WarSclerotic

GLORIA Center: State Department Sponsors Saudi Trip of Pro-Iran Apologist.

There are days when you think: No, this nightmare can’t be real! Is the Obama Administration really so bad? Have the policymakers really taken leave of their senses?

And then you see this:

The U.S. Consulate-General in Saudi Arabia “hosted Dr. Trita Parsi, founder and President of the National Iranian American Council…..Dr. Parsi chaired a roundtable luncheon hosted by CG [Consul-General] Tom Duffy. This event was very well-received by the audience, a mix of prominent academics, businesspeople, journalists, and intellectuals. There was significant audience participation and interest in the topic.”

According to Parsi’s own site, to which the official U.S. site helpfully sends you, “Dr. Parsi was invited to speak and share his expertise on U.S.-Iranian relations and Iranian politics during the first week of October at several events in Riyadh, Dharan and Jeddah.” The official U.S. consulate site tries to pretend that Parsi is actually some kind of noted scholar whereas his claim to fame consists almost entirely in convincing the repressive Tehran dictatorship to back him.

The U.S. State Department recently also organized a paid tour for the imam of the “Ground Zero” mosque who rejects U.S. policy toward Hamas, blames America for the September 11 attack, and claims the United States has murdered large numbers of innocent Muslims.

Under what program is all this done?

“As part of the US government’s public affairs outreach, the State Department tours prominent US-based experts and academics in the region to provide an opportunity for officials from foreign ministries, academics, journalists, and members of the business community to engage with them.”

Parsi has been the leading lobbyist in America for the Iranian Islamist regime and, at least until last year’s election, was also an apologist for President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He worked actively (in partnership with the anti-Israel front group J Street, no less) to stop U.S. sanctions on Iran.

And this is the man who the State Department sponsored in Saudi Arabia? What must the Saudis have thought? I’ll tell you:

Aha, the Americans pretend to oppose Tehran but in fact they are playing a double game, making a deal with that regime. Well, if the Americans are backing Iran we better appease the Iranians real fast before it is too late.

Yes, the nightmare is real.

Qatar Airways: Mail bomb targeting U.S. synagogues traveled on two passenger planes – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Netanyahu: Bomb plot indicates growing wave of Islamist terrorism; Washington: Authorities ‘have to presume’ there might be more potential mail bombs.

By The Associated Press

One of two powerful bombs mailed from Yemen to Chicago-area synagogues traveled on two passenger planes within the Middle East, a spokesman for Qatar Airways said Sunday.

The U.S. said the plot bears the hallmarks of Al-Qaida’s offshoot in Yemen.

The airline spokesman said a package containing explosives hidden in a printer cartridge arrived in Qatar Airways’ hub in Doha, Qatar on one of the carrier’s flights from the Yemeni capital San’a.

It was then shipped on a separate Qatar Airways plane to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates, said the spokesman, where it was discovered by authorities late Thursday or early Friday. A second, similar package turned up in England on Friday.

The airline spokesman disclosed the information on condition of anonymity in line with the company’s standing policies on conversations with the media. He did not give any timeframe for the two flights in question.

	A UPS plane landing in Germany.
	Photo by: Reuters

In Washington, President Barack Obama’s counterterrorism adviser said Sunday that authorities “have to presume” there might be more potential mail bombs like the ones pulled from planes in England and the United Arab Emirates.

Al-Qaida’s offshoot in Yemen is suspected of mailing the bombs. The group was behind a failed bombing on a Detroit-bound airliner last Christmas that bore some of the same hallmarks as this plot.

In Yemen on Sunday, police were searching for additional suspects after arresting a female computer engineering student suspected of mailing the packages and also detaining her mother. Both arrests were on Saturday.

U.S. officials said suspects in the plot include the bombmaker suspected of designing the explosive used in the failed Christmas airliner bombing. The bombmaker is a key operative in Al-Qaida’s offshoot in Yemen, Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

Authorities were also looking at two language institutions in Yemen with whom the plotters may have been associated.

Netanyahu warns of growing Islamist terrorism

The mail bombs indicate a growing wave of Islamist terrorism, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Sunday.

“The fact is, it is does not matter whether it’s an attack on a synagogue in Chicago, or a train station in Madrid, or London, or Mumbai, or Bali,” he told his cabinet at a weekly session in Jerusalem.

Terrorism, he said, was rising “in the scope of the attacks, the audacity with which it is directed at the nations of the world, and of course, in its armaments.”

Netanyahu added that when meeting United States Vice President Joe Biden next week, he would discuss steps to combat terrorism.

The Israeli leader heads for the US next Sunday, to participate in the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly, in New Orleans.

Ahmadinejad aide says Iran not ready to talk nuclear with global powers – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Iran President said on Saturday parties must declare their opinion on Israel’s alleged nuclear arsenal before talking with Iran.

By Reuters

Iran will not discuss its nuclear program at talks with global powers that could take place next month, an adviser to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said on Sunday, adding doubt to the chance of a successful negotiation.

Ali Akbar Javanfekr, a media adviser to the president, said the countries which want to resume talks on Iran’s nuclear activities which they fear might lead it to weapons capability, had yet to address Ahmadinejad’s conditions.

“We will not be talking with the Western party about the nuclear energy issue in this round of the negotiations with this party,” Javanfekr said, according to the semi-official Fars news agency.

Iran said on Friday it was ready to resume talks with the P5+1 group — the permanent members of the UN Security Council: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States plus Germany — after Nov. 10. But the final date, venue and agenda have yet to be agreed.

In a television interview on Saturday night, Ahmadinejad reiterated his position that, before talks could resume, the other parties should say whether they come to the table as Iran’s friends.

“From the very beginning we told them that they have no option but negotiating with Iran. But it should be based on justice,” he said on state-run TV.

“(We ask) on the basis of what framework are you going to negotiate? Is it based on justice and respect? But they do not dare announce it yet,” Ahmadinejad said.

He has also asked the parties to declare their opinion on Israel’s alleged nuclear arsenal. Israel has said it does not rule out striking Iran militarily to prevent it getting an atomic bomb.

The Security Council passed a fourth round of sanctions on Iran in June, followed by tougher measures from the United States and the European Union, aimed at forcing Iran back to the negotiating table.

The P5+1 states want Iran to suspend enrichment work which can have both civilian and military uses, in exchange for trade and diplomatic benefits on offer since 2006.

Iran says its nuclear ambitions are purely peaceful and denies it is seeking nuclear arms, but it has refused to accept demands from the UN Security Council to halt uranium enrichment and has been subjected to tightened sanctions since June aimed at getting it to comply.

Skeptics accuse Iran of stalling talks while it continues to stockpile nuclear material. Iran insists it has a right to enrichment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

He did not say what the talks would cover if they do not address the nuclear issue.

French Company Confirms Weapons Seized in Nigeria Came From Iran | Africa | English.

A French-based shipping company has confirmed that a shipment of arms seized in Nigeria this week came from Iran.

In a statement Saturday, international shipping company CNA CGM said the shipment originated in the southern Iranian port of Bandar Abbas and was delivered to Lagos in July. It was taken to a depot where it has been stored untouched since then.

Nigeria’s secret service on Tuesday discovered the 13 shipping containers of illegal weapons, including rockets, rifle rounds, grenades and explosives at the main port in Lagos.  The shipping company said labels on the crates indicate they contained stone and glass wool.

Authorities have arrested at least two people in connection with the weapons cache. The shipping company is cooperating with authorities.

Israeli officials had said the weapons were bound for the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip. A Hamas leader in Gaza denied the weapons were headed to Gaza.

The Iranian embassy in Nigeria indicated it may issue a statement on the weapons seizure in the coming days.

Israel has repeatedly warned Hamas and other Palestinian militant groups against firing rockets into its cities and territory.

Some reports say Nigerian customs officials were tipped off to the shipment by foreign intelligence and had the cargo vessel under surveillance.  The Associated Press reports Nigerian inspectors became suspicious after the shipment lacked proper paperwork.

Nigeria has been on alert since a bombing near an October 1 independence day celebration killed 12 people.

A militant group, the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, claimed responsibility for the attack.  Nigeria’s intelligence agency has since said it will charge five suspects in connection with the attack.

Some information for this report provided by AFP, AP and Reuters.

Defenders, attackers probe Stuxnet secrets » Kuwait Times Website.

Published Date: October 31, 2010
By Peter Apps

No one may ever know for sure who built computer worm Stuxnet or why, but now it is out there it could prove as big a game changer for industrial system security as the Sept 11 attacks were for aviation. Others compare it to the first atomic blast – a first clear real-world demonstration of something long thought possible that makes it easier and more likely for others to follow. Since its discovery this summer, spy agencies, security experts, hackers and others – perhaps including militants – have been sc
rutinising Stuxnet to learn and exploit its secrets.

Most analysts agree it was probably built by one or more nation states to target a particular industrial facility, most likely Iran’s nuclear program, reprogramming its own control systems to inflict physical damage. Proving that is a different matter altogether. But those who have studied it closely say it is by far one of the most sophisticated attacks able to target the key control systems at the heart of almost all modern infrastructure, from nuclear plants and refineries to transportation and traffic.

There’s still a lot we don’t understand about Stuxnet,” said Joel Langill, one of the authors of a new report into the worm from US-based group of experts the Cyber Security Forum Initiative (CSFI). “But what we do know is it’s a very significant step forward from anything we’ve seen before. Understanding Stuxnet and how it operates is important to learning how to defend against the threat.” If Stuxnet was released by a Western spy agency to damage Iran, Langill said, they could ultimately regret the dec
ision. “Having it out there certainly makes it easier for someone else to produce something similar,” he said.

A host of nations including the United States, China, Russia and Britain are pouring more resources into cyber warfare, viewing it as key to their national security. Whilst the most sensitive systems such as nuclear power plants usually have protection advice from national security agencies, private firms operating utility, refinery and manufacturing plants get less support. Corrupting their programming could still kill, and even the suspicion of infection could force a system shutdown.

Stuxnet will live on – it will be the zombie of our nightmares,” blogged German expert Ralph Langner, one of the first to identify it. “It provides a blueprint for aggressive attacks on control systems that can be applied generically.” A handful of firms dominate the infrastructure control system market: Emerson and Honeywell from the US, Britain’s Invensys, Germany’s Siemens, Switzerland’s ABB and Japan’s Yokogawa. Windows software tends to underpin almost all systems, with all seen likely to have previo
usly undiscovered “zero day” vulnerabilities.

Stuxnet exploited at least four separate zero day vulnerabilities, a sign of its complexity – it is rare for even two to be targeted at the same time. Those particular holes are now being closed with software patches, but meanwhile Stuxnet has quietly copied and sent itself around the world. Most users it passed through would never have noticed.

It would have uploaded itself, scanned their system, found it was not in its target and moved on, meanwhile sending data back to its creator via now-blocked websites in Denmark and Malaysia. The target itself was likely kept separate from the Internet for security, but it would have entered the system through an infected USB stick before taking control. “Stuxnet does a lot of things we haven’t seen before,” said CSFI’s Langill, an oil sector cyber security consultant for Houston-based ENGlobal. “It is abl
e to conceal itself within the system. It is able to reprogram code and then conceal (that).

Experts always knew a Stuxnet-like attack was possible. But no one had seen an apparently working version until this summer. By then, it had already been circulating since 2009, apparently updated by its creators sometime this year. Iranian officials say the worm infected some computers at its Bushehr nuclear plant but deny it delayed start-up. If it did real damage, few expect Tehran – or any other victim – ever to admit it. Israel’s intelligence services are widely suspected, but few expect them to come
forward either.

But as well as representing a technical breakthrough in its own right, Stuxnet relied on lax security systems – unchanged default passwords and poor control around the use of pin drives. The 911 attacks prompted an immediate tightening of security measures around the world to make simply hijacking aircraft more difficult – measures that arguably should already have been in place. Some argue Stuxnet should have a similar effect. “You need a security program that looks at not only one or two security control
s but a comprehensive defence in depth strategy,” said Langill. “There are a whole lot of things you can do – some very simple. Complacency is the real problem.

The good news, experts say, is that designing attacks this sophisticated – even with the original worm to work from – remains fiendishly difficult, certainly much more so than hijacking an airliner with a box cutter. As well as understanding how to create the worm, any attacker needs to have deep knowledge of the system they target. “I’d compare it more to the first detonation of an atomic bomb (than 911),” said Alastair Newton, former policy lead for cyber warfare at Britain’s foreign office and now chief
political analyst for Japanese bank Nomura. “As the North Koreans keep proving, 65 years later it’s still not an easy thing to replicate even though many of the instructions are out there on the Internet.” – Reuters

American Thinker: Syria Continues to Stonewall the IAEA.

By David Fontaine Mitchell

ANALYSIS / Attacking Jews remains a radical Islamist guiding motivation – Haaretz Daily Newspaper | Israel News.

Terrorism changes shape, but tactics, targets and timing remain consistent.

By Yossi Melman

The method used by the terrorist was simple, but the plan was sophisticated, daring and creative, testifying to a meticulous process.

Mail bombs are nothing new. Israeli intelligence used the method in 1956 to assassinate a colonel in Egyptian intelligence in Gaza, and in the 1960s to attack former Nazis and German scientists working in Egypt.

	FedEx jets sit at the cargo terminal at Dulles International Airport on Saturday, Oct. 30, 2010.
	Photo by: AP Photo / Jose Luis Magana

Later, mail bombs were sent to senior figures in the Palestinian terrorist organizations.

These groups retaliated in kind, delivering similar bombs to Israeli diplomats and emigres.

The choice to use two international carriers – Federal Express and UPS – reflects professional planning and a careful choice of material, timing and targets.

The packages were concealed in printer ink cartridges filled with PETN explosives.

One of the explosive charges was meant to be set off with a timing mechanism, another with a cell phone’s SIM card.

The timing of the operation was far from coincidental: The bombs were meant to explode near or on Tuesday, the day of the U.S. midterm elections.

The timing and target – Jewish-American communities – seem to indicate that Al-Qaida did it, and the Yemeni origin of the packages appears to show that the group behind it was the so-called Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula.

Yemenis have been commanders in Al-Qaida ever since Osama bin Laden announced the existence of the organization in a cave in Afghanistan in 1998.

Yemen has also seen a number of terrorist attacks against American targets, including the October 2000 assault on the USS Cole in Aden.

But in recent years, Yemen has become a central operations base for some of the worst attacks.

Radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who preaches from Yemen over the Internet, has been linked by American intelligence to at least six attacks, including the Fort Hood shooting in November 2009 and the attempted Times Square bombing in May 2010.

Three firm conclusions

Three conclusions can be drawn from the attempted attacks of the past week. Radical Islamist terrorism changes shape, but it doesn’t disappear. International intelligence cooperation is increasing – the information that undermined these attacks came from Saudi Arabia and was shared with Dubai, the United States and Britain.

Second, it would appear that just as the fundamentalists are setting up terrorism networks, intelligence communities around the globe are establishing counter-networks of agents, informers, handlers and technology.

The third lesson is that although Israel and Jewish targets are not the terror networks’ main focus, attacking Jews remains a guiding motivation.

DEBKAfile, Political Analysis, Espionage, Terrorism, Security.

(If Israel is privy to the correct intelligence, I would hope the IDF would find a way to deal with this.  While the attack was against America, it was meant to attack Jews.  This legitimizes Israel responding.  If successful, it wouldn’t lose us any friends in the Western world either. – Joseph Wouk)

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report October 31, 2010, 12:13 AM (GMT+02:00)

Ibrahim Hassan Al Asiri, Al Qaeda’s package plot mastermind

The mastermind of the Al Qaeda (AQAP) plot to plant explosive packages aboard US-bound air freighters is identified by debkafile‘s exclusive counter-terror sources as Ibrahim Hassan Al Asiri, a Saudi Arabian. He is hiding out at the main Al Qaeda fighting base in the Yemeni province of Al Gouf, 140 kilometers south of Sanaa.

Our sources also reveal that Saturday night, Oct. 30, Yemeni president Abdullah Ali Saleh was still refusing to allow Washington to land US special forces in Al Gouf to wipe out the al Qaeda bastion which has so far resisted all the Yemeni army’s efforts to root it out. Based there, according to US and Saudi intelligence, is the al Qaeda (AQAP) infrastructure of terror planners and bomb makers who planted the two explosive packages taken off cargo flights bound for Chicago, US, on Friday.

With Yemeni troops falling back against AQAP, US and Saudi forces Saturday stepped up their UAV strikes on the Al Gouf hideouts to keep al Qaeda fighters from escaping to other parts of Yemen. The US drones came from Djibouti and the Saudi pilotless aircraft from Assir just north of Yemen.

Our military sources reveal that US Combined Task Force – CTF 151 has been standing by Yemen’s Red Sea coast aboard the Marine amphibious assault ship USS Boxer awaiting the order to land in Al Gouf, while the Marines Expeditionary Unit 26 waits on the USS Iwo Jima, accompanied by additional US warships.
Saudi King Abdullah and senior US and British government officials have been leaning hard on the Yemeni president to allow these forces to land and storm the bastion of al Qaeda’s air freight package plotters. Ali Saleh Saturday night still stood by his refusal. To deflect their demands, the Yemeni president Saturday night began to disseminate an assortment of claims and data to show how hard he was working to crack the terrorist freight conspiracy.
Our sources report that even when he ordered Yemeni police to seize up to 30 pieces of suspect freight and arrest a woman and her mother as suspects of planting the explosive parcels on Fedex and UPS air freighters he was acting under duress. Saudi and US intelligence dropped this information in his lap with an ultimatum to  take action or else they would take matters out of his hands.

The two women are believed to be no more than couriers at the end of the line who agreed to plant the parcels for a small sum. They are unlikely to have information that goes high up to the hideouts and identities of the planners. However, by locking them up in Yemeni cells, Ali Saleh has shut the door to US and Saudi counter-terror investigators trying to garner even small crumbs of information under questioning, although they are unlikely to accept this refusal without a fight.

20 explosive devices suspected to be en route to US – Israel News, Ynetnews.

British, American press report security forces trying to trace parcels sent in last 48 hours via airmail to European destinations. It is feared packages scattered in various airports, may already be on US soil. Security beefed at airports

Jonathan Weber