'A paralyzed government will drift closer toward the maelstrom.'

Is This How Democracy Ends?

By Patrick J. Buchanan
Vdare

"I used to think it would take a great financial crisis to get both parties to the table, but we just had one," said G. William Hoagland, a former adviser to the Senate Republican leadership on fiscal policy.

"These days, I wonder if this country is even governable."

Quoted in The New York Times' lead story, Party Gridlock Feeds New Fear of a Debt Crisis (by Jackie Calmes, February 16, 2010), Hoagland nailed it.

America faces a crisis of democracy.

At its heart is a fiscal crisis. After the 2009 deficit of $1.4 trillion, we are running a 2010 deficit of $1.6 trillion. Trillion-dollar deficits are projected through the Obama years, be they four or eight.

Long before 2016, however, holders of U.S. public debt will stop buying Treasury bills or start demanding higher interest rates to cover the growing risk of a default.

This week, a smoke detector went off. China, in December, had unloaded $45 billion of its $790 billion in T-bills. Is Beijing is bailing out?

To assure the world we are not Greece writ large, the United States must soon adopt a visible plan for slashing the deficit.

There are three ways to do it. One is through growth that increases the tax revenue flowing into the Treasury and reduces the outflow for safety net programs like unemployment insurance.

But growth only comes slowly and can take us only so far.

Needed is a combination of big budget cuts and tax hikes. But the only place one can get budget cuts of the magnitude required is from the big entitlement programs, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. And the only place to get revenue of that magnitude is by raising taxes on the American middle class.

And here is where Barack Obama hits the wall.

Republicans are not going to give him a single vote for a tax increase. Not only would this violate a commitment most made to the people who elected them, it would be politically suicidal. For behind the GOP today, and its best hope of recapturing Congress in 2010, are the Tea Party irregulars.

And Tea Partiers now play the role of Red Army commissars who sat at machine guns behind their own troops to shoot down any soldier who retreated or ran. Republicans who sign on to tax hikes cannot go home again.

Consider: Arlen Specter voted for the Obama stimulus and faced an immediate primary challenge from Pat Toomey, who took a 20-point lead, forcing Specter to quit the party to survive. Popular Gov. Charlie Crist embraced Obama on a Florida visit and got an immediate primary challenge from Marco Rubio, who now looks to be the next senator from Florida.

The Tea Party folks are not into the Gerald Ford politics of compromise and consensus. They have seen what it produces: the inexorable growth of Government.

Ex-Sen. Alan Simpson, a Republican and co-chair of Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility, has challenged the patriotism of conservatives who plant their feet in concrete.

"There isn't a single sitting member of Congress—not one—that doesn't know exactly where we're headed. ... And to use the politics of fear and hate and division on each other—we're at a point right now where it doesn't make a damn whether you're a Democrat or a Republican, if you've forgotten you're an American."

Simpson is right in his assertion that anti-tax Republicans went along with George W. Bush's spending spree—for two wars, prescription drug benefits under Medicare and No Child Left Behind.

Where he is mistaken is in suggesting "fear and hate" are behind the opposition to tax hikes. History, principle and honest politics explain much of that hostility.

Ronald Reagan, who consented to tax hikes in the 1982 TEFRA bill, told this writer he was swindled. Promised three dollars in spending cuts for each dollar in tax increases, he got the reverse.

George H.W. Bush won election by pledging: "Read my lips! No new taxes!" He broke his pledge, leaving many of the faithful with egg all over their faces. That may have cost him the presidency.

Principled conservatives are resisting tax hikes because they believe government has grown too huge for the good of the country. And if that means putting the beast on a starvation diet—no new tax revenue to batten on—so be it. Cold turkey time.

Anticipating gains in November, Republicans will not give Obama any new taxes before then. After November, their ranks swollen by Tea Party support, they will be even more intractable.

Where does that leave Obama—and us?

Later this year or early next, to avoid a debt crisis, Obama will ask Congress to raise taxes and pare back entitlement programs.

Republicans will fight the taxes to the last ditch. Democrats, having lost dozens of colleagues in the November massacre, will rebel against the cuts in social spending.

And a paralyzed government will drift closer toward the maelstrom.

Red Meat at CPAC

The hits just keep on coming!

Amateur Hour at Mossad. Britain Not Amused.

Good old know it all, Bibi Netanyahu, has been down this road before:

In his first term as premier, Netanyahu approved Yatom's plan to poison Hamas head Khaled Meshaal in Amman. The Mossad assassins, posing as Canadians, fumbled the attack and were arrested by Jordan after seeking refuge at the Israeli embassy.

Netanyahu would have had to sign off on this Pink Panther Operation.

To understand the profound stupidity of this operation and potential implications for Israel consider Bibi sitting down with other world leaders talking about the existential threat of Iran to Israel and dragging out his evidence and plans drawn up by Mossad.




Israelis Share Suspicions in Hamas Leader’s Killing

By ISABEL KERSHNER New York Times
Published: February 17, 2010

JERUSALEM — The initial nods, winks and pats on the back here over the assassination last month of a senior Hamas official in Dubai are turning to puzzlement and concern as mounting evidence, including extensive surveillance videos, points to a remarkably clumsy operation many Israelis deem unworthy of their intelligence service, Mossad.

Officially, Israel has neither confirmed nor denied involvement in the case, as is customary in delicate matters of intelligence and national security. But since the news of the assassination broke last month, Israel has unofficially made the story its own, with newspapers blaring congratulatory headlines and government ministers praising Mossad’s director.

However, then the Dubai police released images showing some of the 17 people suspected of being in the hit squad bumbling about in poor disguises, and Britain became infuriated by the use of faked British travel documents. Now Israelis are wondering whether their once-famed spy service could have been behind such a sloppy job or, in a John Le Carré-like twist, if Israel could have been framed.

On Wednesday, a commentator for the newspaper Haaretz, Amir Oren, wrote a front-page column about the case, calling for the Mossad chief, Meir Dagan, to step down.

“What must have seemed to its perpetrators as a huge success,” he wrote, “is now being overshadowed by enormous question marks.”

Israel wanted the Hamas official, Mahmoud al-Mabhouh, 50, for the capture and killing of two Israeli soldiers in 1989 and for smuggling weapons to Hamas in Gaza. On Jan. 19, he was killed in a Dubai hotel room.

On Monday, the Dubai police named 11 of the 17 people they suspect in the case. Among the names were those of three Irish citizens — of whom the Irish authorities have no record — and six British citizens living in Israel who appear to be victims of identity theft. The police also showed images culled from the ubiquitous closed-circuit TV system showing some of them in false beards, wigs and glasses, in almost comical attempts at disguise.

With the agents’ passport pictures now splashed across newspapers and television screens around the world, Israeli commentators said the agents, whoever they may really be, have been burned. Eitan Haber, a columnist in the daily newspaper Yediot Aharonot and a close aide to Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in the 1990s, wrote Wednesday, “They cannot even go to the grocery store.”

In a first official reaction, the foreign minister, Avigdor Lieberman, said Wednesday that Israel’s policy of “ambiguity” in such cases was “correct.”

“I don’t know why we are assuming that Israel, or the Mossad, used those passports,” Mr. Lieberman told Army Radio. “Israel never responds, never confirms and never denies.”

Three former senior Mossad officials contacted by a reporter on Wednesday refused to comment at all.

The British authorities said they believed the British passports the Dubai police had collected were “fraudulent.” Prime Minister Gordon Brown called for a full investigation.

The six British citizens living in Israel — who woke up on Tuesday to find their names linked with the assassination — do not resemble the agents’ photographs from the passports bearing their names. Among the Britons was a physiotherapist, a technical writer and a repairman who lives on a kibbutz.

The name of an American-born Israeli was used by another of the suspects, who carried a German passport. That person studies in a religious seminary near Tel Aviv.

Three of the British citizens gave interviews to the news media on Tuesday, expressing their shock and some fear. By Wednesday they appeared to have gone incommunicado and did not answer or return a reporter’s calls.

Mr. Oren, in his front-page column in Haaretz, anticipated a diplomatic crisis over the suspicions that Mossad had counterfeited British passports.

“It is as if Israeli governments had never apologized to London for using British documentation,” he wrote, “as if they had not promised solemnly, when passports of Her Majesty’s subjects were found in a certain phone booth, that this would never happen again.”

________________________________

If the Israeli government was party to behaviour of this kind it would be a serious violation of trust between nations. If legitimate British passport holders were put at risk it would be a disgrace.

“Given the current speculation, the Israeli government has some explaining to do and the ambassador should be summoned to the Foreign Office to do so in double-quick time.”

Sir Menzies Campbell, the former Liberal Democrat leader.

Bank Credit Continues to Shrink. Where Will Growth Come From?

US bank lending falls at fastest rate in history

Bank lending in the US has contracted so far this year at the fastest rate in recorded history, raising concerns that the Federal Reserve may have jumped the gun by withdrawing emergency stimulus.

By Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, International Business Editor
Published: 8:43PM GMT 17 Feb 2010

Telegraph


David Rosenberg from Gluskin Sheff said lending has fallen by over $100bn (£63.8bn) since January, plummeting at an annual rate of 16pc. "Since the credit crisis began, $740bn of bank credit has evaporated. This is a record 10pc decline," he said.

Mr Rosenberg said it is tempting fate for the Fed to turn off the monetary spigot in such circumstances. "The shrinking in banking sector balance sheets renders any talk of an exit strategy premature," he said.

The M3 broad money supply – watched by monetarists as a leading indicator of trouble a year ahead – has been contracting at a rate of 5.6pc over the last three months. This signals future deflation. The Fed's "Monetary Multplier" has dropped to a record low of 0.81, evidence that the banking system is still broken.

Tim Congdon from International Monetary Research said demands for higher capital ratios and continued losses from the credit crisis are both causing banks to cut lending. The risk of a double-dip recession – or worse – is growing by the day.

"It is absurdly premature to think of withdrawing stimulus while bank credit is still sliding. To have allowed this monetary collapse to occur a full 18 months after the financial cataclysm is extreme incompetence. They seem to have forgotten that the lesson of the 1930s was the falling quantity of money," he said.

Paul Ashworth, US economist for Capital Economics, said that certain Fed officials are clearly worried about lending since they slipped in a warning that bank credit "continues to contract" in their latest statement.
However, regional Fed "hawks" appear to have gained the upper hand. This has echoes of mid-2008 when the Fed talked of tightening, arguably setting off the chain of events that led to the collapse of Lehman Brothers later that year. China has also been calling for a halt to QE, accusing Washington of "monetizing" its deficit in a stealth default on Treasury bonds.

The bank has already wound up its main liquidity operations. Concerns that the Fed may soon reverse quantitative easing altogether have caused a sharp rise in credit spreads in recent weeks.

Fed chair Ben Bernanke first made his name as an expert on the "credit channel" causes of slumps. It is unclear why he has been so relaxed about declining bank loans this time.

"The reason the Great Depression became 'great' was the contraction of credit. You would have thought that a student of the Depression like Bernanke would be alarmed by this," said Mr Ashworth.

Assassins and Criminals

There is a very dark and disturbing side to this story. It goes way beyond the use of the word "assassins" to describe the killers. It goes to the government that planned and executed this operation.

The more you read about this, the more outrageous it becomes.

Any government has a right to protect its citizens. It has a right to reach out and strike and kill its enemies.

It can send its soldiers in uniform or dressed to look like civilians or in the uniforms of others. It does not have the right to take the real identities of non-beligerant civilians and try and frame them for a crime.

An assassination is not necessarily a crime. Trying to make a killing appear to be the work of a specific person is criminal by anyone's definition.

It would be irresponsible for any ethical government to target innocent British and Irish citizens, clone their ID, use their real names and fake passports to put them at risk and peril in an assassination operation where the possibility of retaliation against them is high.

That is a criminal act and unjustifiable if done by a government.

What kind of government is so cynical and contemptuous of the rights of ordinary people?

What level of arrogance that so disregards the potential consequences to the future safety of the people whose identity was stolen?

These pictures are clearly of people with Middle Eastern roots. Are they Israeli or rival Palestinians?

If Israeli, and according to the procedures attributed to be used by Mossad, this type of operation must be signed off by the highest authority in Israel.

If it is proven that this is an Israeli operation, then Israel has a problem.

If this is not an Israeli operation, then we all have a problem because this group and those behind it can do just about anything anywhere.

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh Assassinated in Dubai

February 17, 2010
Assassins had Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in sight as soon as he got to Dubai
Hugh Tomlinson, Dubai
Times on Line

Mahmoud al-Mabhouh took no notice of the two men who joined him in the lift of his hotel in Dubai during the short ride to the second floor on the afternoon of January 20.

One was short and portly with a moustache, the other tall. Dressed in sports gear and carrying tennis rackets, they looked like any other European tourists visiting the Gulf state for some winter sun.

He did not realise that the two men were part of an 11-strong team that had come to kill him. In just over five hours he would be dead.

Stepping out of the lift, al-Mabhouh was escorted to room 230 by a member of staff at the Al Bustan Rotana hotel, near Dubai airport. Unnoticed, the taller man followed him down the corridor, clocking his room number and that of the room opposite, 237. In the hours that followed, room 237 became the staging post for the audacious murder of the senior Hamas official.

Within an hour of al-Mabhouh checking in his killers had established that room 237 was unoccupied and moved in across the hall. By that evening seven of the team were gathered in the room, waiting for their opportunity.

The killers had lain in wait for al-Mabhouh, whom Hamas admits was involved in the killing of two Israeli soldiers in 1989, since the previous night. Flying in from Paris, Frankfurt, Rome and Zurich, the team of ten men and one woman arrived within three hours of each other. The alleged mastermind of the operation, a Frenchman using the name Peter Elvinger, was the last to arrive at 2.30am on January 19. The team dispersed for the night to hotels near the airport and to the Al Bustan Rotana.

The following morning, several members of the team including Elvinger and the Irish woman, whose passport bore the name Gail Folliard, met at a shopping centre to discuss final preparations for the murder. Nothing was left to chance.

Security footage of the killers’ movements during the afternoon, released by police in Dubai yesterday, underlines the professionalism of the operation. The group switched hotels several times and wore disguises including false beards and wigs, while surveillance teams rotated in pairs through the hotel lobby, never hanging around for too long and paying for everything in cash.

Folliard and another member of the party carrying an Irish passport in the name of Kevin Daveron were operating as spotters on the second floor of the hotel when the murder was committed. Both switched hotels that afternoon and dressed smartly to pose as hotel staff. The bald Daveron donned a dark wig and glasses, while Folliard appears to have removed a blonde wig to reveal dark hair.

Throughout the operation, none of the suspects made a direct call to any another. However, Dubai police traced a high volume of calls and text messages between three phones carried by the assassins and four numbers in Austria where a command centre had apparently been established.

To co-ordinate their movements on the ground, the team used discreet, sophisticated short-range communication devices as they tracked their victim.

Al-Mabhouh touched down in Dubai at around 3pm from Damascus to arrange a shipment of weapons to Gaza. Hamas has not explained why one of its senior commanders, a marked man with several assassination attempts against him already, should have arrived alone without any security.

Clearly, though, his mission was compromised long before his arrival in Dubai. The assassination team were waiting for him at the terminal. CCTV footage shows al-Mabhouh passing within metres of one of his killers. As the Hamas commander approaches the taxi rank outside the terminal, a spotter from the team can be seen sidling into shot behind him, speaking on a mobile phone to confirm the Palestinian’s arrival.

Al-Mabhouh checked into the Al Bustan Rotana at 3.25pm with the surveillance team in close attendance. After they followed him to his room, a call was made and Elsinger booked room 237 from the business suite of another hotel. With the trap set, he then booked a flight to Munich via Qatar at 7.30pm that evening, an hour before the killing.

Security footage gives a macabre inevitability to the hours that followed. When al-Mabhouh made a short visit out of the hotel, apparently to meet a contact, the killers moved swiftly into place. Four burly men arrived at room 237.

Whether through good fortune or design, no security camera covered the door to al-Mabhouh’s room and there is no footage of how the team gained entry to the room. Hotel records show that at 8pm an attempt was made to re-programme the lock to his door and Daveron, waiting in the second floor lobby, is seen to distract a hotel guest who appears from the second floor lifts for a few vital seconds to give the killers time to gain access.

When al-Mabhouh returned to the hotel at 8.24pm his killers were in place. Police believe that he was asphyxiated. By 8.46pm, less than 20 minutes after their victim entered the hotel, the four killers are shown leaving the second floor, followed closely by their spotters in room 237. The surveillance team in the hotel lobby also disbands.

Less than two hours later Daveron and Folliard are shown boarding a flight to Paris. Others took flights to Hong Kong and South Africa before doubling back to Europe.

Al-Mabhouh’s body was not found until 1.30pm the following afternoon. His room showed no signs of forced entry. The cause of death was initially believed to be an increase of blood pressure in the brain.

The murder was only uncovered days later, when local security services were told who the victim was. Al-Mabhouh had also been travelling on a false passport.

As an international manhunt began for the 11 suspects yesterday, one particular anomaly in the case remained. Folliard is the only woman named so far, but footage of the final surveillance shows a second woman arriving at the hotel accompanied by a man in a Panama hat and a beard. It is not known whether this woman is one of two Palestinians arrested in Dubai last week in connection with the murder.

As the hunt for the killers begins in earnest and the finger is pointed at Mossad, room 230 remains empty. “Closed for emergency repairs”.

Progress in Afpakistan?

Top Taliban Commander Captured in Secret Raid
Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Fox

Feb. 14: A U.S. soldier returns fire as others run for cover during a firefight with insurgents in Marjah, Afghanistan.

The Taliban's top military commander has been captured in Pakistan in a joint operation by Pakistani and U.S. intelligence forces, sources confirmed to Fox News late Monday.

Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, described as the No. 2 behind Taliban founder and Usama bin Laden associate Mullah Muhammad Omar, has been in Pakistani custody for several days.

Baradar was captured in Karachi, Pakistan, in a raid by Pakistan's Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, with CIA operatives accompanying the Pakistanis, the New York Times first reported Monday. Pakistan has been leading the interrogation of Baradar, but Americans are also involved, officials said.

Baradar heads the Taliban's military council and was elevated in the body after the 2006 death of military chief Mullah Akhtar Mohammed Usmani. Baradar is known to coordinate the movement's military operations throughout the south and southwest of Afghanistan. His area of direct responsibility stretches over Kandahar, Helmand, Nimroz, Zabul and Uruzgan provinces.

If confirmed, Baradar's arrest would be a major setback for the Taliban.

He may also have information on the whereabouts of Omar and bin Laden.

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