Iran strategy, President Obama has said Iran is a year or more away from having enough enriched uranium to make a bomb.
Bernadette Meehan, an spokeswoman for the administration's National Security Council, said the intelligence community maintains "a number of assessments" regarding potential time frames for Iran to produce enough weapons-grade uranium for one weapon or a testable nuclear device.
"We continue to closely monitor the Iranian nuclear program and its stockpile of enriched uranium," Meehan said.
In the report, Albright said negotiations with Iran should focus on lengthening Iran's breakout time. ISIS' analysis is based on the latest Iranian and United Nations reports on Iran's centrifuge equipment for producing nuclear fuel and its nuclear fuel stockpiles.
Iran's stockpile of medium-enriched uranium has nearly doubled in a year's time and its number of centrifuges has expanded from 12,000 in 2012 to 19,000 today.
Sen. Mark Kirk, an Illinois Republican whose Senate Banking Committee is considering legislation to tighten Iran sanctions, said the report shows that Iran is expanding its nuclear capabilities under the cover of negotiations.
"The Senate should move forward immediately with a new round of sanctions to prevent Iran from acquiring an undetectable breakout capability," he said. The House has already passed legislation to toughen sanctions.
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has said his country has no interest in nuclear weapons but that producing nuclear fuel is Iran's right. However, Iran has blocked international inspectors from some suspected nuclear facilities, making it impossible to determine whether it is complying with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty it has signed.
United Nations inspectors say they have found evidence of a weapons program in violation of Iran's commitment under the treaty. The USA and the U.N. Security Council have implemented economic sanctions on Iran to persuade it abide by its obligation and verify it is not developing a bomb.
Albright says negotiations with Iran should focus on establishing protocols that lengthen the time period that it would take Iran to convert uranium to weapons grade uranium.
"An essential finding is that they are currently too short and shortening further," stated the report by the Institute for Science and International Security.
US Won’t Ease Sanctions Early in Iran Negotiations
Iran Not Seeing Any Benefits From Diplomacy
by Jason Ditz, October 25, 2013
The Obama Administration today said that they have no intention of easing any sanctions against Iran any time soon, and don’t intend to do so at all “at the front end” of the ongoing negotiations with the nation.
With the negotiations expected to take months to sort out all of the minor details, that means Iran isn’t going to be seeing any near-term benefits from their diplomacy push, and rather Iran’s international trade is still falling under the existing sanctions.
In practice, the Obama Administration is struggling to keep Congress from imposing new sanctions, let alone ease any, so to some extent the position is a pragmatic one.
South Africa has said it hopes to start selling corn and vegetable oil to Iran as soon as the sanctions ease enough that such sales wouldn’t be a violation of international law. That could take quite some time, it seems.
Syria Al Qaeda forces threaten Turkey and Lebanon.....
Syrian al-Qaeda Planning Car Bombings in Turkey
10 Cars Filled With Bombs Smuggled From Syria
by Jason Ditz, October 25, 2013
Turkey’s military police issued a secret report earlier this month that Syrian al-Qaeda fighters have smuggled 10 cars full of explosives with fake identifying plates into Turkey, apparently in an attempt to blackmail Turkey into recognizing them as a “legitimate” part of Syria’s rebellion.
Turkey has provided aid to some al-Qaeda linked factions and is openly backing the rebellion, but has declined to endorse the al-Qaeda fighters publicly.
Car bombs in Turkey have so far mostly targeted border crossings, with an effort by Syrian rebel factions to target the crossings held by rival factions, which are transit points for Turkish aid.
The report comes less than a week after a similar report of four “rigged cars” smuggled into Lebanon by al-Qaeda in Syria, in that case with an eye on attacking Shi’ite neighborhoods. In both cases the cars remain apparently at large, with the timing and target of the attacks unknown.
and....
Reports: Syrian al-Qaeda Car Bombs Sent to Lebanon
Rebel Faction Had Threatened to Target 'Hezbollah Strongholds'
by Jason Ditz, October 20, 2013
Syrian al-Qaeda faction Jabhat al-Nusra has reportedly snuck four “rigged cars” filled with explosives into neighboring Lebanon, according to a leaked security memo which emerged in the Lebanese media.
The cars apparently crossed into Lebanon through the border town of Arsal, and have been sent on from there deeper into Lebanon, with one of them reportedly sporting faked Hezbollah identification.
This report comes just a day after Jabhat al-Nusra issued a statement threatening to target “Hezbollah strongholds” in Lebanon in retaliation for the Shi’ite militia’s involvement in the ongoing Syrian civil war.
Nusra has favored the use of car bombs in recent attacks, including one today in the Syrian city of Hama that killed at least 37. They have often threatened attacks in Shi’ite neighborhoods in Lebanon as well, with some attacks already launched and more apparently in the works.
Afghanistan Epic Fail - Contractor wasteful spending version , obscene cost per US soldier version.....
Afghan Contractors: Anatomy of a Failure
Years of Bungling, Waste Leave an Afghan Courthouse Unbuilt
by Jason Ditz, October 25, 2013
Afghanistan’s Parwan Province is the home of the notorious Bagram Prison, so needless to say, it’s a major center for Afghanistan’s justice system. Yet it doesn’t have a courthouse, and the reason why reflects once again on the bungling system of contractors and subcontractors for Afghanistan reconstruction.
The contract for the Parwan Courthouse was actually handed out over two years ago, during June of 2011. The CLC Construction Company was awarded the $2.38 million contract to build it by the Pentagon, and it was supposed to be done by the end of 2011.
Yet the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) has issued a report (pdf) that details failure after failure in the project. Those who have read past SIGAR reports on other projects will find the story all-too-familiar, yet another contract that fell behind schedule almost immediately, and after years of wrangling was simply ditched.
Everything moves in slow motion with the government, and just two months after construction started, CLC was already a month and a half behind schedule. The company was still paid $396,000 for preliminary work that largely was never done, and it wasn’t until January, after the whole project was supposed to be finished, that the government issued a “letter of concern” to the contractors.
It took another 18 months and several passes back and forth between different government factions for the contract to finally get terminated “for convenience,” and CLC was $396,000 richer.
The Parwan Courthouse, today, stands as a few stacks of rusty rebar and some half-poured concrete, and SIGAR says that at this point the Pentagon is going to have to pay to have the whole mess demolished and start over again.
Parwan is left to conduct impromptu court sessions in makeshift settings wherever they can, nearly two years after the courthouse was supposed to be finished. It’s another failure, and a dismal one.
Not that anyone outside of SIGAR will admit it. Ever eager to spin Afghanistan positively, the US State Department said that despite “issues” with the construction of the courthouse building they believe the project has “been a tremendous success,” citing the impromptu trials that the Afghans are holding in spite of them as proof of the Afghan justice system’s strength.
CENTCOM likewise disputed the report, saying that they later conducted a criminal investigation against CLC for botching the job. Once again this seems totally irrelevant since CENTCOM sat on the issue for years before getting around to terminating the contract, and no matter what they do at this point they’ve wasted years and a lot of money to build some rubble in the middle of Afghanistan, a nation which after decades of war has plenty of its own rubble.
and costs spiking even as troops drawdown - what might the cost be when we have no soldiers there .....
$2.1 Million Per Soldier: US Costs in Afghanistan Soar
Pentagon Seeks Huge Increase in War Funding
by Jason Ditz, October 25, 2013
In 2009, the Congressional Research Service provided a stark metric, that it costs the US government $1 million per soldier in occupied Afghanistan. From 2008 to 2013, that figure rose a bit, and averaged about $1.3 million per by the end.
But costs keep soaring, for some reason, and the latest Pentagon war budget request is estimating the costs now at $2.1 million per soldier on the ground, insisting the spike is a product of the drawdown.
The Pentagon likes to blame the drawdown for a lot of things in Afghanistan, but analysts say that doesn’t make sense, since troop movements have been even greater in past years, during past surges, without a similarly gaudy budget.
The Pentagon seems instead to be estimating costs dramatically higher than the troop levels would justify, as part of their ongoing efforts to get more funding at as many levels as possible.
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